Legend of the Swords: War

by Jason Derleth

  “I can’t stand it any more,” Kevin said, inching his horse forward. “Let’s get in there.”

  Ryan reached out his arm. “Not yet.” He wrenched his gaze away from the battle to face the other boy. “Wait until the time is right.”

  Kevin frowned, but nodded.

  A few minutes later, the left flank of the kingdom knights seemed to be advancing. Two of the Triols were down, and the knights were pressing their advantage.

  Kevin nudged Ryan, and pointed with his sword. “What if we went around there and attacked from behind?”

  Ryan nodded. “Let’s go behind the trees so we won’t be seen as easily.” The squires began walking their horses quietly, in single file. In a few moments, they were on the road just beyond the clearing, and formed up ranks.

  Ryan lifted his sword high in the failing light, and brought it down carefully, pointing at the battle just beyond the trees. The troop of squires rode around the trees and brought their forbidden and unused weapons to bear on the flank of the Triols.

  Interlude

  The corpse had made good progress, after leaving the swamp. Now there was a problem that seemed far worse: there was a forest in the way.

  He had been walking for days without incident, without disturbance. Now there was a forest. The road went around, but around was not the right direction, so it stopped and … considered. His head tilted to the side, and he blinked, slowly, looking up at the large trees that sprung suddenly from the flatlands he had been walking on.

  There wasn’t much underbrush. The trees were tall and thick; underneath, it was too dim for most other plants to grow. A fine packing of leaves from the prior year’s fall carpeted the ground. The leaves on the trees were just beginning to turn colors—yellow and pale orange, mostly. There were no reds yet, but they would come soon.

  Dimly, he knew that there were dangers to the forest—that is probably why the road went around—but, more clearly, he knew that the way forward was the way that he was supposed to go. The forest was to the south. He needed to go south. So he needed to go through the forest.

  There was the beginning of curiosity in his mind. The desire was small, but important. He wanted to know why south was the right way to go.

  Desire was foreign to him. He didn’t know what to do. There was a second, smaller desire—he wanted the first desire to go away. That made him confused.

  In the end, the only way to make the first desire go away was to go south until his destination presented itself. The forest led the way. The road did not.

  There was nothing for it. The corpse hung its head and slipped its feet into the darkness beneath the branches.

  Friends

  Renek and the two knights quickly ran back down the hill and mounted. The unit began to gallop down the slight valley, swords out. One of the knights pulled a horn off of his saddle, and sounded the charge as they neared the Triols.

  The Triols turned to see the forty horsemen just as the two groups of kingdom archers crested the hill, arrows knocked. The horn sounded again, and arrows fell in front of the charging knights, cutting several Triols down even before swords were swung.

  The rear commander was flummoxed by this second flanking attack. He had already concentrated his forces to fend off the hundred kingdom foot soldiers, and the knights were able to lay about them unopposed. Being on horseback made them difficult targets. When a Triol managed to lay a blade on one of the knights, it hit his well-armored leg. Meanwhile, the kingdom’s swords fell about the Triol’s heads and necks—far more deadly. Finally, the archers were able to rain death down upon the body of the Triol army. The arrows descended from above with such force that they rent the chain mail hauberks with ease.

  The enemy lost a thousand men before they knew what happened.

  As Renek killed man after man, he felt the same feelings he had felt in previous battles—the enemy was slow and weak, he was faster and stronger. His sword, makeshift pommel and all, was forged of better steel. Only when three or four Triols fought together could they even begin to push him back.

  The enemy’s rear commander realized that there was no escape except through one of the flanking forces. He tried to rally his men, but arrows soon began falling on them from a new direction—from the front line.

  For the Triol line had collapsed. The Kingdom cavalry had managed to take out first one group of Triol archers, and then the other. Without the dangerous hail of arrows, the main bevy of kingdom archers had closed distance and were able to do considerable damage to the Triol front line. It hadn’t taken long before they broke, turned, and retreated—into the path of the rest of the kingdom’s archers.

  Renek kept fighting, yelling encouragement to the kingdom soldiers and knights around him. “Deeper, men! We can cut through their forces!”

  He caught a glimpse of a bloodied and torn captain’s armband. Sure enough, it was Captain Rimes holding out a hand to his mounted friend. Renek slapped the other man’s hand, then turned and fought in another direction.

  Only as few as three hundred Triols managed to escape. The rest were cut down like so much grain before the scythe of the kingdom forces. Two hours after the battle began, the only men left standing on the field wore red and white.

  * * *

  There was great celebration in the camp that night. Hesiod sent two dozen of his knights in search of a farm, and they came back two hours later dragging barrels of beer and some freshly slaughtered cows to roast. Renek had used this time to sleep off the groggy effects of battle that continued to plague him.

  Back in Hesiod’s tent, several captains, Renek, and Hesiod himself dined around his overflowing table. Rimes was still making rounds, visiting the wounded, but a space was reserved just to Hesiod’s right side for him. Glasses were raised again and again. Renek occupied the space of honor to Hesiod’s right.

  “Unbelievable!” Crowed Hesiod. “I can’t believe it! I wouldn’t believe it, except I was there! We few, we happy few, on this day stood against four thousand—and we see what is left of the enemy turn tail and run like dogs!” He raised his glass again, holding it out. “To Renek! Without him, we would have been the ones running like dogs!”

  “To Renek!” the men all lifted their glasses and drank.

  Hesiod sat down and leaned over to Renek. “Nice work, Renek,” He muttered, low enough that only Renek could hear. “You’ve shown yourself to be a valuable asset.” He patted Renek’s shoulder. “Make sure to stay a while. When the others have left—” He grinned and raised his glass to one of the captains who was trying to get his attention from across the table. “—When they’ve left, or fallen asleep, we can talk a bit about why we’re here, and why the King thinks this area is worth fighting for.”

  Later that night, Rimes arrived to give the tallies: over three thousand Triols had been killed. Seventy-eight Triol wounded were captured and were sharing the medical tent, with the twenty-two wounded Kingdom soldiers. A hundred and fifty-eight Kingdom soldiers had died. The room, which had been quiet to hear Rimes’ news, erupted into cheering, and another round of beer followed.

  It was only an hour later that most of the captains got up to head back to their own tents. Some of the rest had fallen asleep at the table and Hesiod had them dragged home by the guards. The rest, he outright told to leave. Finally, Hesiod, Renek, and Rimes were alone.

  Hesiod leaned in to the table a bit. He had been drinking heavily, but seemed to be able to hold his liquor. Rimes seemed fine, but he hadn’t had much to drink. Renek was feeling tired again, the food and beer had weighed down his eyelids, but he kept himself sharp by force of will so that he could hear what Hesiod had to say.

  “Have you two wondered why we’re out here in the middle of nowhere fighting a battle?” Renek tilted his head sideways, considering. He hadn’t really thought of it that way, but there wasn’t much here. The inn at the crossroads; the Abbey; some farms. Nothing else was nearby, not even a small city.

  Rimes continued. He seemed a
bit less … pompous than the night before, Renek decided. “Well, it’s not to guard the sheep, I’ll tell you.” He took a drink from his cup. “The Triols sent their eight thousand men to help guard their Searcher. Their Searcher led them this direction.” Renek raised his eyebrows, nodding slowly.

  Hesiod paused, seeing that Renek was confused. “You don’t know what a Searcher is, do you?” He asked. When Renek shook his head, he shrugged. “Maybe you really don’t have memory of your time before the Abbey.” He cleared his throat, and drank more beer.

  “Searchers are special Singers.” Renek nodded in comprehension. He had read about the Singers at the Abbey while he was searching for a name. “They’re historians: those who choose the path of the Searcher study the history of lost things their whole lives, and Search for them. Because they haven’t studied anything else, they don’t know how to defend themselves well. They don’t know how to call down the sheets of flame or lightning that the most powerful of the Singers are so fond of.

  “They’re quite rare. Most Singers involve themselves with the current world. These are different. Only those Singers that are truly interested in the past become adept Searchers.” He lowered his voice. “Some say that they actually live in the past, although their bodies exist in the present.” He straightened back up. “Nevertheless, it has been four or five generations, at least a hundred years, since any Searchers have been influential in the world.” He shrugged again. “Who knows? There may not have been any in existence.

  “Four months ago, the king received information that a Searcher had appeared in Triol.” His eyes narrowed. “You can see why, with someone as rare and nearly helpless as a Searcher, the Triols sent eight thousand men along to guard him. The information the King received was that the Searcher knew the resting place of the Swords of the Ascendant.

  Captain Rimes laughed out loud. “That legend? The one me mother used to tell?”

  He saw that Hesiod was not laughing with him, and his grin faded. “It’s not a legend?” He asked in a hushed voice.

  Hesiod shook his head, slowly. “Why don’t you tell the story of the Swords, Rimes? I grow weary of the sound of my voice.”

  “Me, sir?”

  “Yes, you, Captain,” Hesiod said, a bit impatiently. “The story you were told as a young boy.” He got up with his cup to get more beer while Rimes took a long pull off of his mug.

  “Well, now, I don’t remember the story the way me mam used to tell it, but I’ll tell you the gist, anyway.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and smiled in fond memory. “Well, see, there are a bunch o’ Gods. There’s the one who created the world, and one for all the fish, and one for the plants. An’ more than one for us, o’course.

  “The way she told it, one o’ the Gods got tired. They were always fightin’, carryin’ on. Well, what this God, name of Yi, decided to do was to quit, like.” Renek raised his eyebrows, and Rimes shrugged. “Well, that’s the way the story goes. Can’t help you understand it any better than I do. Don’t make sense to me.

  “Well, see, Yi wanted to take out his worst enemy, Colwyn, along with him, so he set up a careful bet. He called a council o’ the Gods, and he boasted that he was better than Colwyn at anything. He went around, bangin’ his chest, sayin’ that anything Colwyn could do, he could do better, and there was some things that he could do that Colwyn could never do.

  “Pretty quick, Colwyn gets up and challenges Yi. He says there’s nothing Yi can do that Colwyn can’t do better. So Yi gets Colwyn to agree to a contest—first Yi will do something, and then Colwyn has to do it. Then Colwyn gets to do something, and Yi has to do it. First one to do something that the other can’t do wins.

  “So Yi gets up and he creates a sword. It’s a beaut, all sharp and long and everything. Well, Colwyn laughs out loud, and he pulls an identical sword outta his mouth while he’s laughin’.” He shrugged again. “Don’t make no sense to me either but that’s how the story goes.” Hesiod sat down with a full mug, nodded encouragingly at Rimes, and took a drink.

  “Well, the gods inspected the two swords and they were both perfect, and just like each other,” Rimes continued, clearly getting into the tale now, “So now Colwyn makes a shield. It’s all intricate, with a sculpture carved into the front. It’s got a river on the outside, and some guys fighting on the inside. Yi laughs just like Colwyn did, and an identical shield falls off of his back, clangs on the ground.

  “The gods inspected both shields and they were both perfect, and just like each other.” Rimes took a second to wet his throat and wipe his mouth. “Well, now Yi picks up the sword and he starts chanting. The hilt goes all white-hot where he’s holding it, and the blade is all cherry-red. When it gets hot enough, he takes that sword and he pushes it through his own heart to quench the steel in his own blood. And the sword pulls in some of that blood, turns blood red even tho’ it’s cooled down, like.

  “But there was more. Yi starts getting smaller. He yells, ‘cause it hurts, but he somehow pushes what makes him a God into the blade. And when he pulls that sword out, the wound isn’t there—but he’s just a mortal man, standin’ up there on the side of the mountain, looking at Colwyn.

  “Now, Colwyn protests, but the rules is the rules, and he agreed that he had to do whatever Yi did. The other Gods hold him to it. So Colwyn knows he’s beat, and he does the same thing. Pretty soon there’s two swords with God’s blood in them, shining blood red near the fire—and two mortal men standing on the Gods’ mountain.

  “But there was more. The enchantment that took the Godhood out of those Gods, me mam said that it ‘rent the fabric of the universe.’ The universe wants its Gods back. Those men, Yi and Colwyn, they went down the mountains with their swords. The men died, but the swords lay in wait for the next mortal touch them.

  “She used to tell me that the next person touch them would become a God. Or have a God’s power, which I dunno, sounds like the same thing to me. Said that ‘the universe wants to fix itself’ or something.

  “Anyway, that’s the story she told me. I always thought that it was jus’ a story.” He drained the last beer from his mug. “We used to run around the village, playing with sticks, saying that we had the ‘Swords of the Ascendancy’ and sayin’ that we won the battle and such.” He smiled, then frowned, and turned to Hesiod.

  “Are you saying that the Searcher is trying to find the Swords for them? That two o’ the Triols could become Gods?”

  Hesiod smiled, but put his cup down and spoke. “The scholars and historians back at the court disagreed as to if the swords existed, and, if they did, what they would do. Most of them dismissed the tale, as you did. Some of them thought that the swords existed, but that the story about them was made up long after they were made.” He shrugged. “Something about how they were very well made swords, and wielded by very good swordsmen…after they had killed a thousand people, the swords were covered in so much blood that the stains would never come off. We humans tend to assign great beginnings to things that have affected our history so much, for good or for ill. Perhaps such amazing weaponry caused whomever it was turned against to tell tales that gave the blades epic powers, simply to make themselves feel better about having lost so badly.

  “Personally, I don’t know what to think," he said, tilting his head to one side. “Regardless, however, the King, bless his trusting—or greedy?—heart,” he said, smiling sadly, “believes that the blades exist. And, despite what his scholars said, he believes that the swords will turn him into a God if we can get them for him.” He shook his head, smile fading. “Him and his son. But we don’t have a Searcher.

  “The Triols do, though. And they sent him here. The scholars believe that he was headed to the mountain just to our south. I had given up on searching for the swords, but now that we’ve broken their back, we can go search.”

  Renek gazed at Hesiod’s smile. It was … disconcerting. “Hesiod, did the Searcher even survive the battle? We killed so many.”

  Hesiod’
s smile faded. “I don’t know. I suspect that he did. He wouldn’t have been part of the battle, after all. Perhaps he was in their base camp—

  “Well, we took care of their base camp, sir,” Rimes broke in.

  “I know. I was there, Rimes.” He smiled to take the sting out of his rebuke. “I didn’t see him, but then I was on the front lines. You two didn’t see anyone who was wandering around barefoot, looking lost?” The two shook their heads. “I didn’t think so. It’s most likely that he survived.”

  “If he survived,” Renek said, “what’s to keep him from going to the Triol main army for reinforcements? How far away is their army?”

  Hesiod waved his hand dismissively. “It’s quite far away, actually, from what I hear.”

  Renek smiled. “It seems like you’re intent on the swords? Are you … interested?”

  Hesiod laughed easily. “I wouldn’t want to be a god, if that’s what you’re implying. More trouble than it’s worth, I’m sure. Besides, I’m not really a swordsman. All brains, no brawn. What would I do with the bloody thing?

  “No, I think that the people who should get these swords are men like you two.” His smile faded. “You’ve both shown that you’re willing to fight, and even die, for the kingdom—although, Renek, I think you have a bit more to prove before I can trust you.” He shook his head. “But I can sense that you believe that you’re an honest and true man, at least. But perhaps you’ve been fooled by yourself, or …” He smiled, perhaps a bit sadly. “Some other thing that I can’t think of is wrong.

  “For instance, you haven’t met our king.” He straightened, becoming serious again. “He isn’t always … the kindest of people. I think court intrigue sometimes gets the best of him.”

  Renek smiled. “I thought it sometimes got the best of you?”

  They all laughed. “Perhaps, perhaps,” Hesiod admitted. “But I think we’re all formed by the world around us.”