by Bill McCurry
I was sure as hell wrong about all of that. When I drew my sword to kill Vintan but instead pulled aside that curtain, I saw what I assumed were the gods’ true forms. They were well-built and beautiful, without a bald head or any hunched shoulders in the bunch. Fingit’s hands stood out—they were enormous things on the ends of his long, loose arms. He was blond, with nearly round eyes and a mammoth chin, and he wore a blood-colored robe. Harik resembled him, but with normal hands, black hair, a thin nose, an unbelievably titanic chin, and a robe of unmarred black.
I wondered whether strong chins were considered particularly handsome among the gods currently, with each god striving to manifest the biggest one.
Gorlana wore her red hair cascading past her heart-shaped face and over her shoulders. She appeared svelte, although her golden robe revealed an exceptional area of cleavage. She wore a silver and pearl necklace, but no other jewelry.
While I was examining the gods and trying not to let my jaw hang open, Harik looked at Gorlana and said, “Let us send them back. Lutigan’s birthday party has already started, and if we’re late, Cassarak will have slobbered in the ambrosia. If the Murderer is killed, so be it.”
The goddess waved agreement as she produced a small golden mirror from nowhere and began admiring herself.
Inspiration bolted through me. I sheathed my sword, and everything returned to nothingness. I drew my sword, and all became light again. Well, the sword had some stupid god name. I tried to remember, but I hadn’t paid close attention when Ella had given the thing to me. The Sword of Incipient Charity?
Harik was saying, “Farmer, Murderer, now that the auction has concluded, you may go on with your sad, awful lives.”
Gorlana adjusted her necklace, and I gave it a harder look.
“Wait!” I said as things were beginning to fade. “I sure wish Gorlana was here. I have a trade for her that she’d love to hear about.”
Harik looked at Gorlana, who shook her head and firmly waved him off.
“She’s not here, and I have better things to do than search for her.”
The world reappeared around me without even a slow fade. It contained two swordsmen in mid-lunge, about to pin me like a wolf skin on the barn door. I twisted and deflected one, but the other gashed my left shoulder. I disarmed him by half-severing his wrist, and then I slashed the other’s throat.
The man just beyond those two hung back and waited for me to come to him. He blocked my thrust and returned an irresistibly fatal counterthrust. He must have won a lot of fights in his career. I slipped past his attack, stabbed him deep in the chest, and left him dying on his knees.
The last four men were running. I chased them down, and I killed them all from behind. Then I walked off to retrieve my horse right away so that nobody would see how happy and satisfied I felt.
“Harik, you are a toad-sucking bastard.”
“I see you up there all buoyant and prideful, sorcerer,” Limnad shouted from the hilltop across the trail from us. “Don’t think too much of yourself. This was just a gentle caress to show that I’m still planning your shrieking death.”
“Oh, I enjoyed it, my dear. I was getting bored. If I had spent another hour in the saddle with nothing happening, my ass would’ve fallen off.”
Stan and Ralt had climbed the hillside and reached the men I’d killed. Stan spit at one of the corpses. “Looks like it was a bunch of damn bandits. I hate bandits. My brother-in-law is a bandit, and he’s the nastiest barrel of cow turds I ever met.”
“Not even any good swords for you, Desh. Cheap-ass dogs,” Ralt said.
Since none of us was dead, we all took a few minutes to switch horses. While the triplets were getting themselves organized, Ella took me aside.
“I insist you find a way to dismiss this treacherous spirit. Unless you harbor carnal intentions, I fail to understand why you bound her in the first place. I trust her no more than I would trust a viper in my underpants!”
“In case you didn’t realize it, you should assume that she is listening to everything you say all the time. While she doesn’t particularly care what we think, she is vengeful. Across generations. If you make her mad, your great-grandchildren and their whole town might get wiped out by an inexplicable flood. The main reason I’m not releasing her is that our enemies can hurt us with magic, and she’s the only magic we have to fight them with. The incidental reason is that if I free her, she will immediately kill me and probably all of you too.”
“You. You and your spirit!” Ella hissed and spit into my face. “Of all the doltish, unthinking, imprudent behavior I have witnessed, this stands unparalleled. And I have cared for toddlers as a profession!” She turned away from me with intense deliberation, staring as if her eyes could turn my guts to slag.
I could’ve apologized, but why? I had done the right thing. I was almost sure I had. Well, to hell with her scolding and her superiority. I changed the subject.
“What do you know about this sword, anyway?”
She opened her mouth and closed it again before answering. “The Blade of Obdurate Mercy?”
“Right. Is there anything special about it? What did the queen say when she gave it to you? ‘Here’s a sword with a fancy name. Try not to cut your head off with it’?”
She smiled a little.
“You thought that was almost funny, didn’t you?”
“Not even a bit. I was thinking about an entirely different thing. To answer your question, she charged me with protecting her son, and she gave me her grandfather’s sword with which to do so. I can tell you that the blade possessed the power to reliably pierce and slice human beings. Other than that, nothing. She bestowed it upon me as a mark of trust.” Ella stepped in close enough that we could’ve reached our hands behind each other’s necks had we been so inclined, and she lowered her voice. “That’s why I gave it to you. I want to trust you, because my instincts say that we need you.” Then she walked off toward her horse.
I felt like an entire pile of shit. I had planned to kill Ella twice in as many days. If she had done something to aggravate me, then I might have felt differently; but so far, she had been tough, smart, caring, and contrary, which described my perfect woman fairly well.
As we trotted away from the ambush site, I debated on telling everybody that we were chasing a sorcerer who was also a brutal killer. Such knowledge will sometimes torment a man to the point of indecision. Other men prepare themselves better when they know what they’re facing. A few men have pointed out that I, too, am a sorcerer who is also a brutal killer, so what does it matter if one more is in the mix?
I decided to tell them, and I chivvied us into riding five abreast. “I just found out that a merciless sorcerer is fighting against us, and he’s more powerful than I am right now. So, watch out.”
Desh looked around at the horizon. “Just watch out for a sorcerer? Anything else, specifically?”
“Is it going to rain snakes?” Ralt stared upward with one hand over his head.
“Snakes aren’t so bad,” Stan said. “Now if it was raining wolves or bears, then we’d have something to worry about.”
“I don’t think it’s going to rain bears,” said Desh. He looked at me. “Is it?”
“Probably not. Not at first.” I winked at Desh. “We should watch out for anything that gets swallowed up by fire in just a few seconds. Or things that just disappear as if they never existed, like the roots of a big tree, or a bridge you’re riding across. We may get lucky and just have to deal with enormous swarms of bees.”
“Well, if we die, we die. Weeping won’t help.” Ralt blew his nose on one of his nice, white handkerchiefs.
Ella said, “You’re a courageous fellow.”
“Aw, he ain’t brave,” Stan said. “He’s just got nothing to live for. You should see his wife.”
“Shut up, you gawky chicken neck!” Ralt said.
I stepped in before they started throwing things at each other. “Let’s spread out again so the next
ambusher can’t kill all five of us with the same arrow.”
We rejoined the road late that afternoon. Stones pocked the trail and the small hills around it. A modest river, half as wide as the Blue River, cut across the trail to our south, the direction I expected Vintan to go.
Ella asked, “Have we arrived before them? Or do we pursue them still?”
“That is the conundrum, isn’t it? Boys, keep watch.”
I didn’t want to take the time to wander a quarter-mile down the trail, so I just whispered, “Limnad, I want you.”
The spirit glided out from behind a rock. Her beauty was mesmerizing and disturbing, so I looked at the uninteresting rock beside her.
“Limnad, I am not giving you a command right now. I am asking you, as a favor, to tell me whether the Denzmen and the prince have already passed this spot.”
The river spirit stared at me and said nothing. I heard Ella’s breath catch beside me, our horses stamping, and the odd squeak that Desh’s false leg had developed.
“I will say it again. I am not giving—”
“I heard you. I just could not believe that anyone, even a bucket of broken stones like you, would presume to ask for a favor”—here she began shouting—“when you have bound me like a slave!”
“Well, I don’t think it’s a preposterous notion. I have treated you well, considering the circumstances. I have spoken respectfully. I haven’t chained you or required you to stay within ten paces of me, even though I could’ve done that. I haven’t demanded inappropriate favors, although we both know that’s sadly a common practice. Taking all that into account, having treated you kindly, I ask you for this one favor.”
“I see. I hadn’t thought of it that way. I acknowledge the respect you have shown me, and hope you inhale molten lava, walk naked into a cactus patch penis-first, and fall off a thousand-foot cliff onto a thousand shards of disease-ridden glass.” Spirits are not known to stomp away from a conversation, but Limnad stomped away from this one.
I made a wry face at Ella.
“I remain silent,” she said.
“Your silence sounds a lot like you calling me bad names.”
Rocks began clattering behind me, and I saw Desh on his butt sliding down a tiny hill a little way up the trail. He had climbed up there to get a better view of the road behind us. Once on the ground, he sprinted over to me, going squeak-squeak-squeak.
“Riders coming up toward us! Maybe two or three dozen and more than a mile away. I think it’s them.”
Desh didn’t act as if spiders with huge tongues were stalking him. That was a common delusion for lunatic sorcerers. Nor did he waggle his parts right out in the open as if we couldn’t see or hear him. He spoke and acted logically and with purpose. I decided he was well, which was a pleasant thing. I’d just as soon not cut his throat.
I couldn’t deceive Ella any longer. I had no moral objection to deceiving her, but deception shrivels in the face of facts, and three dozen facts were riding down the trail toward us. I could either help her fight them outnumbered seven-to-one and probably get killed, or I could go my own way and spend the summer killing Denzman at my leisure.
I couldn’t quite make myself ride away with no explanation, so I faced Ella to say I was leaving. There’s expectation and there’s certainty. You expect a friend to save you from being trampled by horses, but you’re certain your father will save you or die himself. Ella showed no expectation. She looked at me with the certainty that I would help her. She was a trusting woman, in the worst sense of the word.
Instead of saying goodbye, I found myself saying, “Ella, you said you want to trust me, right?”
“Certainly. I do trust you, at least enough to allow you to participate in my expedition.”
“And I’m proud to contribute.” I scanned the river to the south and the hills beside us. “Instead of throwing ourselves in front of thirty-odd Denzmen spears, let’s follow the bastards. I’ll sneak in and kill a couple now and then. By tomorrow night, no more than nine or ten will be left, and they’ll be half-insane from wondering when the mystery killer is coming for them. We’ll snatch the prince then.”
Ella clapped my shoulder with her free hand. “That is a perfectly awful plan. You would die, we would be forced to assault the Denzmen without you, and every one of us would be killed, or possibly captured. However, I have something more elegant in mind.”
“I say this with respect, but I may have deeper experience with planning desperate assaults than you do.”
“And perhaps you do not. You might be astonished.”
“A whole lot of Denzmen will be here in a few minutes. We don’t have time to collaborate on a plan.”
“Then you had best follow my orders as briskly as possible.”
I could hear Desh, Ralt, and Stan behind me trying to hold in their laughter, and they were doing a piss-poor job of it.
“Yes ma’am. Where do you want me to stand?” That would mollify her for a few minutes. It was time to leave, after all, and when she wasn’t looking, I’d just ride away.
Twenty minutes later, I had forded the river. I began searching the hills beside the ford for a hidden vantage point, which was where Ella had said she wanted me to stand.
Fourteen
I prefer plans that are simple. A simple plan can fall apart in only a small number of easily understood ways. A complicated plan can go to hell in a staggering number of obscure ways that will never be fully understood, even after the dead have been buried and the wounded carried away.
Ella’s plan was not the most complex I’ve ever participated in. However, any plan requiring the coordinated effort of three forces that can’t all see one another, plus one magical intervention, can’t be honestly described as simple. But when you consider the fact that our entire force consisted of five people and a river spirit, the plan was a little simpler than my description makes it sound.
The plan was based on two assumptions. Vintan had forded the Blue River in three stages: a group of soldiers crossed, then the prince followed with some soldiers guarding him, and then the remaining soldiers rode across. Ella expected Vintan to ford this river using the same tactics, although this one, which Limnad called the Blood River, was just half as wide. At a certain point in the crossing, the prince and his guards would be in the middle of the river while the rest of the soldiers waited on each bank.
Ella also assumed that Limnad would do exactly as I commanded, carrying the prince away on a wave when the boy was mid-river, and rushing him downstream. Then she would hand him over to Desh, who would be waiting to hustle the prince away to our rendezvous in the hills. As a distraction, Ralt and I would ambush the soldiers on the south bank, and Ella would ambush the northern group with Stan. We’d create as much confusion as possible until we thought Desh was safely away with the prince, and then we would run like hell.
Sure, it wasn’t simple, but it was better than a lot of other plans that had successfully changed history.
The most ticklish part of the scheme was unleashing Limnad. She needed to carry the prince off after the diversions started. The trail south ran between two rugged hills, big piles of rocks, really, as it left the river headed south. I found a perch that wasn’t too obvious, about fifteen feet above the riverbank. From there, I could survey the battlefield and give Limnad the proper commands.
I saw Vintan’s whole force as it neared the river. Ralt was holding our horses on the ground below me, also out of sight. I couldn’t see Ella or Stan, and I hoped they were well hidden on the far bank. Eight Denzmen crossed first, and they halted on my side of the river. The prince began crossing with what looked like nine guards. One of them was Vintan.
“Limnad, I command you to wait one minute and then lift the prince on a wave, take him downstream, and give him unharmed to Desh. Don’t take anyone else, and don’t do anything else.” The bond on her left wrist unwound itself and blew away.
“I understand. One more command, and then I will cast you into th
e river and command hundreds of tiny fish to eat you. They may take weeks to consume you entirely.” She seemed to flow downhill against the rocks and toward the river, almost invisible.
I ran down the gentle slope to Ralt and mounted. “Stay quiet until we hit them, then loud as every demon in hell.”
“Right. I bet they yell a lot when we stab them.”
We galloped out of our hiding spot and toward the Denzmen. A few of them saw us coming and shouted, but when we reached them, they were still disorganized. I rode to the left side of the Denzmen and lost sight of Ralt as he rode right. I killed one man who was still looking around for the danger. I started shouting curses at them in three languages.
The next man I reached had lowered his spear at me, and he laughed. “They’re sending old men!” I chopped the spearhead off and then near beheaded him on the backstroke. A third man was out of my reach, so I called him a whale-chasing armpit of a man and rode clear. Lots of the insults in Ir involve whales and body parts. My father could never explain why.
I rode almost to the riverbank and saw the wave. Limnad did a marvelous job. The water surged from the smooth-flowing surface and lifted the prince right off his horse. Almost as good, it threw several guards into the water along with their mounts, and I cherished every hope that the men’s armor would pull them under to drown. Vintan kept his seat, which was a shame, but Limnad had performed her part beautifully.
So far, Ella’s plan looked brilliant. Lutigan himself couldn’t have done better.
I wheeled to face our enemies again and saw Ralt doing the same thing. He chopped at a Denzman’s arm and missed, and the man smashed him with a shield so hard he flew out of the saddle. I cantered to Ralt, blocking thrusts from two men on the way, and stabbed Ralt’s attacker in the back as he tried to spear the soldier rolling across the dirt. I put my horse between Ralt and the remaining Denzmen, and I blocked a thrust from an enormous fellow.