The Death of a Swordsman 15

15

Varad's meditations were becoming peculiar. By now his burned hands and back had healed, as had the mark's left on his wrists and forearms by Fradick. He could breath without difficulty. Even his legs were making good progress. As best he could tell, the bones were healing straight. If he twisted so his feet rested on the floor, he could rest the weight of his legs on them without pain. Even bouncing his lower legs up and down with his ankles merely increased his sense of tenderness.

Yet when he closed his eyes and ran katas in his head, things were different. As he went deeper into himself, his hands and wrists began to burn. Every move practiced to slow perfection became a tedious wade through through some viscous, burning fluid that resisted his movement. Even the relaxation drills that he had used since he was a child came harder.

Varad began those by imagining his bed was adrift on a dark, sunless river. The motion of the waves was very slight, nothing more then the beat of his pulse against his skin. By visualization he left his pain and injuries on the banks of that river while he floated slowly to the center of the river stream. Then the current bore him away, down over rock and dell, until emptying into a vast black tarn between soaring peaks. As a child he had seen such a tarn on a journey over the mountains. Now his memories of it formed a still, black lake between soaring peaks where the water was always frigid. At the center of the lake he would lay, kept warm by the thin bed of his prison, and pushed his mind through his own body. Not so much willing his injuries to heal but rather feeling them do so, his mind had created a point of stillness at the center of the nameless lake of his childhood where he could bend all his mental facilities on encouraging his body to sustain itself. That was before.

Now there was a black, sun-forsaken mass of rock that hovered over him and his lake. It slipped into the images he created for himself, and loomed ominously above his head. Had it remained on the shore before he floated off, he would have thought nothing of it. Then he knew it would have just been a shadow of a painful memory of defeat. Yet it lurked above him, and held within it a potent threat that he could hardly ignore. The lake water he occasionally pictured lapping up against him was becoming warmer then he remembered. Where it touched his skin, his body felt inflamed in his dreams. Every time returned to reality from his dream state, he traced the sensation of heat, and always found it in the places the dragon had licked him with its fire. Now those burns were gone, yet phantom pains skittered across his consciousness when he meditated. Recently they had begun to appear when he awoke from regular sleep. He had no idea how to dispel them.

One afternoon Varad sat on his bed, staring at a wall. His mind was totally blank, though not intentionally. Sensations of the strips splinting the bed legs to his shins entered his head, as did the awareness that the bed still retained two long poles and one short one. Between them they formed the rectangular frame, with the final side comprised of the sod wall, into which the poles were jammed. It rested at an angle, missing legs, that he had ignored at first because he had been exhausted from injury every time he went to sleep. Now he was used to it. The low ceiling and loamy walls filled the room with the smell of dirt in a way that had nothing to do with the scent of filth. Outside it was afternoon, and the shadows wrapped the boulder strewn hillside. Koquo sat on his haunches just inside the doorway, looking lost in his thoughts as well.

The swordsman threw off his lethargy and announced, "I'm going to the cleft."

Koquo shook himself and glanced up. "Whatever," he replied, shrugging. He rose and got out of Varad's way, but did nothing to help as the injured man began his regular crawl towards the split boulder where he relieved himself.

As Varad did his business, a sudden tension ran through the people of the valley. The cattle herds were still out. The consequence had rarely stayed in one place this long, and the herd's tenders were being forced to foray further and further for fresh grazing. Those who remained were already preparing the evening meal. Yet as one they began emerging from hidden places and secreted houses to stare at the western sides of the valley. A lone figure was riding down the hill. He was not of the Consequence of Sudden Conflict, Lrok's people.

Life on the plains did not lend itself to strange visitors, Varad had noted. Even beyond that, the tangible sense of expectation running through the hillside settlement was filled with concern and fear. One by one those who emerged to see the stranger were returning to their homes, and playing children were being quietly summoned into hiding. Koquo had dropped into a crouch and was ignoring Varad to stare at the visitor from behind cover. If Varad had been able to walk, he might have made a run for it.

Instead he finished what he was doing and crawled back to the plainsman's side. "We can return now," he hissed.

Koquo barely glanced at him but wormed away on his belly. Before crawling after him, Varad took another look at the stranger. He stared hard, for now the rider was closer and could be discerned in better detail.

It was another horned lord. The spurs jutting from his skull were longer and sharper than those of either Lrok or Fradick. As he came closer and details resolved to give a sense of perspective, Varad realized this horned one must be huge. Tall grass barely made it to his knees. That meant the rider was seven, possibly eight feet tall. He looked normal sized on his dark gray steed. Unlike Lrok, he had several spikes jutting out of his skin of his head below the ring about his temple. They stabbed out of his jaw and the back of his head, but none appeared from the center of his face. He wore leather, but his jerkin and pants had been finely tailored around the horns. They stabbed up from his body, through his clothing, like he wore an armor of sharp, blood letting spikes. Only his joints were free of them, though several appeared on the backs of his hands. Several shot forward, past the knuckles, and others swept back above the wrist towards the fore-arm. Varad considered it, and judged this one's natural armor was far superior to either of the horned lords he had met so far. The stranger's growth was either guided or extremely lucky.

It reined in at the base of hill, and dismounted heavily. The ground sank beneath its feet. After removing a single leather wrapped parcel from the beast before turning, and walking powerfully up the hill. The horse began to graze, unhobbled. Only by analyzing the way the stranger moved did Varad realize it was a woman. Then she passed out of sight, and he crawled after Koquo.

Lrok met his visitor near a spring pool. Water bubbled up from between two boulders and filled a shallow, hand carved depression before tumbling away. In the valley it widened, and there the herds drank. There were other streams, and they ran together into a wider creek, almost a small river. That stank of cow manure, though flowers grew bright and dense along its banks. This pool remained exclusive for the consequence.

"Dhrazud," Lrok acknowledged her with a nod.

"Bow, Lrok," she replied flatly.

The smaller horned lord hesitated. He shot searching gazes around the small grotto but saw nothing but grass swarming over the dirt. This depression had also been dug in by hand, and no traces of the colorful plants showed to bear witness that this place was a better settlement spot than any other. Above their heads the rude, unworked stone rose into the air to stab at the sky. No one was watching.

Slowly, Lrok bent and sank all the way to his knees. They stabbed into the ground, and the mud squished under him. He leaned forward until his forehead touched the dirt, and he prostrated himself in supplication.

Dhrazud lifted one foot to stomp down on his head, smashing his face into the muck up to his ears. Lrok could not breath, and the woman ground his head down, working it in. She did that for a while.

"Never make me tell you to bow again," she ordered, pushing her weight forward until his head was immersed into the mire to his neck. With a final grind, she released him. Lrok pulled his face free with a slurpy hiss, and sucked deeply at air. "Did you hear me through the dirt? Never wait until I tell you to bow. Now, you insubordinate little shit, perhaps you would like to tell me why I'm here?"

For a several seconds Lrok just breathed while runny mud dribbled from the ridges of his face, and trickled from his horns. Finally he responded, "It is not for me to tell you anything, Dhrazud. It is for me to listen to anything you choose to say." His forced words sounded unnatural, and the humility barely squeezed through fury.

"True, little rat. True. It was the wind. The lying, deceiving wind brought me here."

Dhrazud looked down and noticed she had sank into the mud up to her ankles. She trudged out of the mire to a rock and wiped most of the grime off. Then she continued, "The lying wind told me you had killed your brother Fradick. That cannot be, of course, because you have not asked my permission, nor send me my tribute. Where is the half his body I am owed? You do remember that, don't you? Anyone who kills one of my sons must give me half?" She turned to look at Lrok and gauge his reaction.

He did not show one. Instead he was wiping the fast drying mud from his face. Already most of it had caked into dirt, and the rest was steaming in the cold air.

She continued, "The whispering wind also tells me that you caught a northman. A redcloak. It tells me you are ransoming him back to his people for his weight in northern steel. Does the wind lie?"

Lrok clawed caking muck from his face with his fingernails, trying to figure out a way to admit one without the other. He decided the sidestep the question. "Do you want half a man's weight in fine, northern steel? I would be happy to give it to you in filial tribute, Dhrazud."

"Of course, little rat, but you've screwed that up already. If you had told me ahead of time, we would have the steel to split it. But the wind told the Kahserac, and he wants the redcloak dead. He wants the mortal dead immediately. Now we won't get a inch of steel, and if I'm losing the steel you should have given me, you'll give me Fradick's entire body."

"What does he care for a human?" Lrok demanded.

Dhrazud's head snapped around to glare at her son over her shoulder. "Are you asking me a question, little rat?"

Lrok could not answer, so said nothing.

"What difference does it make?" she said finally. "He heard through the wind that you sent a messenger north with a sword. He drew out a pattern that might match blade. So it came to me to track this messenger down before he made it to the northlands and see if the sword your messenger was carrying matched the pattern. My best mount almost died getting me to the very borderlands in time to catch your rider, and then when I took the sword he refused to tell me where you lived these days."

"Clearly his will was no match for yours," Lrok replied.

"Of course. I began eating him from the feet. He talked before I got to his waist. But there was no time to finish the rest of him, so I wasted all of his meat and organs beside the brain," she said with disgust.

Lrok said nothing. He stood in the muck that oozed about his sinking feet and listened quietly, staring down.

Dhrazud unrolled the package she had brought and produced a broken sword. The leather wrap had a charcoal drawing on the inside that matched the six pointed star on the Song of Winter's pommel. It also had a sketch of the distinctive snowflake pattern along the blade. They were clearly the same. In disgust, she tossed them to the mud. Lrok's posture changed, which she noticed.

"You have a question," Dhrazud told him.

"Not, of course, without your permission," he replied. Without waiting, he genuflected again and moved to prostrate himself.

"Keep your face out of the muck. What is it?"

"If the human is wanted dead, and not to ransom, may we eat the corpse?"

"No. The Kahserac wants the corpse brought to him as proof." Then, with sudden hunger she asked, "Is the human fat?"

"I have fed him well," Lrok replied. "His legs are broken, but he would be a fine meal."

"A damned waste. You should have killed someone for our meal when you saw I was coming," she decided regretfully.

"I should have," he agreed submissively. "Shall I do that now?"

"No. You may tell me where Fradick's corpse is, and where I can find horses that will carry it back to the deep south with me. Then you may go kill the human. Don't mangle him too badly. He needs to be recognized."

Lrok winced in pain at the thought of giving up his brother's full corpse. He had just begun to work it. Combined with the pain of losing the mortal's body-weight in steel, the kneeling figure felt agonized by loss. "I obey your bidding."

"Where's your brother?" Dhrazud demanded.

"Between the two highest pillars, there is a forge. His body-metal is within. There are horses tether by the stream, and they can bear Fradick's body-metal for you. My own horse is there, if you need it. He is young, and not yet injured from bearing me."

"As little as you are, that is no surprise," she replied. "Very well. Go kill the human. Strangle it or something. I'm going to go get my tribute."

She turned and hurled herself out of the grotto. The earth crumbled underneath her feet, meaning she had to climb and claw to drag herself out, gouging great furrows in the earth. When she was gone, the traces of her passage showed a wound in the soil.

Lrok looked sick. For a long moment he stared up after her, thinking about the work he had put into smelting Fradick and the taunts that would now be defunct. Then wearily he rose and trudged through the grasping muck.

"Who was that?" Varad had asked Koquo when the two of them were back in the small cell.

"Don't know. It doesn't matter," Koquo had answered apathetically.

"It was female," Varad added, hoping to eke out more of a response.

"It doesn't matter. They were all men or women once, but they aren't any more. One is no different from the rest. Stop talking. I am not Farus."

Continued questions elicited no clarifications, and shortly Varad stopped asking.

He was certain of only one thing, though, and that was that nothing here happened for the better. No arrival of another, larger horned lord to his captor's settlement would improve his life. It would either leave it unchanged or make it worse. While he came to this conclusion Dhrazud was tersely telling Lrok to kill him. Against either possibility, the injured swordsman decided to disassemble his bed. Koquo watched but said nothing. The plainsman just did not care.

When Lrok suddenly appeared in the doorway, Koquo glanced between the captive, seated amidst a pile of loose wood and leather sheets, and his master. He pulled himself to his feet to stare at his master's shoulder. The horned lord overtopped him by a full head, and Koquo was taller than Varad. "Begone," Lrok ordered, and Koquo fled.

The northerner glanceded at the southern plainslord's posture and carriage for an instant. He had dried mud caked to his face, burned dry. More was splattered on his hands and knees. The lord stood with his weight evenly spread between his feet, leaning slightly forward digressively. His shoulders were bunched towards the slight hump of his neck, and there was tension in the big hands.

"I see I'm not getting ransomed," Varad observed, wondering if Lrok would explain.

Lrok did not, but he did have questions of his own. "Who are you, northman? Why does anyone care?"

For a moment the captive considered the question. In his serene trance, lying was impossible and he would have to fully arise to speak untruth. "I am Al'Varad of the Seven Fingered Palm. My blade is the Song of Winter." Varad replied simply.

Lrok looked baffled, like the words were incoherent. "You are from the Palm? They are the masters of the sword, who stand alone against our kind. You are broken and weak, and I crushed your Song of Winter myself."

"I was injured fighting a dragon." Something inside Varad's head almost clicked. The dragon was a creature who only existed by magic and fire, like the horned lord. There was no way a being with as much metal in its body could move easily like Lrok, and there had been no way the dragon could fly, carrying the corsair. It was like two gears half meshed, but there was a missing piece required for them to complete their interface. "In time, I will be whole again.

"No, you're not," Lrok replied. "You're going to die now."

"Will you eat me, cannibal lord?" Varad asked.

"I am no man. Eating men does not make me a cannibal. The coyote is blameless for eating the sheep."

"As are the sheep for killing the coyote."

Lrok grew tired of this and instead of replying lunged for Varad's neck. From the floor Varad torqued his body to thrust the soft-wood bed pole with shattering force into the horned lord's eye. His thrust was so fast Lrok didn't have the time to blink before the poplar beam crashed into his right eyeball, and straight enough that the pole could not flex in any direction. Instead the force of the strike rebounded onto itself, and exploded in a hail of splinters. Varad rolled sideways with the broken end of the pole clutched tight while Lrok stumbled and crashed into the wall.

When the horned lord turned, the northerner was shocked to realize he hadn't blinded that eye. The ball was lanced with splinters, but it still saw, moving around in its socket. Lrok rose and faced Varad again. Without use of his legs, the swordsman could not drop his hips into a strike. This he seized one of Lrok's ankles and hurled the stubby end of the pole into his eye again.

This throw was slower, and Lrok had time to blink. Unfortunately for him, his eyelids simply caught the splinters that pincushioned his eye and squeezed it, distorting the shape and raising a fluid filled bump directly over the pupil. The ragged end of the poplar pole hit this full on. Being sharper then the blunt end from before, it lanced into the distorted eyeball. By then Lrok's flailing hands caught the pole. It crumpled in before his unnatural strength, and ripped tissue and flesh out with it as he yanked it free.

Lrok wound up staring at his dangling, ruined eyeball as it hung from his hand. The thick, coarse nerves still ran into his head, and they pulsed with heat in the cold air. The wound bled, but it looked like leeching rust instead of blood.

It was too much. Lrok lost his grip on his fury like he had lost Fradick's corpse, a man's weight in steel, and now his eye. He screamed something that was too obscene for mortal profanity and dove at the supine Varad.

His momentum got redirected, and the horned lord smashed entirely through a sod wall. It crumpled on his, burying him with dirt and grass. It took him several seconds to extricate himself, and along the way he lost his grip on the dangling eye. Finally he stood up, throwing dirt and boulders aside, and screaming incoherently. Elsewhere, Dhrazud heard her son's cries and anguish, and could not stop laughing as she collected Fradick's body.

The hut had collapsed, but Varad was outside with the remaining, longer bedpole. He was tumbling erratically down the hillside, flailing his limp legs and posting with his arms to avoid the larger boulders. Lrok threw himself after, crashing into rocks as the hillside gave way under his incautious haste. He started a minor avalanche that swept Varad away before him, likewise bouncing between boulders. Other humans of the consequence scrambled out of their way.

Finally Varad caught himself on the lip of a standing stone that had parted the cascade of dirt. Spinning the bed-pole to an upside down, spear thrower's grip, he swung himself around and jammed it into Lrok's legs. The massive horned lord was charging wildly, out of control, and his center of mass had already passed his feet. Only speed had kept him from rolling forward. Varad's lunge arrested the movement of one of his legs enough that Lrok spun sideways and couldn't get his feet under him in time. His massive, iron-dense body thundered into the erect stone and broke it at the base. Now it, he, and Varad all joined the tumbling fall of dirt that poured between two of the lower boulders and out onto the flat ground before the hill.

Lrok's horned skin provided an easy if painful grip. By the time they stopped rolling, Varad had taken control of his enemy's back and seized the dangling eyeball. He wrapped the tethering nerve around Lrok's neck and yanked, before spearing it on one of the latter's own back spikes. At some level it must have still had feeling, for that gave rise to a earth shattering howl of pain.

Then Lrok rose and searched around. Before Varad could drop away, he figured out the meaning of the strange weight on his back and reached down to grab one of the human's legs, yanking him free in a manner that defied all leverage. Then he lifted the man to wring his neck.

Varad clapped him on both ears, palms flat and wide. On his head Lrok only had the crown, none of the protection on the sides of his face, meaning the strike was unimpeded. It stunned him for a moment, disturbing his already spinning sense of equilibrium. Varad did it again, harder, and then a third time with desperation.

Reflexively the self described predator threw Varad away, and staggered around until he had his bearings. Varad went rummaging through the loose dirt for the bed-pole, and found it when Lrok finally had returned to his senses.

For his part, the horned lord realized he had been fighting stupid. Varad could not run, or even walk, but with a weapon in his hand he was a threat. In fact, the only threat he posed was with his arms. Eschewing getting in close enough to be grappled, Lrok trudged over to the broken stone that had stood like a plinth. It was as tall as him, several feet around, and massed easily several hundred pounds. He heaved it upright, and then threw it.

There was no way to parry it, but it was not moving fast. Varad pushed himself sideways, letting the stone crash into the dirt before him. It threw up a wide splash of loose soil but barely rolled. Meanwhile Lrok had grabbed another great stone and hurled that after the first. This one missed.

"Loosing an eye threw your aim off!" Varad yelled.

"I'll get lucky," Lrok replied evenly. His rage had cooled to a seething, murderous fury that would drive him to sadistic lengths. He searched around for another boulder, and found one a couple yards up the hillside.

It was more than three times a man's weight, and he took two motions to heave it over his antlered head. From the short distance away Varad peppered his face with small, egg shaped rocks, but Lrok ignored them. He advanced carefully, picking his footing and thinking about range.

Varad was fighting to stay calm. His hands burned, His chest was covered in blood from the dozen horn wounds, and his legs had buckled when he tried to put weight on them. He knew if he tried again the fractures would rebreak, leaving him worse then before. He had a chance while Lrok fought stupid, but now that was fading. The crippled Swordman watched Lrok advance slowly with ponderous care.

Then he fled. Varad forsook even crawling and rolled away. Still outside of throwing range, Lrok lurched into faster motion and took two running steps. One the third his foot sank into the loose dirt to his knee, and thrown off balance he dropped the stone. It plowed into the earth, with its highest point several inches below the surface. He had to fight to get back on the surface of the ground before he picked it up again, and then Varad's shameful but effective retreat had taken him out of sight around one of the standing monoliths. Lrok set off after him.

Around the hillside, people were beginning to watch the engagement. Soon now the herds would return, driven by the watchers. The shadows were reaching east from the hillsides, and to the north the mountains were already lost in gloom. The horned lord trudged after his prey, but circled wide around the rock so he couldn't be ambushed.

He found Varad, crawling away up a hillside where it would be difficult to follow carrying the huge boulder. Lrok discarded it, intending to find another when he caught up with the human. As he did so he noticed Farus, dashing around the hillside on horseback and waving his arms wildly for attention. The horned one shot a glance uphill, then at the approaching human, before asking, "What?"

"Master, she's trying to kill you. Do not trust her!" gasped Farus but very quietly as he approached. Immediately he threw himself face down onto the dirt. He turned his head sideways just enough that he could speak. "Her orders, master. They are full of lies."

"What?" Lrok repeated himself in a flatter, far more hostile tone.

"Master, I beg you think. Dhrazud came alone from the deep south, riding one of the few horses which can carry her great weight. She rides it almost to death to catch your messenger, and then does not even finish killing him slowly after finding out where you are. What haste must she have been in, master?

Without waiting for an answer, he continued. "But on arriving she does not kill the mortal herself. She bids you do it. Why would she go to such lengths, but not take the kill herself? And what happens? A man who cannot walk and armed with a stick from his bed fights you off. You said yourself there is something unnatural about a man who sets his own broken legs. On those splints, look at what he has done!"

"I am looking at what he has done," Lrok replied, staring up the hill. "He is getting away."

"How far away can he get? He can barely only crawl!" Farus pleaded.

"I have noticed this. That is why I am listening to you now. I also noticed you listened in on business that had no bearing on you," the horned one said. His rage was still throbbing at the base of his skull, but it was quiet. Farus's words intrigued him.

"I did, master," Farus agreed, knowing denial was pointless. "And I shadowed you to the mortal's cell, where I saw the conflict. Lord of the Sudden Conflict, I asked myself, why would she do this thing? The more I thought, the more troubled I became. Why would the Kahserac send Dhrazud to handle this matter personally, and in justification the prisoner said he intended to kill Morryin. Master, no one can kill Morryin. Yet the man Varad aims to do just that, and the Kahserac does not want him alive. The only meaning can be that the Kahserac fears him. Dhrazud must fear him too.

"If you kill the mortal, she will gain the full weight of Fradick's metal. But if the mortal kills you, then he will be weak and he will be easier for her to kill. Yet you gain nothing. The only outcomes for Lrok, Master of the Sudden Conflict, are death or loss of all Fradick's body metal."

Lrok turned again to watch the struggling human make his way up the hill. They were speaking in low tones, and he doubted Varad would be able to overhear.

"You tell me you think he could win?" Lrok asked with contempt and menace.

"He took your eye with a stick!" Farus implored, still face in the dirt. "He is no redcloak but knows they prize him highly. Master, the redcloaks must fear this man's sword arm and value it above a hundred swords. He has a chance, and either way, you gain nothing by this fight."

That Lrok had admitted to himself, and the ugly injury at the heart of his fury bristled with the truth of it. Absently he removed his impaled eyeball from his back. It looked deflated, and most of the occular fluid had drained out. He popped it into his mouth and bit through the nerve before stuffing the rusty red fibers into his eye socket. Now his missing eye looked like it cancerously bulged from a gaping hole in his head. Lrok chewed the eyeball absently and swallowed.

"So what?" Lrok asked. "But speak quickly.

"Let him go."

"Stand up, idiot. I cannot hear you with your face in the muck."

Farus threw himself to his feet. "Let him go. I will go to him, put him on a fast horse, and send him away. Dhrazud dare not let him escape, but she cannot chase a lone man running for her life if she is leading a team of horses, each bearing a piece of Fradick's corpse. She will have to run at once to her own steed and give chase. They will be gone, you will keep Fradick's corpse, and with luck, Varad will end Dhrazud's life for you."

The man was talking fast. The words tumbled out of his lips in his haste to get them out. "You will already be chasing the man on your own horse. Just don't catch him. But Dhrazud has her own steed, a god-horse of the deep south. She will overtake you, and then have to pass on to catch the man. Follow them both. If he kills her, take her body-metal for your own, and you will have both her great corpse and Fradick's. If she kills Varad, then maybe you will let her go. But maybe she will be very injured, and then, the outcome will be the same. Only then you have Varad's corpse as well, to send to the Kahserac. He may reward you greatly in the south."

"I see you say nothing of what will happen in the Consequence when I am gone," Lrok noted.

Farus stared stared at him. "My lord, make me one of you. Exalt me, bring the horns from my body. I will rule the consequence while you are gone. If you go south to greater things, you won't need the Sudden Conflict, and I will keep them. I can only gain if you do, and as my sire, you will be protected from me."

"The sheep wants to be a coyote?" Lrok asked, mimicking his earlier conversation.

"All sheep want to be coyotes," Farus told him. "Above all things, I desire power. I will get it for you, if you reward me in kind. Two coyotes can kill a wolf."

Lrok thought about this as Varad finally made it over a bump in the hill above them. Seeing his target get out of sight made the freezing fury recede, and his mind seemed to defrost. The horned lord ran calculations in an instant, and with each thought his wits swelled. "Very well, Farus. Go. Set the northman free," he ordered. With that he turned and ignored the man as he went back for his horse. He found it easily, and then set to making it ready. That took a long time, and Lrok acted with no haste.