Fred Saberhagen - Swords 02 - The Second Book of Swords

VIP免费

2024-12-13 0 0 378.31KB 163 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

The Second Book of Swords

by Fred Saberhagen

Version 1.0

CHAPTER 1

Fire from the sky came thrusting down, a dazzling

crooked spear of white light that lived for an instant

only, long enough to splinter a lone tree at the jutting

edge of the seaside cliff. The impact beneath the howl-

ing darkness of the sky stunned eyes and ears alike.

Ben winced away from the blinding flash-too late, of

course, to do his shocked eyes any good-and turned

his gaze downward, trying to see the path again, to

find secure places to put down his sandaled feet. In

night and wind and rain it was hard to judge how far

away the stroke had fallen, but he could hope that the

next one would be farther off.

Ben's thick and powerful right arm was stretched

forward across the rump of one heavily burdened

loadbeast, his hand grasping the rope that bound the

panniers on the animal's back. Meanwhile his left

hand, extended backward, tugged hard on the reins of the

loadbeast reluctantly following.

The little packtrain was composed of six loadbeasts, along

with the six men who drove and led and cursed the animals

forward. A seventh animal, considerably more sleek and

graceful than the six that carried cargo, came a few meters

behind the train. It bore a seventh man, a cloaked and hooded

figure who rode with a cold, flameless Old World torch raised

in his right hand. The torch shed an unflickering light through

wind and rain, projecting some of its rays far enough ahead to

give the train's drivers some hope of seeing where they were

going.

Like some odd crawling compound creature possessing

three dozen unsynchronized feet, the pack train groped and

struggled its way forward, following a mere sketch of a path

across the wild landscape. Ben was pushing the first animal

forward, more or less dragging the second after him, and

trying to soothe them both. Hours ago, at the beginning of

the trip, the drivers had been warned that tonight the usually

phlegmatic animals were likely to become skittish.

There would be dragon-scent about, the officer had said.

Another flash of lightning now, fortunately not quite as

close as the last one. For just an instant the rocky and

forsaken wilderness surrounding the small train was plain to

see, including the next few meters of the path ahead. Then

darkness closed in deeper than ever, bringing with it harder

rain. Its parts linked by the push and pull of human arms, the

beast with three dozen feet advanced, making slow progress

over the treacherous footing of rain-slicked rocks and yielding

sand. Meanwhile the wind howled continuously and the rain

assaulted everything.

Ahead of Ben, the soldier leading the first loadbeast was

wrapped and plastered like Ben himself in a soggy blue-gold

uniform cloak, with a useless helmet drizzling rain into his

eyes. Now Ben could hear him loudly calling down the doom

of demons and the wrath of gods upon this whole situation-

including the high functionaries whose idea it must have

been, and who were no doubt somewhere warm and dry

themselves this moment. The man was almost shouting,

having no fear that the priest-officer, Radulescu, who rode

behind the train, might be able to hear him above the wind.

The cold torchlight from behind suggested, and the next

flash of lightning proved, that the scanty path the train was

following was now about to veer sharply to the left. At the

same time, a large indentation in the line of the nearby cliffs

brought their potentially fatal edge sweeping in sharply

toward the path from that direction. Ben, not liking this sudden

proximity of the brink, leaned harder against the animal whose

rump his right arm was embracing. Using his great strength

and his considerable weight, he forced the beast a little farther

to the right. Now the packtrain was moving so close to the

cliff's edge that when the lightning flashed again it was

possible to look down and glimpse the pounding sea. Ben

thought those rock-torn waves might be a hundred meters

below.

He supposed that a common soldier's life in any army was

not a happy one. More than one old proverb, repeated mostly

among soldiers themselves, testified to that, and Ben had

been given plenty of chance to learn the truth of the proverbs

for himself. But what

worried him tonight was not the usual soldier's con-

cerns of dull abuse and passing danger. Not the storm.

Not really the danger of falling off this cliff-that risk

was obvious and could be avoided. Nor was it even

fear of the guardian dragon up ahead, whose presence

the drivers had been warned of because it might make

the loadbeasts nervous.

What bothered Ben was a certain realization that

had been growing upon him. If it was correct, then he

had more than dragons to worry about. So, for that

matter, did the other drivers who were here tonight;

but Ben had no reason to think that any of them had

yet realized the fact.

He wondered if he was going to have a chance to

talk to them about it without the officer overhearing.

He decided that he probably was not ....

By Ardneh, how could any man, even one afraid for

his life, manage to think straight about anything in the

middle of a storm like this? Ben couldn't even spare a

hand to try to wipe the rain out of his eyes, or hold his

cloak together. Now, sodden as the garment was, it

had blown loose from its lower clasp, and streamed

out uselessly in the wind. Even in the brilliance of the

lightning the cloak no longer looked gold and blue. It

was so wet and matted that it might have been woven

out of the gray of the night itself.

More lightning, more wind, more rain. Through it all

the twelve linked bodies of angry men and burdened

animals kept struggling forward. Under ordinary con-

ditions, one or two men could have managed six load-

beasts easily. But Ben had to admit that whoever had

assigned six drivers to this job tonight had known

what he was doing. Certainly two or three men would

not have been enough to manage it tonight, when

lightning and the scent of dragon rode the air together.

Radulescu had earlier reassured the drivers, telling

them that he had at his command powerful spells,

sure to keep the dragon at a distance. Ben believed

that. Blue Temple officers, he had observed in his

year's stint as an enlisted man, were generally compe-

tent in matters that they considered to be important.

And this trip tonight had to be important . . . and that

led Ben back to his new private worry. He wanted to

be able to argue himself out of that dreadful idea, but

instead the more he thought of it the more real it

became.

And the less time was left to try to deal with it.

They had been told nothing about the nature of the

cargo, so well-wrapped, so compact and heavy, that

they were transporting through the night. Other hands

than theirs had wrapped it, and loaded it into the

animals' panniers. From the way it weighed, and felt,

it could hardly be anything but heavy stone or metal.

Ben couldn't really believe that it was stone. He

could tell from the way the animals moved that it

must weigh like lead. But of course Blue Temple, the

proverbial worshippers and hoarders of wealth, were

unlikely to be trafficking in lead.

That narrowed the possibilities down considerably.

But there was more.

When the packtrain had left the local Temple, some

hours before dark, it had been accompanied by an

escort of some three dozen heavily armed cavalry. These

were mercenary troops, speaking only some bizarre

dialect of their own; Ben thought that they must have

been recruited from halfway around the world.

Progress had at first been easy; the sky was threat-

ening but the storm had not yet broken. The armed

escort had surrounded the packtrain most of the slow

way, the loadbeasts had been docile, and the six drivers

had been able to take it easy, riding themselves on six

spare mounts. Their journey, along back roads and

then increasingly slender trails leading into the back

country, had been entirely on Temple lands-or so

Ben thought; he could not be completely- sure. Such a

heavy escort, on Temple lands, seemed to be over-

doing it a bit-unless of course the cargo was very,

very valuable.

And to think that didn't help the new worry at

all ....

Just before nightfall, the train had halted in a small

clearing amid the scrubby growth and boulders of the

wasteland. In a smooth and evidently prearranged

fashion, the laden animals with their six drivers had

been detached at this point from their escort, and

under the command of Radulescu had continued for-

ward over this rugged thread of trail.

According to the announced plan, their escort was

to wait in the clearing for their return. As the separa-

tion was taking place, and almost as an afterthought,

the six drivers had been ordered to leave their own

weapons behind in the escort's care. Swords and

daggers, Ben and the five others had been told, would

not be needed up ahead, and would just get in their

way when they went to work on the unloading.

Radulescu had been the officer who told them that,

raising his crisp professional voice above the rising

wind, while behind him the cavalry sat their own

mounts, waiting silently. And when the weapons of

the six drivers had been collected under a waterproof,

and the spare cavalry mounts returned, Radulescu

had ordered the train forward along this unknown

thread of a trail. Then he had followed it on his own

steed.

Ben had never set eyes on the priest-officer before

today, and as far as he could tell the man was un-

known to the other drivers as well-even as they were

to each other. Certainly Radulescu was not one of the

regular cavalry or infantry officers assigned to the

local Temple's garrison. Ben suspected that he came

from somewhere very high up in the loftier strata of

Blue Temple power-perhaps he even had some con-

nection with the Inner Council that ruled the Temple

in all its branches. All of the regular officers had

deferred to him, even though his uniform of plain gold

and blue was devoid of any of the usual insignia of

rank. That, thought Ben, had to mean he was a priest.

Still, Radulescu seemed perfectly at home astride his

cavalry mount, and also quite at home with giving

orders in the field.

And now through the night the men and animals

continued to struggle on, to move their heavy cargo

forward. Ben thought it might not be all gold that they

were carrying. He could imagine, inside the heavily

padded, shapeless bundles that filled the wicker baskets,

a certain proportion of jewelry, for example. Precious

stones, and maybe some things of art . . .

With every minute the worry that had fastened

upon him grew and grew. And the wind continued to

blast the little procession, as did the rain, until even

the four-footed creatures were slipping and sliding on

the wet and rounded rocks that made up so much of

this poor excuse for a path.

Again Ben shoved against the beast whose hind-

quarters were under his right arm. He shifted the

animal bodily a small distance to the right, farther

away from that dreadful brink that now again came

curving in from the left to run close beside the path.

And now, to Ben's mild surprise, the officer came

cantering forward on the right side of the small train.

Radulescu was urging his mount to a greater fraction

of its speed, so that it quickly got ahead of the slow

loadbeasts. Lights and shadows shifted with the change

in position of the cold torch still held in the officer's

hand. That torch was a thick rod whose rounded,

glassy tip glowed steadily and brightly white, impervi-

ous to wind and rain. Ben had seen similar lights in

use a time or two before, though certainly they were

not common. In that steady light, Radulescu's officer's

cloak shone, glistened as if it might be waterproof,

and this head was neatly dry under a hood instead of

wet in a damned dripping helmet. From under his

cloak on the left side a sheathed sword protruded like

some kind of stiffened tail.

As soon as Radulescu had gotten ahead of the train,

he turned back into its path and reined in his swifter

mount. And now, with a motion of his light, he sig-

naled to the drivers that here they were going to leave

the precarious path. He was waving them inland,

across utterly trackless country.

The driver just ahead of Ben cursed again.

With the officer now riding slowly on ahead of the

train, his cold light held high for guidance, the first

driver got the first animal turned off the trail and

headed inland, to the west. Ben followed, leaning on

the first animal's hindquarters as before. The animal

behind had to agree, with Ben's grip still on its reins.

The others followed.

Now, moving across country on footing even worse

than before, they were traveling even more slowly.

From what Ben could see of the surrounding land, it

was absolutely trackless and abandoned. All six of the

drivers were cursing now; Ben was sure of it, though

he could hear no maledictions other than his own.

The edge of the cliff was now safely distant. But

now men and animals had to pick their way over

uneven slopes of sand, push through prickly growth,

negotiate more rocks whose surfaces were slicked by

rain. This land, thought Ben, was in fact good for

nothing but raising demons, as the old folksaying had

it of the deserts. If indeed a large dragon was nearby=

and he did not doubt that it was-then it was hard to

imagine what it found to eat.

He thought that the dragon was making its pres-

ence known. The farther west and south the loadbeasts

were made to struggle, the more restive they became.

And now Ben, who had more experience than most in

locating dragons, thought that he could detect the

unique tang directly in the wet air, coming and going

with variations in the wind. In that scent there was

something swinish, and something metallic too, and

something else that Ben could not relate to anything

outside itself.

And now, unexpectedly, the packtrain was jouncing

and stumbling to a halt. A few meters ahead, the

priest-officer Radulescu had already reined in his ani-

mal and was dismounting. Reins held firmly in- one

hand, Radulescu lifted his torch high in the other, and

began to chant a spell. Ben could not hear him chanting,

but could see in profile a regular movement of the

officer's short beard, chewing words boldly out into

the wind.

And now something else came into view, above and

beyond the cowled head of Radulescu, who now turned

fully away from Ben to face the apparition. First the

two eyes of the dragon were born in the midst of

darkness, greenly reflecting the Old World light. The

height of those eyes above the ground, and the dis-

tance between them, were enough to impress even an

experienced dragon hunter. In the next moment, as the

monster drew in a slow breath, there appeared below

and between the eyes a red suggestion, glowing through

flesh and scale, of the inner fires of nose and mouth,

an almost subliminal red that would have been in-

visible by day. The purring snort that followed was

a nearly musical sound, the rolling of hollow metal

spheres in some vast brazen bowl.

Ben's sense of magic in operation was not particu-

larly strong, but now even he could feel the flow, the

working of the chant. The spell had already held the

dragon back, and now was turning it away. With

blinking eyes the great landwalker snorted again, and

then melted back out of the train's path, disappearing

into storm and darkness.

With the going of the dragon, Ben's real worry only

sharpened. He had no trouble now in concentrating on

it. In fact, as he waited for Radulescu to conclude his

spell, demonstrating how firmly the powers of the

Blue Temple were in control, it was impossible for him

to think of anything else.

The worry that deviled Ben was not rooted in any

single warning, any one thing that he had seen or

heard. Rather it had sprung into existence like some

kind of elemental power, out of a great number of

details.

One detail was that all six of the drivers here tonight,

including Ben himself, were newcomers to this particu-

lar Temple garrison. That meant, Ben supposed, that

none of them were likely to have friends around. All

six had been transferred in from local Temples else-

where, within the past few days. Ben had managed to

discover that much from a few words casually ex-

changed while they were waiting for the train to start.

He had not been given any particular reason for his

own transfer, and he wondered if the others had, for

theirs. So far he had had no chance to ask them.

At the time, the transfer orders had seemed to Ben

only one more incomprehensible military quirk; in a

year's service with Blue Temple he had gotten used to

such unexplained twitches of the organism. But now . . .

In Ben's memory, repository of a thousand old songs,

one in particular had now come alive and was dancing

an accompaniment to his thoughts. He couldn't re-

member where or when he had heard it first. He

probably hadn't heard it at all for years. But it had

popped up now, as an ironic background for his fear.

If only, he thought, he was able to talk to the other

drivers. They might be able to shout a few words back

and forth now through the wind, but Ben needed more

than that, he needed time to ask them things and

make them think . . . he suspected he wasn't going to

get the chance.

He had only a very little time in which to decide

whether to act, or not to act, alone. And if he decided

wrong, either way, then very soon he would be dead ....

The priest-officer, in the act of concluding his spell,

used his wand of light to make one long, slow gesture

after the departing dragon. Then Radulescu held the

wand upright again, looking after the retreating beast

and perhaps trying to listen after it through the storm.

Then he remounted, turned to the waiting drivers, and

once more motioned the train forward.

The drivers moved reluctantly. The loadbeasts were

more easily convinced than their masters that the

dragon had in fact departed. With dragon-scent now

vanishing quickly in the wind, the animals moved

forward again with more willingness than they had

shown for several hours. And now, as if to suit the

improvement in the atmosphere, the rain began to

lessen too.

There followed a hundred meters more of stumbling

along their trackless way, now and then tearing clothes

and skin on thorns. Then the officer reined in again,

and again motioned the packtrain to a halt. Another

dragon? Ben wondered. He could perceive no other

reason for stopping at this point. Radulescu was indi-

cating with his light the exact place where he wanted

them to halt the animals, close beside a rocky hillock

that looked no different than a hundred other rocky

hillocks that surrounded it. There's nothing here,

thought Ben . . . and then he understood that that was

just what he was supposed to think.

Radulescu had dismounted again. With torch still

in hand he moved to stand beside the lower end of a

great slab of stone that in itself made up a large

portion of the hillock's flank. Putting one hand on this

huge stone, he raised his voice above the wind: "You

men, secure the animals. Then gather here and lift this

rock. Yes, here, lift, I say."

The boulder he was indicating looked too heavy for

a score of men to budge. But orders were orders. The

drivers hobbled their beasts, and crowded round. Some

of them were brawny men and some were not-but any-

way, the priest was proven not to be mad. As soon as

they lifted, the enormous stone went tilting and tipping

up with surprising ease, to come to rest balanced in a

new position. Now where its lower end had been, the

dark triangle of a cave opening was revealed. The black

hole in the hillside looked to Ben a little too regular in

shape to be entirely natural, and was about big enough

for a single man to be able to pass through it readily.

First in was the officer, moving confidently, holding

his cold torch before him to light the way: The utter

interior darkness melted before that light, to reveal a

single-chambered cave, with its flat floor sunken three

or four meters below the land outside. There was room

on that floor for perhaps a dozen people to stand

without crowding. From where Ben stood at the trian-

gular entrance, a narrow stairway crudely carved from

rock twisted down to the floor, and now in the center

of that floor Ben noticed, between two lips of stone,

another man-sized aperture, this one leading into deeper

blackness.

When he reached that lower opening, Radulescu

stopped. He leaned his torch against a wall, and from

some inner pocket, evidently waterproof, brought out

two stubby candles. He produced a flame-so quickly

that Ben did not see just how it was done-and in a

moment had placed a lighted candle on either side of

the hole in the floor.

And now he looked up to where the drivers' faces were

crowding the small entrance. "Begin unloading," Radulescu

ordered briskly. "You are to carry the sacks of cargo down

here, carefully-carefully! And drop them here, into this

aperture:" With a light stamp of his foot he indicated the

opening in the floor. He had given the last order with special

clarity and emphasis, as if wishing to avoid having to repeat it

for those who thought they had not heard it properly the first

time. On either side of Radulescu the candles burned, blue

wax and golden flames; and on the flat rocks where they

stood, Ben could see drippings, encrustations of old wax. It

was evidently not the first time, nor the second or third, that a

cargo had been delivered here.

The six drivers, as they drew back from the upper entrance,

getting ready to obey orders, all looked at one another for a

moment. But there was really no time for Ben to talk to them.

He could see surprise in some of their faces, but nothing like

his own fear mirrored.

Will it be here, he thought to himself, as soon as the

unloading's finished? And if so, how? Or do I have a little

more time, until we get back to where the cavalry's waiting . . .

"Move! Quickl Unloadl" Radulescu was climbing the stair

with his bright torch in hand. He was not going to give them

time to think about anything except getting the job done.

The men had been trained, in a hard school, to obedience.

They sprang into action. Ben moved with them, as

automatically as any of the others. Only now, as he lifted his

first bundle from a pannier on a

loadbeast's back, did he realize how effective the Blue Temple

training had been.

The bundle he had taken was small but very heavy, like all

the others. It was wrapped against weather in some kind of

waterproof oilskin that had been sewn shut. Inside the outer

covering Ben could feel thick padding, that made it hard to tell

what the true shape of the contents might be. To Ben the

loading felt like several metal objects, all of them heavy, hard,

and comparatively small.

Despite the weight, Ben could have carried two of the

bundles at once easily enough. He did not do so, wanting to

prolong the unloading. He might have only the time it took to

do that job in which to try to think, to nerve himself, to act ....

As he passed through the upper doorway of the cave for

the first time, bearing his first load down, he looked carefully

at the great stone as it rested in its raised position. Ben was

struck by how close it must be to its point of balance. What

six men had heaved to open, it appeared, could be easily tilted

shut again by one.

Going down the crooked stairs for the first time, watching

carefully by candlelight where he put down his feet, he

noticed that the stairs were beginning to be worn. As if many

processions of laborers had borne their burdens here ....

Think, he ordered himself. Think! But, to his silent, inward

horror, his mind seemed paralyzed.

Down in the cave, putting his first bundle obediently down

into the dark hole in the floor, Ben noticed something else.

The heavy bundle made no noise of fall or landing when he

released it into darkness.

Either it was still falling-or it had somehow been caught.

Moving in slow procession with the other drivers, now

emerging from the cave to get his second load, Ben saw that

Radulescu had again set his Old World torch leaning against

a rock, this time just outside the entrance. The officer had

gone back to his tethered riding beast and was taking

something from the saddle, untying a light, long bundle that

Ben had not really noticed until now. The bundle was just

about the same size and shape as the sword- that Radulescu

wore, and heavily wrapped like all the other cargo.

Ben kept moving as he watched. He shouldered his second

load, lightening another animal's burden. Again the weight of

the package he picked up was startling for its size. No, it

wouldn't be lead that the Blue Temple was putting down into

the earth so secretly.

The location of their main hoard had been a subject of

stories and speculation for generations. At least one song

had that hoard as its subject-the same tune that was still

running, very unhelpfully, in Ben's mind.

The other five men in the line of treasure-bearers gave no

indication that they had guessed what they were about. The

implications of their situation, as far as Ben could tell, had

simply not dawned on them at all. Their faces were dull, and

set against the rain; set against knowledge, too, as it now

seemed to Ben. He saw no possibility that he would be able to

talk to them meaningfully before he had to act.

Both the stairway and the upper entrance to the cave were

so narrow that the process of carrying in the cargo was

necessarily slow and inefficient; men moving down always

had to stop and wait for men moving

up to pass them, and vice versa. Even so, with six steadily at

work, the unloading wasn't really going to take very long.

Six men, Ben kept thinking, who now know where

Benambra's Gold is really buried. Were there six other

workmen still living in the world who had managed to learn so

much?

The unloading proceeded, and it seemed to Ben that the

process was going very fast. Outside the cave there was the

light of the Old World torch to work by, and inside the warm

smoky flicker of the two blue candles.

"Move along there!"

Ben had just dropped another bundle into the dark hole in

the cave floor. He was in the act of straightening up and

backing away when he brushed lightly against the officer who

came moving forward just behind him. As the two men grazed

past each other, the tip of the bundle that Radulescu carried

brushed Ben's arm. Even through his sleeve and the object's

wrappings, Ben could feel the passing presence of some power

of magic. It tugged at his memory as some old perfume , might

have done, some fragrance lost since childhood and suddenly

known again. And the incident made his fear suddenly more

powerful than ever.

Ben had climbed the stair and was outside again, getting

yet another bundle to carry down, when Radulescu also

emerged from the cave. When the officer looked sharply at

Ben, Ben looked dully back.

In his twenty-three years of life, Ben had learned that there

were only two things about his own appearance that were at

all likely to impress others. One, that never failed, was his

squat bulk; he was really not

shorter than average, but so heavily built that he appeared

that way. The second thing was his apparent dullness.

Something about his round slab of a face tended to make

people think he was slow-witted, at least until they knew him.

For some reason this effect was intensified by the fact that his

body was so broad and strong. It was as if no one wanted

intelligence and unhandsome strength to coexist in the same

man. Ben had convinced himself that he was not particularly

slow of mind, but he had learned also that there were times

when it was helpful to be thought that way. He let his jaw sag

just a little now, and returned the impatient officer's gaze

blankly.

Radulescu stepped closer to him. "Move along, I say. Are

you taking root there? Do you want to stand out in this storm

all night?"

Ben, who would have been delighted to settle for just that,

shook his head slightly and let himself be spurred again into

obedient motion. Mechanically he rejoined the slowly

shuffling line of the other drivers.

Burdened again with what he thought must certainly be

gold, heading down once more into the cave, he observed

again how precariously the great sealing rock was poised near

its point of balance. One man standing outside the cave ought

to be able to close that doorway quickly, with one hand.

Whereas six men caught inside would never be able to crowd

themselves into position to reach the rock and lift it open. Of

course, if given time, they ought to be able to manage some

way of getting out. If given time.

The rock was not going to come crashing shut behind him

this trip. Not all of the treasure had been unloaded yet.

As he let this weighty bundle slide down into the hole in

the cave floor, Ben started back reflexively. Half a meter or so

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

TheSecondBookofSwordsbyFredSaberhagenVersion1.0CHAPTER1Firefromtheskycamethrustingdown,adazzlingcrookedspearofwhitelightthatlivedforaninstantonly,longenoughtosplinteralonetreeatthejuttingedgeoftheseasidecliff.Theimpactbeneaththehowl-ingdarknessoftheskystunnedeyesandearsalike.Benwincedawayfromtheblin...

展开>> 收起<<

Fred Saberhagen - Swords 02 - The Second Book of Swords.pdf

共163页,预览33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！

Fred Saberhagen - Swords 02 - The Second Book of Swords

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: