Fred Saberhagen - An Armory of Swords

“You must choose your life yourself. Remember that.”

The woman’s eyes dismissed her. She turned away, and Tegan could not bear it, to be left behind, to have seen wonder and never to see it again. She reached out, to hold the hem of the woman’s tunic, to beg her.

The woman’s hand moved to unsheathe the Sword she carried. The clearing filled with the sound of beating wings, with the face of a harpy, with terror.

“Pick your berries,” a voice said. “You will not remember what you have seen.”

Tegan dressed in red for the battle, a divided skirt rather than the breeches she favored, but the children would look for a lady in red, and breeks on women might confuse them. She fastened her sword at her hip and covered it with a dun cloak, for she had riding to do, and best she were dull of color for it.

And she took a little pendant from its jewelcase, a tiny silver arrow on a chain. She had not touched it since-

That’s over, Tegan told herself. I wear it now on a whim, without anger. But on this morning of all mornings, I will trust my whims, my intuitions. It’s a bauble my hand has reached for, and perhaps my hand knows more than I am willing to know. So be it.

Tegan fastened the pendant around her neck and hurried out into the bright morning.

Osyr’s mount danced with the nervousness his master transmitted. Osyr on a riding-beast was a near-disaster at best, his thin legs never meant to control a mount, his hands too jerky on the reins. The beast he rode was of necessity thick of lip, but stolid enough to follow Seagus.

“You are dressed to ride, Tegan?” Osyr asked.

“I would see you triumph,” Tegan said.

In the fields outside camp, Osyr’s troops mustered in good order, a hundred men mounted, two hundred more on foot, armed with pikes and spears. Their riding-beasts breathed clouds of excitement into the chill air of early spring. The day was threatening to dawn bright, and Blacknail muttered weather-spells as urgently as he could from his perch on a dumpy load-beast.

“Keep safe. When this is done, you must choose a proper princess for me,” Osyr said.

“Just so,” Tegan said, thinking, never, my Lord, would I saddle any woman born of woman with such a burden. Tegan mounted her riding-beast and fell into place beside Dorn, the lanky beastmaster carrying his pet ferretsnake, as usual. He squinted at a nearby sycamore, where a mated pair of great owls waited to scout out the land. The owls had been coerced out of day-sleep this morning. They would be unhappy about it, and offer their complaints to Dorn with each message they brought him.

Always, there were plans within plans. If Idris died today, then his lands would have at least a new master. That accomplished, Tegan hoped for so much more. That Osyr might die, too, well, that might happen or it might not.

The bigger hope was to free the children, and for that, the mine would have to be not just closed, but destroyed. The greed the gems caused could be closed away, but unless the stones that lurked in its depths could be hidden forever, Tegan could buy only a few years of peace from its evil. Someone else would crave them.

The opals were laid in narrow strips of clean earth between bands of poisons from the Old World. Matana had learned that, and told the Duke Idris so, before the sight of one of the gems had ensorceled him.

“It is possible to bring them out,” Matana said, “without killing the miners directly. But only a child, a small child, can get into the passages between the poisons. Even then, the children would sicken and die if they were kept for more than a third of a year at such work. The price of these stones is too great, my Lord Idris.”

He had agreed, and sought out dwarves to investigate the mine. The dwarves, being fellows of good sense, had refused to work the place.

“The humors are evil,” they had told him, and left.

But gems began to appear in the markets, polychrome opals with enchantment in their depths. The Lord Idris had paid his crofters well for the use of their children, and returned them, pale but seeming well, at the end of a year. The crofters, by and large, had taken their money and moved from Idris. They went into the towns, or to different lands. The duke brought other families to his farms, and other children to the mines. They sickened and died in time, but of different things, wasting sicknesses, weak blood. It had been a decade of years before the White Temple related the cases one to the other.

But the duke persisted, and there were always some who didn’t believe the stories, but did believe that the Duke Idris paid well. Memory was a slippery thing, easily pushed aside with coin and dreams of coin. Forgetting was so easy.

Tegan would not have heeded the stories, save that her niece, Lyse’s child, had died in a collapsed tunnel. It was after that that Lyse, grieving, had heard of other deaths, and told Tegan of them, and that Tegan had learned what really killed the children of Idris. She learned then to bless the hatred that gave her courage, the hatred that had begun with an order to forget, an order she had disobeyed.

The memory of it flooded through her, a memory that Noya had wakened.

Tegan stood alone in the little clearing walled with wildrose, guarded by the old oak, filled with blackberries ripe as garnets, where a bird sang sleepy half-songs in a drowsy mid-morning. She settled her basket on her hip and reached for a blackberry, ripe and juicy. It stained her fingers with the color of garnets and blood.

I will remember, she told herself. Remember… what?

Had she heard someone whistle up a riding-beast, the creak of leather as someone mounted?

I will remember, she thought later, her basket full, the sun hot on her neck, and old Rollo’s spotted kid munching blackberry canes beside her. Funny, Tegan thought. Silly little boy goat, for a minute this morning I thought I saw a faun, with spots like yours.

The great owl spiraled down toward the line of riding-beasts. Dorn pulled his mount out of formation and galloped toward the tree where the owl waited. Tegan followed the beastmaster.

“Hungry,” the owl said.

“What news?” Dorn asked. “Earn your mouse.” He dangled one by its tail. The ferretsnake darted for it. Dorn batted at the snake and it settled back around Dorn’s neck. “What travels on the road, owl?”

“White,” the owl said.

“Idris rides, then. I think,” Dorn said.

“Mean owls,” the great owl said.

“Idris has sent out his owls?”

The owl turned his head half around. Maybe that meant yes.

Idris was warned, then.

“Small mouse,” the owl said.

“You’ll have a bucket of mice when we’re done,” Dorn said. “I promise.”

“If you live,” the owl said. He stretched out his beak and took the mouse.

Tegan wheeled her mount and galloped for Seagus, for the head of the column. Behind her, she heard the cry go up, “Forewarned! Forewarned! Close ranks!”

I will take Idris, Tegan thought. I will kill him myself, if I can.

She crested a little hill. On the road below, a procession all in white, twenty or more mounted men, rode single-file. She spied Idris in the center of the column. So innocent he looks, this old man, Tegan thought, but as the Osyr riders appeared, the old man found a sword and bared it, spitting curses through his few remaining teeth. Tegan heard Seagus yelling beside her before his mount pulled ahead of hers. She spurred her beast forward, her sword raised. The world had filled with mounted men in the Idris colors of green and gray.

Seagus parried the duke’s blow and skewered the old man. The Idris Duke’s riding-beast stumbled and the corpse went flying. Osyr, close behind Tegan, reined up sharply. Tegan cut at a ‘pilgrim’ beside her. His chainmail glittered beneath his loose white robe. The bright sun suddenly ducked behind a cloud, Blacknail’s spells successful at last, or the clouds simply a whim of weather. Tegan fought through the clot of pilgrim soldiers and raced up the road. She glanced back and saw Osyr, off his mount, kneeling beside the duke’s body. He clutched a sack in his hand, lifted it aloft, and remounted.