“Mother,” Cythera said, spreading butter on a piece of brown bread, “if you know that from personal experience, I’d prefer not to hear the story.”
Heavy footsteps came clomping up the stairs, and the two swordsmen bustled into the room. The barbarian had a fresh bandage around his forearm, but the bleeding wound on his chest was left exposed. He had one massive arm around Croy’s shoulders.
“Everyone,” Croy said, “I’d like you to meet Morget.”
Malden rose from his chair and wiped his hands on his tunic. He glanced toward the window, wondering how fast he could get out of the room if he had to. It wasn’t that he felt he was in any particular danger. Looking to the nearest escape route was simply his natural reaction when being introduced to a very large man covered in weapons.
Croy introduced his new friend to the ladies, and then to Malden, who stuck out one hand to grasp. The barbarian stared at the hand for a moment, then looked away.
“I beg your pardon, sir, if I have offended,” Malden said.
“Little man, forgive me. In my land we touch only those we love, or those we plan on killing.”
“Like… Croy,” Malden said, nodding at the arm that held the knight. “Do the two of you know each other from some previous battle?”
“We never met before today,” Croy assured the thief.
“Then-”
“Morget is an Ancient Blade.”
“Oh!” Cythera said, and Malden nodded, because that explained everything.
Croy bore the sword Ghostcutter, and it defined his life. Before it had been given to him his father had carried it, and before his father a whole succession of knights wielded the sword. Each of them had groomed his own replacement, so that the sword would always have a noble bearer. Croy had spent his entire youth training just to be worthy to hold it. To listen to him talk of his sword, the knight was far less important and less valuable than the piece of iron he wore at his belt, so when people asked him what kind of man he was, he claimed he was an Ancient Blade-speaking for the sword, which had no voice of its own.
The wielders of those swords were sworn to various oaths, one of which was that they would aid each other in noble quests. Another was that if they ever broke their vows, the other six were bound to hunt them down and slay them, so that the blade they had dishonored could be recovered and passed on to a more worthy owner.
Which meant that Croy and Morget would either be fast friends from now on, or Croy would have to kill Morget without warning.
“I believe I told you once that only five of the swords were accounted for here in the West. Two others were lost to us, among the-the barbarians.”
Morget pursed his lips and tsked. “The clans of the East,” he corrected.
“Yes, of course,” Croy said, “the clans of the East. Well, it turns out they weren’t lost at all. The clans have had them for centuries, and they’ve been honoring the blades just as we have, and keeping them for their holy purpose.”
“We have sorcerers beyond the mountains,” Morget added, “just as you have them here. Someone must fight them. I, myself, have slain more than one dozen with Dawnbringer.” He drew the sword from its sheath and jabbed it toward the ceiling. “May I live to slay a dozen more, or die with blade in hand!”
“Yes, may you do that,” Malden said. He went to the table and picked up a pitcher of ale. “Should we drink to it?”
“I never drink spirits,” Morget insisted, putting his sword away. “They dull the senses, ruin the body, and make a man unfit for battle. Do you have any milk?”
“There’s cream here,” Cythera suggested, and pointed out a ewer.
The barbarian picked it up like a cup and quaffed a long draught. Then he grimaced and shook his head. Cream was smeared all around his mouth, obscuring the red paint there.
It did not, in Malden’s eyes, make the man look comical. He could have been wearing a wig of straw and a fake pig snout over his nose, and still Malden would not have thought the man looked like a clown. Not when he knew how much iron Morget was carrying under his fur cloak.
It was not that Malden was a coward, after all-he was not opposed to personal risk if there was any benefit to be had from it. It was merely that he understood that courage in the face of certain doom was folly. He would no sooner laugh at this barbarian than he would put his head inside a lion’s mouth to prove his manhood.
While he was brooding on this subject, Malden heard the door of the tavern open with a crash. He glanced at the window again. “I believe the watch have arrived,” he said, and was proven right when a voice below demanded to know what had happened. “As well met we may be, we would be just as well advised to be elsewhere now.”
“Agreed,” Coruth said. She stood up from the table and grabbed for Cythera’s hand. “It’s time to go home.”
Cythera began to protest but the witch had already started to change shape. She and her daughter transformed into a pair of blackbirds that darted out the window, and before anyone could react or speak they were gone.
“Witchcraft,” Morget said, staring after them. There was a bloody look in his eye.
“Let us follow them, by more prosaic means,” Malden suggested. He went to the window and saw its ledge was wide enough to stand on. “The roof of this tavern is connected to the roof of a stable next door. From there we’ll have to cross Cripplegate High Street.” He looked over at Morget. “Do you know how to climb, milord barbarian?”
The barbarian opened his mouth and let out another booming, murderous laugh. “Like a goat, boy!” he claimed, and threw himself out the window with abandon.
The watchmen were already coming up the stairs. Malden followed Morget, with a trace more care. Standing on the ledge outside, he looked back in at Croy and gestured for him to follow.
“But the banns-we never signed them,” Croy protested, staring at the parchment on the table. Black ink had soaked into the contract and obliterated half of its calligraphy.
“The wedding will have to wait,” Malden said. “Such a shame.” Then he reached in to grab Croy’s arm and pull him toward the windowsill.
Chapter Eight
Malden scampered up onto the roof of the tavern and braced himself against a chimney, then reached down a hand to help Croy up. This was not the first time he had brought the knight up onto the rooftops of the city. Always it was a painful process. Croy could never seem to find proper handholds, and the boots he wore were wholly unsuited to running on uneven surfaces. Always Malden had to help him over every obstacle and show him where to hold on and where not to put his weight. Making matters even worse, the knight didn’t seem capable of moving quietly even when walking down a crowded street. His baldric slapped against his chest with every step, his sword clattered in its scabbard.
Morget, it seemed, was different. He was already halfway across the roof of the stables when Malden caught sight of him. The barbarian leapt from the roof ridge of the stables to a broad lead gutter as nimbly as a bird, and perched there on hands and feet in such a way that even his great bulk didn’t strain the drainpipes. Malden scurried across a bank of shingles to join him, then beckoned for Croy to come as well.
The knight looked game enough, but halfway across his foot slipped and he began to tumble. Malden raced toward him to try to steady him but Morget beat him to it, rushing over and picking up Croy in his two giant hands while Croy’s legs still flailed in the air. The barbarian set Croy down carefully and they all three peered down into the high street. A market crowd had gathered there, perusing the wares of an endless line of ramshackle wooden stalls. Pigs and small children ran in and out of the throng and someone was walking a pair of cows uphill toward a slaughterhouse. Smoke from the stalls of food vendors wafted on the air.
“It’s too far to jump,” Malden said, pointing at the roofs of the shops and houses across the way. Nearly ten yards of open air separated the climbers from that goal. “But up there, we can make use of that canopy.” He indicated a broad ro
of slope sticking out from the second floor of a blacksmith’s shop. It covered the open part of the shop below, where horseshoes and andirons and skillets were on display. “From there we jump to the balcony across the way, and then up over the roof beyond.”
Morget nodded and raced toward the blacksmith’s, even as a watchman poked his helmeted head over the roofline and called for them to stop.
Malden dashed for the canopy and made the jump easily, landing on the balcony across the street and gesturing for the swordsmen to follow. Croy nearly mistimed the jump but at the last second Morget gave him a boost that sent him clattering and sprawling onto the balcony beside Malden. The watchmen came boiling out onto the roof of the tavern they’d just fled so precipitously, even as Morget boomed out a laugh and flung himself over the street.
Half the shoppers in the market looked up in surprise and terror, perhaps thinking some storm cloud had passed over their heads booming with thunder. They could only stare upward in wonder as the thief and the knight followed suit, without quite so much noise.
“Now,” Malden said, “up and over. And-please you-discreetly.”
Morget frowned in mock shame and hauled himself up onto the slate tiles of the roof above. Malden helped Croy do the same. They left the watchmen behind, staring across the street at them, unwilling to make the jump. Rather than waiting for the watchmen to shout for reinforcements, Malden led the two warriors up and over a roofline, then along the gutters of a row of houses and over a narrow alley until a quarter mile of rooftops lay between them and any possible pursuit.
“Enough, Malden, enough,” Croy gasped, unable to stand upright after all that bounding and jumping. “We’ve lost them, I’m sure of it.” He sat down hard on the slates, with his legs dangling in the air.
“We could have just stayed and fought them off,” Morget suggested. “You made it sound as if an army was after us, when it was just five little men with halberds.”
“I’m sure you could have smashed them into paste,” Malden said, scowling, “but then you would have had an army after you. Don’t they have watchmen where you come from? If you fight one, you have to fight them all.”
“Men whose only job is to watch their fellows and make sure they are not breaking laws? Why would we need such a thing? In the East, when a man wrongs you, you go to his tent and call him out to fight. You pummel him until he apologizes, or pays you what is owed. It’s a very simple system, but it works.”
“And what if you call out a man who has done you some injury, but he’s bigger than you, and he wins?” Malden asked.
The barbarian squinted in confusion. “I wouldn’t know.”
Malden shook his head. “Well, here, when you attack six men in a tavern with an axe-”
“Come now, I didn’t kill any of them.”
“-the watch will send as many men as it takes to cart you away. Then they put you in gaol to wait for a trial.”
“I would have died before they put me in a cage,” Morget said.
“Or afterward, when they hanged you. They would have probably arrested Croy for helping you, and detained me on pure suspicion because I happened to be nearby.”
“Thanks to Malden it did not come to that,” Croy said, and slapped the thief on the back.
“I suppose I owe you at that,” Morget admitted.
“Think nothing of it. But perhaps you’ll tell me one thing. Why did that fight start in the first place, and how did it get so out of hand? Normally a tavern fight ends with bruised knuckles and maybe a chair being broken over someone’s head, not axes and maces and faces getting chopped off.”
Morget shrugged. “A man insulted me. He besmirched my honor.”
Croy nodded in understanding but Malden had to look away.
“You Ancient Blades and your honor will get me killed one of these days. All right, what did he say? What was such a dreadful blasphemy?”
“He saw me drinking milk and said I was the largest babe he’d ever clapped eyes on. I thought it a nice jest, and saw no harm in it.”
“Men in taverns often joke and make sport,” Malden said. “It means nothing.”
“But among clansmen, one must always respond to a jape with another. So of course I had to tell him that in my country, even infants were bigger than the men that I’d seen in this city. He didn’t like that much.” Morget shrugged. “He tried to grab my arm-as I have said, that is forbidden to strangers in my land. So I picked him up and threw him against a pillar. I thought that was the end of it, until I saw his friends drawing their knives.”
Malden made a mental note never to try to shake the barbarian’s hand again. “All right,” he said, “that explains how we all came to meet. But now, tell me, pray thee, what you’re doing in the Free City of Ness in the first place. We don’t get… ah, that is to say, a man of your people is a rare sight this far west.” Malden had grown up hearing horror stories of the barbarians, of how they ate their own babies and that their women were all seven feet tall. As an adult he’d often heard them spoken of in hushed tones, as it was commonly believed that the barbarians would sweep over the mountains any day and invade Skrae and enslave them all. It was all hearsay, of course. He had never met a barbarian before, nor ever expected to.
“Ah!” the barbarian said, and looked like he might start laughing again. “I am glad you asked. I am looking for Sir Croy.”
Malden was confused. “Well, you found him-but did you expect to find him in that tavern? It’s not the sort of place he normally frequents.”
Croy himself was still trying to catch his breath. His eyes were locked on Morget’s face.
“I knew nothing of him, until now, except his name. Perhaps I spoke wrong,” Morget said with a frown. “I am looking for another Ancient Blade. I am looking for the help of an Ancient Blade. It did not matter which one. I have sought them for a very long time, looking anywhere men with swords gathered. Until today my search was fruitless. From town to town I wandered, asking everywhere. Few men would even speak to me, but in the town of Greencastle I was told there was not one, but two such men in Ness. Sir Croy, and Sir Bikker-champions of your king, each of them bearers of a puissant sword. Ghostcutter and Acidtongue, they are called. I was told that Sir Bikker would be found in a place where ale is sold, if he could be found anywhere.”
Malden and Croy traded a glance. Until a few months ago that might have been true. Bikker had been in Ness-though that man had fallen a long way since he’d been one of the king’s champions. He’d hired himself out as a sell-sword to the sorcerer Hazoth and the traitor Anselm Vry. And then he’d put himself at odds with Malden and Croy. That had nearly ended in both their deaths. Instead “I’m afraid Bikker is dead,” Croy said, still a little out of breath.
“Dead?” Morget asked.
“He broke his oath,” Croy said, nodding, as if that explained everything.
Apparently it did, as far as Morget was concerned. “Ah. So you had to strike him down. I understand. It is part of our duty, our sworn duty, we who bear the Blades.”
Malden didn’t want to talk about Bikker. The dead man had caused him a great deal of trouble once. “Well, you found the other one, anyway. The other Ancient Blade in Ness. Now, what do you want with Croy?”
“There is a task I must perform. The other part of our oath must be fulfilled.” The barbarian’s eyes had gone out of focus, as if he was looking at nothing but the inside of his own skull. As if his thoughts were very far away.
Malden scratched at an eyebrow. “If you specifically need the help of an Ancient Blade, that suggests just one task I can think of.”
“Indeed. I am hunting a demon.”
Croy jumped to his feet, all sign of weariness gone from him. “Where?” he demanded.
Chapter Nine
There was no word Malden knew that could get Croy’s attention better than “demon.”
The world had its share of monsters. Up in the Northern Kingdoms there were still bands of goblins on the loose, and
the occasional troll for a knight to test his steel on. Malden himself had met an ogre, and knew stories of everything from the dread Longlegs of the Rifnlatt to the dragons of the Old Empire. All such creatures could be felled by good swords or by magic, it was said. Demons were different.
They were not of the world. They did not belong there. Instead they were creatures of the Bloodgod, and they abided in his Pit of Souls, that place where all men were eventually judged and punished for their sins. Demons were normally trapped down there with eight-armed Sadu, but they could be summoned to the mundane realm by sorcerers who sought to tap their incredible power. Such a pact was illegal and utterly forbidden, and with good reason. Demons did not hail from the world of living men, and in that world were unnatural things, unbound by natural law. They were enormously powerful and almost impossible to kill. The sorcerer Hazoth had called up two of them before he died, and either one of them might have destroyed all of Ness if they had not been stopped.
Luckily for Malden and his fellow citizens, Croy had been there to slay them. Ghostcutter had prevailed against them, just as it had been made to do. The Ancient Blades had been forged for just that purpose.
And over the last eight hundred years they’d been quite successful at it. The men who wielded them often died in the process, but the swords had all but eliminated demonkind from the world. Now the existence of a single demon anywhere on the continent was a rare-but utterly fearful-occurrence. If the barbarian had encountered one, Croy had no choice but to go and slay it.
“You must tell me everything,” Croy said.
The barbarian nodded. “And so I shall. Two years ago I was hunting in the mountains at the western end of our land,” he said, squatting down on the tiles. “I was after a wild cat that had already tasted human blood, and found it to be good. I went into the hills with only a knife and three days’ food in a sack. Just having a bit of fun, you know.”
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