Farslayer's Story

by Fred Saberhagen

  Then the Sword had struck again—for what was to seem to others the last time that night—coming in through the stone walls of the Malolo manor and killing someone.

  This time Cosmo had been first on the scene and had drawn the weapon from the corpse. But instead of striking back in his turn, like a true Malolo, he had seized Farslayer and run out into the night with it.

  Soon the remaining family members, few, bereaved, and bewildered, discovered that he’d reclaimed the mount he’d recently left in the stables, and galloped off, the gods knew where.

  Before leaving he’d said something, a few words to a stablehand, that indicated he felt responsible for some reason for the slaughter that had now overtaken his own family.

  “We cannot be sure what he was thinking. But it seems that he meant to take the Sword somewhere where it could do no harm.”

  “A goal with which I can feel some sympathy,” said Prince Mark. “In fact I can remember trying to do something like that once myself. When I was very young.”

  The two boats moved on steadily toward the south shore, where Mark and his friends were determined to find the hermit Gelimer.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Hissarlik, sitting on his high chair in his great hall and enjoying a solitary meal, suddenly gave a great shriek, and tumbled writhing to the floor.

  Three servants, who were the only people in the room with the clan chief at the moment, became aware at that same moment of the return of a terrible visitor: the same Sword that a month ago had well-nigh depopulated the house of its owners and masters.

  This time the onlookers’ first glimpse of the weapon came as it fell clashing on the floor beside their wounded Tyrant. Hissarlik’s clothes and the floor around him were being drenched in a steady outpouring of his blood.

  Two of the servants rushed immediately to the assistance of the Tyrant. In moving the Sword out of the way, they saw that it held, impaled near its tip, a rather peculiar-looking leather wallet. The wallet was heavily spattered with Hissarlik’s blood; and it was not immediately recognizable as leather, having curled up into a dry and lifeless-looking scrap of what looked like parchment.

  Hissarlik was not yet dead. In fact he was not even completely disabled, though his side had been deeply gashed and blood poured from his wound. Ashen-faced, he demanded to be helped to rise. With a servant’s help he got himself up on his shaky knees, and then by dint of grasping another servant’s arm, hauled himself to his feet. Then, almost falling again, he bent over with difficulty to grasp the deadly Sword by its black hilt and pick it up.

  The third of the servants present, who for some days now had been secretly in the pay of Tigris, had already dashed out of the room to tell her newest employer what had happened.

  Meanwhile, Hissarlik, even though his eyes were glazing, had shaken free of the arms that supported him. He was holding the Sword’s hilt with two hands now, and doing his staggering best to spin around.

  He muttered a name, and threw the Sword, which vanished in a flash through the stone walls of the room, as magically as it had come in through them. A moment later, the latest wielder of the Sword of Vengeance had fallen again, to lie at full length on the floor. Hissarlik’s eyes were glazing more rapidly now.

  A door banged open. Tigris, who had been unable to stay with him at every moment, came rushing in angrily from two rooms away. She was moments too late to witness Farslayer’s latest departure.

  “Where is the Sword? What have you done with it? You fool, you’ve thrown it away, haven’t you!” In a controlled rage, she knelt beside the fallen man. “Did I hear you cry out a name? That of the target, it must have been!”

  The dying Hissarlik, his side still spouting blood, was trying to focus his eyes on the face of Tigris as she bent over him. He was trying to tell her something that seemed to him to be of great importance.

  But she gave no indication that she was interested, or that she was about to practice any of her healing arts on him. “What’s this? The demon’s life, well skewered, just as I thought it might be!” In her rage she hurled the scrap of leather down. Then she gripped the dying Tyrant, and shook him angrily. “I thought the Sword might be coming to you—but why did you throw it away? Why? I needed that Sword, you fool!” But she received no answer.

  * * *

  Chilperic had left the Senones manor surreptitiously before dawn, and made his way quietly to the camp of Koszalin’s mercenaries. He found the captain and his men ready and waiting. Chilperic’s objective today was to lead this small force against the Malolo stronghold in what he hoped was going to be a surprise attack.

  They managed to cross the river under cover of darkness, but experienced some trouble with the boats, which the mercenaries handled awkwardly. As a result, the expedition landed on the south shore a great deal farther downstream than its leader had planned, and the day was well advanced before they got back within striking distance of the place he wanted to attack.

  Koszalin and Chilperic had some desultory conversation en route, not all of it acrimonious. Chilperic at least felt that they had come to understand each other on several levels. But there were still problems between them.

  Chilperic, checking the leather wallet in his inner pocket at frequent intervals, thought that the ten men he was leading, with a demon to back them up, had every chance of seizing the undermanned enemy fortress in a surprise attack.

  Koszalin also discounted the Malolo defenses, except for those that the strange visitors might be able to provide, as consisting of no more than a handful of frightened servants.

  Having seen something of the Malolo manor and its defenders firsthand, Chilperic was inclined to agree with this assessment—but not to trust it with his life.

  At last, wanting to make sure that Rabisu was going to be available this time when he was needed, Chilperic overcame his distaste for the creature and tried to call it up.

  As on the previous day, his first attempt got no response at all.

  Chilperic muttered to himself: “What now, has the damned thing got itself banished to the orbit of the Moon again?”

  But this time things were subtly worse than yesterday. Today there was not even the proper feeling of power in the leather wallet when he stroked it.

  Looking carefully at the mottled, folded leather, he realized that though it was as glossy and rich-looking as usual, it was not the same wallet he had been carrying yesterday. There were subtle differences in appearance.

  Looking back across the river, he swore, viciously and quietly. He could remember all too well his nighttime visit from the damned enchantress Tigris.

  * * *

  Swapping passengers from one boat to another in midstream was a little chancy, but Bonar and Gesner insisted on taking over one of the boats for family affairs as soon as they had convinced themselves in discussion that the Sword had again begun to bear the deadly traffic of the feud. The mermaid had thrown it against Cosmo, alive or dead, and it had whirred off somewhere.

  Just where, was a question. Mark and Ben, who had had some previous experience with the Sword of Vengeance, were not surprised that it was difficult to gauge the point of impact from a glimpse of the Sword in flight. But Cosmo alive or dead had probably not been very far away, and Farslayer would most likely be picked up again by someone involved in the affairs of the valley.

  Bonar in particular was determined to reach the stronghold of his family manor as rapidly as possible, now that Farslayer had begun to fly again.

  “If it is my fate now to be struck down by Farslayer,” said Bonar with considerable dignity, “then I must fall where someone of my own house will be on hand to avenge me.”

  Mark had no wish to argue with him. But he detailed Ben of Purkinje to accompany the head of the clan and his magician back to the manor. Mark himself, with Zoltan and Yambu accompanying him, still intended to find the hermit Gelimer and search the upland where the hermit lived. That seemed to them to be the area in which the Sword had most recently c
ome down.

  The boat carrying Ben, Bonar, and Gesner pulled away, riding swiftly downstream with the current augmenting the rowers’ efforts. The remaining craft, on the prince’s orders, pulled straight toward the south shore. On landing, Mark detailed the four armed oarsmen to guard the boat, while Mark, Zoltan, and Yambu started uphill intending to find Gelimer.

  Lady Megara climbed along with them, saying that she wished to confirm Cosmo’s death and see his body. It seemed that a spot of uncertainty regarding his fate still lingered in her mind.

  Aging and tired as she looked, she somehow found the energy to keep up with the other three, and the ascent went fairly swiftly. The four had not spent much time on the trail paralleling the little watercourse before they came upon the hermit.

  It was Zoltan, climbing in the lead, who saw and recognized Gelimer first. The hermit was crouched over two dead bodies, one dripping wet, that were laid out side by side on the bank of the stream. When the young man got a little closer he could see that the dead men were armed and had probably been mercenaries; judging by the green scarves they both wore, they had been members of the same company that had invested Malolo manor.

  Zoltan halted on the path, while Prince Mark came up silently behind his nephew and stood looking over his shoulder.

  “Gelimer,” Zoltan whispered.

  “I surmised as much,” Mark said in a low voice. “But how do two of Koszalin’s people come to be lying here?”

  The hermit, at last becoming aware that he had company, raised his head and stared at his visitors. Gelimer looked worn out, thought Zoltan, and perhaps a little mad. As the company of four once more approached him, he stared at them without seeming to notice whether they were friends or strangers.

  “The Sword again,” said Gelimer in a cracked voice. “It kills and kills, you see. You can see its mark on each of these. How many more funerals,” he asked the world in general, “am I going to be required to conduct?”

  “I cannot tell you that, old man,” said the prince. And indeed Gelimer did seem to have aged considerably since Zoltan had seen him last.

  The hermit, for his part, now at last indicated that he recognized Zoltan and Yambu as the two pilgrims who had dropped in on him only a few days ago.

  The hermit was introduced to Mark and Lady Megara. It was impossible to tell from Gelimer’s demeanor whether he had ever heard of the Prince of Tasavalta, or whether Megara’s name meant anything to him or not.

  “I suppose that you are after it, too,” he said to the prince.

  No need to ask the old man what he was talking about. “I admit that I am,” said Mark. “I want it for a good reason.”

  “It was here, you know. Only a little while ago. I held it in these hands.” And Gelimer spread his work-worn hands and held them out for inspection, as if they might be considered trustworthy evidence.

  “Where is it now?”

  “Gone again. Across the river—I think that’s where it went. I sent it after the life of the demon, and now I think that creature will trouble the world no more.” The hermit spoke with a kind of dreamy satisfaction.

  “Where was the demon’s life concealed, good hermit?” Mark had to take the old man by the arm and shake him gently before he would respond.

  Gelimer blinked at him sadly. “Where was its life hidden? I don’t know. I don’t understand demons. But I expect we can be sure of one thing, that one’s now dead. As dead as my Geelong.”

  “Geelong? Who’s that?”

  Yambu said: “That was the name of his pet watchbeast, I believe.”

  Megara, looking physically frail again after the burst of energy that had let her climb, was growing impatient with all this talk of demons. “Old man,” she demanded. “What can you tell me of Cosmo Malolo?”

  She had to repeat the question before Gelimer truly heard it. Then he said: “Cosmo Malolo? I am sorry, my lady, but that man is dead.”

  “Dead?” Megara smiled gently. Zoltan, watching, thought that in the space of a few moments the lady came to look older than the hermit. “Yes. Yes, I thought that he was dead.”

  Prince Mark persisted in coming back to the subject of Rabisu. “Tell me about the demon, Gelimer. I wonder where his life was hidden?” He gazed intently at the hermit. “Did you say that the Sword went across the river?”

  Gelimer looked toward the north side of the river and gestured vaguely. “It went through him, right through him. And then, yes—it came down somewhere over there.”

  Mark muttered: “It can dart back and forth across the river faster than we can ever hope to follow it. And it probably will, assuming that the feud’s still on.”

  Lady Yambu nodded. “I think we must assume that.”

  Zoltan said: “Then, if Farslayer last came down somewhere in Senones-land, the chances are its next target will be somewhere on this bank.”

  “In or near the Malolo manor,” Yambu added.

  “That seems likely to me,” said Mark. “Well, our quickest way of getting downstream will be by boat.”

  “You are returning to the river?” asked the hermit. It seemed that for the moment he had forgotten completely about the two dead bodies at his feet. “I shall come down to the bank with you, if I may. I want to talk to a mermaid, you see. Black Pearl is her name.”

  The other two men were already moving down the trail again, and neither turned back to answer him. Yambu, falling into step beside Gelimer, explained to him that Black Pearl was dead. He heard the news without any real surprise.

  While the five people were descending the hill, Gelimer told his companions a more detailed story of what Cosmo had done, and what had happened to Cosmo, on that night of many killings about a month ago.

  The Lady Megara listened carefully to the story of that strange visitor, his stranger death, his burial, and his bizarre second “killing” today, by the same Sword; but it was as if these events had happened to someone she did not know.

  When the party had regained the riverbank, they found the boat, which Mark had feared might be gone, still waiting for them. The oarsmen, thought Zoltan, had probably not yet had quite enough time to convince themselves that they had better desert their clients and return to their own village.

  Soft Ripple was nearby in the water, and swam closer to shore at once when Gelimer began to talk to her. In turn, Gelimer heard from her the details of Black Pearl’s death, and saw the mermaid’s body, which was still aboard the boat.

  Soft Ripple listened quietly when she was told that Cosmo had been already a month dead when she had thrown the Sword at him. Her only comment was: “I wish it could have followed him into hell!”

  If Lady Megara heard this, she had nothing to say in reply. She had reached a state of imperturbable calm, and the additional confirmation of her lover’s death meant nothing.

  Eventually Yambu asked her friends: “But who killed Cosmo? Who actually used the Sword on him the first time? He wouldn’t have carried it all the way over here from the manor, simply to throw it at one of the Senones. And even if he had, why would the Senones finally decide at that point to kill Cosmo, after having ignored him all night?”

  Gelimer nodded sadly. “I have thought much about those questions. And it seems to me that that sad young man must have killed himself.”

  “No,” said Lady Megara, softly but decisively. She had, it seemed, been listening after all.

  Mark scowled. “He stabbed himself in the back, with a weapon more than a meter long? That would take some doing.”

  “No, he did not stab himself. I think he went outside my house, where there was more room to dance and spin. And he hurled the blade, willing his own death-vengeance on himself, for the disaster he had caused that night, including his treacherous killing of the Lady Megara’s father.”

  And Gelimer went on to expound further on the behavior of Cosmo Malolo on that last night of his life. “Things might have gone differently, had he not fallen from his riding-beast and injured his head. Or the outcome
might have been the same—who can say, now?”

  “I still think,” said Mark, “that Cosmo’s goal when he left his manor that night must have been simply to take the Sword of Vengeance out into an empty land somewhere—such as these mountains might provide—and lose it there.”

  “Or perhaps,” said Yambu, “to kill himself with it out there, where neither his body nor the Sword might ever be discovered.”

  “We’ll never know.”

  “What’s that?”

  Gelimer was pointing up into the sky. The others squinted, shading their eyes against the sun and peering.

  “Some truly giant bird.”

  “No. No, surely that’s a griffin, carrying someone.”

  Wood was known for using griffins. And now one of the bizarre creatures, bearing on its back a single human figure, was swiftly crossing the river from north to south, heading in the direction of Malolo manor.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Mark and his companions embarked again, leaving Gelimer and Lady Megara behind them on the bank. At the last moment the hermit had asked to be allowed to bury Black Pearl’s body. This wish was readily granted, and the body unloaded from the boat. Zoltan made no protest; with every minute that passed, the horrible thing under the wet canvas seemed to have less and less connection with the girl he had begun to know three years ago. And in any case, he felt that duty now compelled him to go on with his uncle Mark without delay.

  Lady Megara, though saying very little, had conveyed to the others that she wanted to stay with Gelimer, and to climb with him to the cemetery where Cosmo lay.

  The remainder of the party got into the boat and pushed off. The prince, seated amidships, urged on his four rowers in a princely way. And those men, finding themselves now on a direct course for home, complied to the best of their ability. The boat sped downstream, headed straight for the fishing village in which Yambu and Zoltan had spent their first night in this country.