An Armory of Swords

by Fred Saberhagen

  Fabio would have puzzled over that fact for a month, but I accepted it because I was beginning to realize I held one of the Swords! On the hilt, two cubic symbols stood out in white. I knew they did not form a hammer, for that was the device borne only by Shieldbreaker. I canted my head to the right and twisted the blade to the left to figure out what the symbols were.

  I flipped the blade over and saw a change, but initially missed its significance. On one side the two squares had single dots in the middle, but on the other they had six pips a piece. This puzzled me, because the only things I knew to look like that were dice. That knowledge did not help me identify the Sword I held.

  Despair washed over me as I realized how heartily the gods had conspired with Fabio to mock me. They launched me on a heroic quest and gave me a heroic weapon, yet neither I nor the blade was suited to the task at hand. I knew, I just knew, the story of my fool’s question would go down in history. The only consolation I could draw from the situation was that I’d not live to suffer my own mortification.

  I stood and slid the blade into my scabbard. Settling its weight snugly at my left hip, I felt my mouth twist into the sort of grin I imagined on the faces of countless heroes facing hopeless odds. While I found it utterly uncharacteristic for myself, I let it remain. “I may not be a hero, and I may be about to die, but that doesn’t mean I have to be afraid. That’s the one shred of dignity I won’t let Fabio tear away from me.

  In keeping with my newfound bravado, I slid the Sword from the scabbard and let it hang easily from my right hand. A meter long, the blade had a balance that settled in right at the hilt. I made a little cut and heard the blade whistle as it clove the air. My wrist came around in a practice parry, and the Sword moved with me instead of lagging like a dead lump of metal. The blade’s weight was not excessive, and the balance made the parry feel effortless. My mind filled with various diagrams of fencing styles about which I had read, and I knew this blade would slip through each technique with an elan that could make even me seem competent.

  I slowly nodded. “I always wanted to be a legend, and now I hold a legend in my hand. I don’t know why some god hated you so to consign you to die with me on the edge of Shieldbreaker. But I’m happy to have so fine a companion in my misfortune.”

  I wasn’t expecting a reply, and getting none only disappointed me in that I had briefly hoped the blade could tell me its name. For a moment it struck me that the Sword might be too embarrassed to identify itself, given present company, but I dismissed that idea instantly. I flipped the blade through a complex Aurochian parry, and smiled. “I’d rather you speak with actions than words.”

  From the deck I heard Marlin yell, “Admiral, island ho!” I resheathed my anonymous companion before striding through the hatch and out to the deck. My mind filled with the images of countless nautical heroes of legend, and I determined to strike a pose worthy of any of them. Might inspire the men.

  They could have used it. Marlin, if my eye did not betray me, was senior in age and experience, not only in my crew but in my fleet. Actually, I decided, the boats themselves were older than any of the boys crewing them. The Barhead Shark by far looked the most seaworthy, while the other two ships wallowed in the troughs like flotsam and jetsam that had not yet broken apart.

  The boys in my crew, being Marlin, his two brothers, and three other boys who looked like their cousins, had all armed themselves, and I regretted their being fishermen. Had they been farmers I would at least have had men armed with flails and mattocks, pitchforks, axes, and scythes. As fishermen all they carried were gaffing hooks and filleting knives, no doubt fearsome weapons to a fish, but less than terrifying to the kind of pirates lining the gunwales of the frigate heading out of Pirate Isle’s harbor.

  If the sight of the big ship were not enough to daunt me, Pirate Isle would have admirably served. A white stone castle had been built there, all towers and turrets, atop a massive outcropping of rock. It reminded me of coral trees I’d seen for sale in Newgrave Town, for it sprouted towers at unusual places and they all rose to differing heights. Had it not been the stronghold of an enemy who bore a weapon that made him invincible, I would have thought it a grand place.

  But stronghold it was, and hostile as well. I could see people moving around and watched ballistae mounted on walls and in towers being readied for use, as if the castle’s defenders thought my fleet could somehow defeat the ship bearing down on us beneath full sails. “Just hoping they’ll be lucky enough to have us for target practice in the harbor,” I sighed as the frigate sliced through the swells and came round the breakwater. “I’d consider it right good luck if they got their chance.”

  Marlin appeared at my side, gaffing hook in hand. “The Devourer will be slow to beat back up wind, Admiral. We can cut across her bows and come around for a run at the harbor.”

  He pointed as he explained, and I grasped what he intended. It seemed a suitably heroic thing to do. “You read my mind, lad. Do it.”

  As small as our boats were, they came smartly about and managed to force their way through the waves at right angles to the pirates’ course. I saw seamen on the frigate mount the rigging and start shifting sails, but we were across her bows before she could cut us off. Marlin bellowed orders at his brothers, and the Barhead Shark came about to shoot into the harbor, with the Leviathan and Swordfish abeam on either side.

  I looked back at the Devourer, knowing she would be coming about to cork the harbor and keep us in, but then I never expected to get back out, so that did not concern me overmuch. As we cleared the breakwater I saw her bow again pointed in our direction, but an oddity appeared toward the stern. The frigate appeared to be trailing smoke, and as I watched, the cloud grew thicker, and black as a raven’s wing. “Marlin, what’s happening to the Devourer?”

  The lad turned and squinted, then smiled. “They came about too fast! The cookstove in the galley must have gone over.”

  Pandemonium broke out on the frigate. Men started rushing back and forth over the deck. I saw canvas hoses unfurled as men started to work pumps to pull water up to quench the fire. The ship heeled leeward, dipping down toward the breakwater, and the bow swung around as the man at the tiller abandoned his post, escaping the flames nibbling at the quarterdeck. I saw a great spray of water gush out of the hoses on deck, then nothing, as the ship rocked back and forth in the wave troughs, pulling first one hose, then another from the ocean.

  “She’s going aground!” Marlin pointed back at the Devourer as a large wave picked the ship up and dashed her down on the breakwater. The wall of stone stove in the bottom of the ship and snapped the keel in half. It dumped the stem bubbling and steaming into the Isle’s harbor. The crewmen still on board leaped free before the bow slid back out toward the sea. The waves seduced the ship into them, then collapsed its wooden walls, as the ocean jammed it against the sea wall again. Planks splintered and masts snapped, shrouding the ship in canvas as the sea used it to batter the breakwater repeatedly.

  That threat fortuitously removed, my fleet bore in through the harbor. I moved to the prow and drew my Sword in an effort to make myself appear as heroic as possible. I laughed aloud, my drunken headache serendipitously banished. While the frigate’s destruction did not tempt me even to dream of possible success, it did raise the hope that my death might not be as ignominious as I had feared.

  The other large ship at anchor—the Sea Slayer—remained in place, though pirates did line the deck. I knew at once they were not going to weigh anchor, because the first of the castle’s trebuchets splashed a stone off our port bow. Water geysered up and wet me, but I swept thin, wet hair from my face and hooted back at the defenders. I opened my arms wide and invited them to aim for me.

  That might have seemed courage to some and madness to others, but it was neither. The siege machines might have been effective against the sort of fleet Fabio had hoped to raise, a flotilla filling the harbor with wood from wharf to seawall. My fleet was too small to provide anythi
ng close to a good target. Stones and timbers, chains and rubbish, an unnatural hail whirled through the air, but the Barhead Shark passed through it all unscathed. The Leviathan lost its spinnaker to a length of chain, and a stone crushed the figurehead on the Swordfish, but both boats kept coming.

  The ship at anchor lowered a boat, but even with all eight men aboard pulling hard, they could not reach the dock before the Barhead Shark. To port the Leviathan sped on despite having lost a sail, and on the starboard the Swordfish rammed the longboat and sank it. Behind me Doc and Hal furled the sails, while Marlin brought the fishing boat close in to the dock.

  Too close, as it turned out. The Barhead Shark's prow hit the dock dead on, splitting the first half-dozen planks before pilings squeezed it to a stop. I know this because the sudden cessation of our forward movement catapulted me through the air. During my first somersault I realized I had been lucky in that my course remained true and that when I hit, I would still be on the dock. During my second revolution I acknowledged a less heartening fact: my landing would bring me perilously close to the first three men running out to oppose my fleet.

  While my martial training, especially that involving equestrian pursuits, had never been the sort of success my father had wished for, it had endowed me with a knowledge of how to fall and bounce to minimize injury. I curled up into a ball, holding the pommel of my Sword in both hands, with the blade extended to the side rather like a scythe, so I would not impale myself if I hit wrong.

  The blade turned out to be held more like a scythe than I had hoped. I landed hard on my shoulderblades and bounced through a roll toward my feet. My Sword-blade caught on something. I twisted to the left, felt my left hip bump something else, and heard a couple of yelps. Then the dock was firmly beneath my feet.

  A splashing noise prompted me to open my eyes and turn slightly to the left. As I did so, I brought the bloodied Sword across in a short arc in front of my face. Chang! It blocked a thrown dagger, dropping the lesser weapon to the pier beside the unconscious form of the man whose legs I’d slashed during my roll.

  Of course, I knew instantly that what I had done—which included blindly bumping the center man into the third man and sending them both into the bay—was highly improbable. Parrying the thrown dagger was nothing more than luck, and my fingers still tingled with the impact of the knife against my Sword. Still, the men now standing a dozen meters away clearly took the carnage as a result of purposeful action, and their reluctance to engage me showed.

  Before they could persuade themselves, the wind shifted and the gods again intervened on my behalf. The Leviathan flashed past on my left, its speed unabated as it drove straight at the pirates’ wharf. The man at the tiller tried to bring the ship around and back out to sea, but the changeling wind shoved the ship to starboard. With a horrendous cracking and crashing, the Leviathan broadsided the dock ahead of me, tumbling me to my knees. Near the point of impact, the dock tipped up, launching a full dozen pirates into the bay.

  The impact vaulted the Leviathan’s fishing nets up and over the gunnels as neatly as if cast by a master fisherman. By the time I had regained my feet, the ship had already rebounded from the collision and made headway while pulling out to port. The nets, which had draped themselves over a number of recumbent pirates, dragged their catch off with them. Hastily, I estimated that more than a third of the men facing me had succumbed to the Leviathan’s misadventure.

  I drove forward, wanting to reach the rammed section of the dock before the pirates could cross it. I knew, from countless legends of epic battles, that defending the uneven territory would be far simpler than allowing my foes to stand on equal footing. It did not really occur to me until I came close enough to cross blades with the pirates that the valiant defenders upon which I had chosen to model myself usually died at the end of their fights. I also realized that defending in a situation that clearly called for offense was less than satisfactory, but attacking would have pressed my luck even further than it had been pressed so far!

  A swordsman I am not, so I steeled myself against my eventual steeling by the pirates and determined to give as good as I got. By the strangest coincidence, though, their thrusts missed me by centimeters while my Blade slipped fortuitously beneath guards or over parries. As part of me tried to catalog each cut and each block for my experiment in folklore, another part identified fencing styles and suggested simple strategies that succeeded in even the most improbable situations.

  As much damage as I did to them, I believe that they did more. Rinaldo’s men seemed as adept at sticking each other as they were at missing me. Pressed forward by the men behind them and tripped up by the wounded in the front, their blades spilled more pirate blood than mine, and it almost seemed as if letting them surround me would prove more devastating to their number than the advent of Fabio’s future fleet.

  Bleeding and howling men fell from the dock or went staggering back through the press of their companions. Before I knew it I had crossed the treacherous length of canted dock and was actually forcing the pirates into a general retreat! It was impossible, unbelievable, but I was doing it. I looked at them saw fear in their eyes. For the barest of moments I knew what Fabio had read in my eyes during our duel, and in that burning second of shame, I faltered in my advance.

  Even as I paused, my momentum lost, a giant of a man bearing a cutlass in each colossal fist pushed forward through the crowd to demand my attention. He looked like Fabio, except that he was taller, stronger, and had a wolfish intelligence in his dark eyes. Most disturbing of all, I noted as he set himself, he bore no deformities or scars. That fact told me that my time as a hero was over. When he squinted at me, then contemptuously cast aside the sword in his right hand, I got all the confirmation I needed of my impending opportunity to solve the mystery of life after death.

  A gull wheeled overhead and ridiculed me mightily—or so I interpreted his raucous cry, before a splotch of white washed my enemy’s left eye away. The man pulled his left hand up to swipe at the guano in a reaction automatically reflexive. The dull edge of his cutlass smacked him squarely between the eyes, momentarily stunning him. Off balance and still half-blind, a staggering misstep sent him off the edge of the dock and into the ocean.

  I assumed the gape-jawed look of surprise on the pirates’ faces mirrored the one on my own. Coincidence after coincidence had piled one on top of another high enough to have toppled over faster than the man now sputtering in water. I knew the chances of my having gotten as far as I had were slimmer than none.

  There was no reasonable, no possible, explanation, except one. I glanced at the Sword I held. This has got to be Coinspinner, the Sword of Chance! It is known to move about by its own volition, entrusting itself to those who need it. I saw a brief flash of white on the hilt, and observed three and four pips on the dice respectively.

  Hope exploded in my chest. I glanced sidelong, slyly, at the knot of men facing me, and gave especial attention to the heavyset one in red and yellow at the edge of the dock. “It would be very lucky for me,” I murmured, “if he were to lose his footing and fall off the dock.”

  The forward movement of an impatient man behind him sent my target tottering into the ocean. I smiled, and shifted my gaze. “And if that lean weasel hit a weak spot in a board...”

  The impatient man’s foot went through the dock, quickly followed by his body and most of his teeth.

  My smile became generous.

  I brought my sword—my very special Sword—up into a guard. “Come on, gentlemen. As luck would have it, I’m in the mood to take you all!” With the boldness of a berserker, I leaped over the missing board and stabbed out as two blades passed on either side of my body. Pulling my Sword free of one man’s shoulder, I parried the other, then slapped the flat of the blade across his ample belly. The two men fell to either side, leaving me a straight avenue to their comrades.

  They broke, and I chased them with laughter. I pointed Coinspinner at one and imagined how happenstan
ce might make him run blindly off the dock. Before he hit the water I shifted my attention to another, thinking to myself that it would be well within the vicissitudes of life for him to faint dead away in terror of me. His limp body tripped the man following close on his heels, tumbling that man into one yet further forward. They both crashed to the ground, narrowly missing the last man. It almost appeared that he would get away, but it was my lucky day, not his, so he suffered the misfortune of having his boot heel catch in the space between planks on the dock. This pitched him sideways and wrapped his middle around the upper end of the pilings that supported the dock.

  Looking up as I strutted along the wharf, I saw a host of pirate reinforcements pouring out of the castle. I laughed nonchalantly and, somewhat disturbingly, much akin to the way Fabio had when I had vowed to avenge myself for the butter knife duel. These men, these luckless men were mine for the harvesting.

  I watched the line of them scurrying down the narrow stairs carved into the side of the island’s stone face. I was moved to pity the fourth man in line as he took an unfortunate misstep in his haste and fell into the man in front of him. The fifth man vaulted him, but hit the second man, turning the whole front end of the procession into a roiling mass of jumbled bodies.

  Dame Fortune smiled on me when another pirate caught his halberd at a narrow point in the trail, slamming running men into his back until the weapon’s haft gave way and they all spilled to the ground. Lady Luck seduced loose stones from the rocky face above to crash down among the defenders of Pirate Isle. As I advanced to the foot of the steps, I considered it the greatest of luck that the confident man picking his way down toward me suddenly suffered an anxiety attack over the lack of approval his father has shown for him as a child. Equally as fortunate, from my point of view, was that when he laid down his sword and began to weep another man slipped on the blade and bumped his way down a length of granite stairs on his tailbone.