Lawrence Watt-Evans - Ethshar 1 - The Misenchanted Sword

VIP免费
2024-12-23 0 0 376.67KB 134 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
THE MISENCHANTED SWORD
by LAWRENCE WATT-EVANS (1985)
[VERSION 1.1 (Oct 03 03). If you find and correct errors in the text, please
update the version number by 0.1 and redistribute.]
Dedicated to Richard Evan Reis and the old gang at P.I.C.
PART ONE
Wirikidor
CHAPTER 1
The marsh stank, with a sharp, briny stench that seemed to fill Valder's
head. He stared out across the maze of tall grass and shallow water for a long
moment and then reluctantly marched onward, into it. The ground gave beneath
him; his boot sank past the ankle in gray-brown muck. He muttered an
obscenity, then smiled weakly at his own annoyance and slogged forward.
The enemy, he knew, was no more than an hour behind him. The marsh was
nothing but a minor inconvenience by comparison.
To his left lay the open sea, and to his right was endless empty forest
that was probably full of northern patrols and sentinels, human or otherwise.
Behind him somewhere were the three northerners who had been pursuing him for
the past four days. Ahead of him, wet and green and stinking, lay the coastal
marshes.
He could, he supposed, have turned to the right and avoided the marshes,
tried to lose his pursuers in the forest, but he had been running through
forests for four days without being able to shake them off his trail. At least
the marshes would be different.
After half a dozen long, slow steps through the mud, he struck a patch of
solid ground and hauled himself up onto it; dirty seawater poured from his
boots, which had not been watertight in more than a sixnight. The marsh grass
rustled loudly as he pushed his way across the little hummock; he froze,
peered back over his shoulder, and, seeing nothing but the unbroken line of
pine trees, sank to the ground for a moment's rest.
The marsh was probably a mistake, he told himself as the foul smell
saturated his nostrils. He could not move through it without making noise, it
seemed -- the rustling grass was far more audible than the crunch of pine
needles, and the suck of mud wasn't much better -- and the enemy sorcerer
almost certainly had some sort of spell or talisman that augmented his
hearing. Even the other two northerners might have hearing more than normally
acute; from what he had seen of their movements, Valder was quite certain that
at least one of them was shatra -- half man, half demon, though human in
appearance. That eerily smooth, flowing motion was unmistakable.
All three might be shatra; the demon warriors could disguise their
movements if they chose. One of his pursuers was a sorcerer, but he had heard
it said around the barracks that some sorcerers were shatra. It seemed grossly
unfair for a single enemy soldier to have both advantages, but life, he knew,
was sometimes very unfair.
Nobody knew exactly what shatra were capable of, but it was generally
believed that they possessed magically acute senses -- though not, probably,
up to the level a good sorcerer could achieve. Valder had to assume that the
northerners chasing him could see and hear and smell far better than he could.
He had managed to stay ahead of the enemy patrol for four days now, but
it had been due to luck as much as to anything else. He had exhausted his last
few prepared spells in diverting the pursuit, but none of the diversions had
lasted very long, and his company's wizard had not provided him with anything
useful for actual combat. Valder was supposed to be a scout, after all; his
job, if he encountered the enemy, had been to run back to base camp to warn
his superiors, not to fight. He was not interested in a glorious death in
combat. He was just another of Ethshar's three million conscript soldiers
trying to survive, and, for an ordinary human against shatra, that meant
flight.
He had been able to travel at night as he fled because the greater moon
had been almost full when the chase began, but the wizard-sight he had been
given when he first went out on his routine solo patrol had worn off six
nights ago.
Thick morning fogs had helped him, as much as the moon had; he was
running blind to begin with, with no intended destination, and therefore was
not concerned about losing his way in the mist, so long as he didn't walk off
a cliff. His pursuers, however, had had to grope carefully along his trail,
using their sorcerous tracking a few steps at a time. They did not seem to
have any unnatural means of penetrating the fog, either sorcerous or demonic.
And, of course, the enemy had stopped for meals every so often, or for
water, while he had had no need of food or drink. That was the only bit of
wizardry he still had going for him, the only spell remaining; if that were to
wear off, he knew he would be doomed. His outfit's wizard had known his job,
though, and Valder had so far felt not the slightest twinge of hunger or
thirst. He felt the charmed bloodstone in his belt pouch, making certain it
was still secure.
Now, though, he had come to this stinking salt marsh and he wondered if
his luck had run out. He settled himself on the grassy hummock and pulled his
boots off, letting the foul water run out.
His luck had really run out two months ago, he decided, when the enemy
had launched a surprise offensive out of nowhere and cut through to the sea,
driving the Ethsharitic forces back down the coast, away from the forests and
into the open plain. It had been phenomenally bad luck for Valder to have been
out on solo patrol, checking the woods for signs of the enemy, when the
assault came.
He had been looking for saboteurs and guerrillas, not the whole northern
army.
Valder still did not understand how the enemy had cut through so quickly;
all he knew was that, when he headed back toward camp, he had found
northerners marching back and forth across the smoldering ruins of his home
base, between himself and the Ethsharitic lines. He had encountered no scouts,
no advance units, had had no warning. The fact that he had been sent out
alone, in itself, indicated that his superiors hadn't thought the enemy had
any significant forces within a dozen leagues, at the very least.
With the enemy to the south, the sea to the west, and nothing to the east
but forest wilderness clear to the borders of the Northern Empire itself, he
had headed north. He had hoped to get well away from the enemy, then find or
build himself a boat and work his way south along the coast until he reached
the Ethsharitic lines -- surely the enemy could not have driven very far to
the south, certainly not as far as General Gor's fortress. He knew nothing
about boats, but he was reasonably sure that the enemy knew no more than he
did. The Northern Empire was an inland nation; he doubted that there was any
northern navy to worry about.
Unfortunately, the enemy had followed him northward along the shoreline,
not because they knew he was there, but, as best he could guess, because they
were afraid of Ethsharitic landings. He had kept moving north, staying ahead
of the enemy scouts; four times he had settled in one spot long enough to
start work on a raft, but each time a northern patrol had come along and
driven him away long before he had a seaworthy craft.
Finally, four days ago, he had been careless, and a northerner who moved
with the inhumanly smooth grace and speed of a shatra had spotted him. He had
been running ever since, snatching naps when he could and using every ruse he
could think of and every spell in his pouch.
He pulled off his right sock and wrung it out, then draped it on the
grass to dry; he knew that it would just get wet again when he moved on, as he
would have to do quickly, but while he rested he wanted it dry. He was tugging
at his left sock when he heard the rustle of grass. He froze.
The sound came again, from somewhere behind him, to the north -- he had
seated himself facing back the way he had come so as to have a better chance
of spotting his pursuers.
It didn't seem likely that even shatra could have circled around behind
him already. Perhaps, he told himself, it was just a bird or an animal of some
sort. Carefully, with his right foot bare and his left sock hanging halfway
off, he rose, trying not to rustle, and peered through the waving stalks.
Something tall was moving about, something dark gray and pointed at the
top. Not shatra, or at least not the sort he was familiar with; they
customarily wore round, close-fitting helmets that covered almost the entire
head. Enemy sorcerers usually wore similar black helmets festooned with
talismans, and the common soldiers made do with whatever they could scrounge
up -- most often ancient, rusty relics passed down through generations of
warfare. This gray object did not look like any of those. It didn't look like
a helmet at all; it looked like a cloth hat.
He wondered whether it might be some unfamiliar variety of beast, perhaps
a magically created one or some odd kind of small dragon. He had seen pointed
hats; they had once, he understood, been the standard issue for wizards until
someone pointed out that they made excellent targets, but he could not imagine
what one would be doing here, far to the north and west of anything resembling
civilization. Who would be wearing such a thing in a marsh on the edge of
nowhere?
He sank back to the ground and pulled his left sock back up, ignoring the
fact that it was still soaking wet, and then pulled on his other sock and both
boots.
The rustling noise continued; whatever the tall thing with the gray point
was, it didn't seem to have noticed him. He stood up again, then crouched and
began inching his way toward whatever it was, parting the grass carefully with
his hands.
As careful as he was, however, his movement was not silent. He stopped
again and listened.
The other had also stopped. For a tense moment, Valder waited. Then the
rustling began again, and the other moved away. Valder followed, trying to
move only when the other moved, but the rustling of his own passage drowned
out the other's noise and made it very difficult to judge when the other had
stopped.
A few feet from the spot where he had sat and dumped out his boots Valder
found himself at the northern edge of the dry hummock, facing a wide, shallow
channel. He eased his foot into it until the sole of his boot was resting on
solid bottom, sunk an inch or two into muck. His other foot followed, until he
was standing in six inches of foul-smelling water and three inches of goo.
Both feet were once again thoroughly soaked.
He waded across the channel, moving slowly so as not to splash. No grass
grew in the center of the channel, and the reeds were not thick, so that he
was able to proceed without making very much noise. He heard new sounds ahead,
not rustlings, but clatterings, as if things were being casually moved about.
He reached the far side of the channel and slogged up the bank, pushing
aside reeds and grass; he paused at the top to peer ahead.
The gray point was not in sight, but something else was, something
yellow-brown, warm and inviting in the setting sun. It looked very much like a
thatched roof. From his previous viewpoint it had blended with the surrounding
foliage.
He was so intrigued by this evidence of a human habitation where he had
expected none that he forgot his pursuers for the moment and made his way
toward the roof without first checking behind. He knew that the inhabitant was
just as likely to be a northerner as an Ethsharite, but if the gray thing had
indeed been a hat, then whoever wore it was probably not a soldier. Valder was
armed and reasonably capable. He had the sword on his hip and a dagger on his
belt; a sling was tucked away. He wore a breastplate of good steel. His helmet
had been lost two days earlier, and he had abandoned his bow when he had run
out of reusable arrows, but he still felt confident that he could handle any
civilian, whether northerner, Ethsharite, or unknown.
One reason for his intense interest in the roof was that its mysterious
owner might well have a boat, since he or she lived here in a coastal marsh --
and that might save Valder the trouble of building a raft, as well as being
safer and more comfortable.
He crept forward through the tall grass, across another dry patch, then
through a reed-clogged expanse of water and mud and over another hummock, and
found himself looking at a tidy little hut. The walls were plastered over with
yellowish baked mud or clay; wooden shutters covered the two small windows on
the near side. The roof, as he had thought, was thatch. A doorway faced the
ocean, with a heavy drape hooked back to leave it mostly open. Seated in the
doorway opening was the hut's inhabitant, an old man in a gray robe, his tall,
pointed hat perched on one knee. He was leaning back against the frame,
staring out over the sea at the setting sun. The hut was built on the highest
bit of land in the marsh, but faced down a short, steep, bare slope, giving a
fine view of rolling waves and crying gulls.
Valder saw no weapons, but that didn't mean the old man had none; he had
no way of knowing what might be inside the hut. The hat and robe did seem to
resemble an archaic wizard's costume, and wizards of any sort could be
dangerous.
He saw nothing to indicate the man's nationality, unless he counted the
fact that the Northern Empire had very few wizards, archaic or otherwise --
but then, the garb could easily be that of some obscure variety of sorcerer or
other northern magician. He debated with himself what action he should take.
He was not about to turn and leave, with the patrol still somewhere behind
him. He could approach by stealth, try to take the old man by surprise, but
that would appear definitely hostile and might cost him an ally, and, with the
rustling grass, stealth might not be possible. Far better, he decided, to make
his presence known and then see how the hut-dweller reacted.
With that resolve, he stood up straight, waved a hand in the air, and
called, "Hello, there!"
The old man started violently, grabbed at his rope belt, and looked about
wildly.
"Hello! Over here!" Valder called.
Spotting him at last, the man got to his feet and stared at Valder in
open astonishment. "Who in Hell are you!" he demanded.
He spoke in Ethsharitic; Valder relaxed somewhat and looked the old man
over.
He was short and scrawny, with unkempt white hair hacked off raggedly at
shoulder length and a messy beard. The gray robe he wore was clean but badly
worn, with faded patches at each elbow and faint stains here and there. The
pointed gray hat had fallen unnoticed to the ground when its owner arose. A
rope belt encircled his waist and carried a large leather pouch on one side, a
sheathed dagger on the other, where it had been hidden from Valder before; the
old man's right hand rested on the hilt of the knife. His feet were bare, his
eyes wide, and his mouth open with surprise.
He did not look dangerous, despite the dagger; for one thing, the weapon
was still sheathed, where an experienced fighter would have drawn it
automatically. Valder guessed the man to be a hermit, someone who hadn't seen
another human being in years. His amazement at Valder's presence was very
evident.
"I'm lost and alone," Valder replied.
The old man stared at him for a moment, then called, "Didn't ask that."
He sounded peevish; his surprise was fading into irritation at Valder's
intrusion.
"I'm a soldier; I got separated from my unit. You don't expect me to give
my name, do you? For all I know you're an enemy magician; if I tell you my
name, you might have power over me."
The old man squinted, nodded an acknowledgment of the truth of Valder's
words, and then motioned with his left hand for Valder to approach. His right
hand remained on the hilt of his knife. "Come here, soldier," he said.
With his own right hand on the hilt of his sword, Valder made his way
through a few feet of grass and several yards of mud and reeds and eventually
splashed up out of the marsh onto the little island of dry ground surrounding
the hut. He stood waiting while the old man looked him over carefully. As he
waited, he remembered the three northerners somewhere behind him and
suppressed an urge to tell the old man to hurry up; there was no need to
frighten him yet.
"Ethsharitic, hah?" the old man said at last.
"Yes. Scout First Class, with the Western Command under General Gor."
"What are you doing out here, then? Nothing to scout around here." Before
Valder could reply, he added with sudden harshness, "Isn't any fighting around
here, is there?"
"I got cut off from my unit, far south of here, and got chased north. The
fighting is still a long way off. I thought maybe you could help me -- loan me
a boat or something."
"Maybe I can. No boat, but come in and tell me about it and we'll see."
He gestured and led the way into the hut.
Valder smiled. The old man's face was as easy to read as a baby's. He had
obviously forgotten how to control or conceal his emotions after being alone
for so long; Valder had plainly seen his initial surprise and confusion turn
first to annoyance at this unexpected disruption of his routine and then to
eager curiosity. Valder could not be sure, but he guessed the old man was also
eager for a little human companionship. Even a hermit might get lonely
eventually.
He followed the old man into the hut, ducking his head to clear the low
doorframe.
CHAPTER 2
As they stepped inside, the old man asked, "You want something to eat?"
"No," Valder answered tersely.
The hermit paused and turned to look at him. "The old bloodstone charm?
Spell of Sustenance, that one?"
Reluctantly, Valder nodded. He hadn't expected the old man to guess the
reason for his abstinence so readily. If any food or drink were to pass his
lips, or even if he salivated too much, the spell would be broken and he would
need to forage or carry supplies like any ordinary wanderer; accepting
anything from the hermit was therefore out of the question. Unfortunately, the
old man now knew that Valder carried a bloodstone, which, although not exactly
a fortune in gems, was a fairly rare and precious item, particularly in this
northern wilderness so far from the mines of Akalla.
The old man obviously had some acquaintance with magic, as Valder had
suspected, to realize so quickly why a weary traveler might refuse an offer of
food.
Then the hermit stepped aside and opened the shutters, allowing his guest
a good look at the hut's interior, and Valder knew that his host had far more
than a passing acquaintance with magic.
The basic furnishings were simple and practical. A bed consisting of a
mattress, pillow, and furs lay against the base of one wall; a table against
another wall held a basin, pitcher, and assorted pots, pans, and kitchen
implements. A cozy wicker armchair stood beside the table and a large wooden
chest that could serve as either another chair or a low table was nearby.
Those were the only ordinary furniture, but the remaining space was by no
means empty. Shelves and cabinets lined every wall, and free-standing sets of
shelves occupied much of the floor. Every shelf and cabinet was crammed to
overflowing with bottles, jars, boxes, vials, and bizarre paraphernalia. It
was obvious why the hermit had been able to identify the Spell of Sustenance
so easily.
"You're a wizard, aren't you?" Valder said. Only a wizard had any use for
such things as mummified bats and bottled organs, so far as Valder was aware.
Sorcery, witchcraft, demonology, and theurgy all had their own ceremonial
trappings, but those were not among them.
The old man glanced at the cluttered shelves as he sank into the wicker
chair. "Yes, I am," he said. "Are you?"
"No," Valder answered, "I'm just a soldier."
"You've got that spell."
"They issue that to any scout who's going out on patrol for more than a
day and a night." He looked around again, impressed by the arcane bric-a-brac.
"Sit down," the hermit said, pointing at the wooden chest. "Sit down, and
tell me what's happening in the world."
Valder's feet were tired and sore -- in fact, his entire body was tired
and sore. He settled gratefully onto the wooden trunk, allowing himself to
forget momentarily that he had no time to rest while the northerners were
after him. His boots made a wet squeaking as his weight was removed.
"Get those off," the wizard said. "I'll light a fire and you can dry them
out. And I'm hungry, even if you can't eat; I don't use that charm if I can
help it. It wears you down if you keep it going too long, you know; it can
ruin your health. If you don't think the smell will break the enchantment, I'm
going to make my dinner."
"A fire would be wonderful," Valder said, reaching down to remove his
boots. "Please don't let me interfere; you go right ahead and eat."
As he pulled off his second boot, however, he suddenly remembered his
pursuers. They might, he realized, arrive at any moment, if he had not lost
them by entering the marsh. "Ah... Wizard?" he asked, "Do you speak the
northern tongue?"
The sun had set and the light was beginning to fade; the old man was
lighting a fish-oil lamp with a flame that sprang from the tip of his finger.
When the wick was alight, he curled his finger into his palm, snuffing the
flame, and turned to look at his guest. "No," he said. "Haven't needed it.
Why?"
"Because there's a northern patrol after me. I should have told you
sooner. They spotted me four days ago and have been following ever since.
There are three of them; one's a sorcerer, and at least one is shatra."
"You led them here!" The old man's voice became a screech.
"Well, I'm not sure of that. I may have lost them. I'm hoping they
wouldn't expect me to try and cross the marsh and that their trackers, if they
have any, can't follow me across water. If you could speak their language, I
was hoping you could convince them that I'm not here; after all, this far
north, one of their people would be just as likely as one of ours, even out
here on the coast. If you hadn't spoken Ethsharitic when I hailed you, I
wouldn't have known which side you were on and I might have gone around you.
Maybe you can convince them that I did go around."
"I wish I hadn't spoken Ethsharitic! I don't know any of their speech; I
can't fool them for a minute. I came out here to get away from the war, damn
it, not to get tangled up with shatra!"
"I wondered why you were here. Well, if you deserted, here's a chance to
get yourself a pardon; just help me get away from these three."
"I didn't..."
A voice called from outside, and the wizard stopped abruptly in
mid-sentence. The call was in the harsh northern tongue.
"Oh, damn it!" the hermit said. He reached for a thick leather-bound book
on one of the nearby shelves.
"Look, I'll see if I can slip out and lead them away," Valder said,
suddenly contrite. "I never meant to get anyone else into trouble." As he
spoke he got to his feet, leaving his boots behind and stumbling toward the
doorway. The wizard ignored him, fully occupied as he was in pawing
desperately through the fat, leather-bound volume and muttering to himself.
Valder leaned out the door, then jumped back in as a streak of red flame
flashed past, tearing through the twilight inches from his face.
Seconds later, three sharp smacks sounded, followed by an instant of
uncanny whistling screams as sorcerous projectiles tore across the interior of
the hut at roughly the level of a man's chest, narrowly missing Valder's arm
as he fell back. The sound ended in a second three-part snap as they exited
through the north wall.
Not quite sure how he got there, Valder found himself sprawled on the
hard-packed dirt of the hut floor. He looked up and realized that the wizard
was still standing, book in hand, staring nonplussed at the holes in his wall.
"Get down, wizard!" Valder called.
The wizard still stood motionless.
Concerned, Valder shouted, "Are you all right?"
"What?" The magician stirred uncertainly.
"Wizard, I think you had better get down, quickly; they're certain to try
again."
"Oh." Slowly, the wizard sank to his hands and knees, keeping the book
nearby. "What was that?" he asked, staring at the holes.
"I don't know," Valder answered. "Some damned northern sorcery."
The wizard peered at the soldier in the dim light of the flickering
fish-oil lamp and the last gray twilight; his scraggly beard almost reached
the floor, and his robe was bunched up around him, revealing bony ankles.
"Sorcery? I don't know any sorcery."
"Neither do I," Valder replied. "But they do." He jerked a thumb at the
south wall.
The wizard looked at the three entry holes. A wisp of smoke trailed up
from a book that had been pierced by one; the other two had gone through jars,
strewing shards of glass. "Protections," he said. "We need protections, ones
that will work against sorcery." He began desperately turning pages in his
book.
Valder watched him warily. No new assault had immediately followed the
projectiles, and that seemed like a good sign. The northerners might be
waiting for someone to move and provide them with a target, he thought. If so,
they would have a good long wait; he was not that foolish.
The wizard stopped, slammed a hand down on the open book, and looked at
Valder, anger and fear on his face. "What were those things?" he asked. "I
have to know what I'm defending against."
"I don't know what those things that came through the wall were, but I
know what sent them. I told you, a northern patrol is after me. Shatra -- you
know what shatra are, don't you?"
"I'm not a fool, soldier; shatra are demon warriors."
"More or less; they look like men, but fight like demons."
"Damn you, soldier, I came here to get away from the war!" the wizard
burst out.
"You told me that. Tell them that; maybe they won't bother you. I doubt
they have anything against Ethsharitic deserters."
"You have no call to insult me; I am not a deserter. I was never
enlisted. I served my apprenticeship under a civilian advisor, not a combat
wizard, and worked thirty years as an advisor myself before I retired and came
out here to do my own research."
"Research?" Valder ducked his head instinctively as another projectile
whistled through the hut; this one entered through an open window and departed
through a box of gray-brown powder, leaving a slowly settling cloud of dust
hanging in the air above them. "You mean magical research?"
"Yes, magical research." He waved a hand in the direction of the nearest
jam-packed shelves.
"Oh." Valder stared at the old man. "And I thought you were a coward,
hiding out here! I apologize, wizard, for wronging you. You've got far more
courage than I do if you've been experimenting in wizardry."
"Oh, it's not that bad," the wizard replied modestly, brushing at the
dust that had settled on his sleeve and open book.
"I've heard that the life expectancy of a research wizard is just
twenty-three working days," Valder argued.
"Oh, but that's for military research! I don't do anything like that --
no flame spells or death-runes or juggernauts. I've been working with
animations and I've been very careful. Besides, I use a lot of protective
spells. That's what most of this book is. They were my old master's
specialty."
"Protective spells?"
"Yes, of course."
"Have you got spells there that will stop those three?"
"I don't know. Look, soldier, you must know what wizardry is like; it's
tricky, unreliable stuff, and there's no telling what a new spell will do --
if it does anything at all. I haven't gotten any of the results I wanted in my
research so far. I've come up with some interesting things, but I don't know
what will work against shatra. Demons aren't like men or beasts, and shatra
are half demon, aren't they? I've got a spell here that may help us; it's not
much, but it's the best I could find in a hurry that won't take more time than
we've got or ingredients I don't have. It's an aversion charm." He rose to his
knees and snatched a jar and a small wooden box from a low shelf.
Valder paused and listened before replying, then said, "I hope you can do
it fast, wizard; I hear something moving out there."
The hermit paused, a pinch of malodorous green powder in one hand. "I
don't hear..." he began.
The rest of his words were lost in a whooshing roar as the roof of the
hut vanished in a ball of flame. Blinking and shielding his eyes against the
sudden glare, Valder grabbed one of the old man's bony arms and dragged him
unceremoniously across the dirt floor, keeping his head low and dodging scraps
of flaming debris that spattered down on all sides.
The wizard flung the powder across both of them, gestured with his free
hand, and said something incomprehensible. Something flashed pale blue where
the powder fell, cool against the orange blaze of burning thatch; the old man
grabbed at the knife on his belt and yelled, "The door is the other way!"
"I know," Valder shouted back over the roar of the flames. "That's why
we're going this way! They're probably waiting out front!" With his left hand
still locked around the old man's wrist, Valder drew his sword with his right
and jabbed at the back wall above the wizard's bedding.
As he had thought, the smooth coating was a thin layer of baked mud, and
the wall itself just bundled reeds; the mud broke away easily, allowing him to
hack an opening through the dried reeds with his blade. A moment later the two
men were outside, tumbling down into the brackish water of the marsh; the
wizard spluttered angrily while Valder scanned the surrounding area for the
enemy.
Someone was visible off to the left; Valder whispered in the old man's
ear, "Lie still."
The hermit started to protest; Valder jabbed him with the hilt of his
sword.
"No, listen," the wizard insisted, "I have a spell that can help here."
Valder glanced at the shadowy figure of the enemy soldier, standing well
back and apparently unaware of their presence, and then at the blazing fury of
the thatch roof. "Go ahead," he said. "But hurry, and keep it quiet."
The wizard nodded, splashing, then drew his dagger and stabbed the back
of Valder's hand.
"What the hell..." The soldier snatched his hand away; the wound was only
a scratch, but it hurt.
"I need a little of your blood," the wizard explained.
He smeared a streak of blood along Valder's forearm, dabbed a few drops
on the soldier's face and neck, then pricked his own arm and distributed a
little of his own blood similarly on himself.
Behind them, the fire was eating its way down the walls of the wizard's
hut, lighting the surrounding circle of marsh a vivid orange, its reflections
in the murky water a labyrinth of flame. Valder knew that somewhere in the
blackness beyond the illuminated area the northerners were watching; he could
not see them anymore, as the fire's glow kept his eyes from adapting
sufficiently to the dark, and nothing at all remained of his night-sight
spell. He wished that he had one of the sorcerers' masks that the enemy used
for night vision; they were awkward to wear and carry, but they seemed never
to wear out the way wizard-sight did.
The old man was muttering an incantation, working his wizardry, whatever
it was. Valder wondered, as he had before, why Ethshar used wizardry so much
more than the Empire did and sorcery so much less. This difference in magical
preferences was hardly a new question; he and his comrades had mulled it over
dozens of times back in camp. Everybody knew that the Empire used demonology
and Ethshar used theurgy, but that just made sense, since the gods were on
Ethshar's side, and the demons on the Empire's. Wizardry and sorcery seemed to
have no such inherent bias, yet a northern wizard was rare indeed, and
southern sorcerers almost as scarce. Neither side, it seemed, got much use
from witchcraft, and that was another mystery.
He peered out at the surrounding gloom and again spotted the northerner
he had seen before, at the very edge of the circle of light. That, Valder
thought, was probably the one who had ignited the hut. He was slowly circling
closer to the burning structure, obviously looking for any sign that his
intended victims had escaped. Valder could make out one of the intricate metal
wands used by combat sorcerers cradled in the northerner's arms; he gave up
any thought of fighting the man on even terms and perhaps killing him before
his companions could arrive. One of those wands could rip a man to pieces
almost instantaneously, from a dozen paces away.
Something exploded with a bang and a tinkling of glass somewhere inside
the flaming hut, and Valder remembered the shelves and cabinets crowded with
jars and boxes. He guessed that several more would probably explode when the
flames reached them.
The northerner turned at the sound, wand held ready, and Valder looked
desperately for some way to take advantage of the instant of surprise. He
found none.
If the man came closer, Valder estimated, ambush was a possibility; at
close enough range, sorcery would be no better than a sword, and a knife might
be better than either. Thinking of the wizard's dagger, he realized that the
sound of the old man's incantation had stopped. That reminded him of the drawn
blood, and he glanced at his injured hand.
His mouth fell open in horror; instead of a simple scratch, he saw the
flesh laid open to the bone, blood spilling out thickly, as if half-congealed.
When his jaw fell, more blood poured out, running down his beard and into the
mud -- yet he felt no pain save for a slight twinge in his hand.
Confused and frightened, he looked at the wizard and shrank back
involuntarily; the old man was obviously horribly dead. His skin was
corpse-white, splotched with cyanotic blue-gray, and blood dribbled from his
nose and mouth. His arm was a mangled ruin, and his throat cut open clear to
his spine.
"Gods!" Valder gasped. The spell must have gone wrong, he thought; he had
heard of spells backfiring. Backfires were what made magical research so
deadly.
The old man smiled, his expression unspeakably hideous through the
half-dried blood. "The Sanguinary Deception," he whispered. "Looks awful,
doesn't it?"
"You're alive?" Valder had difficulty accepting it, despite the old man's
movement and speech.
"Of course I'm alive. So are you, and you probably look worse than I do.
It's a simple trick, but effective; doesn't the army use it any more?"
"I don't know," Valder said, staring in fascination at the hermit.
"Well, it's a good trick, and if they aren't using it, they're fools.
Now, shut up and lie still, and they'll think we're dead."
Valder stared at the old man for another second, then slumped back and
did his best to look dead.
Something else shattered amid the flames, and a loud clatter followed;
Valder guessed that a shelf had given way, spilling its entire contents. He
stole a glance at the hermit and saw that the old man was no longer smiling at
his ruse; instead his face was contorted with anger and pain at the
destruction of his home and his work.
From the corner of one eye Valder noticed the northerner doing something
with his wand, perhaps making a mystical gesture or perhaps only adjusting
something; then he lifted it to chest height and pointed it at the fiery
remains of the hut. Red streaks of light scarred the air, etching themselves
into Valder's vision, and the burning ruin fell inward all at once with a
roar, collapsing into a smoldering heap less than two feet high.
A seething hiss sounded.
The northerner did something else to his wand and pointed it again;
something seemed to leap from the wand to the wreckage. With a white flash and
a sound like tearing metal, the smoldering heap vanished in a shower of
burning fragments, leaving only a crater.
For several seconds lumps of hot mud and burning reeds splashed into the
marsh around the two fugitives, sprinkling them liberally with salt water and
mud, but not actually striking either of them. It seemed to Valder that some
pieces actually dodged aside in mid-air in order to miss them. "That aversion
spell," the wizard whispered beside him.
After what seemed like hours, quiet and darkness descended again. Valder
lay absolutely still. For a long moment the only sound was the hissing of
burning debris as it was extinguished by the marsh; then a voice called out.
Valder could not understand the words. He whispered, "Do you know what he's
saying?"
"No," the old man answered. "I told you, I don't know their language."
Another voice called back to the first, and both laughed.
Then came the sound of feet slogging through the marsh with no attempt at
stealth.
"They must think we're dead," Valder whispered.
"That's the idea," the wizard replied.
They lay still as footsteps splashed about; when the sound stopped for a
moment Valder risked a glance and saw two of the northerners poking about the
smoking crater, carrying torches. One stopped, knelt, then stood, holding out
something for his companion to see. Valder squinted. He couldn't be sure, but
the object looked like a scorched bone.
The northerners exchanged a few words in their own language, and one gave
a short, unpleasant laugh, then glanced around at the surrounding marshland.
Valder froze. The northerner's eyes came to rest looking directly at the spot
where the two Ethsharites lay. The man called something to his companion, then
marched toward them, moving out of Valder's line of sight. Valder did not dare
to shift his eyes.
A moment later a boot splashed into the marsh beside him and a hand
gripped his hair and pulled him up. The pull hurt, but Valder kept himself
limp, refusing to react, playing dead. Blood dripped from his beard.
He toyed briefly with the idea of pulling his knife and taking the
northerner by surprise, but the sorcerer was waiting, watching from the rim of
the crater, and Valder did not think much of the idea of suicide, even when
taking an enemy with him. He had too much to live for. He hung limp in the
northerner's grasp.
Then the man dropped him, and he fell heavily to the mud; the side of his
face stung with the impact, but he kept still.
摘要：

THEMISENCHANTEDSWORDbyLAWRENCEWATT-EVANS(1985)[VERSION1.1(Oct0303).Ifyoufindandcorrecterrorsinthetext,pleaseupdatetheversionnumberby0.1andredistribute.]DedicatedtoRichardEvanReisandtheoldgangatP.I.C.PARTONEWirikidorCHAPTER1Themarshstank,withasharp,brinystenchthatseemedtofillValder'shead.Hestaredouta...

展开>> 收起<<
Lawrence Watt-Evans - Ethshar 1 - The Misenchanted Sword.pdf

共134页,预览27页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：134 页 大小：376.67KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-23

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 动力学连接体 力的合成 配电装置 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 134
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注