The Broken Blade

by Simon Hawke

  He had positioned the camp within the shelter of some large, natural rock outcroppings near the banks of the estuary. The tents had been pitched near the base of the rocks, as if for protection from the wind. To the watching raiders—and Kieran was sure they would be watching—it must have looked absolutely perfect. An attack from the southeast would leave them trapped in a pocket formed by the estuary in their rear and the big rocks on their flank—caught like a fly between a hammer and an anvil. Which was precisely what Kieran wanted the raiders to think.

  The handlers had staked the beasts at the rear of the camp, as usual, by the slope leading to the estuary. It was the logical place to put them, but at the same time, it served another purpose. As the passengers and crew retired for the night, gradually, in ones and twos, they entered their tents and were taken out through slits cut in the backs, then led by roustabouts between the rock outcroppings and the backs of the tents, so that they were concealed from view. They were then taken down the slope behind the beasts, where they huddled together, wrapped in blankets against the chill. In this manner, masked from any observation, all the passengers were removed from the camp and secreted by the estuary, where they were protected by Ryana and a group of armed roustabouts. All the tents stood empty.

  At the advance guard outpost to the southeast, the direction from which Kieran invited attack, the three captive mercenaries sat in a circle by a watchfire. They were bent over slightly, as if gaming with dice. Only on close observation could it be seen that they were gagged and bound, with hands in front of them, staked down to the ground. Kieran nodded with satisfaction as he checked their bonds and grinned.

  “Well, does this match your vision?” he asked.

  Sorak nodded. “It seems to.”

  “Good. Let’s take our places and see if it all unfolds the way you saw it.”

  They moved off about a dozen yards and lay down to wait behind some scrub brush. The movements of the mercenaries as they struggled to pull themselves free and their panicked shouts into their gags merely made it look as if they were going about their game. Kieran chuckled softly. “They don’t seem very happy, do they?” he said in a low voice.

  “No, this wasn’t quite what they bargained for when they signed on for this journey,” Sorak replied. “Still, I suppose it’s better than being thrown into the silt.”

  “True,” said Kieran. “You never know, one or two of them might still survive.” He shrugged.

  They did not have long to wait. Shortly after midnight, the attack came with devastating swiftness, just as Edric said it would. A black arrow came whistling out of the darkness and struck one of the captive mercenaries with a soft thump. It was immediately followed by several more arrows, in rapid succession. The second mercenary was struck down. The third managed, with a desperate effort born of panic, to pull his stake free of the ground. He jumped up and started running back toward the camp, but didn’t get more than several yards before an arrow in his back brought him down.

  “Here they come,” Sorak murmured.

  They heard them first, but it wasn’t until the raiders were almost upon them that they became visible. A squadron of soot-blackened crodlu came galloping out of the darkness in tight formation, bearing black-clad riders armed with bows, wooden spears, and obsidian swords. Sorak and Kieran stayed low, hidden behind the brush as the Shadows rode by, storming into the camp, confident they had the element of surprise.

  Kieran peered hard into the darkness as they went past. “How many do you estimate?”

  “Perhaps thirty,” Sorak said, his night vision sharper than the human’s.

  Kieran nodded. “The bard told the truth. Well, I may have to let him live, after all. Pity.” As the elves thundered past them toward the camp, Sorak and Kieran jumped to their feet and drew their swords.

  “Now! Charge!” Kieran shouted as he ran forward with Sorak at his side.

  Armed men leapt up from behind shrubs and rocks where they had dug in to await the attack. They quickly closed ranks behind the raiders as the black elves charged unsuspecting into the camp. One by one, the tents burst into flame, torched by roustabouts, and the resulting blaze clearly illuminated the attackers. Archers appeared atop the rocks and started firing down at the Shadows, who suddenly realized that, rather than trap their victims against the rocks, it was they who had been trapped.

  More than a dozen of the black elves fell in the first volley of the archers before they wheeled their mounts to retreat, but they found themselves cut off. Thrown spears from the caravan guards unseated about half a dozen more, and then the crodlu were rearing about in panic and confusion, the riderless beasts colliding with the others. Kieran shouted out the command to move in and finish them off before the survivors could regroup.

  However, several of the elves recovered quickly and got their beasts back under control. They wheeled around and rode straight for the rear of the camp, hanging off the sides of their mounts to avoid the arrows of the archers.

  They were heading straight for the passengers… and Ryana.

  “Kieran!” Sorak called, and without waiting for a reply, he gave chase.

  The elves swung around the kanks staked down at the rear of the camp and headed down the slope, hoping to escape, but then spotted the passengers clustered behind the roustabouts and made straight for them.

  Sorak heard the alarmed cries of the passengers from behind the line of kanks staked at the crest of the slope, and he knew he would never have time to circle the kanks, as the raiders had. Running at top speed, twice as fast as any human could, he leapt ten feet into the air and landed atop one of the kanks. As he fought to maintain his balance on the giant beetle’s slippery carapace, he drew one of his daggers and hurled it.

  An elf raider cried out and fell from his crodlu as the blade stuck home, but by then, the others were already atop Ryana’s group.

  As Sorak leapt down from the kank and tumbled down the slope, the passengers fled in panic toward the silt.

  Ryana moved in with her roustabouts to meet the attack. She brought one elf down with her crossbow, then tossed it aside, drew a dagger and hurled it in one smooth motion, felling another. As she drew her second dagger from her boot, one of the mounted raiders hurled his spear at her. She twisted aside, and it missed her by scant inches. Then she threw her dagger as the elf thundered down upon her, bringing up his blade.

  It took him squarely in the chest, and he fell backward off his mount. It was only by diving to one side that Ryana avoided being trampled by the riderless crodlu. She hit the ground, rolled, and came up with her blade in her hands, just as another raider closed with her. She went down to one knee and parried his downward slash, then came up and swept her blade around, opening a deep gash in the raider’s leg as he rode by. He screamed, and blood fountained from the wound, but by then, Ryana was already engaging another opponent.

  Several of the roustabouts had fallen, slain or wounded, by the time Sorak reached the scene. He ran straight into the melee and leapt, carrying a Shadow off his mount. He landed on top of the raider and heard the breath whoosh out of his lungs. Before the elf could recover, Sorak grabbed his large, pointed ears and twisted his head sharply.

  He heard the sharp crack as the raider’s neck snapped, then felt the breeze of a blade slashing down at him, missing his head by a hair. He ducked down and rolled, came up to his feet, and drew his sword, but by then the raider had already ridden past. And an instant later, Sorak saw why.

  Edric stood perhaps a dozen yards away, his hands bound behind him and his ankles tied together. He had been unable to run off toward the rocks with the other passengers, but then he had not wanted to. He hopped toward the raider, and Sorak saw the black-clad elf lean down from his saddle to sweep him up.

  But before Sorak could react, he heard another crodlu pounding the ground behind him and turned to meet the attack. He met the Shadow elf’s blade on his own, then ducked and rolled as the raider tried to ride him down. The elf wheeled his mou
nt, and Sorak ran up behind it, slashed the crodlu’s legs. With a screeching cry, the crippled bird went down, and the raider tumbled from the saddle. As he fell, one of the roustabouts pounced on him and brought down his knife.

  Sorak turned back to see that the other raider had already hoisted Edric up onto his saddle and slashed his bonds. Edric straddled the crodlu, sitting in front of the rider and bending low, grasping the beast’s long neck for support. The rider urged his mount up the slope on a diagonal path, away from Sorak. There was no way to stop them. As they galloped up the slope, Kieran appeared at the crest.

  “Kieran!” Sorak shouted. “Edric is getting away!”

  The mercenary drew his dagger as the riders thundered by him, and he threw. The knife struck the raider between the shoulder blades, and he tumbled from his mount, but Edric seized the reins as the crodlu surged up the slope.

  Sorak shifted his sword to his left hand and pulled Galdra from his belt. The broken blade glowed with a bright blue aura as he grasped it, flipped it around, and threw it with a powerful, overhand motion. It seemed to leave a blue contrail in its wake as it flew toward Edric and struck him in the shoulder. Sorak heard him cry out, but he retained his seat, slumping in the saddle. The crodlu and its rider disappeared over the crest of the slope.

  Sorak spun around, looking for Ryana. He saw at least half a dozen roustabouts lying on the ground, some moving, some perfectly still. He felt a knot forming in his stomach, but then saw her, bending over one of the roustabouts and tearing a strip from his cloak to use as a tourniquet. He exhaled heavily with relief.

  Then Kieran was at his side.

  Sorak asked, “How goes the battle?”

  “It’s over,” Kieran said. “A number of them got away, but at least a score won’t be doing any more raiding. We’ll take the bodies with us into Altaruk and present them to the Jhamris. They may wish to display them as an object lesson to other would-be raiders. Every man who fought tonight will win a reputation. There aren’t many mercenaries who can boast surviving an encounter with the Shadows.”

  “How many of ours died?” asked Sorak, glancing back at the bodies littering the shore.

  Kieran shook his head. “We’ve made no count as yet, but we lost some good men.” He set his teeth, and Sorak saw a tic in his jaw muscles. “I should have killed that bard.”

  “You gave your word you would let him live if he cooperated,” Sorak said. “And he did give us an accurate account of what to expect. Still, now he’ll have to answer to his friends, the Shadows, and only he could have betrayed them.”

  Kieran nodded. “They will hold him to accounts, all right, but he’s a slippery character. He may yet talk his way out of it. I hope he does, for I would dearly like to encounter him again. A pity about that special blade of yours.”

  “It was broken, anyway,” said Sorak. “It’s no great loss.” But even as he spoke, he wondered. It had returned to him once before; it could yet return to him again. Only time would tell.

  “We had best see to the wounded,” he said, then suddenly, he staggered against Kieran as everything started to spin. He felt the mercenary catch him.

  “Sorak! Are you wounded?”

  Kieran’s voice sounded as if it were coming from the bottom of a well. The sounds around him receded and Sorak’s vision blurred; he gasped for breath.

  Then, slowly, everything came back into focus… but he was elsewhere. And this time, it was not only his body that seemed to have been transported. It was his mind, as well.

  He stood in a dark room, illuminated only by one thick candle standing on a wooden table. There was someone seated at that table, a robed figure cloaked in darkness. And he heard a low, raspy voice say, “He is coming. I can feel it.”

  The robed figure leaned forward into the light and Sorak tensed inwardly as he saw the shaved skull of a templar. It was an old woman, and on her head she wore a chaplet of beaten silver bearing the crest of Nibenay. She sat in a peculiar posture, with one arm hanging limply at her side, favoring her shoulder as if it were injured.

  “It will not be long now,” she said, looking up at him, “but he will surely come. And it will be up to us to stop him.”

  The feeling was surreal. It was as if the templar were looking straight at him and speaking to him directly. At the same time, he felt not himself at all. It was as if his body had somehow become alien to him. It felt large, grotesque and… but then the templar’s next words mesmerized him.

  “Valsavis is dead. The Nomad has fulfilled his mission. Somehow, he must have managed to make contact with the Sage. Now, he will be truly dangerous.” The templar smiled wanly. “You haven’t the faintest idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

  Sorak felt his head shake slowly.

  “No matter. You do not need to understand. Your needs are simple. That must be reassuring. In a way, I envy you your simplicity. You eat, drink, sleep, defecate, and kill. But then, that is what you were bred for. The subtleties of life escape you, and yet it concerns you not. How refreshing, in a primitive way. Does my conversation bore you?”

  Another head shake.

  “No? Well, I rather doubt you would admit it if it did. Perhaps it truly does interest you in some way. I do not imagine anyone has ever bothered to converse with you before. What would be the point? You could not answer, anyway. Doubtless, the only words anyone ever spoke to you were commands… or pleas for mercy. And those last fell on deaf ears, of course. No one ever taught you mercy. I doubt you even understand the concept.

  Still, I’ve come to find our one-sided conversations comforting. Do you know why?”

  Brief head shake.

  “Because a templar has no one in whom she can confide. Oh, when she’s young, she can share confidences with her senior sisters, but as she grows older, she learns about such things as palace intrigue and political maneuvering and soon realizes she can profit best by keeping her own council. Her life becomes a maze of ritual and duty, and she becomes isolated, commanding of respect and fear and yet, a lonely woman. Do you know what it means to feel lonely?”

  This time, a nod.

  “Ah. Of course. I thought you would. Then perhaps you can understand. Have you ever mated? No? Not even once? Well, who knows, that may be for the best. That means you cannot have unreasonable expectations. Do you know how old I am?”

  Head shake.

  “I am almost two hundred years old. That surprises you. I look old, but not that old, eh? Well, I am. Magic can extend one’s life, if one knows how to use it.” The templar sighed. “My husband’s magic. A power so great it makes me tremble, even after all these years. I was brought to him when I was just fifteen, but I had already learned something of love. Oh, I was a virgin, else I would not have been acceptable, but I was not entirely innocent, you see. There was a boy, a lovely boy of seventeen… I can still see his face as clearly as if he were standing right here in front of me. I can still recall our cautious rumblings, clumsy and yet tender. We swore we would always love each other, but we were afraid to go much further than sweet kisses and intimate caresses. And then I was chosen for the harem of the Shadow King and I never saw him again.

  “No, not true,” the templar continued, after a brief pause. “I saw him once, many years later. I chanced across him in the street. He was afraid even to look me. I imagine he found himself a fat little wife and sired fat little sons, and lived his life… and died. This is the first time I have even spoken of him in over a hundred and fifty years, and yet, even though his bones now molder in a grave, he has never left my thoughts. I think back to those bygone days of girlhood and wish just once, we could have had the courage to…”

  The templar fell into a long, contemplative silence. Finally, she looked up, and the wistful look was gone, replaced by the cold, regal demeanor of a servant of the Shadow King.

  “Memories. They serve no useful purpose. And we are here to serve a useful purpose.”

  Sorak felt an unwholesome thrill of anticipation ru
n through him. It was not his feeling at all. It made his skin crawl, and yet, at the same time, he somehow felt what the other was feeling, and it repelled him.

  “Let us go, my silent friend,” the templar said, rising to her feet. “It is time for you to do what you do best. You will not have the sort of audience you are accustomed to, but I will be close by. An audience of one, but one who has a true appreciation of your craft. And soon, very soon, you will have an opportunity to test your skills against one who should, by all accounts, provide a proper challenge to your abilities. You would like that, wouldn’t you?”

  An eager nod.

  “Yes. I rather thought you would. But tonight, if our reports have been correct, there will be some fine amusement for you. And by tomorrow, all of Altaruk will be abuzz with talk of your doings… and the Veiled Alliance will know the meaning of fear.”

  * * *

  “Sorak! Sorak! Oh, Sorak, wake up, please!”

  Ryana bent over him anxiously. He blinked several times and brought his hands up to his forehead. It felt as if his head were splitting, and he was covered with sweat.

  He was lying on his back on a bedroll spread out on the ground. The first orange-tinted light of dawn was visible on the horizon as the dark sun slowly rose over the Sea of Silt. He sat up slowly, with a groan.

  Kieran came and knelt at his side. “You had us worried, my friend,” he said. “You were gone for a long time. Over four hours. And whatever it was you saw, it must have been a nightmare, judging by the way you thrashed and moaned.”

  Sorak took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, sitting with his head in his hands.

  Ryana put her arm around him. “It’s all right,” she said softly. “Whatever it was, it’s over now.”

  He shook his head. “No, it is not over,” he said in a dull voice. “It is only just beginning.”

  “What did you see?” asked Kieran, gazing at him intently.

  “Death,” said Sorak.

  “Whose?” asked Kieran, frowning. “One of us?”