Shieldbreaker's Story

by Fred Saberhagen

  It was not the first time that the Sword of Stealth had played him such a cruel trick, and in another moment or two he was able to greet his friends in a normal voice.

  * * *

  Karel had obeyed to the letter the command of his Master (as he thought) to put himself to sleep for a full day; but his need to protect and serve that Master actively soon brought the old man to his feet, sleepwalking. Unnoticed by his three friends, now deep in conversation at a little distance, the elder wizard, obviously in the grip of some purpose which transcended sleep, walked out of the garden by another exit, and away.

  * * * * * *

  Meanwhile, the young Prince was congratulating himself and entertaining his new gathering of friends with the story of how he had swindled Baron Amintor out of the Sword Coinspinner, and had effectively gotten rid of Amintor and his search party—at least for the time being.

  Coinspinner had not failed to provide the little band with food. A root cellar under Ben’s house, and a small icehouse in his garden, had both been spared demonic vandalism.

  But hours were passing and there was only limited time for self-congratulation. Stephen and his friends, finding themselves fortuitously armed with two Swords, now had to determine the best way to put Coinspinner and Sightblinder to work.

  Zoltan opened the serious conference by suggesting that they carry the pair of god-forged weapons to Stephen’s royal parents as quickly and by as direct a route as possible—Ben ought to know where Mark and Kristin were most likely to be found.

  But Ben was already shaking his head. He had ominous and urgent news to relate, eyewitness reports of Vilkata’s hostage-taking.

  This seemed important enough to compel a change of plan.

  * * *

  Stephen and his friends, still benefitting from Coinspinner’s untiring influence, had not got much further with their talk when a messenger reached them from the Prince and Princess—a night-flying scout, a great owl dispatched from village headquarters, discovered their whereabouts in the city.

  While the bird rested and ate, Ben took the opportunity to indite a short message laden with good news, written in code and addressed to Stephen’s parents. The note informed Kristin and Mark that their son had been located, that Sightblinder and Coinspinner were available, and that the destruction of the Mindsword had now been definitely confirmed.

  Soon the messenger, somewhat rested, was urged on its way. Still, there could be no thought of merely waiting now for orders from Mark and Kristin. The need was urgent to do something about the hostage situation, and orders sent from headquarters might never get through.

  But everyone in the garden needed a rest before undertaking any substantial tasks. Stephen in particular was grimy and bleary-eyed from digging in the ruins of his grandparents’ house and had suffered burned fingers on both hands in the effort to save their lives; his legs and ankles were scratched from climbing through the rubble, his right shoulder had been wrenched by last night’s Swordplay, and then Coinspinner, before coming into Stephen’s possession, had twisted his ankle, enough to keep him from walking easily or far.

  The lad had put in rather more than a full day’s hard work in the armory even before the attack fell on the palace, and had enjoyed only brief periods of real rest since then.

  Now and then pangs of guilt still assailed Stephen over the fact that he had lost one of the Swords, perhaps the most important, to the enemy. But each time he forced himself to try to think the matter through clearly and logically, telling himself that he had done the best he could manage at the time.

  * * *

  In the hours before dawn—the messenger had been perilously delayed en route-—Prince Mark and Princess Kristin received the happy news of Stephen’s safety and confirmation of the Mindsword’s destruction.

  Prince and Princess happened to be awake when the good news arrived because people from an outlying farm had come to the village shouting, pleading, seeking Woundhealer’s blessing on a scalded child. This victim was no casualty of Vilkata’s attack, but only of domestic accident, a broken table-leg, a falling pot. Even in the midst of war, the other terrors of life went on.

  While Mark and the cavalry remained suspiciously on guard against some trickery, Kristin drew the Sword of Love. As always with Woundhealer, the healing was swiftly and easily accomplished.

  The child, relieved of pain, shock, and disfigurement, contentedly fell asleep. The grateful parents could not be as easily sent away. In fervent voices the man, named Bodker, and his wife Alta, praised and blessed the Prince and Princess, and the Sword the royal couple had brought among their people.

  Kristin, more at ease than her husband in such situations, walked with the parents outside the cottage. Left alone again for the moment, Mark stared with a bitter smile at the Sword of Healing in his hand—one Sword which was never going to do the least harm to any of his enemies. Still, he had come to know the Sword of Love too well not to appreciate the ways in which it could be useful to the fighting man.

  * * *

  With enemy reptiles and demons tending to dominate the sky, flying messengers could now afford the Prince only an intermittent and indirect contact with his son. Messages could be exchanged, some co-ordinated plan of action could be at least outlined. A messenger approaching Stephen and his friends could be as confused by Sightblinder as any human or demonic enemy—but, of course, Coinspinner could help to straighten matters out.

  * * *

  Mark had to assume that Vilkata, with a thousand fanatically helpful converts to call upon, would soon learn to what village his archenemies, the Prince and Princess of Tasavalta, had gone, and when and why. Then—if the Mindsword still existed—the Dark King would soon be marching after them, doing his best to create an avalanche of new converts on the way.

  But no such attack seemed to have been launched. Another indication, if any were still needed, that Skulltwister had actually been smashed.

  Still, Mark and Kristin warily decided to continue moving their headquarters repeatedly, perhaps several times a day, keeping in touch with their key people by means of galloping couriers and a small band of flying messengers. Even now, in the village currently occupied by the royal couple, someone was getting the riding-beasts ready for the next relocation.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, with hard information gained, more orders could be dispatched to all the outlying districts of Tasavalta and to any reliable allies in the region. Mark’s new confidence that the Mindsword had been destroyed rendered a general assault with an army on Vilkata’s forces feasible again. Mark and his Princess were both busy, full time, sending reassurance to their people and marshalling troops.

  Chapter Sixteen

  With dawn, squadrons of flying reptiles, precursors of Amintor’s advancing army, patrolled the sky over and around the city, making further Tasavaltan communication by flying messengers, at least temporarily, almost impossible. More couriers, and fighting birds to escort them, were being summoned from the more distant provinces.

  * * *

  Dawn found Karel still walking in his sleep, a man moving with the dazed sense of some unknown, urgent task to be accomplished—the elder wizard was wandering on an erratic course that had already taken him out of Sarykam. Twice minor demons tried to interfere with him, and twice he blasted them magically out of his path, even without becoming fully aware of his surroundings.

  With the passing hours, the hold upon him of the vanished Mindsword was decaying, and the old man struggled internally to regain control over his own soul.

  * * *

  At first light, Yambu made her way across the grounds of Ben’s ruined house, looked at the place where Karel had been put to sleep, and discovered that he was missing.

  There were no signs of violence, nor did it appear that the wizard had taken anything with him, even food or water.

  The lady reported her discovery to her friends, but there was nothing any of them could do about Karel now. Rather, it was necessary f
or the four remaining, having restored themselves with food and rest, to take action quickly to help the many hostages Vilkata had now crammed into the courtyards and cellars of the palace. Ominous sounds from the city streets, drifting in over the garden wall to Coinspinner’s charmed redoubt, confirmed that more victims were being added hourly to the total.

  There could be little doubt that the Dark King’s prisoners were in urgent peril of being slaughtered within the next few hours. Such an atrocity was only to be expected, given Vilkata’s nature and the situation in which he now found himself.

  Stephen and his three friends all agreed that the most effective action would be direct, getting in among the hostages with Sightblinder and Coinspinner. It was entirely possible, even likely, that the rescuers, in following such a course, would find themselves facing Shieldbreaker—but the risk had to be accepted.

  Naturally the organization of the rescue operation would have been much easier could it have been postponed for even one more day. Now it would be more difficult because of the necessity to save some all-too-willing victims; but in another day the great majority of Vilkata’s converts would be emerging naturally from the mental fog generated by the Mindsword. Hour by hour, even minute by minute, they would experience first doubts, then confusion, then a full readiness to rebel against the man who had so briefly made himself their Master.

  But of course it was not possible to wait that long. The Dark King, anticipating just such a mass reversion, would be planning already to slaughter those he had confined—or to have them massacre each other, or be devoured by demons—before they could regain their senses.

  * * *

  Before pushing open the garden gate and launching their attack upon the palace, Stephen and his companions had to decide, of course in consultation with Coinspinner, which of them was going to carry each Sword in among the hostages.

  “Who shall carry this?” The Silver Queen, addressing one Sword, raised high the other.

  The tip of the Sword of Chance twitched, tugged decisively.

  The task of wielding Sightblinder in combat had fallen to Zoltan. The young man gripped thoughtfully the black hilt marked with the symbol of an eye, and in the perception of his comrades he vanished, was transformed into a series of images compounded of their own hate and fear and love.

  “And this?” Yambu, like a priestess, held aloft the very Sword that was being questioned.

  Coinspinner’s magic weighed straight down upon her; and thus remained in Yambu’s hands.

  There were a few tactical questions to be settled. Ben, mundanely armed, undertook the job of bodyguard to the now-Swordless Stephen. The young Prince’s chief responsibility would, of course, be the exercise of his unique power; when the fighting started, he would banish as many demons as he could, to as great a distance as possible.

  * * *

  A minute later, Ben yanked open the door leading to the street. Stephen and his friends, doubly Sword-armed, marched out of the walled garden and toward the palace. They anticipated that on their arrival their work would be for the most part indoors and in enclosed courtyards; therefore they made no attempt to equip themselves with riding-beasts, which under the circumstances seemed more of a complication than an advantage.

  Still the unconverted population of Sarykam had not totally evacuated the city, though by now a high proportion had fled. Many old people remained, and a scattering of others, some simply unwilling to be driven from their homes, had been hiding from the hostage-taking demons. Zoltan, advancing with Sightblinder, had not walked two blocks before he began to attract a following crowd of Vilkata-converts, some no doubt genuine, some playing the role, all deceived into believing they were following their all-important Master. Among them a few confused individuals, who beheld in Zoltan an image of some dearly beloved child or spouse or parent riding toward them, hastened to give thanks for that person’s survival.

  In a loud voice Zoltan introduced his three original companions as his faithful servants; then all four began to tell the swelling crowd that an impostor, a false Master, now sat in the palace.

  * * *

  More than once while walking the modest distance to the palace—and later, coming at him in the jammed interior courtyards—total strangers, deceived by the Sword of Stealth into the conviction that Zoltan was someone they loved, still accosted the young man with maudlin apologies, self-accusations regarding old and unknown mistreatment. Again and again his ears rang with tearful pleas that he—or she—come home with them at last.

  Less visible, or audible, were an equal number of people who fled from his path in total terror.

  * * *

  Coinspinner, in the hands of the Silver Queen, unobtrusively set the raiders’ course. The marching crowd, urged on by Zoltan’s shouts, soon swelled into an angry horde. A figure appearing to be, in the eyes of hundreds of onlookers, the Dark King himself, accompanied by a rapidly growing entourage whose purpose was uncertain, pushed through the outer gates and entered the palace grounds.

  That company went in unopposed, unchallenged by human or demonic guard, through one of the main doorways of the palace itself.

  Complicated, conflicting reactions by the hostages themselves surrounded Zoltan and his close escort when he carried Sightblinder in among them. A roar went up from a thousand human voices, and what had been a passive crowd of captives was transformed in a moment into an utterly chaotic mob.

  Eagerly the four invaders began their inside work, shouting into the cellars and improvised dungeons, freeing hostages with sharp commands in Vilkata’s name. Even as Stephen and his band began their rescue operation in the palace, the most recently rounded-up contingent of genuine hostages, a scant few, were still being penned up with the others in the inner courtyards. Those interior rooms of the huge building which were most suitable for the purpose had already been filled far beyond their normal capacity. Up till the hour of the raid, in an effort to forestall, or weaken, the inevitable Tasavaltan counterattack, the Dark King had continued to cram more hostages into the courtyards and cellars of the palace, an indiscriminate gathering of whatever men, women, and children could be rounded up by his remaining human converts and his demons.

  Aside from elderly folk, or those who had been injured or crippled after Woundhealer ceased to be available, practically everyone who was not a hostage or a direct combatant on one side or the other had by now fled the capital.

  Doors and gates were opened in blind obedience, convert guards were trampled, demons hurled away by Stephen, who stood chanting steadily, pointing at one inhuman form after another. Lady Yambu continuously consulted Coinspinner, trying her best to interpret the results and convey them to her comrades amid the din.

  In moments, a mass escape was under way.

  On the theory that the prisoners most remote from freedom should be released first, or, in any case, must not be forgotten, Zoltan, almost as familiar as Stephen with the palace, urged his comrades to the lower depths, where they found some doors still locked. With shouted commands the raiding party dug people out of cells and an improvised torture-room, then moved above-ground again to visit one courtyard after another.

  It was plain from their behavior that demons and converts saw Zoltan as their god, the Dark King, the ultimate object of both love and fear, whereas the non- converts among the prisoners beheld Vilkata as an object of stark terror. Many feared some kind of sadistic trap when he told them they were free, but few dared to let the opportunity slip by.

  * * *

  At the hour when the emptying of the palace began, Baron Amintor was still riding away from the city, heading generally northwest at a steady pace—reversing the route of his entry little more than a day earlier. He was taking his handful of convert troops to attempt a linkup with his own advancing army.

  The Baron—still agitated and energetic as a result of the no-sleep spell—was furiously regretting the loss of Coinspinner and making his own private plans to regain control of the situation, when th
e great demon Arridu came dropping down out of the sky to visit him for a second time.

  The little group of riders halted. Arridu, taking the form of a mounted warrior in black, at once informed Amintor that a strong effort to free the hostages in Sarykam was even now in progress by a small band of Vilkata’s enemies armed with Sightblinder and Coinspinner.

  The demon added: “I would, of course, have rushed to help our glorious Master—but, alas, one of the attackers would see to it that I was swiftly banished, were I there.”

  The Baron drew a little aside with his illustrious visitor to talk while his mounted escort waited uncomfortably at a little distance, out of earshot.

  Eager to hear details of the attack on the palace, Amintor demanded: “And Vilkata? Does he come to meet these raiders with the Sword of Force?”

  A smile showed under the black warrior’s helmet-visor. “We must expect that will soon happen.”

  So far, Coinspinner’s luck appeared to be sustaining the rescue party in excellent fashion. The Dark King himself, and the great Trump-Sword he carried, still had not taken the field against them.

  Until now, Zoltan and his small band of companions had ravaged and emptied the familiar cellars and the prison-courtyards with impunity. Everywhere their orders for a general release of prisoners, shouted in the Master’s name, were being accepted as genuine and obeyed.

  When some hundreds of people who were still under the Mindsword’s spell, guards and prisoners both, came swarming round Zoltan in bewilderment, he ordered them firmly, in the Dark King’s name, to return to their homes and their old loyalties, and honor the Prince and Princess of Tasavalta.