An Armory of Swords

by Fred Saberhagen

  My glee knew no bounds as I picked out one enemy after another for special treatment. One doomed fellow caught his spurs—bad luck for a pirate to be wearing them, it seems—on the tunic of a downed man and crashed head-first onto a landing. Another star-crossed corsair attracted the attention of a passing seahawk, rendering himself hors de combat as he dove for cover from its slashing talons.

  “And you,” I noted as I pointed Coinspinner at an archer preparing to shoot me, “your bow will attract lightning...” I stopped because lightning struck me as too improbable and the rapid gathering of dark clouds on the horizon scared me. Coinspinner handled him itself when the bowstring snapped in mid-draw and the arrow tipped down to stick the man in the leg.

  I mounted the steps like a conquering hero, graciously nodding in response to the whimpers for mercy rising from around my knees. “You are a Commodore now, Marlin,” I announced over my shoulder to the fisherman following me. “Into your care we commend these prisoners.” I made certain to keep my voice pleasant, yet infused it with an imperial tone in a synthesis that Fabio had never managed to produce.

  “Aye, sir.”

  The respect in his voice played like soft music in my ears. Never had anyone spoken to me with that hushed tone of awe. I’d heard it used many times when men and, oh, so many women spoke to or about Fabio, but until Marlin addressed me with it, I did not realize how much the veneration of Fabio had annoyed me. He, by accident of birth, by being tall and strong and handsome, was beloved by many and envied by even more.

  Including me. I discovered. No more! I had earned through my deeds what he had been given by the gods. Marlin’s respect for me, the pirates’ cowering in fear, all this had been won by my actions. I deserved exaltation, and before I was through I would have accomplished enough that even Fabio would come to me on bended knee.

  I slid Coinspinner home in my scabbard and stalked upward. Even with the Blade out of my hands, men pulled back away from me. Those who were still ambulatory, or at least conscious, bowed in my direction. They watched me cautiously, in case I chose to capriciously strike out at them. They knew they could not stand against me, and they wanted to provide me with no reason to demonstrate my superiority.

  “Who dares assault my people so?”

  Though the shout from the top of the stairs surprised me, I conquered my reaction and continued to pace up the last two steps to a landing before I looked up at him. I forced and suppressed a yawn, then folded my arms across my chest. “Your people?” I glanced about at the pirates huddling in fear below and above me. “Then you must be this scurvy sea-bandit, this wharf-rat in pantaloons who calls himself Red Rinaldo.” I echoed Fabio’s contempt for me in the tone I used to address him.

  “And who is the fool who dares address me in so dismissive a manner?”

  I wished I had a hat so I could doff it as part of my exaggerated bow. “I am Count Callisto of Fishkylle, Protector of the Duchy of Newgrave.” I wanted to make up another title or two to throw at him, but my mind betrayed me as I looked up at Red Rinaldo. He was tall enough and thick enough of limb to be an even bet in a wrestling match with a bear. I felt a familiar jolt of fear run through me, but I overcame it and thrust my jaw as far forward as it would go. “I have been sent to end your dominion of the seas and restore peace to the coast.”

  “Have you now? You bear a sword, good. I will not sully my blade by slaying an unarmed man.” Rinaldo smiled as he drew the Sword he wore. Immediately I heard a slow, dull thudding sound reverberate down the stairway between us. The men crouched there looked at me and then back at him, many moaning, more slinking down past me and a few even going up and over the wall for the drop to the wharf. “This blade is Shieldbreaker, and none may stand before it.”

  I knew he meant his comment to terrify me but it did not—quite. Actually, even in my exalted state, it did make me uneasy. The rhyme did say that Shieldbreaker shattered Swords, which I wanted to take as a generic use of the word. Still, all the translations and iterations of the verse did capitalize Sword, and that could be taken as a portent of dire difficulties on the horizon. Still, I refused to let my confidence in Coinspinner flag.

  “That may be, Reedy Rinaldo, but I think you will have the misfortune of falling down the stairs and cracking your skull.” I stared at his feet as he began his descent, willing him to slip, or for granite stones to crumble, but nothing happened, save for the pounding thunder of his Sword growing louder and more swift.

  Down another step he came and down another, moving as inexorably as an executioner approaching a victim on the block. His eyes had darkened except for a gray glint, and I marked that as the reflection of Shieldbreaker. The hammer-fall sound thudded through me, a bass counter to the staccato fluttering of my heart.

  Perhaps I had somehow misconstructed my first destructive wish. “Wouldn’t it be lucky if your heart seized up and you suffered a stroke?”

  He slowed not a whit, nor did the sound.

  “It would be incredibly, unbelievably lucky for me if lightning would strike you.”

  Nothing, not even a cloud on the horizon. Not a wisp of fog, not even a lightning bug. Nothing, nothing but his mechanical advance down the stairs. Barely a dozen steps separated us and I felt panic rip through me.

  No! I forced myself to dominate my fear. I knew in an instant what I had done wrong, why the Sword refused me, and I named it hubris! I had dared claim its victories as my own. I had placed myself on the level of Fabio, and I had reveled in it. Coinspinner had chosen me because I had been an underdog in a hopeless situation. It had come to me to give me a chance at survival.

  And why? Clearly it was so I could stand as an example to all who would otherwise despair and for that reason never realize their potential. Coinspinner, I imagined, wanted to give me the opportunity to overcome the sort of adversity that had beset me for all my days. Red Rinaldo obviously stood as surrogate for Fabio and all those like him who dismissed me because of my physical limitations. With the Sword of Chance in battle against Red Rinaldo and Shieldbreaker, I, we, would show humanity that the only true failure is to surrender to adversity instead of fighting it.

  I took a step back as Shieldbreaker’s thunderous voice slammed through my chest. Red Rinaldo reached the landing, his long strides hungrily devouring the distance between us. I let him come on, even as he raised his right hand, elevating the Sword of Force for a blow that he doubtless believed would cleave me in twain. Unbridled confidence and battle-madness shone from his eyes—he knew he could not lose, and wanted me terrified of that fact.

  I knew no fear. My left hand held Coinspinner’s scabbard rock still. I knew this battle had been predestined and the name of the victor had been written in stone since before the gods themselves were born.

  Shieldbreaker started to fall, the cacophony building until it even drowned out the pounding of my heartbeat.

  My right hand yanked on the hilt of Coinspinner. I slid the blade free of the scabbard, brandishing it with a flourish. I meant Rinaldo to see it and see the design worked into it. I wanted him to know he was vulnerable to my attack. Even as his blade arced in toward my left shoulder, I knew the Sword would not fail me and nothing could stop me from defeating Rinaldo.

  Nothing but the fact that Coinspinner twisted in my hand and flew from my grasp! It shot out from within my clutching fingers, the pommel brushing my fingertips as the Sword rose into the air. I watched it become a black silhouette in the heart of the sun, then saw it evaporate as soon I knew my life would.

  Many chronicles have noted the elastic property of time, allowing it to stretch to infinity in times of horror. It seems the gods, while tending to ignore the most fervent entreaties for long life or happiness, take a perverse delight in granting humans more than enough time to experience the mortification and embarrassment spawned when their dreams run headlong into reality.

  The hollow ludicrousness of everything I had surmised about Coinspinner and its mission for me sucked my stomach in on itse
lf. My arrogance tasted bitter in my mouth, and the truth about my pitiful condition filled me with disgust. The whole world would mock me, for once my head bounced down the steps Red Rinaldo would strike out at Newgrave, pillaging and slaughtering innocent people in payment for my audacity. The base stupidity of my thinking about Coinspinner likewise pilloried me—the Sword had no intention of using me as a lesson for humanity. The verse had said it all, exactly, that no Sword could stand against Shieldbreaker. Had I left it in my belt, Coinspinner would have survived me. Because I drew it, because I doomed it, the Sword of Chance had fled as I would have done were my luck not all run out.

  Defeated and dishonored before I died, I collapsed in on myself. In that frozen moment, it struck me as laughable that I couldn’t even die properly, for Rinaldo’s blow struck me on the left shoulder and carried on down through my body to exit at my right hip. Anyone else would have dropped into two pieces, but not me. Bisected by the most powerful of all the Swords, I felt no agony, heard no angels singing, saw no visions of a glorious afterlife. Aside from the chill sea air pouring through the gaping rent cut through my clothes by the Sword, I felt nothing to confirm my death. There was not even a drop of blood. Though the irony of the thought would not occur to me until later. I decided that the failure that defined my life culminated in my failure to die.

  Angry and resentful at Rinaldo for making apparent to all that last failure, I leaped forward, weaponless, and grabbed double-handfuls of his tunic. Clinging to his chest like a mad squirrel on an oak, I pushed him with one hand and pulled with the other. Rage at my ultimate humiliation fueled me, and I wrestled him around as if I were his size and he were nothing but a doll.

  The rhythm of Shieldbreaker’s thunder broke as the frenzied pulse of my heartbeat pounded in my ears.

  I knew men stood behind me and was certain they were laughing at my humiliating plight. I pulled Rinaldo toward me and turned to interpose his body between them and me. As I did so, my right hip caught his left and sent him spilling. Rinaldo’s heels went up and his head went down, smacking hard on the stone. Shieldbreaker started to fall from his nerveless grip, but my right hand stripped it from him before gravity could wrestle it free.

  The hammer-thud faded as Rinaldo lay limp at my feet. Without a thought to the consequences of my action, I raised Shieldbreaker and prayed against the possibility that now I might succumb to the wound he had inflicted. I half-expected battle-madness to fill me, but as I looked out at the men gathered on the stairs and wharf, I did not sense a single foe among them. Supplanting the thunder I had thought I would hear, a great cry rose up from the men on the island. It took me a moment to sort it out, for I’d never heard my name shouted outside of a curse before.

  “Hail Callisto, Corsair Supreme and Master of Pirate Isle!”

  “What?” My voice revealed my surprise, but no one seemed to notice. “What do you mean?”

  Marlin dropped to one knee before me. “It is the way of the pirates, m’lord. You have defeated their leader, and now they are sworn to your service. They know a great leader and fearsome fighter when they see one, and so do I, m’lord, I’m hoping me and my men can serve you as well.”

  “Yes, yes, Marlin—Commodore Marlin, of course.” I slid Shieldbreaker home in the scabbard that had contained its brother, and I noticed a general lessening in the anxiety on the faces of the corsairs. All in all they didn’t look like a bad lot, and it struck me that I could convince my sister to raise enough of a tax from the Merchants’ Guild to let us rebuild the Devourer and turn the whole pirate company into Newgrave’s own Navy.

  Then again, if we remained outlaws... I shrugged. There would be plenty of time to decide if I wanted my legend to be that of Callisto the Corsair or Count Callisto, Lord of the Sea. I had other things to do before that choice had to be made.

  I forced my voice as low as I could make it and scowled fiercely. “Get up, you scurvy seadogs, and make this island ship-shape. I want everything ready for when Commodore Marlin returns from Newgrave. He’ll be bringing my sister Antonia with him, and her husband, and I want them even more impressed with Pirate Isle than they already are.”

  Smiling I turned to Marlin. “Go to Newgrave and tell them exactly what—” I hesitated for a moment. “—you saw happen. But no need to mention Shieldbreaker.”

  “Aye, sir.” Marlin shot me a wink. “Anyway, m’lord, no one would believe me if I said you threw your sword away so’s you could engage Rinaldo bare-handed.”

  “No, no, they probably wouldn’t, would they?” I shook my head. “Ask my sister to visit me here, and conduct her yourself.”

  “My pleasure, m’lord.” Marlin bowed and started back down the steps, collecting his brothers as he went. He stopped when I called to him.

  “Marlin, one more thing.”

  “Yes, m’lord?”

  “Extend the invitation to my brother-in-law, of course.” I dropped my left hand to Shieldbreaker’s hilt. “And see to it he brings his butter knife when he comes.”

  Stealth and the Lady

  Sage Walker

  The boy wore a traveler’s cloak and carried a staff. In the dark tent, Tegan held up a small shuttered lantern and looked closely at his face.

  He carried the stone. She read the signs of it in the faint trace of gray under his pale skin, in the subtle dysphoria that showed in the fine tremor of his hands.

  The boy blinked at the riches in the tent, a chest of carved oak gleaming with the shine brought by pots of beeswax and hours of labor, satins and furs piled on the cot where Tegan would sleep. And he would not lift his eyes to her, Tegan the Courtesan, who held the Duke Osyr in the palm of her hand, and the duchy as well, in all but name.

  “You have brought me something,” Tegan said.

  “Uh. Uh...” He gripped his staff with white-knuckled fingers. It seemed to be the only thing that kept him from falling to his knees before her.

  “You’ve done well. You could hand it to me, I think.”

  He fumbled inside the folds of his cloak and produced a grubby leather pouch tied with a thong.

  “Thank you.” Tegan took the pouch in her cupped palm. She smiled, feeling the nascent power of it even through the leather, and teased the lacings apart to look inside. The pouch held a small, heavy object, a misshapen black lump, black as the rotted fuels of the Old World, at its heart a sparkling bit of greenish glass. The wizard Greenapple had not lied to her. This was a demonsoul.

  The thing throbbed in her hand. She must inform the demon who it was that held her without calling the demon forth. Tegan was no wizard. All she could do was to say what Greenapple had told her to say, and hope.

  Tegan held the stone close to her lips. Would that she had years to learn a wizard’s art before she held a demon in her hand, but there was no time! Would that the boy were not at risk, but she did not have the knowledge to shield him if the demon appeared.

  “Ninidh,” she whispered. “I am Tegan, who holds your soul in my hand. Know this, Ninidh, but do not wake.”

  A tiny warmth escaped the stone. Tegan waited for possession, for the unleashing of a demon’s powers. She felt a slight shift in the weight of the world, as if a power had turned in its sleep, the demon responding to her name.

  Then, thank Ardneh, the stone was only a stone, inert in her palm.

  Her fear disappeared in fierce joy. She held a demonsoul in her hand! This stone held Ninidh, who was ever enamoured of gems.

  Tegan wrapped the stone in gold foil to mask its power, and dropped it in a little pocket stitched into her bodice.

  The boy tried not to watch, but he did; he stared at her hand touching the warm creamy skin between her breasts. Tegan could see dreams rise in his eyes, dreams that he had never dreamed before. She hoped that someday he’d find a woman to make them true.

  “You’ll feel better in just a little while. Here.” Tegan opened the oak chest and picked up a moneybelt, weighty with gold.

  “Put this on. It’s for your mast
er.”

  The boy held the moneybelt in his hands, all of Tegan’s wealth, though she would risk much to not to have that fact known.

  “Do it now. This much gold might tempt the loyalty even of my servants.”

  Obedient, he started to lift his robe, then stopped.

  “I won’t look,” Tegan said.

  He got the straps tied round his waist, but he stood swaying on his feet, exhausted and dazed, sickened by his long journey and the restless miasma of the stone.

  “Your master will give you a share of it when you’re safely home. He’s promised me that.” She picked up a small purse, coppers and silver, and put it into his hand. “This is for you. I would have you comfortable on your journey.” He looked like he was going to faint. Tegan took the boy’s arm and led him out of the tent.

  “Give him mulled wine,” she said to the guard. “And find a cot where he can rest. When he’s strong enough, he’ll leave.”

  Tegan hurried through the maze of tents. She saw something move in the shadows, one of the guards, perhaps. No matter. She entered the tent where Osyr and his advisors had gathered for the evening meal.

  Osyr and his coterie sipped porter and cracked walnuts. They plotted tomorrow’s battles while they digested tonight’s cold dinner. No cookfires had been lighted, lest an Idris scout see them.

  “Tegan!” Osyr said. “Join us!”

  She bowed to him and edged her way past the men crowded along the trestle table.

  Osyr sat slump-shouldered, his colors of bronze and black yellowing his sallow skin. He held an opal in his fingers, an Idris opal, gleaming like a pearl but full of hidden colors. They were beautiful stones, Idris opals, filled with mystery. Osyr owned one, and craved them all.