That hardly seemed fair.
Then again, damn little was fair; damn little even made sense.
Although some things were beginning to. Arta Myrdhyn and the sword, for one.
Things on this side were often reflected as legends on the other side, at home. A great broadsword, somehow involved with the plans of a powerful wizard, held immobile until the right man appeared to claim it . . . that sounded like the story of Excalibur. The legend had been garbled, granted, but that wasn't unexpected.
The Excalibur story had never made sense to Karl; if whoever could remove Excalibur from the stone were automatically to become king of England, England would quickly be ruled by the first stoneworker to happen along and chisel it loose.
No spell could prevent that; magic worked erratically back home, when it worked at all.
But what does all this add up to? Deighton had brought a group of Vikings through to this side, not primarily to guard the sword, but to guide the right one to the sword, a sword that protected its bearer against magic.
And the right one was supposed to take it. To use it. To use it for what?
Karl shook his head. He couldn't follow the thread any further.
What are you really up to, Deighton?
He shrugged. Ahira was right. It would be a long time, at best, before they knew.
Karl turned to the window that looked out on the sea. He pressed his fingers against the left side of the glass and spun the view shoreward. A procession of Mel was engaged in bringing canvas sacks down the beach and depositing them on the sand just above the high-water mark. The pile was already well over six feet high.
Karl shrugged. Ganness' copra, no doubt. Too bad for Avair that he couldn't bring it directly to Pandathaway, but would instead have to sell it in Ehvenor to some Pandathaway-bound merchant. The dried, impressed coconut meat would bring a high price in Pandathaway; after it had been run through presses, what oil the wizards didn't need would find its way into gentle soaps and balms, while the remaining meat would end up in breads and cakes.
But why were they bringing it down to the beach now? Ganness and the Warthog weren't due until tomorrow. Right now, the Eriksens should be celebrating Aeia's return.
Karl spun the view seaward. Just over the horizon, a black speck grew. A ship.
That explained it. Ganness was on his way a day early, and the Clan Erik coastwatchers had spotted the Warthog. Undoubtedly, the watchers had sounded the alarm, which had then been canceled when Wohtansen's men explained that there was a friendly ship en route.
Karl opened his mouth to tell Wohtansen about it, but changed his mind; the Mel was still studying the wall, his whole body tensed in concentration.
Wish I'd asked how long this was going to take. Idly, he centered the ship on the screen and pressed his fingers to the center of the glass.
The Warthog grew in the screen as it seemed to sail directly toward Karl. The ship rode high in the water, since most of its cargo had been unloaded in Clan Wohtan. As it moved closer, Karl could make out Ganness at the prow.
That was unusual; Ganness generally ran the ship from the main deck, where he was midway between the lookout in the forward mast and the steersman at the stern. That way, he could lounge in his chair while still able to hear warnings and give commands easily.
Only when the ship needed careful handling did he act as either lookout or steersman himself. Beaching the ship in the lagoon had needed that careful handling; beaching it here should just be a matter of sailing the Warthog slowly toward shore until it wouldn't go any farther.
Ganness' figure grew in the screen. Trembling, he raised a hand to wipe sweat from his brow.
What's Ganness nervous about? I guess there could be underwater boulders near the shore, but that shouldn't scare him like this.
Karl moved his finger to scan the rest of the ship, but his control wasn't fine enough; the Warthog scudded out of the Eye's field of view.
Damn. He removed his finger from the screen, centered the ship as soon as the field widened, and zoomed in carefully, making fingertip corrections to the aim of the Eye.
Standing next to Ganness was a young man. His face was dark and thin, his hair straight. A cruel smile flickered across his lips as he examined a dark glass ball, slipped it into his pouch, then turned to say something to the men behind him.
He looked for all the world like a younger version of Ohlmin.
Karl's heart pounded.
"Wohtansen, look."
The Mel wizard scowled at him. "Not now, please. This is difficult."
"Shut up. This is important. That's the slaver who tried to take me on the docks at Ehvenor. He and his men have taken the Warthog. They're going to be sailing right up to the damn beach, and the Eriksens won't know—"
"—that they are slavers." Wohtansen whitened. "We've told them to expect friends."
"Right." Karl's right hand ached for his sword. Got to figure out exactly what they're going to do. The slavers had the element of surprise. How would they use it?
They would probably drop anchor or beach the ship, and let some Eriksen dugouts come out to meet them, just as if this were a normal trading session. Then the slavers would kill or capture the Mel in the canoes, and use the canoes to go ashore, their wizard protecting them all the while from the Mel wizard's spells.
They would work it something like that. The slavers had clearly gone to some trouble to gain the advantage of surprise, and they would make good use of it.
"Karl," Wohtansen said, his voice shaky, "they must have already raided my clan. Otherwise someone would have chased after us, to warn us."
"Be quiet for a moment." That was true, but there wasn't anything that could be done about it right now. "We've only got one edge. You and I know what's going on, but they don't know that we know."
But how could they use that single advantage? Karl and Wohtansen couldn't take on the slavers all by themselves. "You swim to shore, and quietly warn my people, only my people. Tell Ahira to get into the treeline with his crossbow; have Chak take Tennetty and Rahff, and hide themselves along the path to the village."
"But the Eriksens—"
Karl shook his head. "If we let them know, they'll sound the alarm. All that would do is turn this into a standard raid, with Clan Erik taking to the hills, and the slavers scooping up a few dozen stragglers. We've got to stop them; that wouldn't do it."
The Pandathaway wizard, he was the key; Karl would have to take the wizard out. "Just keep quiet until you hear from me. If you raise a fuss, all you'll do is bring their wizard down on your head. Now, move."
"But you can't take on the wizard, not by yourself. You don't have a chance."
"I won't be by myself. Get going."
Wohtansen ran toward the tunnel that led to the entrance pool.
Karl didn't wait for the splash; he turned and sprinted toward the cavern of the sword.
* * *
He seated himself tailor-fashion on the cold stone. "Deighton, can you hear me?"
No answer.
"I know you put this sword here for a purpose."
Still no answer. Nothing. Held firmly by the fingers of light, the sword hung silently in the air. "Arta Myrdhyn, talk to me. Say something."
Nothing.
He stood and walked over to the rough stone altar and gently laid his hand on the sword's hilt. As though he were holding a baby's arm, he pulled on the sword, as gently as he could.
It didn't move.
He pulled harder, harder; the light brightened, the sword vibrated.
Karl loosened his grip. Force wasn't the answer. Reason had to be.
Why would Arta Myrdhyn create or procure a sword that rendered its user immune to magical spells? What was such a sword good for? The answer was obvious: It was good for killing wizards. That was Arta Myrdhyn's intention.
Not all wizards, of course. Myrdhyn wouldn't go to all that trouble to wipe out his own kind; he wanted a specific wizard killed.
; So. The sword had been left here for a purpose, and that purpose was for the right person to take it, to use to kill an enemy of Deighton's. That made sense.
But why would a wizard as powerful as Arta Myrdhyn need to do this in such a roundabout way? Why not just kill the wizard himself?
There was only one answer: Deighton wasn't sure that he could win, not in a fair fight.
Unsummoned, a vision of the Waste welled up. It had been lush green forest, until a battle between two wizards had scarred the land forever.
And the Shattered Islands lay across the northern part of the Cirric. Legend had it that they once were one island, one kingdom. But the name of that island had been lost.
Lost? That didn't make sense. There were records of everything in the Great Library of Pandathaway; knowledge couldn't be lost as long as the library stood. Unless . . .
Unless the name had been excised. Not just from paper, but from minds. And who could do that better than the grandmaster of Wizards' Guild?
Hypothesis: Deighton fought the grandmaster; their battle created the Waste and shattered the island.
And while Deighton wasn't killed, he had lost, and had either created or found the sword, brought some Vikings across to guard it, then fled to the Other Side.
And, eventually, brought us across.
That had to be connected. If this was truly part of his battle with the grandmaster, Karl and the rest being sent across had to be some sort of attack on his enemy.
Then why hadn't Karl been able to take the sword? If all that was true, then the sword should have practically jumped into his hand. All it had done was move a little.
Then I can't take the sword because, for some reason, I'm not the one who is supposed to kill the grandmaster. But I am somehow connected with the right one, or the sword wouldn't have twitched.
No! Deighton hadn't sent them across until the night Andy-Andy joined the group. That was what triggered it.
"Connected with? As in 'the father of'?"
He rested his hand on the sword's hilt. "And if I were to agree to take this for the purpose of bringing it back to the valley, giving it to my son when he's ready—"
Black shapes flickered across the silvery blade, forming themselves into thick black letters.
Take Me.
Karl blinked. The letters were gone.
The ghostly fingers faded, then vanished; the sword clanged on the stone.
Quickly, he stopped to pick it up; the steel was blank, unmarred.
"Okay, Deighton, you've got yourself a deal." There's going to be an accounting between you and me, one of these days.
But, in the meantime, I'd damn well better work out how I'm going to use this.
Chapter Sixteen
Blood Price
The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those it cannot break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure that it will kill you, but there will be no special hurry.
—Ernest Hemingway
Keeping all of himself except his eyes and nose below the waterline, Karl clung with both hands to a half-submerged boulder.
The sword, wrapped tightly in a blanket from the cavern, was slung across his back with two strips Karl had torn from another blanket.
Hiding in shadow, he kept motionless as the Warthog passed, no more than two hundred feet away. At the bow, the boy who looked like Ohlmin stood next to Ganness, one arm around the captain's shoulders in false camaraderie, the other resting on a scabbarded dagger.
All over the ship, thirty, possibly forty strangers worked in sailcloth tunics, never straying far from their swords and bows.
So, that's the way they're playing it. All of Ganness' crew had been replaced by slavers. Probably the crew was chained below. More likely, they were held captive in the slavers' own ship. Or, conceivably, they were dead.
With excruciating slowness, the Warthog passed the island. There was no lookout at the stern; Karl pushed off the boulder and swam after the ship, struggling against the weight of the sword to keep his head above water.
The ship slowed still further; its huge jib luffed, flapping in the wind, while crewmen doused the mainsail. But they didn't bring the ship about or drop the anchor; the Warthog drifted in toward the sandy shore.
So that was the plan: The slavers would ground the ship just as though this were a normal trading session. Then wait until enough of the men of Clan Erik came down to the beach to load the cargo, charge shoreward through the shallow water, and attack the unprepared Mel.
Let's see if I can put a few holes in that plan.
It would have been nice to have Walter Slovotsky around; Walter could have figured out some way to get aboard without alerting anyone, then taken out half the slavers before anyone realized there was an intruder among them.
Hell, Walter would probably have been able to steal all their pouches, file their swords down to blunt harmlessness, then tie all the slavers' sandal laces together without being spotted.
Karl would have to confront all of them, take out the wizard quickly, then do his best to hold on until help arrived.
And that just plain sucks. Too much had to go right. It would work just fine, if Karl could take out the slavers' wizard quickly, if he wasn't too tired to hold off a score of slavers, if the Eriksens arrived quickly enough.
Too damn many ifs.
He gave a mental shrug. I'm no Walter Slovotsky, but let's see if I can do a bit of Walter-style recon.
He reached the stern of the Warthog and clung desperately to the massive rudder, his breath coming in gasps. His back and thighs ached terribly; the tendons in his shoulder felt like hot wires. Swimming with the sword on his back had taken more out of him than he had thought.
The rudder was slippery, overgrown with some sort of slimy green fungus. The ship's railing and deck loomed a full ten feet over his head. It might as well have been a mile. There was nothing to grip; even rested, he wouldn't be able to pull himself up by his fingernails.
But halfway up the blunt stern was Ganness' cabin. In the Warthog's long-ago better days, the captain's cabin had been a light, airy place, the light and air provided by a large sliding porthole made up of glass squares. Or was it a window? Didn't something have to be round to be called a porthole?
The glass had long since broken, and the window was covered by boards, but the window sash might still slide, if he could get a grip on it without stabbing himself on the points of the rusted nails that held the boards in place.
Panting from the exertion, Karl pulled himself up onto the rudder and rose shakily to his feet, balancing precariously, his hands resting on the splintered wood of the windowsill.
He tried to slide the boarded-up window to one side.
It didn't move. Years and years of the wood swelling and contracting in the hot sun and cool spray had welded the window in place.
If he pushed harder, he'd likely lose his footing and splash back into the water. Either that, or his hands would slip and open themselves up on the nails.
The nails—of course! His balance growing even more hazardous, he reached over his shoulder and unslung the sword, then unwrapped it, dropping the blanket and strips of cloth into the water. He held the sword hilt-up.
Careful, now. And I'd better pray that there's nobody inside the cabin. Using the pommel like a hammer, he tapped lightly against the point of a nail, flattening it. It didn't make much sound; no one on the Warthog would be able to hear it over the whispering of the wind and the quiet murmur of the waves.
His free hand held flat against the wood to dampen the vibration, he hit the flattened nail harder, driving it back through the wood.
The second nail took less time; the third, only a few seconds.
Soon, he pried the board away, dropped it carefully into the cabin, and went to work on the second board. Within a few minutes, he had cleared an opening large enough to accommodate his
head and shoulders.
The slavers were using the cabin as a storeroom; it was piled high with muslin sacks, rough wool blankets, cases of winebottles, and chains.
Karl slid the sword into the cabin and followed it in.
For a moment, he lay gasping on the floor. No time. Can't afford this. He rose to his hands and knees, then crawled to the cabin's door, putting his ear to the rough wood. No sound. Good; that meant that the slavers were all on deck.
Using a rough blanket to towel himself off, he took a quick look around the room. Over in a corner was his own rucksack. He opened it and drew out his spare sandals and breechclout, quickly donning them before picking up the sword. I always feel better when I'm dressed, and a fight is no time to worry about splinters.
But there was no armor in the room. That was bad; tired as he was, he could easily miss a parry. This was one time that he would have liked to have his boiled-leather armor, no matter how uncomfortable it was over bare skin.
As he moved again toward the door, a familiar-looking brass bottle under a bunk caught his eye. Propping the sword against the bunk, he stooped to examine the bottle, and found that there were eight other, similar ones, all marked with the sign of the Healing Hand.
Healing draughts. Thank God. He uncorked a bottle and drank deeply, then splashed the rest of the bottle on his face and shoulders. The sweet, cool liquid washed away his muscle aches and exhaustion as though they never had been.
Reclaiming the sword, he straightened. Good. My chances of getting out of this alive have just gone way up. He tucked another bottle of healing draughts under his arm. It might come in handy.
Next to the stacked bottles of healing draughts were five other brass bottles. These were plain, unengraved.
He unstoppered one and sniffed. Lamp oil. Not necessarily any use, but—
I'm still stalling, he thought, suddenly aware that the dampness on his palms hadn't been caused by either the splashed healing draughts or the water of the Cirric. I'd better get to it.
* * *
Both of them standing aft of the forward mast, Ahrmin smiled genially at Thyren. The wizard looked silly in a sailcloth tunic, but Ahrmin wasn't about to tell him that.
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