Fred Saberhagen - An Armory of Swords

Well, let him have those stones for his own. If this day went well, they were the last the world would ever see.

Seagus caught up with her, and behind him, she heard the thunder of riding-beasts, a century of Osyr knights who howled like banshees.

At the outskirts of the charging formation, she could see gray and green riders cut toward Osyr’s ranks, and be cut down. There, at the pass, Castle Idris loomed, but Tegan and her army sped past it, almost out of range of the archers on the ramparts. Seagus raised an arm as if to shield her from the arrows. Some clattered against mail, some struck at the ranks. None of Osyr’s men fell, but a few of their mounts now sported flesh wounds.

To the mine, Tegan thought. To the mine, and to hell with what’s behind us.

She found she was laughing, but it sounded more like a shriek. Her riding-beast stretched her neck and ran flat out, as battle-maddened as her mistress. Between Tegan’s breasts, the foil-wrapped stone nestled safe. She bent forward into the wind. Her tiny silver arrow swung free on its chain, as sharp as the day she had found it.

Tegan’s mother plied a hoe around the sweetgourds, and wisewoman Meraud had come to help her, for a share of the gourds when the frost came and turned them gold. Chop, talk, chop, gossip, it made the work go not faster, but with less boredom.

The heavy basket weighed against her hip. Tegan was proud of her labors, enough to make a tart with just a touch of hoarded honey, hot enough to burn and cooled with sweet milk poured over, and plenty of berries left to put in the crock for a winter’s wine. Tegan was hungry.

“I said, you may have some of those stringbeans, take them, lest she come back at night and empty the field, or so I feared, but she smiled and gave me a coin for them.” Tegan’s mother whacked at a weed and it flew through the air, its roots white.

“The warrior woman? I am not surprised, Edda,” Meraud said. “She is a lady, after all.”

“That one? Brown as an elk’s hide, no lady would let her skin brown like that. Tegan, where is your hat?”

“I forgot it,” Tegan said.

“The Lady Idane,” Meraud said. “The Lady Idane herself has paid you a visit, and you thought she would steal your beans.”

“Is that her name? Do you know her?” Mother asked.

“So, we had words last night, and she listened to my tale, and she went out to the highroad this morning, I think.”

I am already gone from here, Tegan thought. These two are already part of my past. I will miss them.

“Which way did she go?” Tegan asked. The words flew out with urgency, with pleading.

Her mother looked up. “Tegan? Is something wrong?” Edda straightened slowly. Meraud had said she had rough spots on her bones, and had given her simples for the pain.

“I’m fine, Mother. Meraud, which way did she go?”

“Where she had business, I expect,” Mother said. “Business far from here; it’s nothing of ours what those women do.”

Tegan promised herself she would come back, someday. Whenever she could, yes, and bring gifts.

Meraud planted her hoe and leaned on it as if it were a crutch. She looked at Tegan, at the berries. “You met her.”

“I would follow her.”

“So,” Meraud said. “So.”

Tegan would remember her mother’s face as long as she lived, the love, the grief.

“I must, Mother. You know I don’t fit here, I don’t belong, Lyse, you’ll have Lyse, and grandchildren soon. I’ll never be as good a wife as Lyse is, or skilled with herbs like Meraud, or-” Or happy to stay in this village, where nothing changes, ever, not now that I have seen a goddess in her power.

“Or beautiful? Or loved? Oh, child.”

“Many go to them,” Meraud said. “Most come home.”

“I will not,” Tegan said.

“Take the berries to the porch,” Mother said. “They will get hot here in the sun.”

“I will go, Mother.” Not to the porch. Far away. Far away from here.

Mother struck a vicious blow at a tiny weed, as if Tegan had not spoken at all. The hoe made a grating sound, metal on metal. “What’s this, now? Something to break my hoe?” She knelt, quick enough in spite of the pain in her bones. Her fingers grubbed in the earth.

“Don’t, Mother.” Tegan put the basket down and knelt beside her. “Let me help you.”

Coins. Not a hoard of gold, no, worn thin coppers and coins of silver.

“Well,” Mother said. “Well.” Her gnarled fingers cupped earth and metal.

Meraud rocked back and forth, braced by her hoe. She hissed at the sight of the coins and drew away from the tiny black arrow Tegan held like a needle. Tegan scratched at it with her close-bitten thumbnail. It was silver.

“It’s for you,” Meraud said. “For you, Tegan.”

They seemed so far away, these two goodwomen with their beans and their long, busy days.

“A sign,” Mother said. “Go if you must. I would not keep you here against your will.” There were tears in her eyes.

Meraud beckoned, and Tegan came to the old woman’s side.

“West,” Meraud whispered. “The Lady Idane has gone west. But comfort your mother before you leave. Will you do that?”

“Yes,” Tegan said. “I will try.”

But she left in the night, left with good-byes unsaid, anxious for the journey.

The entrance to the mine was well-guarded. Tegan led the Osyr knights into a rain of javelins. Above the mouth of the cave, she spied a rank of men with crossbows. She pointed to them, screaming warning.

Seagus left her side, calling up twenty men who veered from the charge, speeding toward a side path that led up past the cave’s mouth.

Bolts from above chattered on armor. Two of Tegan’s men fell. Her riding-beast dodged aside, but Tegan urged her forward again. The beast seemed as enraged as the woman felt. There had been fear. Now there was only rage, rage at the sight of that low tunnel faced with sagging timbers, that black mouth into hell. The entrance was barred by an iron grate, a cruel doorway to let foul air out, to keep the miners in.

Tegan’s sword seemed to strike of its own will. She slashed at an outstretched arm, cut down at an unprotected shoulder, heard a sigh as the man beside her gutted an Idris spearman.

Her protector went down, felled by a bolt. Tegan heard Seagus bellowing above her, and the hissing of the bolts began to slacken.

“Bring up the ram!” Tegan yelled.

An aisle formed behind her, centered on the grate. Twenty Osyr men hauled up a huge oaken log mounted on straps.

“Not at the center! The timbers! Hit the timbers!”

The new-cut log crashed into old wood. The grate fell.

Tegan dismounted and slapped at the flank of her riding-beast. The war-trained beast reared, twisting to bring her steel-clad hooves down on an Idris man. The tip of his falling sword cut a long gash through the cloak on Tegan’s back. Tegan tore at its fastenings and threw it aside.

She turned at the ruined grate and saw, below her on the mountain’s dark flank, a melee of green and gray fighting Osyr’s bronze and black, a knot of Osyr men surrounding their duke and his banner.

Tegan ducked under the sagging timbers, into the mine itself. She held her bloody sword like a beacon.

The woman had left the tiny silver arrow, how else could it have got in Edda’s field? She had buried it for Tegan to find. But the little weed had grown in undisturbed earth. It could have been an old thing, a bauble tossed away centuries before.

No, Tegan told herself. She called me. She left a sign.

All through that journey, west, she clutched at her talisman, polished bright and tied round her neck with a length of green ribbon. The coins were gone, save for four thin coppers. Cold and tired, Tegan stumbled along a stream that came down from the high pass in the western mountains.