The Sword of the Spirits Read online

  He was stripped above the waist and made to kneel in front of us. Another soldier stood over him and lashed him. I do not know if the strokes were well laid on, as Harding had commanded, because I did not look at his naked back. I watched his face, staring down at the earth. He took his punishment impassively but on the last few strokes could not help wincing.

  Harding said: “Let no other man of this troop shame himself and it by failing to pay due respect to his Prince. It will be fifty lashes next time.”

  I looked at Morgan’s back when they gave him his shirt again. The lash had not broken the skin but there were dark red weals in neat rows. He did not put the shirt on—he would need ointment from the surgeon first—but saluted and walked away.

  His eyes looked into mine again before he was lost in the mist. It was Harding who had ordered the lashing, but I who had gained an enemy. Harding came well out of this, I saw. In maintaining his own authority he had filched from mine. They would see me as a boy, Harding as my protector who might, at the right moment, supplant a weakling.

  • • •

  The mist was a little less thick next day and we made more progress. We were in Petersfield lands and for that reason must go warily. Grimm had told me before we set out that the Petersfield army had not left the city—he had the news from their Seer by radio—but they might have done so since. I told Greene to post a double line of scouts.

  We came within sight of the city in late afternoon. We showed ourselves but did not approach the walls closely. We retreated into the mist, which was thickening again, and made camp on high ground to the north.

  The men were in better heart. We had found cattle which we killed and roasted. We had also found a country alehouse, and the men washed their victuals down with Petersfield ale. They claimed it was poor thin stuff compared with our own, but I warned Greene all the same that the Sergeants must make sure they did not drink too freely. I did not want an army with sore heads if the Petersfield warriors came out next day.

  They did not come out, though. The weather had changed. The mist had gone and a fresh wind blew from the north. The sky was cloudy but visibility was good. We made a circuit of their walls. A few arrows hissed through the air at us, falling short. Nothing else happened.

  I sent a herald to them in the afternoon. This was according to custom where an army was not already in the field. My message was to Captain Michael Smith. The Prince of Winchester sent him greeting. If he surrendered himself and opened the gates of the city to its rightful Prince, he would have fair trial by the Captains for his murder of the Prince’s lieutenant. If not, the swords of Winchester were ready to cut him down, along with any other rebels rash enough to follow him.

  The herald was that Captain Barnes who had arrested me at my brother’s command on my return from beyond the Burning Lands. He was a tall, thin, gray-haired man, sparing of speech but full of loyalty. He had served my brother and now served me. I could trust him as I could not trust all my Captains.

  Returning, he dismounted and his horse was led away, the white cloth of truce blowing from the saddle. I said:

  “Well, John?”

  The other Captains were present. Barnes said awkwardly:

  “I was given a message, sire.”

  “Tell it, then.”

  I could have taken him off and got the message in private; but I would not do that. It was plainly an insult. I would receive it publicly.

  Barnes said woodenly: “This is the message I was given, sire. ‘The Prince of Petersfield bids little Luke go home and play with the toys he sent him. He does not go into battle against children, or those who follow a child.’ ”

  My Captains watched me, from Wilson the eldest to Edmund, little older than myself. Blaine watched from his fat face and Harding from his meager one. Greene put up a hand to twirl his mustache.

  I said: “I have heard. Thank you for your office.”

  I talked to Edmund later. He said:

  “He shows himself inferior by refusing your challenge. Everyone must see that.”

  “Must they? And how will the talk run in the alehouses if we go back to Winchester with our swords still sheathed? That the men of Petersfield mocked them for letting themselves be ruled by a boy. That they judged us unworthy of battle.”

  “No one of sense will say such a thing.”

  “I spoke of men in alehouses, not men of sense. And do men of sense sway a mob? They were not men of sense who shouted for my death a week ago.”

  “You have no choice, Luke, anyway. They will not come out and you cannot make them. Nor can you storm the city. Your father did, but only because they were fool enough to use a machine, which the Spirits caused to blow up and breach the wall. It has been strongly rebuilt and we should have small hope of scaling it.”

  “He will come out,” I said. “I will bring him out.”

  Edmund shook his head. “How?”

  I told him. He listened in disbelief. “You cannot do it.”

  “You will see what I can do.”

  • • •

  I stood with the Captains on a knoll. A little below us and half a mile away were the walls of Petersfield. There was open ground between: grazing meadows and wheatfields. The wheat moved in the wind. I said to Greene:

  “Send a squad of men with torches to fire the wheat.”

  Greene stared, too staggered for speech. It was Blaine who spoke.

  “You cannot do such a thing! It is against all custom.”

  Wheat meant bread for the long hard winter. It stood for life itself. No one rode or fought over growing wheat, and if a campaign ever lasted through summer, harvesting put an end to it.

  I said to Greene: “You heard me. That field below us first.”

  If Greene had hesitated further, the others might have got together and stopped me. As it was they watched in grim silence. There had been no rain for days and the wind had dried the wheat of the mist’s dampness. The stalks caught and smoke rolled down toward the city.

  It was after we had put torches to the second field that they came out. I gave them no chance to assemble in battle array but rode down on them in the shadow of their own walls. We lost some men from arrows but once we had closed, the bowmen could not distinguish friend from foe.

  I was happy now, feeling the lifting pulse of battle. Hans rode near me, almost of human stature in the saddle, his voice deeply shouting. I saw fat Blaine rise in his stirrups and deal a Petersfield man a blow that almost severed head from body. For all his fatness he was immensely strong. A horseman, a Captain by his blazon, slashed at me. I parried with my sword which, sliding down from his, skinned his arm. I toppled a trooper from his horse with a thrust under the shoulder. Then they were scattering from us and the battle, if one could call it such, was over.

  They rode for their gates but we rode with them. We secured the North Gate and after that they were a beaten rabble.

  • • •

  Michael Smith had been a florid flashy man, a good talker who was proud of his voice and given to merry songs at banquets. He sang well even when drunk. But he was not singing now, or talking. His body shivered as Greene hung round his neck the wooden toys he had sent to me in mockery.

  I felt sick myself. I had no stomach for watching a man die in cold blood. But I also was being watched, by my own army and the people of Petersfield.

  I had been driven to burning the wheatfields, and the trick had worked. It was not so bad to break the rules as long as one won. And ruthlessness followed on from ruthlessness. He had rebelled against his Prince and slain his Prince’s lieutenant. He had earned his death. I only wished I did not have to see it.

  The day was ending with no sign of the sun. The wind had a cold edge and I could have shivered too, but schooled myself against it.

  Greene said in a loud voice: “Let all witness the proper end of a traitor!”

  He looked at me. I raised my hand and dropped it. Strong arms pulled on the rope that hung from the pulley of the gibbe
t, and Michael Smith gave a single gasp as his body was lifted up. His legs twitched as he hung there. They twitched for a long time before they were still.

  TWO

  PRINCE OF THE THREE CITIES

  I WENT TO VISIT EDMUND’S mother the day after we returned from Petersfield. I went unaccompanied and would not let the man-servant announce me. He was normal in shape except for a withered arm and had been in her service for more than twenty years. When her husband was killed and my father took the palace he could have stayed there, a high position for a polymuf, but had chosen to go with her to the little house in Salt Street into which she had to move. She was a woman who commanded affection.

  Charles, her elder son, had restored her fortunes to some extent, with bounty won in campaigns under my father and my brother. She lived in West Street now, in a bigger house though one still modest for someone who had been the Prince’s Lady. But she had never troubled herself over wealth or display. I found her in the kitchen, baking bread. She held, as few now did, to the old rule that this was something a housewife did not leave to polymufs. And she had trained her daughter, Jenny, to follow the same tradition. Jenny stood beside her at the well-scoured table, her arms like her mother’s covered with flour.

  Jenny started and looked confused at my appearance. She blushed, and it became her. She had been a plain, thin-faced girl when I had first known her and—an awkward newcomer to the court life which she had lost—had felt the edge of her tongue. She was quite pretty now, especially with her cheeks flushed from the heat of the oven and her present embarrassment.

  I said: “You have flour on your nose, Jenny.”

  It was not true but made her lift her hand automatically to her face. Her nose was floury then. I laughed. She said indignantly, “Oh, you . . . !” then fled the kitchen.

  Her mother smiled at me. “Hello, Luke. You come without ceremony and will get none, even though you return as a conqueror.”

  I took a chair and straddled it. “I am glad to be back.”

  This was very true. I felt at home in her house as I did not in the palace. It was a deep thing with me. I had no happy memories of my own home as a child. My mother was beautiful and I loved her, but though she was fond of small animals she did not have the gift of making a child, even her own, feel at ease; and the house itself was badly run. She did not keep her servants long and while they were with her they were slack and sullen.

  Edmund’s mother said: “Thank you for the roses, Luke.”

  I had ordered them to be sent down early that morning, the best blooms from the rose garden at the palace. In the old days it had been a great joy to her, and was perhaps the only material thing she missed out of all she had had there. I said:

  “Everything in the garden is yours, as I have told you. You are welcome at any time, to pick the blooms or tell old Garnet how to go about his planting and grafting and seeding.”

  Garnet was the palace gardener, and had held that post through many reigns. He was a polymuf giant, more than six and a half feet tall, and like most such had a weakness of the back. He could no longer stoop but had a boy—a dwarf except that he also had a cast in one eye—who did the stooping for him.

  Edmund’s mother smiled. “The idea of telling Garnet anything! But I am grateful for the roses. They have done well this year.”

  We talked about things of the city: pleasant gossip and without malice. She had no malice in her. She brought me a pot of cider, drawn cold from the barrel, and hot spiced biscuits from the oven. I said after a time:

  “Jenny is a long time getting the flour off her face.”

  “You confused her, Luke.” She smiled at me. “She pays attention to the things you say.”

  I shook my head. “I can scarcely believe that. I have never been a match for her words, nor the cool hard mind that frames them.”

  “She is not as cool and hard as she seems,” her mother said. “It is because they are so strong that she hides her feelings. When she was a child she used to give way to her tempers. Then afterward she was bitterly ashamed of herself. I never punished her for her tantrums; she punished herself more than I could ever have done.”

  We heard footsteps in the passage, and Jenny came back. She had washed the flour off her face and hands, and had tidied her hair and put a comb in it. I said:

  “Well done! That is a great improvement.”

  Her face was flushed but she was composed. She dropped me a mock curtsy.

  “Thank you, sire. It is something to get a word of kind approval from the Prince of the Two Cities.”

  I looked at her. Yes, she was quite pretty. I thought of another girl, in a city of gaily painted domes and pinnacles on the other side of the Burning Lands. Jenny was quite pretty but Blodwen was beautiful. And Blodwen, in due time, would be my wife and Lady of this city.

  • • •

  That night we celebrated the victory over Petersfield. The long table was set up in the Great Hall of the palace and I sat at its head. My Captains were ranged on either side down to the first salt. Between the first salt and the second were leading merchants and other men of standing in the city. Below the second salt sat those dwarfs, such as Rudi the Armorer, who were entitled to feast at the Prince’s table.

  They drank my health, and I gave back the toast, drinking the strong sweet ale out of the Prince’s golden pot that stood before me. I was not at ease that night. I drank sparingly, and made an excuse to leave as soon as was decent.

  I went out onto the balcony overlooking the palace yard. There was the noise of the banquet behind me, and in front of me but farther off another din. It came from the barracks, where the soldiers were also celebrating. They would be noisier and more drunken than the Captains. I had no appetite for such a scene. I would have preferred to walk alone on the walls and watch the distant glow of the Burning Lands and think of the far northern city of Klan Gothlen. But a Prince had duties, as I already well knew, I resolved to go down to the barracks to greet my warriors.

  Since it was a fine night they had brought tables and benches out into the barrack square and were feasting there. The guard at the gate saluted me—soberly, I was glad to see. The noise from the square was much greater now. And I detected a different note in it, of anger rather than rejoicing.

  They were so engrossed that they did not see me. They had deserted the tables and were gathered in a corner of the square. Something was going on there. I heard cries, and the clash of swords. I shouted:

  “Hold, you fools!”

  A few heard me and turned; then others followed suit. They parted their ranks to let me through. These were the spectators. Inside were half a dozen with swords drawn. And backed into the corner of the square a seventh, sword also drawn to defend himself. It was Hans.

  I said: “Put up your swords, all of you.”

  Some of the six obeyed at once, but two hesitated. Hans looked at me and slipped his sword into its sheath. One of the two said:

  “Sire, he has wounded one of our comrades—perhaps killed him.”

  I noticed then another figure who lay groaning on the ground. I knew him: Foster, one of Blaine’s men. I said to the man who had spoken:

  “Sheath your sword, before I order you a flogging.”

  He obeyed then, and so did the other. They were both of Blaine’s troop. This one was called Sheppy. He was drunk but could talk clearly. He said:

  “If we are not to kill him, sire, then he should be hanged. He has no right here, anyway—a dwarf! This is a place for warriors.”

  The Watch Sergeant had come up by now. I pointed to Sheppy and the others. I said to the Sergeant:

  “Arrest these men for brawling. Put them in the cells to cool off.”

  The Sergeant said: “Yes, sire. And the dwarf?”

  Hans looked at me but did not speak. If he were put in the cells with them he would not live till morning. According to custom he had no right here, as Sheppy had said. It was a place sacred to warriors, and they were entitled to kill a
nyone who was there unlawfully.

  I said: “I will take him into custody myself.”

  I asked Hans, once we were clear of the barracks, what had happened and he told me.

  He had gone to take part in the feast, having fought and killed his man outside the walls of Petersfield. He had been received with mockery. It was good-humored at first and he had taken it cheerfully. But Foster, a cruel man when drunk, had carried things further. There was a special dance the dwarfs had at their weddings and celebrations. Foster demanded that he climb on the table and perform this. Hans refused. Foster drew his sword and said he would prick him on until he did. At that Hans drew his own sword. They fought and Hans spitted him. Then his comrades joined to take revenge. He had been trying to defend himself against the six of them when I arrived.

  I had listened in silence and was silent still. Hans said:

  “I am sorry, sire.” I said nothing. “I should not have gone there. But . . . they accepted me in the field, or some of them did. I guessed there might be hard words but I thought it best to learn to take them.”

  We had reached the palace. I said: “This needs thought. I will see you in the morning. You are under arrest for brawling, as they are. Do I need to have you locked up, or will you appear on my command?”

  “I will always appear on your command, sire.”

  “Then find yourself a bed in the palace for the night.”

  • • •

  I had called a general assembly for ten o’clock. I spoke to Edmund before that. He had heard something of what had happened and I told him the rest. He shook his head, and his face was serious.

  “If I may suggest . . . ?”

  I gripped his arm at the elbow. “I always listen to you. You know that.”

  “It does no good to say I warned you there would be trouble. You want to save his life, which they could demand even if Foster does not die. A dwarf in the barracks . . .”