The Seventh Book of Lost Swords : Wayfinder's Story, Fred Saberhagen [13 ebook reader TXT] 📗

* * * * * *

      Less than a kilometer away, the young woman who had once been Tigris was still lying injured, half delirious, inside some peasant’s half-roofless and long abandoned hut.

      Fearing equally for her own survival and for her lover’s safety, Delia drifted in and out of feverish sleep. In her lucid moments the young woman hoped and prayed to all the gods that the two of them would be able to get away from this seemingly endless conflict, to the peaceful vineyard Val had so proudly described to her.

      Almost Delia felt that she already knew that place, that she and Valdemar had already lived there together. In dreams she saw the little house, the garden, a green and summery vision of delight, a paradise once possessed, now gone again and unattainable.

      In her pain and distress she had lost track of how much time had passed since Val had left her here alone. Many hours, certainly. She was afraid it had been days. She feared, in her state of suffering, that the man she loved had suffered some horrible fate. Or, worse, that he had cruelly deserted her.

* * *

      Zoltan, still suffering somewhat from Wood’s maltreatment, could provide little relevant information about Wood, nor could he guess what Swords the Ancient One might hold. But Yambu was able to confirm that Wayfinder had been here, in this camp, and in Wood’s hands.

      Where the Ancient One was now, or whether he had with him that Sword, or any other, she did not know.

      Mark assumed that Wood had carried the Sword of Wisdom away.

* * *

      Now, in the center of the camp, Mark and his augmented bodyguard faced a development the Prince had not really expected—a carefully prepared series of enemy counterattacks by a surrounding composite force of armed and unarmed men, specially trained to fight against Shieldbreaker.

      At the next pause in the action, Mark suspected, and his panting friends agreed, that the Ancient One must be somewhere near at hand, directing these attacks.

      The beleaguered handful craned their necks, trying to spot their enemy in the clouded sky. The Prince grunted: “He’ll be riding on a griffin, or I’m surprised. He’ll be too shrewd to mount a demon, when he expects me to be present.”

      Before anyone could answer him, there sounded from somewhere in the distance what Mark and his compatriots could recognize as a Tasavaltan horn.

      “That’s Karel, thank all the gods.”

      “Let us hope some cavalry is with him.”

* * *

      Karel himself, riding forward with a courage matched only by his physical clumsiness, doing his best to keep up with the cavalry, had been able to determine with fair accuracy, despite Wood’s attempts at concealment, just where the enemy camp had been established. Some of the Tasavaltan scouting birds had been deceived by enemy magic, and others temporarily outfought by reptiles. But the uncle of the Prince and Princess could also determine, even without much help from feathered friends, that Mark was now in the vicinity.

      He signalled to the cavalry commander to sound the charge.

* * *

      In moments the Tasavaltan mounted troopers, supporting and supported by a truly formidable magician, were heavily engaged with the forces surrounding Prince Mark and his small bodyguard.

      Drawing a deep breath, Mark commanded an advance, toward their allies.

      There were plenty of fallen weapons about with which the former prisoners could arm themselves.

      They advanced.

      Meanwhile Wood, still carrying Wayfinder, was airborne. Mounted on his own especially large and vicious griffin, he circled above the fighting, dispatching relays of reptiles with urgent messages to his officers below. He sent other winged couriers with orders to speed the advance of his additional ground forces already marching to the scene.

      What had once been an orderly camp was now a ruined, trampled field of mud, fallen bodies and ruined and discarded weapons, and collapsed tents. Time and again, the Prince’s personal bodyguard saved his life by beating off unarmed attack. He, and the unmatchable power in his right hand, rescued them in turn. The onslaught of the Tasavaltan cavalry had relieved some of the pressure from surrounding forces, but still Mark and his handful in the center had all that they could handle. So far, thanks to skill and luck and the weapons of the gods, none of them were more than slightly wounded.

      Wood, hovering on his chosen griffin, darting away and coming back, now and then swooping low enough to get a good look at the figure he knew must really be Mark, sometimes perceived instead a man he recognized as the Emperor. Again the Ancient One beheld a shadowy figure, insubstantial yet angular, somehow almost mechanical, something out of the Old World. He knew that the Sword of Stealth was tricking him into seeing Ardneh.

      Though Shieldbreaker had prevented Wood from using Wayfinder effectively to plan his counterattack on Mark, the Sword of Wisdom continued to be effective against Mark’s allies, Karel and the Tasavaltan cavalry. The trouble was, as long as Mark himself was on the scene, Wood could not spare the time to accomplish their destruction.

      The next time he dove his mount low enough to get a close look at the fighting around Mark, the Ancient One beheld, to his own freezing horror, the hulking, foul image of the king-demon Orcus—a being now ages dead, along with Ardneh his great antagonist.

      Putting aside the initial shock of this perception, Wood summoned up his intelligence and will, gritted his teeth, and stubbornly denied what both his eyes and his best magical perception were assuring him to be true.

      That was Mark. And with the two Swords, Mark was winning.

* * *

      A number of Wood’s people, who as a rule were more afraid of their master than of any other conceivable enemy—or at least of Mark—fought like fanatics.

      But on encountering the armed Prince of Tasavalta, a majority of these unfortunates perceived Mark as Wood, and they saw confronting them a figure even more terrible in its