Swords & Steam Short Stories

by S. T. Joshi

His feet pass from slippery log to slippery grass without wavering. He can do, and has done, such things with eyes shut. A helpful talent, not least when the mist from the marsh lake is thickest, is clogging the channels in between trees.

  He has his eyes open tonight though, as he treads the shore of that lake. He sees the sky through the elms glow all hearth-fire and lilac. Tongues of flame belch intermittently from the silt up ahead.

  Through their glare, their gaseous haze, he checks for the figure in the distance, making sure that he hasn’t lost track.

  The white robes the man wears are a beacon. They draw the boy onwards, deeper into the woodland: birthplace and home of all rumour and myth.

  The boy pulls closer; his nimble feet, booted in calfskin, outdoing the old man’s stumbling gait. The man’s white linen is spattered with mud, patterned with moss on the sleeves where he brushes too close to the centurion oaks. Dead leaves catch and then crumble from grey hair and grey beard. The man’s long, gnarly staff plunges into and out of the marsh-dirt with a sound like toads in their mating.

  The boy has watched these toads, lit by stars, lit by will o’ the wisps, with his father beside him. One of the rare times that his father didn’t just shoo him away. It was quite dull – really dull – when it happened, but glows now like a blade in remembering. His father so often at war of late, keeping other chieftains at bay. His mother so often by the fireside, weeping, unsure if he’ll ever return.

  It is this worry, in part, which has brought the boy here.

  The old man turns his head and the boy flattens his frame to the trunk of a sycamore, not daring to breathe even a little, in case the old man, even from this distance, can hear him or detect a slight change in the air.

  He has come because there are murmurs the old man is a druid. That he keeps communion with the old gods, with the spirits. That he can work spells.

  And a man like that must be helpful in war, good to have on your side.

  Surely.

  The boy grows a tad doubtful, however, when they reach the man’s hovel. The walls are crooked. The thatch is damp and grey-green and thin. Mushrooms gathering and overlapping like slates at one edge. The door, such as it is, doesn’t sit quite right on its frame.

  If he himself could do magic, he wouldn’t live in a dung-heap like this.

  Still, all stories have to start for a reason. Usually a good one, he thinks, keeping some kind of faith.

  Squatting in the long grass on the edge of the clearing, he soon sees weird, vivid lights, a whole range of colours, begin to flicker through cracks in the oaken shutter, which stoppers what should be a window but is more simply a haphazard hole in the wall.

  Mothlike, adept, the boy floats over towards it. Presses an eye to a suitable gap.

  * * *

  The old man leans over a dark, heavy table. In this light, his white robes show far more shades than simply mud-brown and moss-green; they’re dappled, almost, with a rainbow’s blood. Beside his thin blue hands are a range of small earthenware bowls, roughly the same size, striped with more colours still.

  He adds seeds, berries, even what appear to be flakes of stone to the mixture. Works them together with a bleached animal bone.

  Candles burn nearby. Occasionally, dust will be churned up by the motion, and hit a flame, flare out, glitter then die. The old man adds what might be swamp water, might be beer. The harshness of grinding becomes a river-like slosh.

  At the window, the boy sees the birthing of magic. His eyes at the wood are unblinking, don’t want to miss how these potions are made.

  The old man sees only work. Once satisfied that each mixture is right, he sets the bowls on a wooden plank and then lifts it with a delicate, trembling grace. He carries it over to another table, just beneath and beside the window. There is only a single candle there, resting on the yellowed skull of a ram; wax forming frozen waterfalls across the sockets of the eyes, the nose, the gaping, deathly jester’s mouth. The light it throws across the small pools of liquid makes the colours, each distinct, pop out and glimmer. Cats’ eyes, owls’ eyes, in the focus of some nocturnal hunt.

  The boy meets their stare, only faintly afraid.

  He watches as the druid picks up a slender, sharpened stick – which, from the rumours, from the fireside myths, he believes must be a wand – and holds it precarious over one of the potions. The red one. A blood-moon in a bowl.

  But, rather than muttering an incantation – as, again, he’s been led to think that druids do – the old man dips the wand into the potion. Scratches it across the lightened surface of this wood.

  Patterns happen. Runes. Other shades besides red are added. An island begins to take shape. Beasts, humped and spitting out steam from their backs, move in blue swirls that he takes to be some kind of river. Fishing boats appear all around them. Small men holding spears …

  Then, the scratching stops. And the druid turns towards the shutter. And rises. And the eyehole goes black.

  * * *

  The boy sits on the floor in the corner, drinking beer from a cup made from hollowed-out horn.

  At the other side of the room, the druid is still working. The stick scratches again at the surface of the table. The candle still dances on top of the skull.

  After a while, the boy stops sniffing and sipping and screwing his face up at the strange taste of the brew. He starts to ask questions. All of which go unanswered. So many of which go unanswered that he starts to worry the druid doesn’t understand the common tongue.

  He asks him this straight out, to be sure.

  And is corrected and rewarded with a string of raw curses, told to be quiet and to drink up and sit still.

  He stays in the corner and focuses on figuring out what kind of beer this is; on keeping it down and not adding further to the wreckage of the old man’s floor. Bugs like walking shields, like the Roman phalanx formation, scuttle and slither among food-scraps and rags.

  He shivers, kicks out at them. He tries to stay quiet, but the effort doesn’t last long.

  Soon, he is up and peering over the druid’s shoulder, watching as the stick speeds across what he can tell now isn’t the moon-pale surface of the table, but rather a length of vellum, stretched taut and flat.

  Glancing around, it’s clear that at least some of the rubbish in the room is other pieces of this, bundled and bound up into scrolls. Amassed in great quantity; stored without any real planning or care. The bugs seem to use them as tunnels, as thoroughfares.

  “Is this what druids do, then?” he asks.

  And: “What’s that bit mean?”

  And: “How about this?”

  “And this man with a sword?”

  He is transfixed. He’s never seen pictures of this type or quality before in his life.

  From his wanderings in town, he knows the etchings on doorposts outside taverns – shapes that he gathers mean wicked things (according to his mother and his nurses) but he can’t make out exactly what.

  These ones here, though, he can make out right away. The warriors. The ships. The forest.

  The waters. The deer. The peasants. The bandits. The keep.

  It is only the small dark markings dotted in and amongst all of these pictures that give him pause, that confuse him. A question loiters on his tongue, but, as if able to sense it, the druid swivels round and stops it with a look.

  The boy glances again at the walls of the room, at the various shabby sheets he now recognises as further scrolls, for any clues, anything that might aid understanding. But there are none.

  Vaguely disheartened, he heads back to the corner, treading on bugs as he goes.

  * * *

  Even now, years later, the boy has never learnt to read. The young man. Not for want of trying to teach him, on the druid’s part, but rather due to a lack of focus in his pupil. A tendency to become distracted by the fi
gures beside the text. To be swept off into dreaming. A tendency that only increases as the situation in the region worsens.

  His mother, once so pitiful and endearing in her worries for his father, becomes almost placid in his absence now. The longer his father has survived, despite all of the injuries suffered, the more she’s exhausted her stockpile of care. No matter what her husband, who dares now to openly call himself King, does, there is no peace in the Marches, no easing of the panic and the darkness that has set about the land. So, she has said to her son, pleaded of him, what is the use of it all?

  “He encourages the bastards,” she says. “He taunts them.”

  The village is no longer safe from attack, either by the men of other chieftains or by wandering rogues. Old women and old men, and children, suffer worst in these raids. Horrors his mother will no longer speak of. Findings that turn his father’s face stony, even in the middle of a hearty feast. Where there was once ribaldry, challenge, greasy ribs tossed with a laugh to the wolfhounds, now there is only a drear wait for the end.

  “May I be excused?”

  If he were still so young, he would not be allowed out of the keep. He would never learn to navigate the swamps so well that he could do it even in thick fog, even eyes-closed.

  Certainly, his younger brother never will.

  Several times this past year he has been grateful for his knowledge, for the mud and the moss and the lake that baptised him, taught him where not to fall. Brought him close to his drowning.

  With the ways being so fearful, and in exchange for his continued free stay at the hovel, and for being taught how to make what the druid calls ‘ink’, he now gathers the ingredients for this from the woodland himself. In so doing, crouching amidst squelching earth and cracking twigs, he is sometimes caught off-guard by bandits. Each time, however, he manages to escape, to lose them in the woods.

  Or, if they are too many, and block his ways, then he draws his dagger, his broadsword, and stabs out at them, slashes. Though his training is not yet complete, he sometimes gets lucky – he clove a man through the ribs once, the bones springing out like the bloodied jaws of a wolf – but mainly his hope is to drive them into the water. With the weight of their stolen gold, and the tangle of grasses and weeds in even the shallower parts, they don’t stand much chance of escaping alive.

  Whatever scratches he incurs in return for his efforts, the druid always tends.

  Whatever scratches he incurs, he feels that they’re worth it.

  Not long after he first started coming here, the druid gave in to his questions and began to explain to him some of the scrolls. Over time, these explanations turned into fully-fledged histories, overstuffed myths.

  He comes now, he mixes the inks, smashing the seeds and the berries in all proper quantities; carries them to the second table, which the druid now rarely leaves, and waits to see which song comes next.

  Whilst the old man works at the vellum, he retreats to his corner, padded now with hay – when he can steal some from his father’s stables – and drinks beer from the cup made of hollowed-out horn.

  When he’s ready, the druid turns to face the young prince, the ram’s skull leering snow-blindly over his shoulder, and he sings about empires and fiefdoms undreamed of, about madness and freedom on the far side of the world.

  * * *

  One day, in an effort to filch more hay from the stables, he is caught by his father. He is forced into armour. He is placed in a saddle. He is told that the war is getting worse. That the chieftain on the next hill is pushing for victory; that all of this, the castle and the village, is on the verge of being lost.

  The prince doesn’t have so much time to go and listen to the old man’s stories after that.

  His days are spent in open combat in muddy fields.

  The rainbow of the druid’s palette fades.

  There are now three colours only: iron, blood and earth.

  His nights are spent in deep sleep without allowance for dreaming.

  His mother worries again, for his sake, but is prone now to rages at his father. Accuses her husband of trying to murder their son, so that he cannot challenge for the throne. Claims he is under thrall of witchcraft. That he has made a deal with some demon, some succubus, so that their firstborn will not rule.

  She becomes increasingly distant. Goes missing for days at a time.

  During those wanderings, his father looks almost half-cheerful again. Relaxed. Carries the day’s new battle-scars lightly.

  Until, at last, he doesn’t.

  * * *

  When the prince barges in through the door of the hovel, the old man turns around calmly, amidst flickering candles and fluttering scrolls, as though he already knows what his visitor will say.

  “You are a druid, are you not? All this time you have beguiled me with songs and with pictures, when I came out here at first to learn of your spells. To seek your help against our enemies.”

  The old man is silent.

  “Well? Where are they? Do I not deserve them, after all that I have done for you?”

  Still the old man doesn’t speak.

  “My father lies slain in a field and they have taken his flag. I will have my revenge. And I will have your help.”

  “Why don’t you sit down, boy?” the druid says. “I have a story that might be of use.”

  “No. I do not need stories. I need spells. I need to take my enemy’s blood.”

  Silence.

  “Will you help me or not?” the youth says, with his hand on the hilt of his sword.

  “What is it that you want most to gain from this war?” the old man says. “What end would satisfy you, if it were indeed within my power to give?”

  The youth thinks.

  He glares.

  He clenches and unclenches his fist on the sword-hilt.

  “I would be true Lord and King of this land, having bested all enemies. I would be known as the bringer of unity. The bringer of peace.”

  The druid pauses, then nods: “I can do this for you. But it will take time. And you, for once, must be patient. And you must leave me alone to this task for a while.”

  * * *

  Barely three days after his father is buried, his mother leaves the castle to live with the man whose army took the old king’s life.

  There are other defections.

  He takes a wife, but suspects her constantly of being unfaithful. Whenever he’s wounded in battle, he raises his hand to her face, makes her share the hurt. Reminds her: “We are in this together. Win or lose.”

  Though he says the latter word, he doesn’t believe it to be a possibility. He doesn’t want to. He wants to keep faith in the powers of his old friend. He tells himself – even tells his wife, in his quieter, gentler, rarer moods – that the druid’s spell will work out. That he will be unchallenged King, and she will be unchallenged Queen.

  But this faith is tested, daily. As he rides back, usually muddied, frequently bloodied, and looks up at the ramshackle husk of the keep, stamped against the lilac and hearth-fire of dusk. As he imagines the walls, the foundations beneath them simply giving up and sliding down the hill and disappearing into a river, into what the druid had said was an ocean, of blood.

  And it is tested most sorely and sharply when the axe of an enemy cleaves through his collarbone, before he can push the man back and end his life with a thrust.

  It is strained for weeks, whilst his wife sits by his bedside, keeps the hearth-fire burning, keeps the wound clean. Weeps onto his fevered brow. Wails into his sweat-and-piss-and-shit-drenched sheets.

  Looks at that brow in a rare moment of stillness, of coolness, and wonders if it will ever, now, bear the weight of a crown.

  * * *

  Recovered, though tender, he resolves to ride out to the forest. He has been patient enough, he reasons. It has be
en half a year, perhaps longer, and he can afford to wait no more. Not with the village at breaking point.

  His shoulder still pained – the skin there a pink welt like a length of rope or a snake underneath it – he cannot carry the weight of armour, and nor can he swing a sword or do much else with his left hand. This leaves him, though vulnerable, at least light on his feet, and despite it being a decade since he first mastered the path to the druid’s hut, and the vegetation being subject to its usual rhythm of summer-growths and frost-culls, the lake’s border changing, he finds his way easily.

  But what he sees doesn’t please him, doesn’t offer him hope. He hangs back, crouched in the long grass, pressed close to a willow. Through its swaying fronds, he sees the roofing thatch gone sparser, more ragged than ever. The shutter hangs off its hinges. The door buckles inwards where it didn’t before.

  Through the hole in the wall, even before he enters, he can tell the place is deserted. It has been cleared out or raided, that much is plain.

  He pushes through the door with his left shoulder. Normally, the wind that accompanied his entrance would ruffle vellum, tremble flames. But now it finds emptiness, its passage untroubled, except by the thick dark wedge of the table. On that table, the mixing-place, there are only shards and fragments of the small earthenware bowls.

  On the other, there is only the ram’s skull, caved in.

  And a lone scroll beside it.

  As he approaches, he looks for others on the walls and on the floor, but there are none. In fact, the floor has never been so clean. Even the bugs have deserted, their legions decamped. All that mars it are a few drops of dark red, which he scuffs with his boot to see how they flake. They might be ink. They might be blood. He doesn’t quite want to get down on his knees and taste.

  He opens the scroll. At the start and down the sides, for a part of its length, there are pictures. There is a warrior in a crown, with hair of a colour that could be taken for his. There is a woman who, though he never introduced her to the druid, looks very much like his wife. Even down to the cobalt blue of her eyes. There are his enemies before him, wasted and slain. And there is the red dragon of his father’s flag, crawling up along one side. And the spiralling turrets of a massive castle ascending the other. A stone castle. Much more impressive than the current wooden fort.