The Fourth Book Of Lost Swords : Farslayer's Story (Saberhagen's Lost Swords 4), Fred Saberhagen [100 best novels of all time TXT] 📗

      There came another small volley of missiles aimed at the griffin, on the orders of Chilperic.

      Tigris’s next move was a counterattack on her former partner who was trying to kill her now. First an approach as if to parley again, then a charge, striking him down, using her griffin’s powerful, lionlike forepaws as her directed weapons.

      Chilperic, too crafty ever to be taken by surprise, got home on the griffin with a good swordsman’s thrust in the instant before he perished.

      The beast reeled in midair, and almost plunged to earth; Tigris wondered if Chilperic’s own sword might have had some touch of magic in its steel, to let him strike like that at a creature of such magic.

      But the griffin bore the victorious Tigris up again, just before they would have crashed into a tree. Certainly, at least, something of speed and maneuverability had been lost.

      In another moment or two Tigris had to admit that the situation was worse than that. The animal was going to have to land somewhere, at least until she was able to work some of her healing arts upon it. Gently she urged it down, at the same time muttering curses upon Chilperic’s magically poisoned steel.

      During this part of the fighting, Mark was beset by two or three opponents, and he fell, dazed by a slung stone. One of the mercenaries closed in for the kill.

      Zoltan was near his uncle, but fully occupied at the moment in his own fight, unable to come to Mark’s assistance.

      Ben, near the edge of the thicket thirty or forty meters distant, had just overcome Sergeant Shotoku with a stranglehold. Now Ben had to throw the Sword of Vengeance at the mercenary threatening Mark if the life of the fallen prince was to be saved.

      The flying Sword skewered the mercenary and knocked him down.

      Koszalin bravely charged in Mark’s direction.

      But not to strike the helpless prince. Instead the captain seized the Sword, wrenching it free from the torso of its latest victim. Then Koszalin ran off, dodging among bushes, to get the few moments of privacy he needed.

      Tigris, still on the ground tending to her griffin, was unable to keep the captain from doing what he wanted with Farslayer in the next few moments, though she probably saw him take the Sword, and guessed, and feared what he was about to do.

      Some of Koszalin’s men, having overheard the lady’s dazzling promise of riches and other rewards, were quite ready to dispute this point with him; and Koszalin needed to kill one of them with the Sword, never letting go of its black hilt, to make his own point perfectly clear.

* * *

      Koszalin was ignoring the fact that the griffin and rider had managed to become airborne again. He was ignoring his other opponents, including some who had been his own men. All of them were coming to kill him now in an effort to get Farslayer for themselves. But they were all going to be too late. The captain spun around and chanted, and launched the Sword of Vengeance on a new mission.

      The recovering Mark, and others closing in on Koszalin, were able to obtain only a brief glimpse of the Sword’s trajectory on this occasion. From what they could see, the indication was that the Sword of Vengeance was departing on a very long flight, headed somewhere in the general direction of the southern horizon.

      Exactly who or what had been Koszalin’s target was something that no one else present then understood. If any of them had heard the captain’s last shouted word, which might be assumed to be the name of his chosen victim, that name had meant nothing at all to them.

      But Koszalin, dying after being cut down too late to stop the Sword’s departure was heard by several people to mutter something about a promise at last fulfilled.

      Sergeant Shotoku, having survived the stranglehold, and coming to make sure that the fight was really over, had a comment to the effect that now at last his captain would be able to sleep. And indeed there was a look of peace upon Koszalin’s face.

Chapter Twenty

      The fighting and dying in the thickets and on the hillside; along the road to Malolo manor had come to an end in early afternoon. Now, just a few hours later, all was quiet in the valley of the Tungri just below the Second Cataract.

      With Bonar and Gesner dead, Prince Mark and his companions had no desire to try what sort of welcome they might receive from the two sisters who still occupied the manor. Lady Yambu, coming out from that house before anyone could begin to worry about her, advised against it. So when the last live mercenary had disappeared from the scene of fighting, the four instead made their way warily back to the fishing village, with whose inhabitants they considered themselves likely to be still on good terms.

      At the village they were received cautiously but without open hostility. And they found Soft Ripple there, drifting in the water beside a dock, talking to some on the land who had once been her own people. Several other mermaids were gathered not far offshore, holding position effortlessly there against the current, as if they might be waiting to hear news of the day’s events.

      Lady Megara was nowhere to be seen, and Zoltan supposed it likely that she was still upstream somewhere with the hermit, perhaps beside Cosmo’s grave.

      Zoltan, feeling exhausted, stood on the bank, looking across the river to the north. What might be going on now over there, in and around the stronghold of the doomed and decimated Senones clan, was impossible to tell from this distance. But, to most of the people who were still alive on the south bank, that no longer mattered.

      Yambu came up beside him. “If you wish,” she said, “I will release you from any pledge of service you have made to me.”

      Zoltan picked up a pebble and threw it into the river. “Are you