Shieldbreaker's Story

by Fred Saberhagen

  One of these was Prince Mark’s fourteen-year-old son, Stephen, who had been hard at work for half a day and half a night upon a certain private project; the other was an elderly man called Bazas, one of the senior armorers, who had volunteered to stand by and give advice. The young Prince was making it a point of honor to do all the actual labor on this particular job with his own hands.

  The task Stephen had set for himself was that of crafting some piece of armor (whether a breastplate or a shield was still to be determined) from dragons’ scales. And the project was private, more accurately semi-secret, because the product was intended as a gift for Stephen’s father, on the occasion of Prince Mark’s fortieth birthday.

  Prince Mark was currently absent from the palace, not expected back for two or three days, when he would return in time for the semi-official birthday celebration. At the moment Mark was some sixty kilometers from Sarykam, having spent the last several days in a lightly populated region of his compact realm. Mark and Princess Kristin had gone there, with a small military escort, to help some citizens who had recently suffered from a local plague of dragons. The scales Stephen was working with were a byproduct of the relief expedition.

  From the five Swords available in the Tasavaltan armory at the time of his departure, Stephen’s father had chosen to carry with him only two—the harmless Woundhealer and the ruthlessly efficient Dragonslicer. The latter Sword had been returned to the armory, under guard, as soon as the need for it in the countryside had passed.

  For more than a year now the land of Tasavalta had been at peace, save for the occasional natural violence of dragon-incursion, or of earthquake—thank Ardneh, there had been only minor temblors lately.

  Inside the palace, peace reigned with special felicity. These days the royal couple, Stephen’s parents, were doting on each other, spending by choice a great deal of time in each other’s company; although they were temporarily separated now and then by the need to accomplish important business in two places at the same time, they were firmly reconciled, following an earlier period of near estrangement.

  For more than a year Kristin, thanks to Woundhealer, had been completely recovered from the physical injuries she had incurred at the time of the Dark King’s assault upon their palace.

  Approximately two years had now passed since the vicious attack by Vilkata. That onslaught, the cause of so much pain and suffering for everyone in Tasavalta, was only a bitter memory.

  * * *

  But tonight, Prince Stephen’s thoughts were concentrated on the matter of a birthday gift. To make a shield of practical size, two dozen or more of the hand- sized scales would have to be fastened to a wooden frame, arranged in overlapping rows. Putting together a suitable frame ought to pose no problem; but working a dragon’s scales was something else. Try to cut or simply bore a hole in one, at least in any scale which was big enough to use for armor, and you were likely to wear out your tool or weapon of mere mundane steel, no matter how well forged and honed, before you had made much of an impression on the material.

  Stephen had argued, and the expert armorer had grudgingly admitted, that dragonscale shield or armor, provided it proved feasible to make at all, ought to offer some real, practical advantages over any metal breastplate or shield—gram for gram of weight, such a defense would probably be a lot tougher and more protective than any human smiths could make of steel.

  The special material for this project, the actual scales of a genuine landwalker, had of course been harvested in the field in the course of the recent emergency, by a skilled fighter who had been loaned the Sword of Heroes for the task. The detached scales had been brought back to the armory with the Sword, and were now being shaped with the same god-forged implement which had slain the monster and had cut the scales loose from its otherwise almost impervious hide—the only feasible way to do the job.

  The setup on the bench in the armory workshop, with a Sword, one of the world’s enduring wonders, clamped in place like some mere ordinary tool, was remarkable to say the least, and in the earlier, daylight hours of the job other workers had occasionally stopped to stare at the work in progress. Stephen had sworn each new witness to secrecy until Prince Mark’s birthday came and the gift could be presented.

  Stephen’s hands, well coordinated though not yet extremely skillful, were already big, and hardened from frequent work with tools and practice weapons; his arms and shoulders were still on a smaller scale, not nearly as thick and strong as they would be in a few years.

  At the moment the boy’s hands were gripping a single dark scale, approximately the shape of a giant freshwater clamshell, slightly convex on its upper, darker surface, and with something of a clamshell’s rugose texture.

  Clamped immovably into place (earlier attempts to use it as a drill bit had been abandoned), the magical weapon began making its customary shrilling sound as soon as Stephen began to work the scale against the more-than-razor keenness of the Sword’s bright tip. Using point and edge in alternation, the youth was with comparative ease shaving, carving, and boring holes in the material which would have quickly dulled or broken any ordinary tools.

  Stephen, impatient to get the job finished before his royal father could be expected home, pushed harder, and suddenly the scale, tormented by the shrilling Sword which carved at it, broke neatly down the middle. The youth narrowly avoided cutting his own fingers.

  It was not the first time during the past few hours that such a problem had arisen. The tough, hard scales seemed soft and malleable as cork when Stephen put them to the test with Dragonslicer; but the material was stubbornly reluctant to yield in the precise way the young craftsman wanted. The floor near the bench was littered with the debris of these mishaps.

  The Sword’s noise ceased abruptly when it lost contact with the scale. Into the sudden silence Stephen swore, using soldiers’ oaths with a veteran’s casual instinct, his adolescent voice breaking awkwardly in the middle of the utterance. He had heard a great deal of soldiers’ talk during the last year or so, when the armory had suddenly become one of his favorite places. The armorer meanwhile looked on dourly, this time restricting himself to a single laconic comment; in truth old Bazas had never thought much of the plan of making a shield, or anything else, from dragonscale. In his view, if the idea had any real merit, some expert would have done it long ago.

  As far as the old armorer had ever heard, only one being had ever used dragonscale armor: the god Vulcan, the limping smith who’d forged all of the Swords. Mere humans—so Bazas was ready to tell the world, royalty or not—mere humans ought to be content with the kinds of armor humans had always worn.

  * * *

  Now Stephen bit his lip. In his cooler moments he was well aware that he needed to demonstrate patience and control his chronically difficult temper if he was going to make a real success of this job.

  For one thing, his stock of available scales—his original intention had been to use only those in a narrow range of size and color—was far from unlimited.

  Wiping his hands on his simple workman’s shirt, he went to work again, longish hair falling over a face that was swiftly losing its childish looks; his hair was growing dark, soon to be even darker than his father’s had been until a year or so ago, when Mark’s hair and beard had started to show some gray.

  Long hours ago, during the sunbright afternoon, the youth had been sweating from his work, but now the deep armory was almost chill. Tasavalta was a coastal land, whose climate, though subject to abrupt and sometimes unpleasant variations, lingered for the most part in a state approximating perpetual spring.

  * * *

  Now for a time the work went more smoothly. But the young prince soon paused again, with a technical question for his old adviser, one for which old Bazas, as usual, had a ready answer. Other voices, those of bored sentries exchanging passwords outside the thick walls, drifted in faintly through a high grilled window. It had been necessary for Stephen to inform Karel, the realm’s chief wizard, and al
so General Rostov, the military commander, that he was opening the heavily guarded Sword-vault to get out Dragonslicer. But he had not needed any special permission to work with the dragonscales. At least he had not asked specifically, though he had told his mother what he was going to do, before she left Sarykam with her husband.

  * * *

  Now, having shaped one more dragonscale to his own satisfaction, the boy added it to the small pile of finished work and picked out a fresh scale from a small box nearby. Then once more he set to work under the critical eye of the grizzled armorer.

  * * *

  Mulling over the subject of gifts in his own mind as he worked, wondering whether he ought to try to discuss it reasonably with Bazas, Stephen’s thought turned briefly to his two-years-older brother, Adrian, who was now absent from home while performing—or undergoing—the last stages of a years-long tutelage in advanced magic. This was a subject for which Adrian, unlike Stephen, had a tremendous natural aptitude. It now occurred to the younger brother, trying to carve scales, to wonder what, if anything, Adrian might be getting their father for his birthday. Mark himself, though a child of the Emperor, was no magician, apart from one great and apparently inherited talent—his amazing ability to hurl demons into distant exile.

  * * *

  Now for a time Stephen forgot about his brother and the subject of gifts in general. On the workbench things for a change were going well. Presently another of the exotic scales had now been cut and bored into the desired shape. Stephen held it up, inspecting the small, neat holes in the hand-sized slab, openings through which tough thongs could be laced, binding it to a light wooden frame. The surface of the shield (or, alternatively, the breastplate) when it was completed would be comprised of rows of overlapping scales, like shingles on a roof, each protecting the otherwise vulnerable lashings of the scale below.

  With satisfaction the young Prince laid the latest scale on his small pile of finished work. Five or six more of the same size, he told himself, ought to be enough.

  * * *

  Soon Stephen paused again, briefly, to ask Bazas another question having to do with certain details of the shield-maker’s craft. Months ago when he began to frequent the armory the young Prince had discovered that it was necessary to speak loudly to the old man, who had been left somewhat deaf by his years of labor at the anvil. Except for Stephen’s loud voice the vaulted room beneath the palace was very quiet at this hour, now that the Sword on the bench had once more ceased the shrilling sound it made in action.

  In the near silence, the lad noted in the back of his mind that there did seem to be, after all, at least one other worker present there at midnight. The faint thudding sound of someone industriously, almost continuously, hammering came drifting in from one of the armory’s relatively remote chambers.

  The young Prince made some passing comment on this sound, mentioning the evident presence of another worker to his companion. Old Bazas, who had not yet been able to hear the noise, only grunted noncommittally. He was a proud man, who at any time during the past several years could have had his hearing restored by Woundhealer for the asking—but had not wanted to admit he needed help.

  * * *

  Stephen went back to work—he had become grimly determined to finish cutting, in this session, all the scales he was going to need. And the old armorer, gnarled hands behind his back, resumed the pose of an alert overseer.

  But before another minute had passed, another difficulty arose with the scale currently being carved. Maybe, thought Stephen to himself, the shape of this one just wasn’t quite right to begin with. …

  Thud thud thud thud…

  The sounds from the other room were growing louder, becoming a real distraction. Not just because they were loud; during the afternoon just past, the armory had been a much noisier place than it was now. No, the young Prince thought, the disturbing thing was that something fundamental must be going wrong with whatever project was under way in the other room. He hearkened to another random, senseless-sounding barrage of impact-sounds from that direction.

  Abruptly Stephen looked up, frowning, and turned his head, listening intently; that didn’t sound like rational constructive hammering at all, but rather like some angry workman taking out his spite upon his bench. No, not like that either, but more like some deranged drummer, who had been locked inside a big chest and was trying to get out.

  No, not even that.

  Really what it sounded like was—was—

  Stephen’s eyes, widening, met the suddenly frightened gaze of the old man who stood across the bench from him. Even Bazas could hear the racket now, and in this he had been quicker-witted than his young Prince.

  Realization had come to man and boy at the same time, and they both uttered almost the same words, almost in unison: “It is the Sword of Force!”

  Shieldbreaker only gave such warning when actually in use, or when combat impended. So Prince Mark had taught his sons; and Mark had impressed upon the two young Princes also that in his experience the Sword was never wrong when it sounded the alert. This current uproar from the chamber where the Sword of Force was kept must mean that a serious assault was about to fall upon the palace at any moment.

  Stephen, having been taught the lore of Swords almost from his cradle, realized that whatever kind of armed attack might be impending, they had only a few minutes, or perhaps only a few seconds, in which to act before it struck.

  The troublesome dragonscale fell unheeded from the hand of the young Prince. Everything but the alarm forgotten, Stephen turned away from the workbench, his first impulse being to run up the nearest stair into the palace, shouting out a warning … but before he had taken more than two steps, he realized that there was no figure of real authority near at hand, none close enough to relieve him of the burden of decision and action which had been so suddenly thrust upon him.

  He had no time to seek out Great-Uncle Karel, or General Rostov, or even the officer of the day; besides, the latter was not privy to the secret code of magic necessary to get the Swords out of their vault and bring them into action. Neither were any of the regular armorers, not even trusty old Bazas. The only person able to act immediately and effectively was the young Prince himself.

  With swift agility Stephen turned in the opposite direction. Two driving strides and he was running at full speed toward the chamber in which the Swords were kept.

  Just in the last few moments Shieldbreaker’s noise had swelled to a hammering bedlam of terrible urgency. The young Prince experienced a choking sensation as he thought that there might be just time for someone as near to the repository as he was, someone able and willing to act boldly, to get the Sword of Force out of its case and into action before the threat, whatever it was, arrived.

  The constriction in his throat proceeded from a fear of failure. He, a Prince of Tasavalta, should have known better, he should have known the sound of the Sword at once for what it was, he should have been alerted to the danger long minutes ago! Possibly the unthinkable had already happened, he had ignored the warning for too long, it was already too late for him to act. …

  * * *

  In the few heartbeats of time which had elapsed while those thoughts ran through his mind, Stephen’s running feet had brought him to the Sword-chamber. He jolted to a stop just outside that room’s single doorway, darkened now. The opening lacked any material door but was gauzed with almost invisible but effective barriers: his Great-Uncle Karel’s powerful magic, spells keeping everyone out with an action like that of unseen hands.

  Muttering the necessary secret password under his breath, the boy felt the hands immediately cease their opposition, the barrier of enchantment divide like a curtain to let him in.

  He sprang through into the vaulted space where all of the Swords in the possession of the realm of Tasavalta, along with a few other very precious things, were ordinarily kept safe.

  The low-ceilinged Sword-chamber was octagonal, and comparatively small, extending no more th
an about five paces between opposite walls. Two of the walls supported racks of ceremonial crowns and weapons, kept here for the sake of their jewels and gold. There were a few sword-belts and empty scabbards, there as works of art; other shelves held jewels and comparatively minor treasures. A few lamps and candles, none of them lighted at the moment, stood about on stands and ledges. The place was cool and very dim, particularly to eyes so recently accustomed to the brightness around the workbench. In fact the chief source of illumination in the Sword-chamber at the moment was the indirect glow of the Old World lamp still burning two rooms away.

  Only a small handful of individuals had ever been empowered to enter this room. An even smaller number had been granted the immaterial keys required to open the inner vault and remove a Sword. The necessary secret magic, simple enough for even a non-magician to use, had not been entrusted to Stephen until very recently, on the occasion of his fourteenth birthday.

  This expression of his parents’ confidence had made him very proud. He had used the spell (with his mentor, Karel, looking on) for the first and only time only yesterday—actually a mere matter of hours ago, in the morning just past—to get Dragonslicer out of its case for his secret project.