by Brian Daley
For a moment his eyes ranged around the acres-square glory of his throne room. He shrugged. “I was a serving warrior a long, long time before anybody’s sword rested on my shoulders.”
Chapter 7
A RETINUE OF ONE
The presence of Ironwicca made for a much more respectful escort into the midst of the lizard riders. The King was in black silken shirt and breeches, with a sleeveless shirt of ring-mail and a purple cape streaming back from his shoulders. He wore no crown, only an iron cap with a crouching lion on its crest. His serviceable sword was belted to his side with a broad band of leather and heavy metal plaques.
The new knight rode beside his liege. Crassmor held high the Warlord’s medicine wand. The two entered the camp with a hundred barbarians on every side, but none too close.
The invaders’ encampment was now a chain of extensive bivouacs paralleling the Singularity’s border. Everywhere there was preparation for the first great strike into the Charmed Realm. The parasite-eating birds clouded the sun. Tents filled the high places and the low, not clustered any longer, but packed tightly, separated only by narrow byways and makeshift lizard pens, ranged out as far as could be seen. The rank smell of reptiles and fires and slit trenches clogged the air. Off to one side, on an open stretch of plain, a reviewing area had been measured off. A contingent of thousands upon thousands now wheeled and maneuvered there. It was toward this parade ground and not the ziggurat tent that the lizard riders guided Ironwicca and Crassmor.
The camp was even more of a wonder to the neophyte knight than before. He had no idea how someone could keep such an awesome force supplied. Apparently, Ravager had the trick of it, though, if only barely. As they crossed the unending camp they saw wide, rutted roads, feeder arteries to the barbarians. Lines of lizard-drawn sledges moved along them, bearing provisions for men and animals alike. Although enormous amounts of provender were arriving constantly, Crassmor saw, they were being doled out meticulously, in modest portions, to clamoring men. Numbers this great, he saw, could impoverish even the best logistical organization—and the lizard riders were not used to this sort of thing.
Sandur said that their home Reality is dying and barren, he recalled. Who, where, is making such fearful sacrifices, that this army might eat? This spells starvation for someone.
As he and the King rode along, Crassmor heard lizard riders both mounted and afoot call their customary curses and provocations while they wolfed miserly rations. Crassmor thought, however, that the savages, noting Ironwicca, moderated their shouting considerably. The King and the knight came to the place where the Warlord reviewed his troops from a platform fashioned from yellow wood in the semblance of a riding lizard.
Ravager was dressed in full battle harness, luminous gems, and glittering trappings. His weapons were the same that Crassmor had seen before, with a sword as well.
The many units had assumed their formations, spread out across the field. Closer in, a group of some thousand or so had dismounted, leaving their lizards in close ranks. These warriors stood in files before their Warlord, each man’s lance planted butt-down in the sand to one side, his longsword thrust point-first into the ground on the other.
Seeing Ravager rekindled Crassmor’s misgivings, but the sight of his massed hordes drove home the reasoning behind the King’s decision to make a duel of it, regardless of risk. Single combat held the only prayer for the Singularity’s survival.
The knight had added reason to be nervous, having done a good deal of thinking on the way in. Both he and Ironwicca rode under the protection of the medicine wand, but, as the King had taken the trouble to point out, formalities were subject to dismissal in the name of convenience.
Too, Crassmor had come to see through the illusion of safety that the company of the King had at first imparted. To be sure, Ironwicca was legendary for his knack of getting through every conceivable misadventure alive. Stories of his exploits included melees, duels, shipwrecks, quests, escapes, rescues, wanderings, and assaults by mystical forces. What worried Crassmor was that on a number of occasions the King had been a lone survivor, or lost all-too-numerous comrades-in-arms. The companionship of Ironwicca, who possessed tremendous powers of strength and endurance, was no guarantee that an ordinary mortal would also elude death. In fact, it greatly increased the likelihood of finding oneself confronted by situations quite beyond the resources of a lesser man. Which I readily concede myself to be, Crassmor reflected glumly.
Seeing them, the Warlord leaped down lightly from the platform, hands on the hilts of his weapons. The confidence he exuded turned to curiosity when he studied Ironwicca. Ravager must long since have had word of their coming, but he chose to examine them with feigned surprise. His broken-nosed face creased into a grin. Ignoring the King, he said to Crassmor, “So—you have managed to find another opponent for me, sandmite? Hard to credit that even the Singularity could contain two such fools.”
Crassmor bridled at the reference to Sandur, barbarian hordes or no, but held his tongue. Ravager pretended an amused inspection of the King; Crassmor saw that it was in fact a sober evaluation of an enemy to be reckoned with. The Warlord gestured to the ranks of men dismounted before him with longsword and lance to either side, and to the thousands upon thousands beyond.
“Those are my clan chieftains, and these afoot here my overlords,” he told the knight and the King. Crassmor wondered how many scores of warriors each one represented. “This killing will have a certain prestige for me.”
Ironwicca said nothing, shedding his cloak and dismounting without demonstration. Ravager saw the disdain in that; anger showed on his face. Crassmor, remembering propriety, rushed to dismount and accept Ironwicca’s reins when the King handed them aside. The King kept an open hand extended. After an instant, Crassmor realized what Ironwicca wanted and put the wand in his palm. The Warlord was watching carefully, weighing, assessing.
The King gave Crassmor a meaningful sideways glance. With a start, it came to the knight that he was now Royal Herald. He blurted, “His Majesty, Ironwicca, sovereign of all the Singularity.” The King’s manifold other titles had fled his memory. Crassmor didn’t elaborate, simply happy that his voice hadn’t cracked.
“Your name precedes you,” the Warlord told Ironwicca, “but you are known to me by some other, are you not?” He shook his head, pacing toward the King in a long spiral while Ironwicca waited. “And yet, you are no enemy I have ever met, nor any friend either.”
The King held up the wand. “To that, supply your own answers. My only purpose in this miserable place lies with this.” He had the wand in his left hand; his right freed his broadsword in an arc of light. “And this.”
The Warlord’s sword came forth too, and the yataghan. The King was about to cast down the medicine wand to free his left hand for the shortsword. Crassmor’s dismay at seeing his only safeguard thrown aside got the better of his sense of decorum. He made a strangled sound that the King caught. Ironwicca raised one eyebrow, then handed his shaken herald the wand. So low that no one else might hear, he informed Crassmor, “While that may not speak highly of your confidence in your sovereign, Crassmor, it pays good praise to your prudence.” His mouth pulled a quick grin.
He handed over the wand. It was scarcely in Crassmor’s palm before the shortsword was out, reflecting the purple-white sun. The knight bounded backward like a startled deer as the Warlord charged his enemy, screaming a hair-raising battle cry. The King, as was his habit, joined combat without a word.
Twin streaks of silver marked where the Warlord’s weapons cut the air; Crassmor couldn’t follow the blades themselves. Edge sheared against edge, Ironwicca parrying with both swords. The collision, powered by Ravager’s weight and speed, drove the monarch back a step, his foot skidding a bit in the gritty soil. His counterattack was instantaneous; the Warlord had to move quickly to stay alive. The blades took up an astonishing dialogue.
Weapons pealed in contention. Passage after passage of sword work rang, with ne
ither man gaining or losing ground by more than a pace. They dueled at a rate and with an exertion that ordinary fighters could not have sustained for more than moments. The Warlord laughed, taunting the King as he fought. Ironwicca conserved attention and strength for matters of points and edges alone, yet something in him that Crassmor had never seen before had been unleashed.
It was clear from the first exchange how near-even the match was. The barbarians broke ranks, running to form a wide circle around the combatants. This time no one bothered to restrain or disarm Crassmor, who followed the duel with an eldritch feeling that he’d lived it all before, the image of a laughing Sandur in his mind’s eye. The lizard riders kept a watch on the new-made knight, though; he knew that there would be no throwing of a replacement blade to the King.
Each duelist’s life was in constant danger. Any second in the contest carried the possibility of being the last. The fight began to take up more and more space, swords thrusting and arcing in, parries tolling. Soon the footwork opened up. As with Sandur’s combat, the barbarians had to enlarge their ring, with Crassmor keeping to the edge. Both antagonists were showing increasing determination now. Their blade work was less conservative. They ended a feeling-out phase in which most of the swordsmen known to Crassmor would have met death. The two advanced and retreated with barely a pause in between.
Cuts came more quickly; Crassmor saw that it was the Warlord who was accelerating the pace. Ironwicca obliged him with no sign of distress. The King surrendered ground, backing toward the marshaling field. With a determined attack, the Warlord drove Ironwicca among the ranked longswords and lances set there. The King nearly backed into one grounded lance despite Crassmor’s yelp of warning. Ironwicca turned Ravager’s attack aside at the last moment, then ducked. The Warlord’s blade clipped the lance’s shaft neatly in two, sending its streamers and a third of its length into the dust ten feet away. Ravager’s return swing barely missed as Ironwicca sucked in his gut. The two fell to it again.
The King pressed the Warlord in his turn, raining blow after blow from every quarter, working cleverly with his shortsword. The bigger man gave way grudgingly, giving no sign that he was in trouble. Ravager counterattacked all at once, throwing all his height and bulk into it; the King, wielding his weapons brilliantly, managed to contain him. They shuffled, feinted, and lunged in among upright lances and longswords, raising dust. Crassmor and the barbarians came after, threading among the planted weapons.
Suddenly the Warlord engaged his sword’s curled quillons around those of his adversary’s shortsword, twisted, and whirled the weapon out of Ironwicca’s hand, flinging it far, even though Crassmor had been at great pains to warn his sovereign of that trick.
The King responded instantly, with a slash that nearly found his foeman’s gullet before the yataghan turned it. Ravager bellowed in triumph, but the King stretched out his arm, snatched up one of the longswords, and was two-sworded once more. Swinging them both with haste and determination, Ironwicca won himself time and room.
It was difficult to use a longsword of the lizard riders well with both hands, however, and the King could spare only one. In the fleeting respite he’d gained, he thrust his own broadsword into its scabbard and came at the barbarian with the longsword in a two-handed grip. For all the weapon’s weight and length, the King moved it with amazing speed and force, and a precision that had the Warlord on the defensive, second blade or no. The longsword’s mass and reach gave Ironwicca a new advantage; his sheer brute strength and feline coordination made its unwieldiness insignificant. Ravager learned that the Singularity’s monarch was aware of the rules of the contest—any weapon that comes to hand.
The King made rampant advance, giving the lizard lord no time to form any defense. Both Ravager’s weapons were needed to stop the longsword’s stealing his life; there was no opportunity to make a stand. With a stupendous swing, Ironwicca snapped the yataghan off at its hilt.
Ravager lost no time in leaping back, casting his sword at the King—who ducked it—and plucking up a longsword of his own. Ironwicca rushed at him. They renewed their contest, moving now onto harder-packed ground where the riderless lizards were tethered. Crassmor and the other onlookers emerged from the forest of lances, following. The knight had again remembered religion; half-forgotten prayers were on his lips.
The Warlord had backed a step in among the staked-out reptiles, waiting. Ironwicca went to meet him, disregarding the fate of the Outrider. One lizard swung its head at him, aroused by the fighting and commotion and antagonized by his alien smell. The King showed no concern; he struck it on the internasal plates of its head, eluding its fangs, with the flat of his blade. He thereafter ignored it as the lizard scuttled away from him.
Ironwicca threw himself at the Warlord, but this time with a one-handed stroke, clutching for his enemy’s wrist with his left to wrestle the barbarian’s guard aside. Ravager took his left hand from his longsword to seize Ironwicca’s wrist instead. They grappled, lurching in a giant’s corps- à-corps, spinning further in among the grouped lizards. Crassmor feared that the King would fall prey to the stratagem that had claimed Sandur.
It was a vicious deadlock. With an explosion of effort, the two pushed apart. Then they were together again, clashing with swords held two-handedly. The treacherously curled hilts met, entwined, and strove against each other. Gradually, the Warlord’s forced the King’s downward.
The intensity of it was eloquent in the quivering blades, in the hunched shoulders and bunched muscles of the duelists, and in their clenched teeth. The Warlord had the advantage of leverage. Ironwicca’s weapon descended beneath his enemy’s until both points and lengths of the two blades rested on the hard ground. The unbinding of the swords now lay completely in the lizard rider’s control. The King, Crassmor saw with dismay, could either abandon his weapon or be killed or wounded after that unbinding. :
Ironwicca chose a third option. In a single motion he shifted his big, lithe body, still gripping his hilt tightly and keeping both blades firmly against the ground by dint of intertwined hilts. He raised his booted foot, to bring it down across the Warlord’s blade with enormous power. The barbarian’s weapon snapped across, as did the King’s. Ironwicca jumped back, dropping his useless stub of a sword, tugging free his own tried broadsword. In the same moment, his left hand produced from his belt a control whistle; he blew a tremendous breath into it, fingering the keys and stops.
Lizards around the two went mad. The King’s notes sent them into a bloodlust; they snapped at both men and one another. Barbarians, overcoming their astonishment and outrage, began groping for weapons, howling to one another. The Warlord ducked a fanged maw, reached for his belt, and fumbled uselessly. It came to Crassmor with a jolt that Ironwicca had stolen the Warlord’s own control whistle during their corps-à-corps.
Men were lofting weapons and replacement blades to Ravager, shouting, seizing their own whistles to blow counterorders. The King drove their own beasts at them in all directions with blade and whistle. There was shrieking, confusion, bloodshed. One weapon, a shortsword thrown on blind chance, landed near the Warlord, who cast aside his broken blade. But the King was there first, one foot planted on it; the barbarian backed away. Ironwicca advanced. The Warlord took up the only defense left to him in the midst of the lizard’s insanity, his belt knife.
The King gave vent to his whistle again, his chest expanding to pour air into it. The birring hurt Crassmor’s ears. A lizard that the Warlord hadn’t noticed behind him turned in instant fury, fastening its fangs into his arm, opening a terrible wound. A second reptile, smelling blood, rushed at Ravager as he fought the first with nothing but his knife and bare hands. Its jaws closed on his shoulder and part of his neck. Two more lizards sidled in for the kill.
Another rushed at the King. Without ceasing his hate notes, he bent out of the way of its sinuous strike, then beheaded it. Crassmor thought, Any weapon that comes to hand, as he watched the beleaguered Warlord understand that he
was doomed; the knight felt only a sanguinary content.
Barbarians tried to scatter their beasts and battle their way to their liege. Yowls, shrieks, and hissing deafened everyone there as weapons and lizard prods swung and flew. The air was filled with dust, making a yellow half-light in which men and animals strove. The barbarians’ calming notes had little effect.
At last a path was cleared. Horde members charged in to the rescue. Crassmor came after, coughing from the dust; he fetched up against a mob of men who stood unmoving. The knight wormed his way in among them and none objected. Breaking through their circle, he found Ironwicca standing over the corpse of Ravager.
The King’s sword was wet with the blood of riding lizards. The Warlord’s lifeblood was seeping into the hard ground. Nearby lay the body of the lizard Ravager had killed with only a knife before the others had pulled him down. Crassmor wondered why the sight gave him no pleasure, as he went to Ironwicca’s side.
There may have been some sign that the knight didn’t catch. The ring of barbarians, thumbing weapons, began closing in slowly. The King weighed the plain sword in his hand, the gore dripping from it. Crassmor swallowed only after some trouble and put a hand halfway to Shhing’s hilt. Too bad there isn’t a minstrel within miles, his mind jibbered. With his left hand he produced Ravager’s medicine wand, pushing it high into the air.
“I came under the wand,” Ironwicca’s calm voice said, somehow easy to hear even over the pandemonium of the lizards and the injured. “Under your law, not mine. My herald and I go in that same manner. Any man here who wants to lay claim to duel vengeance will have his wish. Where is he?”
In the ensuing silence each lizard rider eyed his neighbors, waiting for one of their number to step forward. Even their foremost champions recognized that their Warlord had been the best fighter among them. The man who’d killed Ravager could easily slay any of them.