The Sword & Sorcery Anthology

by David G. Hartwell

  He went to Torfin.

  The youth scoured Tain’s armor twice before the soldier took the dagger and arced it out into the grass of the Zemstvi.

  Torfin still would not yield.

  Tain kicked his feet from beneath him, laid the edge of one hand across the side of his neck.

  Tain backed away, glanced down. Torfin’s dagger had found a chink. Red oozed down the shiny ebony of his breastplate. A brutalized rib began aching.

  He recovered his shortsword, went toward the Witch.

  In seconds she would complete her conquest of his magick. In seconds she would be able to destroy him.

  Yet he hesitated.

  He considered her youth, her vulnerability, her beauty, and understood how she had captivated Torfin and the Baron.

  She bleated plaintively, “Mother!”

  Tain whirled.

  Rula stepped onto the ramparts. “Tain. Don’t. Please?”

  Seconds fled.

  Tain sheathed his blade.

  Shirl sighed and gave up consciousness.

  “Tain, I brought your things. And your mule.” Rula pushed past him to her daughter.

  “The wound is cauterized. I’ll take care of the bone.”

  “You’re wounded. Take care of yourself.”

  “It can wait.”

  He finished Shirl’s arm ten minutes later. Then he removed his breastplate and let Rula tend to his injury. It was minor. The scar would become lost among its predecessors.

  Rula finished. “You’d better go. The hunter....”

  “You’re staying?” An infinite sadness filled him as he drew his eyes from hers to scan the Zemstvi. Kai Ling was out there somewhere. He could sense nothing, but that had no meaning. His hunter would be more cunning than he. The trap might have closed already.

  “She’s my daughter. She needs me.”

  Sadly, Tain collected his possessions and started for the ladder.

  Torfin groaned.

  Tain laid his things aside, knelt beside the youth. “Ah. She does have this stubborn ass, you know.” He gathered his possessions again. This time he descended without pausing.

  Soldiers of the Dread Empire seldom surrendered to their emotions.

  He had a hand on Steban’s shoulder, trying to think of some final word, when Rula came to him. “Tain. I’ll go.”

  He looked into her eyes. Yes, he thought. She would. Dared he?...

  Sometimes a soldier did surrender. “Steban. Go find you and your mother some horses. Rula, get some things from the Tower. Food. Utensils. Clothes. Whatever you’ll need. And hurry.” He scanned the horizon.

  Where was Kai Ling?

  “Old friend, are you coming?” he whispered.

  Not even the breeze responded. It giggled round the Tower as if the gathering of Death’s daughters were a cosmic joke.

  Their shadows scurried impatiently round the old stronghold.

  They were a hundred yards along the road to nowhere.

  “Tain!”

  He whirled the gelding.

  Torfin leaned on the battlements, right hand grasping his neck. Then he raised the other. “Good luck, centurion.”

  Tain waved. He didn’t reply. His ribs ached too much for shouting.

  The day was dead. He set a night course for the last bit of sunlight. Rula rode to his left, Steban to his right. The mule plodded along behind, snapping at the tails of the newcomers.

  He glanced back just once, to eye the destruction he had wrought. Death’s daughters had descended to the feast. The corner of his mouth quirked downward.

  His name was Tain, and he was still a man to beware.

  XX

  The wind of dark wings wakened Kai Ling. The daughters of Death circled close. One bold vulture had landed a few feet from his outstretched hand.

  He moved.

  The vulture took wing.

  He rose slowly. Pain gnawed his nerve ends. He surveyed the stead, the smoking ruins, and understood. He had survived his mistake. He was a lucky man.

  Slowly, slowly, he turned, feeling the twilight.

  There. To the west. The centurion had called on the Power yet again.

  Epistle from Lebanoi

  MICHAEL SHEA

  Long hast thou lain in dreams of war—

  Lift from the dark your eyeless gaze!

  Stand beneath the sky once more,

  Where seas of suns spill all ablaze!

  —Gothol’s invocation of his long-drowned father, Zan-Kirk

  I

  From Lebanoi

  Nifft the Lean, traveller and entrepreneur at large,

  Salutes Shag Margold, Scholar.

  I am to ship out to the Ingens Cluster, but it seems the craft I’ve passage on is finding the refitting of a gale-damaged mast slow work. Writing—even to you, old friend—is tedious toil, but since the alternative is the restless fidgets, write I will. And in truth, what’s passed here merits some memorial.

  Well then—I disembarked here at Lebanoi from a Lulumean carrack a fortnight ago. I know you are aware that for all the lumber towns along this forested coast, and all the flumes you’ll find in them, Lebanoi’s Great Flume is justly preeminent. Standing at dockside, staring up its mighty sweep to the peaks, I gave this fabled structure its due of honest awe.

  Then, bent on some ale, I repaired to a tavern, where I found out right quick about the native fiber of some of these lumbering folk! They can thump a bar, and bray and scowl with the best, these logger-lads! No dainty daisies these, be sure of that, when they come down the mountain for their spree!

  I sat with a pint in the Peavey Inn—an under-Flume inn, one of countless grog-dens built high up within the massy piers which prop that mighty channel of water-borne timber. In many of these inns and taverns—clumped up right against the Flume’s underbelly and reached by zigzags of staircases—you can hear just above you, through the ceiling, the soft rumble of rivering timber as you sit imbibing.

  And thus sat I, assaying the domestic stout, till a bit of supper should restore my land-legs for the long ascent to Upflume—Lebanoi’s smaller sister city on the higher slopes halfway up the Flume’s length.

  But here came trouble, a come-to-blows brewing. For behold, a bare-armed lout, all sinewed and tattooed—axes and buck-saws inked upon his arms—stood next to me at the bar, and he began booming gibes at me which he thinly guised as jests.

  “Your braid’s divine!” he cried. “Do they not call that style a ‘plod’s-tail,’ honest traveller?”

  My hair was clubbed in the style of the Jarkeladd nomads. I keep it long to unbind in polite surroundings to mask the stump that’s all that remains of my left ear—lost, as you know Shag, down among the Dead.

  Soon, I knew, after initial insults, the lout would mock my ear, for his eye already dwelt on it. I decided that this slur, when it came, would trigger my clouting him.

  Beaming in his face, I cried, “Why thank you! Your own dense curls, Sir, merit equal praise! Sawdust and shavings besprinkle your coiffure! How stylish to resemble—as you do—a broom that’s used to scour a saw-mill’s floor!”

  He sneered and plucked a phial out of his vest, tapped dust into his cup, and drank it off. Even swamp-despising woodsmen buy swamp spices—this one “whiff,” unless I missed my guess, productive of raw energy, no more.

  “Another thing, fine foreigner,” brayed my lout, “that I adore your doublet, and your hose! Garments so gay they would not shame a damsel!”

  This bellicose buffoon would blanch to face such men as wear the Ephesian mode I wore. I grant, the costume does not shun display. The snake-scale appliqué upon my hose, the embroidered dragon coiled upon my codpiece, my doublet harlequinned with beadwork—all my clothes artfully entertained the cultivated eye with rich invention.

  Of course, I would straightway don self-effacing garb once I should find an inn, and stroll the town to learn its modes. The seasoned traveller travels to behold, not be beheld. But, until I did so, a bustling port like
Lebanoi might sanely be expected to extend sophisticated sufferance to the modes of the far-flung cultures whom her trade invites!

  “No doubt,” I said, “your celibate sojourns in the woods make even stumps and knotholes seem to sport a womanly allure. No doubt even alley curs arouse your lust, so be that they have tails to wag, and furry arses.”

  Oddly, though his mates looked to be loggers like himself, they seemed in the main unmoved by our exchange, and unconcerned by gibes from me that mocked their trade. Their cool interest set my nerves on edge.

  “Where did you hear,” brayed Lout, “we lacked for lasses? You were mis-told, or likelier mis-heard! Yes, half-heard with your half-a-brace of ears! ’Tis very meet that you should mention arses—that puckered hole you sport athwart your head resembles one!”

  All knew my blow was coming, yet showed no concern beyond any man’s casual interest in a developing brawl....

  Well, I clouted him, and brought him down, then backed away a bit, and let my hand hover in the general direction of my sword-hilt. An older, gnarlier woodsman, giving a sardonic eye to my stunned adversary on the floor, addressed me.

  “Think nothing of it, stranger! Here now my lads—someone prop him at a table and pour him another flagon.”

  “Please!” I interjected. “Permit me to buy his drink—by way of amends!”

  This was generally well received. The older man, Kronk, stood me a flagon. “Wabble’s not a bad sort, but he’s dim, and in his cups. He took you for a spice magnate, merely by your costly gear. Too dim to see that your style—no offense—is much too lively even for an Up-flume entrepreneur.”

  We talked. I learned that tree-jacks dabbled in spice trade even as Up-flumers did, in the long years since the Witches’ War had damaged Rainbowl Crater, and reduced the output of Lebanoi’s mills.

  I took a thankful leave of him, keen to have some daylight left to learn the city a bit more, and to dress myself less noticeably.

  Stairs and catwalks threaded the maze of under-Flume construction. I made my way a good half mile farther inland from the dockside, or farther “up-flume” as the saying is here. I mounted a level rooftop, scooted well back into the Flume’s shadow, and disrobed. I stowed my gaudier gear, and donned a leather jerkin and woolen hose. Bound up my hair, and hid it in a Phrygian cap.

  I rested and enjoyed the view, the golden sinking of the day. Above me hummed the Flume’s boxed flood, the softly knocking bones of trees that colossal conduit carried down to the wharf-side mills. I looked upwards along its mighty sweep, ascending on its titan legs the skorse-clad mountains....

  All Lebanoi was bathed in rosy westering light. Her mills and yards and manses and great halls glowed every mellow hue of varnished wood. Her houses thronged the gentler coastal hills. And they were so etched by the slanting sunbeams that I could trace the carven vines and leaves that filigreed the gables of even the more distant buildings.

  The rumble of the rivering logs above me, the shriek of saws from the mills, the creak of tackle, the shouts and thumps of cargo from the shipyards—all blended in a pleasing song of energy and enterprise. Despite her wounds from the Witches’ War, the city still prospered.

  But I’d just tasted the tensions at work here. Where factions are at odds, outsiders best go lightly. Best to head inland to the town of Up-flume, obtain my spice, and ship out tomorrow. It meant harvesting at night, but by all reports spice-gathering went on in the swamp at all hours.

  And so, I mounted from the Flume’s underside to its top. This, of course, forms a wide wooden highway which streams with traffic up-Flume and down, and in the late sun its whole great sweep showed clear. Far up I saw where the Flume’s high terminus lay shattered, just below great Rainbowl Crater’s fractured wall—Lebanoi’s two great wounds, suffered in the Witches’ War...

  My own goal lay but half as far—just four miles up, where Lebanoi’s smaller sister-city filled a shallow valley under the Flume’s crossing: Up-Flume, where the spice swamp lay.

  I flagged a dwarf-plod shay. “Are spicers ready-found at night?” I asked my teamster, a white-haired woman, as she sped us up-flume. She slant-eyed me, wryly marking an innocent abroad. “Readily found, at double rate, and like to take you roundabout if you don’t watch ’em close.”

  I tipped her for the warning.

  As we reached Up-Flume, the full moon was just rising as the red sun sank to sea. At Up-flume, one took ramps that zigzagged down through a three- and four-tiered city of dwellings densely built amid the Flume’s pilings, and jutting out an eighth mile to either side on tiered platforms. Down amid the swampwaters themselves could be seen here and there the bow and stern-lights of spicers’ boats out harvesting amid the darkening bogs.

  Descending, I was accosted on the stairs by more than a few would-be guides, and courteously deflected all of them. It might behoove me to try them later, but first I meant to try my hand alone.

  On the swampside docks, a punt-and-pole was readily rented for a high fee and a hefty deposit, and in this narrow vessel I set off cautiously along the swamp’s meandering shoreline, where my pole—with careful probing—found mucky purchase.

  No accident my being here at the full moon’s rising. A full moon is prescribed, both for one’s searching and for the spices’ potency, which is held to peak when bathed in lunar light.

  But the density of vegetation here—big shaggy trees all spliced with scaly vines, overarching a boskage of glossy shrubs and dense thickets—provided an eerie matrix for all the furtive movement everywhere about me. The swamp teemed with spicers all hunting discreetly, taut, intent, and sly. On all sides the feculent waters chuckled and tremored with their stealthy investigations. Foliage flustered or twitched or whispered here and there, and you glimpsed the sheen of swift hulls crossing moonlit patches of black water and then ducking quick back into the darkness again.

  But soon I knew I could not move so discreetly, however deftly I poled through the shadowy margins. My punt was rented, and the sight of it drew defter boatmen gliding to my gunnels.

  “What spice, what spice, Sir? Five lictors in my pocket brings you to it!”

  At my outset, I firmly declined their insistence. Before my coming to Lebanoi, costly consultations with two different spice connoisseurs had provided me with sketches of the herbs I sought. These drawings had looked detailed enough on receipt, but proved useless compared to the intricate, moonlit weeds and worts I scanned.

  So at length, I named to these solicitors the growths I sought. “Sleight Sap, Spiny Vagary, and Obfusc Root.”

  The spice-hustlers showed me knowing smiles at this, and their price rose to twenty or even thirty lictors. What I sought were inducers of trance, confused logic, and ready belief. All these herbal attributes inescapably pointed to thievery as their seeker’s aim.

  I resolved to search on solo, and stoutly forbade myself to be discouraged. The full moon neared zenith, which made my sketches easy to scan, but did nothing to improve their correspondence to the jungled growths around me

  And then, a new difficulty. I became aware of a furtive follower—that sensation one gets of cautious, incremental movements at one’s back. Now astern of me, now to my right or my left, it seemed that something in the middle distance always moved in concert with me. Thrice I diverged, at ever sharper angles, and each time, soon sensed him once more astern.

  At the moon-drenched middle of a large pool, I drove my pole in the muck and, thus anchored, turned my face towards his approach, and waited. At length, he edged out into view. “He” surely, so hugely thewed his arms and shoulders showed, his cask-like torso. Shy though, he seemed—pausing, then gingerly poling forward again, as though doubting his welcome.

  But at length he came to rest, his raft rim almost touching my gunnel. His massy shoulders were torqued out of line, his huge arms hung a bit askew, and his gnarled body seemed constantly straining to straighten itself. So thick was his neck his whole head seemed a stump, his ears a ragged lichen, his brows a
shaggy shelf. Yet for all the brute strength in the shape of him, his eyes were meek and blinking.

  “Friend, you are in danger here.” His voice, an abyssal echo, came eerily distinct from his great chest.

  I felt a strange conviction from his calm utterance, which I resisted. “Does this danger come from you yourself, Sir, or from some other quarter?”

  “Another quarter. It comes from Gothol, who is, in a manner of speaking, my half-brother.”

  Again his deep resonance somehow invited my trust against my will. But indeed his words were full of sombre implications which, as I sorted them out, prickled along my spine.

  “If it comes from Gothol, it also comes, then, from...”—my throat, for a moment, would not give passage to the name. The deformed giant courteously waited, despite an air of growing unease. “Ahem.... Comes also, then, from Zan-Kirk, who begot Gothol on the demon Heka-Tong.”

  “Just so, my friend. That great mage indeed did sire Gothol thus, down in the sub-World.”

  “So...if you speak of him as your half-brother,” I ventured to continue, “then might you not, Sir, be born of Zan-Kirk’s consort, Hylanais...?” I stood in some suspense, fearing that perhaps my mouth had outrun my wit. I had asked, in effect, if he had not been born of the witch’s defiant coupling with a nameless vagabond abroad in the wilderness, done in vengeance for her mighty consort’s sub-World dalliance with the demon Heka-Tong....

  “Born of Hylanais, yes, and named by her Yanîn—but truly, hark me, Sir—”

  “Delighted. My name is Nifft, called the Lean, of Karkmahn-Ra.”

  “I greet you, Nifft, but in all truth we stand in danger even now. For Gothol is at hand. And Zan-Kirk—even now quite near to us—will himself follow hard upon Gothol’s coming!

  “In fact, good Nifft, we have no time to flee. If you’ll permit me, I will take the liberty of hiding you. We truly have no time—see there?”