Sword of Betrayal

by Robert Evert

  “I want you to be better than fine, Bea. I want…” he trailed off, gazing at the twinkling stars.

  “What do you want?” she asked affectionately.

  He dithered. “I want to make sure you’re safe when I’m not here.”

  “Unfortunately, I’m a single woman from the lower class. Beautiful dresses and your money aren’t going to protect me from men like…” She shuddered.

  “We’re not all like him, you know. Nobles, I mean. We’re not all like—”

  “I know. But I don’t think you truly understand what it’s like to be a common woman.”

  “I understand!” Edris exclaimed. Then he nodded in concession before taking her hand. “No…you’re right. I don’t understand.”

  “If a nobleman wants a girl from the lower classes,” she said, “well, woe be for us to refuse. Now, if I were married…”

  Edris frowned. He and Beatrice had been romantically involved for years. They’d discussed marriage, of course, but only in a casual, half-joking way; however, there was no joking in her tone. Now it was colored with a hint of desperation.

  “Bea…” Edris said.

  She repositioned the heaps of expensive clothes in her arms. “It’s fine. I understand.”

  “Do you?”

  “I do.”

  But to Edris, she seemed to harden.

  “I’ve always known who and what you were.” She sighed. “I could imagine what your father would say if you brought somebody like me home…”

  “Hey.” Edris touched her chin. “There is nobody like you.”

  She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. “Thanks, Ed.”

  “I need you to know I mean it. You’re the only person in this world I care about.”

  An uneasy silence enveloped them as they stared at the ground.

  “Are you and your father still getting along?” Beatrice asked eventually.

  “We are. For the first time, he’s taking an interest in me.”

  “That must be rather disconcerting.”

  Edris laughed. “It is! Sometimes I wish he’d go back to not knowing my name.” His laughter died away. He touched her face again and saw tears building in her eyes. “I have to get going. But I’ll return in—well, I don’t know when.”

  “I’ll be here.” She stood on her toes once more and pulled Edris’s head toward her. “I’m always here.”

  Forty-Three

  Riding as fast as they could, Edris and Brago reached the battle site between King Pembroke’s army and Gubli-gan’s raiders in a fortnight. What they found didn’t please them.

  Green Hill was a small bucolic kingdom populated mainly by cattle and sheep ranchers spread throughout the gently rolling countryside. Towns and villages rarely exceeded a score of permanent buildings. Yet as Edris and Brago peered into the valley separating the rolling grasslands from the colossal stone cliffs of The Step, they could see hundreds of figures milling about.

  “Who are all these people?” Brago asked.

  Edris groaned as he watched men digging here and there. The valley was pocked with their labors. “They’re adventurers.”

  “Does everybody know where the golden bug is buried?”

  “I’m not sure any of us knows anything of the sort. We’re simply guessing.”

  They sat on their restless horses, watching the once peaceful valley.

  “I have to say,” Brago said, “burying your valuables is probably the stupidest thing somebody could do. Especially here. However, as history shows us, people are indeed idiots.”

  “Why would burying valuables here be stupid?”

  “Finding them again would be problematic. You could draw a map, but what landmarks would remain constant over time? Trees up and die. Boulders roll downhill or are broken into dust. Even rivers change course. There’s not a single feature here that could be used as a reliable guide.”

  A group of adventurers plowing the trampled grass plodded along the eastern part of the valley. At their oxen’s current pace, it’d take them a year to till the entire meadow.

  “I doubt the raiders meant to leave the treasure buried for long,” Edris said. “But you raise an interesting point.”

  “Did I? Do tell.”

  “A map. If you’re going to bury something, you’d make a map so you can find it again.”

  “You think there might be a map somewhere?”

  “Maybe. The trouble will be finding it.”

  Shading their eyes from the late afternoon sun, they watched the horde of adventurers scouring the countryside, poking their swords into the ground, overturning the occasional rock. An adventurer who’d dug a hole big enough to be a grave gave a cry. Immediately, dozens of men converged on him, weapons drawn.

  “Think he’s found something?” Brago asked.

  “If he did, he won’t keep it.”

  The adventurer in the hole held up a skull. Most of the other adventurers drifted back to where they’d been searching.

  “This is pointless,” Edris said. “Blast it! We can’t excavate this entire area. And if we could, we couldn’t hide the fact we found something.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  Edris’s horse thrashed its tail at the buzzing flies.

  “Let’s head to the town we saw. Maybe there’s a librarian or loremaster there who knows some ancient stories that might point us in the right direction.”

  Edris and Brago rode to the closest settlement they could find—a little hamlet called Tiny Dribbling. Surrounded by rolling fields dotted with thousands of grazing sheep, it was nothing more than a cluster of brick buildings situated around a dirt road intersecting a muddy stream.

  “I don’t suppose,” Edris said to the elderly innkeeper, “you have a couple of rooms available for weary travelers.”

  “I don’t have a couple, but I do have one,” the innkeeper said in a tone suggesting he knew he had the only inn in town and that he was about to make a small fortune. “Became available not more than a few minutes ago.”

  “Wonderful. We’ll take it.”

  “That’ll be ten silver a night.”

  “Ten silver!” Brago grumbled. “And I get called a thief.”

  Edris quieted him. “That’ll be fine, sir. Thank you.”

  “Very good. Let me get you situated.”

  They followed the old man to a table, behind which were several pegs; only one held a key.

  “You’re awfully busy,” Edris said, attempting to get information without being too obvious. “I had no idea this place was so well visited.”

  The innkeeper gave him a smug look. “I’m quite sure you’re here for the same reasons as everybody else.” He handed him the key. “Your room is upstairs and to the left.”

  “Has anybody…”

  “Found the golden dung beetle? Son, if I knew that, I’d be making more than ten silver. Every adventurer in town has offered sacks of gold for information about its whereabouts.”

  “Upstairs to the left?”

  “Correct, young man. And good luck hunting.”

  They climbed the stairs and found their room. It was barely big enough for Edris, let alone the much smaller Brago.

  “Charming man,” Brago said, throwing his pack onto a chair. “We should burn his place to the ground before we leave.”

  “He’s only trying to make a living.”

  “As is any thief. Funny what is considered legal and illegal.”

  “Never mind that.” Edris peered out the dingy window to the street below. Adventurers went about in a great hurry. “This is what I want you to do. Stroll around and see what you can learn. Here. You may need some money to help loosen people’s tongues. Let’s keep a low profile. I don’t want anybody noticing us.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to see if Markus is in town.”

  Still wearing his weather-stained traveling clothes, Edris roamed Tiny Dribbling, trying to blend in. Wherever he went, groups of heavily armed
men stood talking to townsfolk about the Sacred Scarab. Meanwhile, more and more adventurers galloped into the village, swelling the already clogged streets. Markus was nowhere to be found.

  Feeling hungry, Edris stepped inside the first eatery he could find that wasn’t overflowing with people. After telling the fellow behind the counter what he wanted, he sat at the far end of the bar. All around him, adventurers chatted, pored over maps, or read various age-worn documents. Nobody paid him any mind.

  At a table by the front windows, a rotund man with a fleshy face grumbled loudly.

  “There too many of these damned runt kingdoms,” he said, his speech slurred from alcohol. “Too many. Too many blasted kingdoms. Every blasted farmer with an outhouse is declaring himself king.”

  One of his tablemates got up and left, leaving behind a plate of half-eaten mutton.

  “I tell you,” he went on to nobody in particular, “they should all be taken over by somebody. Every single one of them. Make one big kingdom worth something. Not all these, good for nothing, damned runt kingdoms.”

  The din throughout the common room faltered. Talk of war was never something people liked to hear—especially by those who might be commanded to fight it.

  “Too many worthless kings…” the drunk said as the second of his companions moved to the other end of the bar. “Too many bastards of bastards. Assholes. The entire lot of them.”

  The drunk’s final tablemate left. He kept talking, nonetheless.

  “King Amrose. King Hamfast.” He spilled some of his beer. “Worthless pissants. King Michael…”

  This got Edris’s attention. He glanced around the packed room. There were many knights there, but none appeared to be from the kingdoms being mentioned. He was the only one.

  “Nothing but worthless pissants…” the drunk continued. “All of them.”

  Edris fidgeted. He didn’t particularly care for King Michael, not after what his son had done. But he was family, and he did knight him.

  “King Christopher…” The man by the window chortled. “He isn’t fit to wipe the shit from my boots. None of them are.”

  Edris strode over to his table.

  The inebriated adventurer looked up with blurry eyes. “What do you—?”

  Edris backhanded him across the face, flinging him to the floor.

  Every conversation stopped.

  The drunk felt his cheek. A large white welt was rapidly turning purple. He fought his way to his feet. He wasn’t tall, but he was thick of build and had a sizable belly. He easily weighed as much as Edris, if not more.

  “You bastard!”

  Edris slapped him again, knocking him into another table.

  “I’m Sir Edris of The Angle,” Edris said proudly. “King Michael is my sovereign and kin.”

  “Bully for—”

  Edris slapped the drunk a third time, sending him reeling against annoyed diners attempting to eat their food.

  The drunk stabbed a finger at Edris’s chest. “I don’t give a damn whose bastard you are!”

  Edris shoved him out the door. “We’ll finish this outside.”

  Chairs squealed as everybody leapt from their seats and followed them into the road.

  An adventurer stepped in front of Edris. “He’s drunk.”

  “I won’t let his comments stand.”

  “Very well. But don’t overdo it.”

  Staggering, the drunk drew a sleeve across his bleeding mouth. He blinked at the smear of blood, then at Edris. “Bastard! I’ll kill you. You and your pissant king.”

  Fists raised, he charged. Edris threw a right uppercut to the drunk’s jaw. The drunk fell backward, landing hard in the dirt. He didn’t move.

  “That’s enough,” said the adventurer who’d followed Edris out of the eatery. “You’ve maintained your honor and the honor of your king.”

  “Not yet.” Edris unbuckled the unconscious man’s weapon belt. “Who is he? Does anybody know?”

  “That’s Sir Rodney,” somebody in the murmuring crowd said.

  “Lord Ronald’s son?” Edris knew the family, though he hadn’t seen them in years.

  “Aye,” a short, balding man next to him answered. “And he won’t be pleased by you taking his son’s possessions.”

  “Don’t worry. I know Lord Ronald. We’re on good terms.”

  Edris held aloft Sir Rodney’s sheathed sword. It glinted in the failing evening light.

  “I am Sir Edris,” he hollered over the commotion. “And any man who disparages my king gets his sword sent to his father.”

  Several knights chuckled in approval.

  “You. Boy!” he called to one of the squires in the crowd. “Find out where this ass is quartered and carry him there. I don’t want any more of his belongings disappearing. When he comes to, tell him what I did with his sword.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  The squire and some of his comrades hoisted the lifeless knight onto their shoulders and headed to the inn.

  Edris pushed his way inside and found the three steaks he’d ordered waiting for him. Famished, he began wolfing them down, Sir Rodney’s sword across his lap.

  “Well done,” a young knight said, offering his hand. Edris shook it. “I’m Sir Kaye.” He indicated the knight next to him. “This is Sir Donald.”

  Edris shook his hand as well.

  “May we join you?” Sir Donald asked.

  Mouth full, Edris motioned to the empty stools on either side of him, then swallowed. “Please. Buy you a drink?”

  “I think we’ll buy you one.” Sir Kaye caught the serving girl’s eye. “Three beers, lass. The good stuff.”

  “Ale,” Sir Donald told her. “If it isn’t watered.”

  Other patrons patted Edris on the shoulder. Annoyed, Edris thanked them as he tried to finish his dinner.

  “How long have you been a knight?” Sir Kaye asked when everybody had returned to their tables. “Forgive me, but I’ve never heard of you before.”

  “I was knighted five months ago.”

  “You don’t say. Congratulations on that as well.”

  Edris shoveled more food into his mouth. “Thank you.”

  “And,” Sir Kaye said, as if trying to broach a sensitive subject, “how old are you, if you don’t mind the inquiry?”

  Edris winked at him as he chewed. “Old enough to be knighted.”

  They laughed.

  Somebody else came by and shook his hand. Looking up, he found it was Markus.

  “Well done, cousin!” he said loudly. “I greatly appreciate you defending our family’s honor. I only wish I was here to do it myself!”

  Forty-Four

  “Markus!” Sir Donald shook Markus’s hand, as did Sir Kaye. “Good to see you!”

  “Good to be seen.” Markus pulled up a stool.

  People began gathering around them.

  “You and Sir Edris are kinsmen?” Sir Kaye asked.

  “We are indeed,” Markus replied. “He’s the youngest child of my father’s sister. The baby of the family, you might say.” He grinned. “And to answer your question, Sir Donald, Eddie here is fifteen years old.”

  Amazed, everybody faced Edris.

  “Fifteen!” Sir Donald gasped in disbelief. “I knew you were young, but I had no idea.”

  “I’m sixteen,” Edris said, aggravated.

  “Even so. How the devil were you knighted?”

  The serving girl set three pints of dark ale on the bar.

  “Oh, you know how it is,” Markus said, reaching for one of the glasses. “Of all my cousins, Eddie is my father’s favorite.”

  Edris grabbed his arm.

  “It’s Edris.” Markus tried to pull his arm back, but Edris wouldn’t let it go. “Perhaps you should tell them how I got knighted—Markie.”

  Markus blanched. Then relaxed. Edris let go and placed one of the beers in front of him.

  “I jest with him because we practically grew up together,” Markus told the other knights. He took a dr
ink. “Edris was knighted because he saved my life.”

  A buzz of interest swept among the listeners.

  “Oh?” Sir Kaye said, impressed. “How?”

  “Do you know the hillside path by Strombath? The one approaching from the south and flanking the Dean River?”

  “Surely. Go on.”

  “A rattlesnake spooked my horse.”

  Edris waited for Markus to finish the story, but he took another long pull from his pint as though the tale had reached its conclusion.

  “What my dear cousin failed to mention is that he was unable to master his steed and found himself dangling over the edge of the cliff, screaming.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “I wasn’t screaming,” Markus said.

  Edris laughed. “The valley still echoes with his terror.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “Strombath?” Sir Donald thought for a moment. “Isn’t that where you found the Sword of Betrayal?”

  “Indeed,” Markus replied proudly. “It was my most challenging win to date.”

  “Why don’t you tell them how you found it,” Edris said, chewing his second steak. “About how you fell down the hillside while taking a piss.”

  Everybody erupted with laughter.

  “Now! Now!” Markus cried, shooting an angry glance at Edris. “That’s not true. Ed is the one who fell!”

  “Me? You’re the one who found the sword—aren’t you, Markus? Or am I mistaken?”

  They locked smoldering gazes. Markus turned away first, his face red.

  “Let’s talk about other matters,” he said. “I say we shave Rodney’s head and leave him to awaken in a pigsty. That should teach the scoundrel not to speak ill of his betters!”

  Forty-Five

  “So, he spent the entire evening slipping these snide comments into the conversation,” Edris said indignantly.

  He and Brago were in their room at the inn—Edris stretched out across the lone bed, his feet dangling off its end, Brago lying on the thread-worn rug. Midnight had passed several hours before, but neither was tired.