The Sword of the Spirits

  “In Winchester, sire.”

  He frowned. “You have left her there, unguarded?”

  “I had no choice.”

  His eyes went small. “Do you say so? We put her into your protection.”

  “Will you hear me, sire?”

  Cymru said grimly: “We will hear you.”

  I told my story, sparing nothing. Cymru and the Wilsh nobles watched me as I spoke. There was shock and amazement in their faces but I could not read what else. When I finished there was a pause before Cymru spoke.

  “You have lost your city,” he said, “and you have lost Blodwen to one of those Captains who deposed you. What brings you here? Do you seek an audience for your tears? Or perhaps a pension?”

  “Neither, sire. I seek an army.”

  His cold eyes studied me and he pulled his grizzled beard.

  “You beg our aid?”

  I shook my head. “I beg nothing, sire. I demand it.”

  “Demand?” He was incredulous. “Of me?”

  “She was your gift,” I said, “in return for slaying the Bayemot I gave you thanks. I took her in good faith. She played me false and, through her, enemies have stolen my city from me. In breaking faith with me she dishonors you, and all your people. She is your daughter, Cymru. I demand your aid so that I may kill her and her lover.”

  His face had changed while I was saying this. Coldness and surprise gave way to heat and anger. By the time I finished it was full of rage. He would have me killed, I thought, and vowed I would not die quietly. I would take some of them with me, perhaps Cymru himself, before they cut me down.

  But the rage and anger were not for me. He said:

  “All you say is truth. You will have your army. And I will ride with you when you go to take your revenge.”

  EIGHT

  THE BATTLE OF AMESBURY

  FROM THAT MOMENT BLODWEN’S NAME was never mentioned in Cymru’s court.

  They were good haters, the Wilsh. I remember what Blodwen herself had said, as she rode between Edmund and me on the day of the hunt, the day of the killing of the Bayemot. “In our country when a man makes an enemy it is forever.” She was Cymru’s only child. He had loved her and indulged her greatly. But she had dishonored him, and that was enough. I think he would have watched her die with a smile on his lips.

  Snake told me, and I believed him, that my own life had hung by a thread in the red room that afternoon. Had I shown weakness, he said, Cymru would have ordered my death because of the news I brought. I would have been a reminder of his disgrace, to be removed without pity.

  But his acceptance of my vow to take revenge, and his joining with me in it, set me even higher in his regard than during my first visit to Klan Gothlen. Snake told me this also, before I had truly realized it.

  “She was his daughter,” he said, “but he would wash his hands in her blood. He would have killed you had you begged or flinched; and now you are his son. I do not say it lightly. Fond as he was of her, that is a lack he has always felt, and you fill it. No man who is wise will cross Luke of Winchester in this city from now on.” He smiled. “It would be almost as bad as defying the King himself.”

  He spoke without rancor. He was a devious man, as I suppose a Chancellor should be, but I had come to respect him. His manner showed no resentment but no false flattery either. Behind the slyness of the surface he showed the world, there was some honesty.

  And the truth of his forecast of my preeminence in the King’s favor was borne out the next day. I was talking of the new tactics that would be required with the use of Sten guns, and Kluellan interrupted. He took something I said as showing ignorance of the qualities of Wilsh troops, and indignantly challenged what he thought was a slur. As Colonel of the Guard he commanded the army in the field, directly under the King, and thought himself its spokesman. I held my peace, but Cymru said:

  “Enough, Kluellan! You are older than Luke, but can learn from him.” Others were present: Captains and civilian nobles. He raised his voice. “Luke is my lieutenant in this enterprise. I would have that kept in mind by all of you.”

  As I had guessed would be the case, the Wilsh were not shocked by the weapon I had brought them, but fascinated. At the demonstration I gave they clapped and shouted with delight. I had had a wooden target set up, but this did not satisfy Cymru. Snake, with his usual care for his monarch’s future pleasures, had arranged for wild boar to be caught and kept in pens within the city; so that whenever the weather should prove fair enough to tempt Cymru to a hunt there would be quarry to be released. Cymru called for one of these to be loosed now, at the end of the narrow yard in which we stood.

  It was a half-grown boar, not polybeast as far as I could see. It stood in front of the trap from which it had been set free, undecided what to do, alarmed probably by the noisy chatter of the Wilsh nobles.

  “Now, Luke,” Cymru cried, “show us what this gun of yours does to that young tusker.”

  Except for food, one killed beasts only in sport; and there was no sport in firing bullets into a defenseless and most likely frightened animal. It was not even moving. But I remembered that Cymru’s idea of a hunt was firing crossbow bolts from behind wooden covers. And it was Cymru I relied on to help get me back my city and my pride. I wasted no time in hesitation but raised the Sten gun to my waist and fired a burst. The boar gave one sharp squeal as the bullets smashed it to the ground, then lay there silent in its gore.

  The Wilsh nobles broke into loud applause. Many, even ladies, rushed forward to examine the dead animal, and I saw one lady dabble her delicate fingers in its blood. I hid my disgust. These were my people until I won my own city back.

  Cymru said: “Have it taken to Lewin.” That was the Master Cook. “We will dine on roast boar tonight. Tell him I shall require one of his best sauces to go with it.”

  • • •

  Hans turned armorer; and I wondered what old Rudi would have thought of it, recalling his regret when Hans, his last son, chose not to follow him to the forge. It was, of course, a very different kind of armory. In the King’s name I had put Hans in complete charge of the making of the Sten guns. He was in any case the only man who had the knowledge for it. I could use the weapon, but I could as easily have flown up to the top of one of the Wilsh mountains as make it.

  He found good and willing craftsmen here: not only dwarfs but polymufs and true men also. When I visited them in the forge-house I found a great bustle of activity, with the roar of flame and the clang and hammer of steel added to by a clamor of voices. Unlike our Winchester dwarfs, who were silent workers for the most part, the Wilsh could not even shape steel without chattering; and there were times when, one of them first taking up a tune, they would all burst out into singing.

  I asked him one day how matters were progressing. He said:

  “Very well, sire. They are quick to learn.”

  “By spring . . .”

  “We shall have two hundred and fifty guns for you. More maybe. And ammunition enough and to spare. Will that do?”

  “It will do. Hans, without you I could do nothing. These Wilsh soldiers are better than I once thought, but with equal weapons they would have small chance against our warriors of Winchester, and there are other territories to get through first. I think all the cities will fight against an army that comes from beyond the Burning Lands, whether it offers defiance or no.”

  Hans looked at me. “I think so, too, sire.”

  “I made you a warrior,” I said, “and now you have become my armorer to help me. It will not be for long. When spring comes and the guns are ready you can be a warrior again. And this time one of my Captains.”

  I had thought he would be overjoyed. For a dwarf to be a warrior was a marvelous thing; but this would make him noble.

  He said slowly: “It is a great honor, sire. But . . .”

  I was amazed. “But what?”

  “I am not sure I desire it.”

  His doubts did not stem from lack of courage, a
s I well knew. He had as brave a heart as any man I had met.

  I said: “Why, Hans? Because you would be commanding Wilsh, against our own people?”

  “No. I serve you against anyone. And I am making guns to kill them.”

  “Then why?”

  He picked a Sten gun up and gazed at it. “I cannot remember a time when I did not want to be a warrior. There was a place where I could climb the citadel wall and stay there hidden, watching the drilling and jousting and sword play. The longing was greater because it was an impossible thing.”

  He put the gun down and looked at me.

  “By your hand, sire, the impossible became a reality. I fought with you at Petersfield and Romsey. But that was in the old way, on horseback, with sword and shield. It will not be the same to carry a gun at one’s hip and kill a man a hundred yards away—a man maybe who has not even seen you. I will make the guns but I do not think I want to use them.”

  “You will not refuse to go with me when we ride south, Hans?”

  “No, sire.” He smiled. “I will not do that. Not then or ever. I go wherever you go.”

  • • •

  I worked hard that winter, drilling and organizing the army, making plans and preparations for the campaign to come. I rose early and rested little through a long day. This was no hardship. In work I could forget my shames, and keep at bay those specters that otherwise filled vacancy to mock and jeer at me. There were hours on end when I did not think of Blodwen, nights when I went to bed so tired that I did not dream.

  Cymru remonstrated with me for this unceasing labor, though I think he was impressed by it. He asked me to take things more easily, then begged, at last commanded. This was at the Christmas Feast, which the Wilsh kept far more lavishly even than we had done in Winchester. For twelve days there was a round of feasts and balls, masques and concerts and visitings, a vast gluttony of eating and drinking. Lewin and his minions produced mountains of food, most elaborately prepared, glazed and sauced. On one great table he set up a pyramid, ten feet high, of meats cooked and carved in strange patterns of shape and hue, the whole thing topped by the head of the biggest boar I had ever seen. A polybeast, of course, but that counted for nothing in this land.

  On the chief day of the Feast there was a procession of Christians through the streets of the city, ending up at their church, a huge building bearing no fewer than seven large onion domes, which they called the Cathedral. Cymru and his court joined in the procession as it passed the palace and walked the last hundred yards with it, before actually going into the church immediately behind the Bishop.

  When Cymru told me of this, taking it for granted that I would go with them, I said in surprise:

  “But you are not a Christian.”

  “I am not one of the White Witches, either, but I attend their grand coven at midsummer. And preside at the feast the farmers give at harvest, though I am not a farmer. Amongst us the King is father to his people as long as they obey the law. And the Christians do that as well as any.”

  “In our lands they give trouble by protesting against war and executions.” I remembered a bitter freezing morning in Salisbury and myself punished as an Acolyte who had disgraced the Seers’ cloth. “Even against men being put into the stocks.”

  “They make no protests here,” Cymru said. “And their Christmas worshiping is worth attending for the music.”

  So I walked beside him from the palace to the Cathedral. Snow fell lightly and it was cold in the open when one had become used to the heated floors of the palace, but we were well wrapped in furs. So too, I saw, were the Christians. They looked fat and prosperous, quite different from the ragged starvelings I had known in the south. There were fewer than a hundred of them. I said to Cymru:

  “Is this their full number?”

  “All who can will attend the Christmas worship,” he said. “Their numbers dwindle. Forty years ago, when I walked here beside my father, there were three times as many. But their music is still excellent.”

  Listening, I supposed it was. I found it florid stuff, with much contrast between boys’ trebles and deep booming basses: there were almost as many in the choir as in the audience. But I knew nothing of music, anyway. I let my mind wander to watch the others in the church. Sitting on their high-backed benches they looked even fatter and richer than before. I wondered what our Winchester Bishop would make of them. They looked far worthier citizens than his own rabble. And yet, Cymru had said, their numbers dwindled. It was not easy to account for it.

  I put the question to their Bishop later, when he came to the feast at the palace. His name was Griffis and I had seen him at court before. For such visits he put off his Christian robes and his elegance outdid the majority of Cymru’s nobles, a notable achievement. He spoke elegantly too; more slowly than was usual among the Wilsh and with what was thought to be great wit. I could not always see the jest myself, but the Wilsh nobles round him were quick to laugh.

  He said: “Numbers do not of themselves give distinction.” From a tray proffered by a page he took a small roast bird and crunched it delicately. “It is sometimes an honor to be part of a minority.” He glanced sideways at me, smiling. “Did you not find yourself in this case with the Captains of your city?”

  Someone tittered. I had heard this Bishop on other occasions dripping malice from his slightly twisted mouth. The Wilsh nobles were nearly all gossips, but he outdid them in that also. I said coldly:

  “You have a merry wit, Bishop.” He inclined his head, smiling still. “I must tell the King that you find treachery a good subject for jesting. Maybe he will laugh with you.”

  He looked at me quickly to see if I were jesting in my turn. When I stared heavily back at him he quickly changed his tune. I had misunderstood him, he said, but it was for him to apologize for the misunderstanding. From that he went on fulsomely in flattery of me. It was laid on like the grease which still rimmed his lips from the bird he had been eating, smooth and oily. After a moment or two I nodded, and turned my back. It was discourtesy, but I could stand no more of the man.

  I thought of the Bishop of Winchester, talking boldly about forbidden things, speaking up to an Acolyte in the presence of his Prince. And thinking of it I thought of who else had been there that night, saw her again scolding me and then sweetly pleading as she told me whom she had asked to dine with us. And sickness filled my heart as the Wilsh nobles chattered and laughed and gorged themselves all round me. I left the room and went up to the quiet of my chamber. The double windows were shut. I opened them and stepped out onto the balcony. The river was frozen except where it tumbled down its horseshoe falls, barely visible in the darkness. Beyond it lights flickered from the hundred towers of Klan Gothlen, and whispers of music came in on the night air.

  The cold was sharp against my skin and memory a knife in my mind. I clenched the freezing balustrade with my fingers. Soon, thanks be to the Great, the feasting days would be over and it would be time to work again.

  • • •

  At last winter ended, and the army could ride south. We set off with banners and pennants flying in a stiff breeze that blew down from the mountains and still had ice in it. The citizens cheered us from their towers and balconies and thronged the streets to watch us pass. Apart from the scouts, Cymru rode in the van and I beside him.

  It was a leisurely progress. We could not travel at any great pace because of the baggage train, which was enormous. I had been for reducing it to the minimum, but on this one point Cymru overrode me. So we went laden with gear of all kinds—tents for the nobles, a pavilion for Cymru himself—and a great store of food and drink. This at least we consumed as we made our way south. But we still took far more than an army in the field needed—and far more, as I pointed out to Cymru, than we should be able to take with us over the pass through the Burning Lands.

  We were sitting in his pavilion which had been set up close by the river. Our camp stretched for half a mile along the valley. Had there been any possible
enemy I would have wanted it more tightly disposed, but on this side of the Burning Lands there was none to challenge the might of Cymru’s army.

  Cymru laughed. “We shall travel lightly when we need to, Luke, but until the need arises we Wilsh will have our comforts. Could Lewin have prepared a dinner such as we had tonight without his mountain of pots and pans and his own army of scullions?”

  I said: “The contrast may come hard.”

  He smiled at me strangely. “You do not understand us yet. We are a people of contrasts.” He looked across the river. “A people who smile and talk lightly, but our hearts are extreme.”

  In love and hatred I thought, but did not say. We did not talk of her but her presence was between us.

  “You do not understand us, Luke,” Cymru said, “but perhaps you are more like us than you think.”

  Bats swooped low in the dusk over the hurrying waters. We sat in silence as the night came on.

  • • •

  We passed the place where the polyhounds had surrounded Hans and me, and the valley of the Tribe. I wondered if Jok and the others were watching our progress from cover; I saw no sign of them. We passed the village of the building rats, deserted still and almost overgrown with weeds and saplings, and that other village from which I had been taken, as a sacrificial victim, to the Eyrie of the Sky People. We skirted the forest in which Edmund and I, in an upper room of a crumbling palace, had found a skeleton dressed in the moldering clothes of the past, and a gold box, and a painting of an old man, done with a skill no painter of our time could equal. And so we came at last to the black desolation where trees and plants withered in the heat, where there were only rocks and steaming pools, and the air was choked with dust from the clouds of smoke that hung over the jagged peaks of the Burning Lands.

  We left the baggage train there, along with Lewin and his scullions. The horses’ legs were wrapped about with asbestos cloth, and we took nothing with us but our weapons. Cymru himself put aside his velvet cloaks and wore a leather jerkin, armored with slats of steel. I was surprised by the difference it made in him: he looked a warrior now.