The Sword of Bheleu (15 page)

“No.”

“I don't think we need it,” Saram said. “She's outnumbered four to one and outweighed at least six to one.”

There was general agreement, and Frima approached the weapon unencumbered. She used only one finger for her experiment, and thereby escaped with the least injury of any.

She came running back into Saram's arms and held up her scorched finger for him to kiss.

“Perhaps,” Galt suggested, “the sword has changed somehow—the time of year may have affected it, or some occurrence in the battle. Perhaps no one can now handle it.

Garth nodded. “I hope you're right; let us see if it will singe my fingers as it did yours.” He picked up the rope and threw a loop around his neck, handed the ends to Galt and Fyrsh, and then marched toward the sword.

Almost immediately he felt the familiar urge to grab it up, to use it on his enemies. The red glow of the jewel seemed to fill his vision and flood everything with crimson.

As he drew near, any caution he might have felt faded away. He reached down and picked up the sword, easily and naturally, as if it were an ordinary weapon. The flames that had glimmered about the hilt vanished as his hand approached; the grip was warm to his touch, as if it had been left in bright sunlight for a few moments.

He lifted the sword, and the red haze vanished from his sight. The glow of the jewel faded. He felt none of the berserk fury that the sword had brought upon him in the past; instead he was strangely calm. He turned to face his companions. “You see?” he called. “It has a will of its own, and it has chosen me as its wielder.”

“I see,” Galt called back. “Now put it down again.”

Garth nodded and tried to turn back.

The sword would not move; it hung in the air before him as if embedded in stone.

Garth tried to release his hold and drop it where it was; his fingers would not move.

“I think we have a problem,” he called.

Instantly, Galt jerked the rope tight; with equal speed, the sword twisted, feeling as if it were moving Garth's hands rather than the reverse, and cut the rope through. Before Fyrsh could take any action with his end it flashed back and severed that, as well. The two overmen found themselves holding useless fragments, while the loop around Garth's throat remained slack.

There was a moment of horrified silence; then Galt called, “Now what?”

“I don't know!” Garth replied. “I can't let go!” He struggled, trying to pry his fingers from the grip, but could not move them.

He attempted to move his arm and discovered that he could now move it freely. He lowered the sword from the upright display he had held it in; there was no reason to be unnecessarily uncomfortable.

He tried placing his other hand on the grip and then removing it; there was no resistance. He then placed his left hand on the grip and tried removing his right.

It came away easily and naturally.

Now, however, his left hand was locked to the sword.

He switched back and forth a few times, and established to his own satisfaction that whatever power held him to the sword would be content with either hand or both, so long as he retained a hold suitable for wielding the thing. He could hold it with two fingers and one thumb, if he chose; that seemed to be the absolute minimum. Any one finger and both thumbs on the same hand would also work. A single finger and thumb, however, or just two thumbs, would not suffice; when he attempted to use such a grip, his other hand would not come free.

He was about to point this out to Galt as clear proof that there was a conscious power involved—after all, how could any spell, however complex, manage anything so subtle? Galt chose that moment to call, “Garth, stay there; I will return shortly.”

For the first time Garth realized that while he had been playing with his fingers, the other four had been discussing his situation and had, apparently arrived at some sort of a decision. Galt and Saram were leaving. Fyrsh and, oddly, Frima were staying. He called after the departing pair, “See if you can find a sheath that would fit this thing! I have an idea!”

It had occurred to him that, if it were sheathed, the sword might behave differently; it was certainly worth trying.

He was frankly puzzled by this new difficulty. He had never before had any trouble in releasing the sword.

But then, he told himself, he had never tried to destroy it before, or tried to abandon it.

Perhaps he could still destroy it, he thought. His previous failure might have been because the sword held some special relationship to stone; after all, he knew almost nothing about it. The standard method for breaking a sword had always been to snap it across one's knee; he could try that.

He turned back toward the stone blocks—the sword seemed to have no objection now that the rope was cut. He placed one foot on a block, raising his knee to a convenient height.

Ordinarily he wouldn't have done something like this without armor. Metal splinters might fly, and the broken ends could snap back and gash his knee badly. He thought such injuries would be worthwhile, though, if he could be rid of this particular sword. He placed it across his knee, his right hand holding the hilt and his left gripping the blade, and pushed down.

Nothing happened. The sword bent not an inch.

He pressed harder. It still did not give.

He put his full strength into it, so that the pressure bruised his knee and the palms of his hands; had it snapped, he knew he would have been thrown forward on the fragments and probably seriously cut.

It did not snap. It did not yield at all.

He gave up in disgust and looked speculatively at the stone block.

Raising the sword above his head in a two-handed grip such as he would have used on an axe in chopping firewood, he swung the blade down at the stone with all the might he could muster.

The stone block shattered in a spectacular shower of sparks, dust, and gravel.

He studied the blade and ran a thumb along it carefully. It was as sharp as ever, with no sign of nick or waver.

Destroying this thing would be a real challenge, he realized. It might take days or even months to contrive an effective method.

It was very curious, though, that it was allowing him so much freedom to try. He knew that it could cloud his thoughts and turn him into a mindless engine of destruction or move in his hands without his cooperation, yet it was doing nothing of the kind. Instead it had displayed this new talent, this refusal to come free of his hold. Why had it not done so before?

Perhaps it had felt no need. He had cooperated with it readily at first. Only after he realized how disastrous the consequences of the destruction of Skelleth might be had he seriously resisted. When he had actually managed to abandon it perhaps it had become frightened, aware that it might lose its control of him.

Could a sword be frightened? Or, if the sword were only a tool, could a god be frightened?

Frightened might be too strong a word; “cautious” would be better. If he could reassure the entity, whatever it was, perhaps he could contrive to slip away and abandon the sword for good. Once he was free of its hold, he would be certain never to touch it again.

If he could pick it up without touching it, with tongs perhaps, and transport it, he could find some way to get rid of it even if he couldn't destroy it. He could throw it in the ocean; no one would retrieve it from the bottom of the sea.

That assumed, however, that he would be able to get it out of his hands.

The Forgotten King would probably be able to make it let go. Judging by the ease with which the old man had darkened the gem and suppressed the sword's power before, he should have no trouble in doing so again. The only problem with that solution was that the King would almost certainly demand something in exchange, and Garth did not care to deal with him further.

Still, if he could not manage something else, sooner or later he might be forced to give in to the Forgotten King. Even that would be preferable to unleashing the sword again, he was sure. He had felt the sword's personality, if it could be called that, and he knew that it sought nothing but death and destruction. It was being canny now, biding its time, allowing him to think, but he was certain that soon its bloodlust would grow and more innocents would die, as they had died in Dûsarra and Skelleth.

Thinking of death, the sword, and the Forgotten King, he began to wonder at the exact nature of the King's immortality. What would happen if the old man were to have a blade thrust through him? Would he live on regardless? Could he bleed or feel pain? What if his head were to be severed? Surely, death-priest or no, he could not survive decapitation.

It might be, then, that he could not be decapitated, that any blade would break in the attempt. In that case, what would happen if he were to be struck by the unbreakable blade of the Sword of Bheleu?

This seemed a very interesting question. What would happen when the irresistible destructive power of the sword met the immortal body of the Forgotten King? One or the other would have to yield and perish.

If the sword were to break, then Garth would be rid of it.

If the King were to die—as seemed far more likely, more in keeping with the natural order of the world—then Garth would have performed an act of mercy, and would no longer need to worry about the old man's schemes. Unfortunately, he would also no longer have a means of last resort for disposing of the sword.

Perhaps both would be destroyed. That would really be the ideal solution.

He would have to consider this further, and perhaps attempt a few experiments. He might want to obtain some advice on the matter. He wondered if he could trust the old man to tell the truth; perhaps he would do better to go home and consult the Wise Women of Ordunin.

As he considered this, he saw Galt and Saram returning, leading a squad of half a dozen overmen and an equal number of humans. Someone was even leading a warbeast.

He wondered, out of a warrior's professional curiosity, whether the sword would be able to kill so many opponents before they could rip him apart. Without the warbeast, he suspected it would have no trouble. Warbeasts, however, were notoriously hard to kill and moved with a speed and ferocity that no overman could even approach, just as no human could equal an overman.

He hoped that he wouldn't have to put the matter to the test.

Several of the overmen, he saw, were carrying various ropes and restraints. Saram was carrying the same oversized, over-the-shoulder scabbard that had held the sword before.

That was encouraging, because it implied that they hoped to restrain him—and the sword—without harming him. Less pleasant was the fact that four of the humans carried crossbows. Galt apparently did not care to take too many chances. Garth hoped that those would be strictly a last resort and that the archers would not aim to kill.

The newcomers stopped where Fyrsh and Frima waited and spoke with them; Garth did not try to listen, but it was plain that Frima was protesting such extreme measures.

While the argument continued, Garth called, “Ho, Saram! Toss me that scabbard!”

The acting baron looked up and thought for a moment before obeying.

Garth picked up the sheath with his free hand and flung it back across his left shoulder. He managed to catch the lower strap with the fingers of his right hand, despite the sword's encumbrance, and to bring it up to meet the shoulderpiece.

It took several minutes and much fumbling, but he contrived to tie a reasonably secure knot. He wished that the thing had a buckle; he was sure he could have managed that much more readily.

When he had the scabbard in place, he tipped it forward and slid the blade into it. Then, slowly, he removed his fingers, one by one, from the sword's hilt.

They came away easily, and the sword fell back into place, slapping his back. It felt peculiar to be wearing the scabbard without armor; a two-handed broadsword was strictly a weapon of war, not something to be carried casually about the streets.

“There, you see?” he called to the watching crowd. He held up his hands, showing that they were free and empty. “All I needed was the scabbard.”

Galt called in reply, “We see that you have released the sword, but has it released you? Can you remove the scabbard?”

“Of course I can, Galt, but I think I had best keep it with me for the moment. It's too dangerous to leave lying around.” He lifted the sheath's strap up from his shoulder, to show that it was not adhering unnaturally. He had no problem in doing so. “See?” he said. “And the gem is dark. It's quiescent right now.”

In truth, he did not believe that he could remove the sword and scabbard; he was sure that the knot would prove impossible to untie as long as the sword was sheathed. It was his own problem, though, and he did not want Galt and a bunch of ignorant helpers making matters worse. He was reasonably certain that the only way the sword would voluntarily let him go was if he were to be killed and that Galt's motley group would be unable to remove the sword against its will. He had no wish to die when they attempted to do so, nor to kill any of them.

He had some idea of how powerful the sword was, and they did not, as yet. He would be unable to convince them that the sword was more than they could handle without bloody experimentation. He therefore intended to convince them of the opposite, that the problem was already under control.

“Are you sure?” Galt asked.

“Yes, I'm sure. I've handled this sword for weeks, Galt. It's harmless right now.” He reached up and grasped and released the hilt a few times to show that it was not spitting flame or grabbing hold. It remained cooperatively inanimate.

He had it partly figured out now; it was determined to remain in his possession, but it was intelligent enough not to waste energy in holding him any more tightly than necessary. As long as he kept it on his person, it didn't care how it was carried.

He pulled it out, then sheathed it again, demonstrating that it was behaving like any ordinary sword. “You see, Galt? I think it's worn itself out, at least temporarily.”