The Last Book Of Swords : Shieldbreaker’s Story (18 page)

      
And—wasn’t there some relevant old proverb? If not, there ought to be. Only a lunatic, the Baron thought to himself, would ever willingly become a demon’s partner.

      
The question was whether he, Amintor, really had any choice.

      
“Then I am with you,” he said at last, trying to make the agreement sound hearty and whole-hearted.

      
The tent restored itself to normal interior dimensions as the peasant got to his feet, his small eyes twinkling. “Of course you are,” the demon said reassuringly.

      
“When do we strike?”

      
“That has yet to be decided. Probably the next time you and the Dark King are together. But let the coming-together be his suggestion and not yours.”

      
Arridu agreed with the Baron that Amintor at this point had best go on trying to rejoin his army.

* * *

      
When the thing was gone, Amintor once more stretched out, shakily this time, to try to get some rest. He wondered whether Vilkata’s wide-awake spell was going to keep him from sleeping altogether.

      
Dozing, or trying to doze, the Baron also considered privately whether it was yet utterly hopeless for him to make a deal with Prince Mark and his royal wife, or with Stephen if and when he encountered the lad again. Amintor was quite ready to ally himself with Tasavalta, for the time being at least, if other choices seemed unsatisfactory. And the Tasavaltans, their capital in enemy hands, were in no condition to be too choosy about their allies.

      
Darkness was falling outside his tent. His minor demons and his hapless converts went about routine activities. If only he could sleep.

Chapter Fourteen

      
The compact realm of Tasavalta lay for the most part green and beautiful, in sunny early afternoon, some twelve hours after Vilkata’s surprise attack on the capital, Sarykam—and approximately two hours after Stephen had confronted Baron Amintor and relieved him of the Sword of Chance.

* * *

      
Ben of Purkinje—massive, heavily muscled, scarred, graying and ugly Ben, who was a couple of years older than the Prince and looked a little older still—and Prince Mark, companions since their early youth, had ridden together out of the village of Voronina before dawn, feeling the urgent need of a scouting expedition in the direction of the city.

      
Mark was wearing Woundhealer at his right side, and at his left, just in case of untoward encounters, a mundane sword of comparable size and weight, an efficient killing tool.

      
Captain Miyagi and his small company of soldiers had remained in the village with Princess Kristin, as had the beast-master and his trained animals, with the exception of one day-flying bird-messenger that went with Mark. In expectation that Vilkata’s invading forces would soon renew and extend their assault, the understanding was that the Princess would, at some time during the day, move her field headquarters to a different village. If all went well, her husband, having completed his reconnaissance for the time being, would soon join her there.

* * *

      
Mark and Ben, long familiar with each other’s thoughts, had little to say as they cantered toward Sarykam. The morning was well advanced by the time they came in sight of the city’s familiar walls.

      
At this point the pair encountered a handful of people, good Tasavaltan citizens, but now with the look of refugees about them, carrying homemade bundles and wearing expressions of bewilderment. One couple pushed a laden cart built to be hauled by animals. All of these people recognized the Prince on sight, and most of them knew Ben as well. All told at length of the devastation in the capital, and several were eye-witnesses of Vilkata’s demons taking hostages by the hundred.

      
One man had heard a rumor that the Mindsword had been destroyed, but that all the weapons in the armory were captured by the foe. Another rumor was that Vilkata had been slain; and there were less happy rumors concerning things that might have happened to Prince Stephen. The father of the young Prince, well aware of the unreliability of tales in wartime, managed to hear these last without giving any overt sign of great dismay.

* * *

      
Leaving the refugees to settle their concerns of food and shelter for the coming night, Ben and Mark moved on a little way. They were considering whether to approach the city more closely, when in a suburban street one of the death squads dispatched by Vilkata against Mark, half a dozen Tasavaltan converts sent out as assassins, recognized the pair and attacked, shrieking their glorious Master’s name.

      
Some of these men were literally frothing at the mouth with the violence of their hatred, with their joy at the prospect of killing and dying for the Dark King.

      
Ben had only a moment’s warning, but that was all he needed. He met his attackers with considerable skill and overwhelming strength. Knowing that Woundhealer was available, in his partner’s hand, made it possible also to fight with an unusual recklessness.

      
Mark, standing back-to-back with his huge ally, engaged in peculiar Swordplay—every time he thrust home with Woundhealer, or even nicked one of his attackers, the bright steel of his Sword brought swift healing, recovery, to the Mindsword’s victims.

      
First one attacker then another, bloodlessly slashed or neatly skewered, staggered back, dropping weapons, moments later crying out in horror at their own behavior.

      
The first men so efficiently de-converted were in moments hurling themselves upon their former comrades, grabbing at sword-arms, trying desperately to stop those still under Skulltwister’s spell from pressing the attack. The odds in the fight had soon shifted dramatically.

      
Those injured soon received Woundhealer’s swift, sharp blessing, some of them two or three times before the fighting stopped.

* * *

      
In a minute the skirmish was over. After a last round of healing, wiping away whatever wounds Mark and Ben and their opponents had incurred in the deadly business, the Prince, breathing heavily, sat down on a curb to rest. Ben, gasping even more loudly, had slumped beside him.

      
“I am going,” Mark said presently, “back to rejoin the Princess. There will be decisions to be made, and I must learn what reports have come in from around the country. Will you come with me, or scout some more? I leave it up to you.”

      
Ben thought it over for a few more gasps. “I will stay here, or move closer in, toward the palace, and learn what more I can learn. Send me a messenger-bird or two when you can.”

      
Mark nodded. The Prince took Woundhealer with him when he departed to rejoin Kristin. But he left with Ben a freshly acquired squad of de-converted Tasavaltan soldiers to aid him in scouting out the city and trying to establish an organized resistance.

* * *

      
Ben ordered his de-converted squad back into the city, where, without his easily identifiable presence, they could pretend to be still carrying out Vilkata’s orders. A tentative plan was made for rendezvous.

      
Ben himself waited alone for a few hours, indoors in an abandoned suburban house, till darkness fell—then he cautiously advanced, passing inside the city walls without trouble, through an abandoned gate. He was increasingly consumed with the urgent need to find out what had happened to his home, and to his wife and daughter.

      
It was no secret that Ben had been on poor terms for years with his wife, Barbara, and in fact months had passed since his last visit to his home—or house—in Sarykam. But since the horrible news last midnight, he’d discovered that this degree of estrangement gave no immunity from fear and grief. For years he’d not seen much of his and Barbara’s only child, their grown-up daughter Beth, but now he knew beyond any doubt that Beth’s fate was still of great importance to him.

      
It had also crossed his mind that young Prince Stephen, supposing he had somehow escaped the palace, might have come to Ben’s house looking for help.

      
From a block away, Ben saw the ruin of his own dwelling—the upper floor completely gone—without surprise. He knew, without particularly worrying about the fact, that it was extremely dangerous for him to be here in the city, especially in the vicinity of his old house. He did not doubt that the destruction which had claimed this building and much of its immediate surroundings had been meant for him primarily.

* * *

      
Meanwhile, the afternoon had worn on for Kristin, in another little village much like Voronina, but with a different name, and closer than sixty kilometers to the capital, lying outwardly tranquil under a complacent sun.

      
In this new village Kristin had relocated herself and, thus, the royal headquarters. By midafternoon she was waiting anxiously for, among other things, her husband to rejoin her.

      
Kristin had not been brought up in a farmer’s house—far from it. But she had learned long ago to put up with much worse, when necessary. Today, like most of the village women, she was wearing trousers and loose shirt of homespun.

      
The owl which had brought the royal couple their first word of the disaster in Sarykam had come with her to this village and was even now sleeping the remainder of the day away in one of the barns, a bulky alien presence making the pigeons nervous. The Master of Beasts, considering that he had done everything useful that he could do for the moment, was catching a nap there too.

      
The central village square, enclosed on four sides by rows of little houses, was quiet except for the usual domestic noises of fowl and other farmyard animals, including a barking dog or two.

      
Surrounding the small settlement, which consisted of no more than a score of houses, were fields now lush with summer crops, demarcated by hedgerows. A range of coastal mountains loomed blue in the distance. The people, like most of their compatriots more or less accustomed to the occasional presence of Prince and Princess, were today for the most part going about their usual affairs, though with uneasy faces and many pauses to search the sky.

* * *

      
Mark, about an hour after leaving Ben, came riding into the village, returning about on schedule from his reconnaissance.

      
His wife made no great demonstration at Mark’s appearance, but to anyone watching her closely, her sudden relief was intense and obvious.

      
Mark agreed with his wife’s suggestion that he get some rest now, while he had the chance. He’d been up since the alarm was sounded, since very early that morning.

      
For the last few nights, back in Voronina, he had shared with his Princess the tiny spare room—perhaps the only such chamber in Voronina—of a prosperous yeoman’s house. This new village was even smaller, and Mark guessed there would be no spare rooms available.

      
When the Prince had seen to it that his mount was stabled, and heard such reports as had come in during his absence—they seemed of little importance—he lay down in the shade of a tree. The Prince felt comfortingly at home among these country smells and sounds and people. He had grown up in a small village not that much different from this one, and at no enormous distance either, though the home of his birth had not been Tasavaltan.

      
An hour later, after a sleep troubled by strange dreams, Mark was up again, standing near the middle of the small village plaza, anxiously scanning the afternoon skies, hoping for another winged messenger. Even more bad news—provided it was not too bad—would be, in a way, some relief.

* * *

      
For both husband and wife this waiting, with no knowledge of what the limits of the ordeal were going to be, gave promise of becoming a supreme test of patience. The hours since the first word of the attack had seemed endless, a desert of time to be got through in which it seemed impossible to do anything useful, or anything at all but wait.

      
As the afternoon wore on, with shadows lengthening, it became impossible for Mark, and Kristin too, to sit without doing anything. While continuing a desultory conversation, the royal couple was soon at weapons’ practice, sharing a single battle-hatchet for the purpose. The sound of the thick blade’s impact on the trunk of a dead tree echoed repeatedly from the flat house-fronts of mud brick and wood. Soon some of the simpler villagers came to stand gawking in the background. Soon Captain Miyagi came to join the onlookers.

      
Those who had stopped to silently judge the skill of Prince and Princess, some of them with expert eyes, were favorably impressed. The arm drawn back-swiftly, not giving an enemy a chance to dodge—and then snapped forward.
Thunk!

      
First Mark’s long powerful legs (next turn, Kristin’s, somewhat shorter) strode restlessly toward the target and back again, his (or her) right arm swinging the recovered weapon in a practiced hand.

      
This time it was Prince Mark who spun around and threw. Again the sharp blade thudded home. Small chips flew from where previous cuts were intersected. Mark’s aim was good, mechanically good. Another day or two of waiting, he thought, and the target tree was going to be chewed away to nothing. But no, they would have to relocate once more to another village before that much time had passed.

      
And every few moments he raised his head, as did his Princess, to scan the skies, on watch for an attack by demons or flying reptiles, but particularly for more news.

* * *

      
One of the problems reviewed by the royal couple while practicing with physical weapons was that of how to obtain the best possible magical help, and as soon as possible. If only Adrian were finished with his studies and were here … but in fact Adrian was not ready, and not here, and it was not possible that he could be of help just now. Thank Ardneh, the older son at least had not been taken by surprise, as the younger must have been, in Sarykam.

      
Karel, too, was ominously out of communication, like everyone else the royal couple had left behind them in the supposed safety of their capital.

      
At least General Rostov, traveling in another province at the time of Vilkata’s attack, had now checked in, sending a messenger with some reassuring word about mobilization there.

* * *

Kristin and Mark by now had convincing evidence that Vilkata was the author of this latest disaster. The plenitude of demons in the assault had suggested as much. Refugees’ information, such as Mark had now heard first hand, provided more solid evidence. It was true, then: The Dark King had returned to the attack, bringing with him the Mindsword which had been in his possession two years ago when he was hurled away. The Prince could remember all too well the horrible events of two years past, on the night of Vilkata’s previous attack, which had resulted in the Dark King’s banishment and also Kristin’s injury.