Fred Saberhagen - Swords 01 - The First Book of Swords

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The First Book of Swords

by Fred Saberhagen

Version 1.0

PROLOGUE

In what felt to him like the first cold morning of the world,

he groped for fire.

It was a high place where he searched, a lifeless, wind-scoured

place, a rough, forbidding shelf of black and splintered rock.

Snow, driven by squalls of frigid air, streamed across the black

rock in white powder, making shifting veils of white over layers

of gray ancient ice that was almost as hard as the rock itself.

Dawn was in the sky, but still hundreds of kilometers away, as

distant as the tiny sawteeth of the horizon to the northwest. The

snowfields and icefields along that far edge of the world were

beginning to glow with a reflected pink.

Ignoring cold and wind, and mumbling to himself, the

searcher paced in widening circles on his high rugged shelf of

land. One of his powerful legs was

deformed, enough to make him limp. He was searching for

warmth, and for the smell of sulphur in the air, for anything that

might lead him to the fire he needed. But his sandalled feet were

too leathery and unfeeling to feel warmth directly through the

rocks, and the wind whipped away the occasional traces of

volcanic fumes.

Presently the searcher concentrated his attention on the

places where rock protruded through the rough skin of ice.

When he found a notable bare spot, he kicked; stamped with his

hard heels, at the ice around its rim, watching critically as the ice

shattered. Yes, here was a place where the frost was a trifle less

hard, the grip of cold just a little weaker. Somewhere down

below was warmth. And warmth meant, ultimately, fire.

Looking for a way down to the mountains heart, the searcher

moved in a swift limp around one of its shoulders. He had

guessed right; before him now loomed a great crevice, exhaling a

faintly sulphurous atmosphere, descending between guardian

rocks. He went straight to that hard-lipped mouth, but just as he

entered it he paused, looking up at the sky and once more

muttering something to himself. The sky, brightening with the

impending dawn, was almost entirely clear, flecked in the

distance with scattered clouds. At the moment it conveyed no

messages.

The searcher plunged down into the crevice, which quickly

narrowed to a few meters wide. Grunting, making up new

words to groan with as he squeezed through, he steadily

descended. He was sure now that the fire he needed was down

here, not very far away. When he had gone down only a little

way he could already begin to hear the dragon-roar of its voice,

as it came scorching up through some natural chimney nearby to

ultimately emerge he knew not where. So he continued to work

his way toward the sound, moving

among a tumble of house-sized boulders that had been thrown

here like children's blocks an age ago when some upper cornice

of the mountain had collapsed.

At last the searcher found the roaring chimney, and squeezed

himself close enough to reach in a hand and sample the feeling of

the fire when it came up in its next surge. It was good stuff this

flame, with its origin even deeper in the earth than he had

hoped. A better fire than he could reasonably have expected to

find, even for such fine work as he had now to do.

Having found his fire, he climbed back to the windblasted

surface and the dawn. At the rear of the high shelf of rock, right

against the face of the next ascending cliff, was a place

somewhat sheltered from the wind. Here he now decided to put

the forge. The chosen site was a recess, almost a cave, a natural

grotto set into the cliff that towered tremendously higher yet:

Out of this cave and around it, more fissurechimneys were

splintered into the black basalt of the face, chimneys through

which nothing now rose but the cold howling wind, drifting a

little snow. The searcher's next task was to bring the earthfire

here somehow, in a form both physically and magically

workable; the work he had to do with the fire meant going

deeply into both those aspects of the world. He could see now

that he would have to transport and rebuild the fire in earth-

grown wood-that would mean another delay, here on the

treeless. roof of the world. But minor delays were unimportant,

compared with the requirement of doing the job right.

From the corner of his eye, as he stood contemplating his

selected forge-site, he caught sight of powers that raced airborne

across a far corner of the dawn. He turned his head, to see in the

distant sky a flickering of colors, lights that were by turns foul

and gentle. Probably, he thought to himself, they are only at

some sport that has nothing at all to do with me or my

work. Yet he remained standing motionless, watching those sky-

colors and muttering to himself, until the flying powers were

gone, and he was once again utterly and absolutely alone.

Then he clambered down the surface of the barren

mountainside, moving methodically, moving swiftly and nimbly

despite one twisted leg. He continued going down for almost a

thousand meters, to the level where the highest real trees began

to grow. Having reached that level he paused briefly, regarding

the sky once more, scanning it in search of messages that did not

come. Wind, trapped and funneled here between the peaks,

blasted his hair and beard that were as thick and wild as fur,

whipped at his scorched garments of fur and leather, rattled the

dragonscales he wore as ornaments.

And now, suddenly, names began to come and go in his

awareness. It was as if he saw them flickering like those magical

powers that flew across the sky. He thought: I am called Vulcan.

I am the Smith. And he realized that descending even this

moderate distance from the upper heights had caused him to

start thinking in human language.

To get the size and quantity of logs he wanted for his fire, he

had to go a little farther down the slope. Still the highest human

settlements were considerably below him. The maplike spread of

farms and villages, the sight of a distant castle on a hill, all

registered in his perception, but only as background scenery with

no immediate significance. His mind was on the task of gathering

logs. Here, where the true forest started, finding logs was not

difficult, but they tended to be from twisted trees, awkwardly

shaped. It occurred to the Smith that an ax, some kind of

chopping tool, would be a handy thing to have for this part of

the job: but the only physical tools he had, besides his hands,

were those of his true art, and they were all back at the

site he'd chosen for his forge. His hands were all he really

needed, though, clumsy though they could sometimes be with

wood. If a log was too awkward, he simply broke it until it

wasn't. At last, with a huge bundle that even his arms could

scarcely clasp, he started back up the mountainside. His limp

was a little more noticeable now.

During his absence the anvil and all his other ancient metal-

working tools had arrived at the forge-site, and were dumped

therein glorious disorder. Vulcan put down his firewood, and

arranged everything in an orderly array around the exact place

where he had decided that the fire should be. When he had

finished, the sun was disappearing behind the east face of the

mountain that towered above his head.

Pausing briefly to survey what he had done so far, he puffed

his breath a little, as if he might be in need of rest. Now, to go

down into the earth and bring up fire. He was beginning to wish

he had some slaves on hand, helpers to handle some of these

time-consuming details. The hour was approaching when he

himself would have to concentrate almost entirely upon his real

work. He longed to see the metal glowing in the forge, and feel a

hammer in his hand.

Instead, gripping one five-meter log under his arm like a long

spear, he descended for the second time into the maze of

crevices that ran beneath the upper mountain. Through this

maze he worked his way back toward the place where fire and

thunder rose sporadically through convoluted chimneys. This

time he approached the place by a slightly different route, and

could see the reflected red glow of earthfire shining from ahead

to meet him. That glow when it encountered daylight seemed to

wink, as if in astonishment at having found this place of air so

different from the lower hell in which it had been born.

At one neck in this crevice the rocks on either side

pinched in too much to let pass the Smith and his log

together. He set down the log, and laid hands on the

rocks and raged at them. This was another kind of

work in which his hands were clumsy. Their enor-

mous hairless fingers, like his sandalled feet, were

splayed and leathery. His skin was everywhere gray,

the color of old smoke from a million forge-fires. Now,

with his effort against the rocks, the sandals on his

huge feet pressed down on other rocks, dug into pockets

of old drifted snow, crunched and shattered ancient

ice. Presently the rocks that had narrowed the crevice

gave way to the pressure of his hands, splitting and

booming and showering fragments.

With a satisfied grunt, Vulcan the Smith took up his

log again. One final time he paused, looking up at

what could be seen from here of the day's clear sky-

only a narrow tracery of blue. Then he went quickly

on his way.

When he pushed one end of his log into the roaring

chimney, the earthfire caught promptly and deeply in

the wood. The log became a blazing torch when the

Smith pulled it back from the inferno-fissure and tossed

it spinning in the shadowed air. Its rosin popped and

snapped with hot, perfumed combustion. Vulcan

laughed, pleased with the forge-fire he had caught;

then he tucked the log under his arm and quickly

climbed again.

He built up his forge-fire quickly on the spot he had

prepared for it. Now his anvil, a tabletop of ancient

and enchanted iron, had to be positioned levelly and

solidly in just the right spot relative to the fire. This

took time. As he worked with the anvil, adjusting its

position in small increments, the Smith decided that

he'd have to make at least one more trip downslope for

fuel before he'd be able to start his real work. After

he'd begun that in earnest, he'd want no interruptions.

His eye fell on the waiting bellows. The sight made

him frown. Yes, it would be very good, perhaps

essential, to have some helpers.

The more he thought about it the more obvious it

seemed. Yes, human help would be necessary at some

stage, given the peculiar nature of this job. He now

had earthfire burning in earth-grown wood, with the

clean upper air of earth to lend its spirit to the flame.

Opposed to this, in a sense, was the unearthly metal

that he was going to work. At one side of the grotto,

sky-iron waited, a lump of it the size of a barrow. It

was so heavy that the Smith grunted when he took it

up into his arms to look it over carefully. He could feel

the interior energies of it waiting, poised in their crys-

talline layers, eager to be shaped by his art. He could

feel the ethereal, unearthly magic of the stuff-yes,

even crude-looking as it was, slagged and pitted on all

sides by the soft fist of air that had caught and eased

the madness of its fall, slowing the fall until mere

crashing instead of vaporization had resulted when

the mass struck earthly rock at last. Yes, the metal

itself would bring enough, maybe more than enough,

of the unearthly to the project.

Human sweat and human pain were going to be

indispensible. The catalyst of human fear would help

to refine the magic too. And even human joy might be

put to use-if the Smith could devise any means by

which that rare essence might be extracted.

And when the twelve blades had been forged at last,

when he could raise them straight and glowing from

the anvil-why, for their quenching, human blood

would doubtless be best . . .

The keening pipe-music and the slow drum were

borne to Mala's ears by the cool night breeze, well

before the few dim lights of Treefall village came into

her view between the trees ahead. The sounds of

mourning warned her that at least some part of the

horrible tale that had reached her at home was proba-

bly true. She murmured one more distracted prayer to

Ardneh, and once again impatiently lashed with the

ends of the reins at the flanks of the old riding-beast

she straddled. Her mount was an elderly creature,

unused to such harsh treatment, and to long night

journeys in general. When it felt the sting of the reins

it skipped a step, then slowed down in irritation. Mala

in her impatience thought of leaping from its back and

running on ahead, groping her own way along the

lightless and unpaved road. But already she had almost

reached her destination; now she could hear the cack-

ling of the village fowl ahead as they sensed her

approach. And now the first lighted windows were

coming into view amid the trees.

Presently, on a main street every bit as small and

narrow as the only street of her own town, Mala was

dismounting under a million stars, whose light made

gray and ghostly giants of the Ludus Mountains loom-

ing just a few kilometers to the east. Autumn nights in

this high country grew cold, and she was wearing a

shawl over her regular garb, a workingwoman's home-

spun trousers and loose blouse.

The music of mourning was coming from a building

that had to be the village hall, for it was the largest

structure in sight, and one of the few lighted. Mala

tied up her animal at a public hitching rack that was

already crowded. Moving lightly, though her joints felt

stiff from the long ride, she trotted the few steps to the

hall. Her hair was long, dark, and curly, the loveliest

thing about her physical appearance. Her face was

somewhat too broad to be judged beautiful by most

peoples standards; her body also was broad and strong,

vibrant with youth and exercise.

Her quick step carried her onto the shadowed porch

of the hall before she realized that a man was standing

there already. He was in shadows, not far from the

curtained doorway through which candlelight and music

came out, along with the murmur of many voices and

the soft thump of dancing feet. His bearded face was

unfamiliar to Mala, but he had a certain look of

importance; he must, she thought, be one of the elders

here.

To simply rush past an elder without acknowledg-

ing his presence would have been impolite, and Mala

halted, one foot in the shadow cast by the rising

moon. "Sir, please, can you tell me where Jord the

blacksmith is?" Since courtesy required speech of her,

she would not waste the words. but instead try to use

them to accomplish her urgent search.

The man did not answer her immediately. Instead,

he only looked in her direction as if he had not clearly

heard, or understood. As he turned his face more fully

toward Mala, she saw that he was stunned by some

great pain or grief.

She spoke to him again. "I'm looking for Jord, the

smith. We were-we are to be married:"

Understanding grew in the tormented face. "lord?

He still breathes, child. Not like my son-but both of

them are in there."

Mala put aside the curtain of hides that half-closed

the doorway, and went through, to enter the most

crowded room that she had ever seen in her seventeen

years of life. She guessed wildly that forty people,

perhaps even more, were gathered here in one place

tonight. Yet the hall was big enough for the crowd,

even big enough to have at its center a sizable area free

of crowding. In that central area stood five rude biers,

each covered with black fabric, expensive candles burn-

ing at the head and foot of each. On each bier a dead

man lay draped with ritual cloths; on several of the

bodies the cloths were not enough to hide the marks of

violence.

Near the foot of the central bier was a single chair.

Jord was sitting in it. Mala's first glance at him made

her gasp, confirming as it did another aspect of the

eU story that had reached her in her own village: the

right arm of her betrothed now ended a few centi-

meters below the shoulder. The stump was tightly

wrapped, in fresh, well-tended bandages, lightly spot-

ted with the bleeding from beneath. Jord's beard-

stubbled face was aged and shrunken, making him

look in Mala's eyes like his own father. In his light hair

there was a gray streak that she had never noticed

before. His blue eyes were downcast, staring almost

witlessly at the plank floor, and the dancers' feet that

trod it slowly a pace or two away from him. The ring

of village women who danced so slowly to the dirge

went round the biers and chair, their feet hitting the

floor softly in time to the drum, slow-beaten back in

the rear of the large hall.

And outside the dancing ring, the other mourners-

yes, there might really be forty of them-mingled and

socialized, wept, joked, chatted, prayed, ate and drank,

meditated or wailed in loss just as their spirits moved

them, each in his or her own cycle of behavior. There

was a priest of Ardneh, recognizable by his white suit,

comforting an old woman who shrieked above all

other sounds her agony of grief. Most of the crowd

looked like folk of this village, as was only natural-

the story had said that all the dead men were from

here, as was Jord. Mala could recognize some of the

faces in the crowd, from her earlier visits here to meet

Jord and his kinfolk. But most of the people were

unknown to her, and a few of them were dressed

outlandishly, as if they might have come from far

away.

Still standing near the doorway, looking over shoul-

ders and between shifting bodies, Mala breathed a

prayer of thanksgiving to Ardneh for Jord's survival;

and yet, even as she prayed, she felt a new pang of

inner anguish. The man she was going to marry had

been changed, drastically and terribly, before she had

ever had the chance to know him in his full health and

strength and youth. Then as if trying to reject that

thought she tried to step forward, meaning to hurry to

Jord at once. But the thick press of bodies held her

back.

At this moment she had the impression of an odd,

momentary pause in the room-but it must have been

only a seeming in her mind, she was not used to

crowds, and when she looked at the faces in the crowd

around her they were all doing just what they had

been doing a moment earlier. But in that moment of

pause, the hide curtain draping the doorway behind

Mala had been put aside by someone else's hand.

Amid the din of music and grief and conversation

there was no way she could have heard that soft

movement, but she did feel the suddenly augmented

breath of the cold wind that at night here slid down

from the mountains.

And then in the next .moment a man's hand came to

rest on Mala s arm-not insinuatingly, not harshly

either, but just as if it had a right to be there, like the

hand of a father or an uncle. But he was none of those.

His face was entirely concealed by a mask, made of

what looked like dark, tooled leather. The mask sur-

prised Mala, but only for a moment. A few times in

her life before, at wakes and funerals, she had seen

men wearing masks. The explanation was that feuds

could be exacerbated, friendships and alliances some-

times strained, if a man whose opinion mattered were

seen to be mourning openly for the enemy of a friend

or ally; while at the same time, some conflicting rule

of conduct might require him to do so. A mask allowed

its wearer's identity to be ignored by those who did

not wish to know it, even if it were not really kept a

secret.

The masked man was somewhat on the short side,

and well enough dressed in simple clothing. And Mala

thought that he was young. "What has happened,

Mala?" His voice, close to her ear, was almost a whisper.

He knew her; so he was most likely some distant

relative of Jord's. Or, thought Mala, noting the short

sword at his belt, he might even be some minor lord or

knight, one who had perhaps at some time been served

by Jord as smith or armorer.

And the masked man must have come here from

some distance, and must have just arrived, not to

know already what had happened. In the face of such

ignorance Mala stumbled over words, not so much

trying to repeat the story as she had heard it as trying

to find some reasonable explanation of the horror. But

an explanation was hard to find.

She tried: "They . . . all six of them . . . they were

called by a god to go up on the mountain. Then... "

"Which god's call did they follow?" The quiet voice

was not surprised by talk of gods; it wanted to nail

down the facts.

One of the men who had been standing in front of

Mala, unintentionally blocking her path to Jord, turned

round at that. "They answered Vulcan's call. No doubt

about it, the god chose them himself. I heard him-so

did half the village-more than half. Vulcan himself

came down here from the mountain in the night and

called the six men out by name. The rest of us just lay

low in our beds, I can tell you. Next day, when none of

the six had come back yet, we gathered here in the hall

and wondered. The women kept egging us on to find

out what had happened, and eventually some of us

started climbing . . . it wasn't pretty, what we found

there, I can tell you."

"And what," the masked man asked, "if they had

chosen not to follow Vulcans call?" The light in the

hall was too uncertain, the shadows too heavy, for

Mala to be able to tell if his hands looked like those of

a worker or of a man highborn. The hair emerging

from his jacket's cowl was dark, with a hint of curl,

giving no clue about his station. Perhaps it was this

very indeterminateness in his appearance that first

raised in Mala s mind a suspicion that seemed to come

out of nowhere: I wonder if this could be the Duke

himself. Mala had never actually seen the Duke, but

like thousands of his other subjects who had not seen

him either she knew, or thought she knew, certain

things about him. One of the most intriguing of these

things was that he was supposed to go out in disguise

from time to time, adventuring and spying among his

people. According to other information, he was still a

relatively young man; and it was also said that he was

physically rather small.

Jord, Mala thought, might have worked for the Duke

at one time. Or some of the dead men on the biers

might have. That could explain why the Duke had

shown up here tonight . . . she told herself that she

was making things up, but still . . . there were some

stories told about the Duke's cruelty, on occasion, but

then, Mala supposed, such stories were told about

almost all powerful folk. Even if they were true, she

thought, they didn't preclude the possibility that Duke

Fraktin might sometimes take a benevolent interest in

these poor outlying villages of his domain.

The solid citizen who had turned round to speak

was plainly not entertaining any such exalted idea of

the masked man's identity. Instead, he was looking

him over as if not much impressed with what he saw,

small sword or not. The citizen snorted lightly at the

masked man's question, and shook his head. "When a

god calls, who's going to stop and argue? If you want

to know more about it, better ask Jord."

Jord had not noticed Mala yet. The brawny, young-

old man with one arm and one bandaged stump still

sat on his chair where ritual had placed him, almost

as if he were one of the dead himself.

Mala heard the solid citizen saying: "His arm's still

up there on the mountain, but he brought his pay for it

back with him." Without trying to understand what

this might mean, she pushed her way between the

intervening bodies and ran to Jord. Inside the slow

ring of dancers, Mala went down on one knee before

the man she had pledged to marry, clutching at his

one hand and at his knees, trying to explain how-sorry

she was for what had happened to him, and how she

had come to him as quickly as she could when the

news of the horror reached her.

At first Jord said nothing in return, but only looked

at Mala as if from a great distance. Gradually more

life returned to his face and in a little while he spoke.

Later. Mala was never able to remember exactly what

either of them said in this first exchange, but after-

wards Jord could weep for his friends' lives and his

own loss, and Mala was able to comfort him. Mean-

while the dancing and feverish festivity went on, punc-

tuated only by outbursts of grief. Looking back toward

the entrance from her place near the center of the hall,

Mala caught one more glimpse, between bodies, of the

man in the tooled leather mask.

"All will be well yet, lass," Jord was able to say at

last. "Gods, but it's good to have you here to hug!"

And as Mala stood beside him he gripped her fiercely

around the hips with a huge, one-armed blacksmith's

hug. "I'm not yet destroyed. I've been thinking it out.

I'll sell the smithy here and buy a mill elsewhere.

There's one in Arin I can get . . . if I hire a helper or

two, I can run a mill with one hand."

Mala said things expressing agreement, trying to

sound encouraging. Closing her eyes, she hoped devoutly

that it would be so. She told herself that when Jord

healed he'd be a young man again, and he'd regain

some part of his old strength. Being wed to a one-

armed man would not be so bad if he were still a man

of property . . . and now two small children, widower

Jord's by his previous marriage, came out of the crowd

to lean possessively against their father's legs, and

distract Mala from her other cares by staring at her.

The hands of the small boy, Kenn, began to play

absently with the rough cloth wrapping a long, thin

object that stood leaning against his father's chair.

Mala, without really giving it thought, had assumed

this object was some kind of aid provided for the

crippled man, a crutch or possibly a stretcher. Now

that she really looked at the bundle she could see that

it was certainly not long enough for either. Nor was

there any obvious reason for a crutch or a stretcher to

be wrapped up; nor, for that matter, did it appear that

Jord would be likely to benefit from either one.

Jord saw what she was looking at. "My pay," he

said. Gently he eased his son's small hands from the

wrapped thing. "Not yours yet, Kenn. In time, in time.

Not yours to have to worry about, Marian." And with

a huge finger he brushed his tiny daughter's cheek.

Then he grabbed the upper end of the bundle firmly in

his large fist, and raised it in the air and shook it, so

that the rough wrappings fell free except where his

grip had caught them. People on all sides were turning

to look. The blade was a full meter long, and straight

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TheFirstBookofSwordsbyFredSaberhagenVersion1.0PROLOGUEInwhatfelttohimlikethefirstcoldmorningoftheworld,hegropedforfire.Itwasahighplacewherehesearched,alifeless,wind-scouredplace,arough,forbiddingshelfofblackandsplinteredrock.Snow,drivenbysquallsoffrigidair,streamedacrosstheblackrockinwhitepowder,mak...

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Fred Saberhagen - Swords 01 - The First Book of Swords

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