Piers Anthony - Neq the Sword

Finally he unstopped the voice that had been dormant during the entire time of killing, and that had emerged only when his sword was buried. He sang, accompanying himself carefully on the glockenspiel:

Then only say that you'll be mine

And our love will happy be

Down beside some water flow

By the banks of the O-hi-o.

He sang all of it, though this was not that river and his voice, despite the smithy's compliment, was imperfect now, a creaky shadow of its prime. But the instrument gave him a certainty of key he had not had before, and the spirit of the melody suffused him with its odd rapture.

As he sang, he rocked to the lovely, tortured vision of it: the young woman taking a walk by the river strand, refusing to marry the suiter, being threatened by his knife at her breast, and finally drowned. An ugly story but a beautiful song--one of his favorites, before he had come too close to living it. There were tears in his eyes, making his watch difficult.

"Your wife--did you kill her too?"

He was not startled to find Vara awake. He had known he could not sing aloud without arousing her curiosity or ire. "I must have."

"I ask only because I have to," she said bitterly. "Tyl balked me, on pain I should know you. Before I kill you. I saw you had no bracelet."

"She was a crazy," he said, not caring what she might think about Neqa.

"A crazy! What have you to do with them?"

"I thought to rebuild Helicon."

"You lie!" she cried, clutching at her sticks, which were always with her, warrior-style.

Neq looked at her tiredly. "I kill. I do not lie."

She turned away. "I may not kill you yet."

"You want the mountain dead?"

"No!"

"Then tell me: what is Helicon to you? Were you not kept prisoner there, and betrayed at the end? Don't you hate it yet?"

"Helicon was my home! I loved it!"

He studied her in the moonlight, perplexed. "Do you want it restored, then, as I do?"

"No! Yes!" she cried, crying.

Neq let it be. He kn�w what grief was, and the burning for revenge. And futility. Vara was in the throes of it all, as he had been when Neqa died. As he was still. It might be months, years before she made sense to others or to herself, and she would not be so pretty, then.

He tapped the flat metal bells of the glockenspiel again, picking out a new tune. Then he sang, and Vara did not protest.

"I know my love by her way of walking And I know my love by her way of talking..."

Tyl slept on, though their conversation was not quiet.

"When I first saw Var," Vara said, "he was standing on the plateau of Mt. Muse, looking down from the rim. He could have dropped a rock on me, but he didn't, because he wasn't the kind to take advantage."

"Why should anyone drop a rock on you?" Neq demanded, disliking this reference to the dead man.

"We were meeting in single combat. You know that,"

"Why did Bob send a child?" Was the truth at last within reach?

"And after we fought, it was cold, and he held me so I would not shiver. He gave me his heat, for he was always generous."

They were working at cross purposes.

"Would you warm your enemy if he were cold?" she asked him.

"No."

"You see. Var was a giver of life, not of death."

She had meant to hurt him, and she had succeeded. How could he return to this bitter girl what he had taken from her?

"Ambush," Tyl murmured. "Well-laid; I saw it too late. You two break while I cover the retreat."

Neither Neq or Vara reacted openly; both were too well versed in tactics. They exchanged a glance of chagrin, for neither had been aware of the situation. But if Tyl said there was an ambush, there was an ambush, though the forest seemed deserted.

Vara turned nonchalantly and started back. Neq shrugged and followed, while Tyl whistled idly and moved toward a tree as though for a call of nature. But it was too late; the trap sprung, and they were neatly in it.

From front, back and sides armed men appeared and converged. They carried clubs and staffs and sticks. No blades, oddly. Now Neq understood how the three had walked into the trap: the ambushers came out of holes in the ground! The trapdoors were flush with the forest floor and covered with leaves so that nothing showed until they opened.

But this was a great deal of trouble for a mere ambush! And no sharp weapons! Why?

Tyl and Vera had run together the moment the men appeared. Now they stood back to back, sticks in each hand. Neq remained where he was; his first abortive motion to uncover his sword had reminded him that he was no longer armed. If he joined the other two he would only hamper them.

The men closed in. Neq remembered the similar maneuver of a tribe six years before, closing in on a truck. If he could have known in time to save Neqa... !

"Yield," the leader of the ambush said.

No one answered. They were too wise in the ways of outlawism to doubt that death would be cleanest in battle. Such elaborate preparations would not have been made merely to recruit tribesmen!

"Yield or die!" the leader said. A ring formed about the two stickers, and another around Neq. "Who are you?"

"Tyl of Two Weapons."

"Vara--the Stick."

The ambusher considered. "Only one Tyl of Two Weapons I know of, and this is pretty far out of his territory."

Tyl didn't bother to answer. His sticks remained ready; his sword hung at his side.

"If it is him, we won't take him alive," the leader said. "Or his woman."

Vara didn't deign to correct him. Her sticks were ready too.

"Why would he travel without his tribe?" another man inquired. "And with a girl young enough to be his daughter?"

"That's why, maybe," the leader said. He came over to Neq. "But this one doesn't talk, and he covers his weapon. Who are you?"

Slowly Neq raised his left arm. The loose sleeve fell away and the metal pincers came into view.

There was a murmur in the group. The leader stepped back. "I have heard of a man who had his hands cut off. So he had his sword grafted on, and--"

Neq nodded. "They were ambushers."

The circle about him widened as the men edged away.

"We have a gun," the leader said. "We do not want to kill you, but if you move--"

"We only pass through," Neq said. "We have no business with you." He was now talking to distract attention from Tyl, who might then get out his own gun unobserved. There were enough men here to overcome the little party, though that would not have been the case had Neq's blade been in place and Tyl's gun ready. The outlaw's gun was not the advantage they supposed.

"You have business with us," the leader said. "We require a service from you. Perform it and you shall go free with the wealth of our tribe on your shoulders. Fail it, and you shall die."

Neq ached with fury to be addressed in this manner, as though any threat by any straggling outlaw could move him. He had/destroyed a tribe of such arrogance before. But he had given up the sword. Now he would live or die without it. "What is your service?"

"Walk the haunted forest at night."

Neq stifled a laugh. "You fear ghosts?"

"With reason. By day the forest harms no one, and stands athwart our richest hunting-grounds, just a few miles down this trail. But the ghosts strike those who enter at night. First the blades, then the dull weapons. Banish our spook: walk it at night and live. We will reward you richly for breaking the spell. Our food, our equipment, our women--"

"Keep your trifles! Feed us today; tonight we challenge your ghost. Together. Not for your sake, but because it crosses our route."

"You will keep your sword covered in our camp?"

"I keep my arm covered if no man annoys me."

"And you?" the leader called to Tyl.

"And I," Tyl agreed, and Vara also nodded.