David Chandler - A thief in the night

“Ah!” the barbarian said, and looked like he might start laughing again. “I am glad you asked. I am looking for Sir Croy.”

Malden was confused. “Well, you found him-but did you expect to find him in that tavern? It’s not the sort of place he normally frequents.”

Croy himself was still trying to catch his breath. His eyes were locked on Morget’s face.

“I knew nothing of him, until now, except his name. Perhaps I spoke wrong,” Morget said with a frown. “I am looking for another Ancient Blade. I am looking for the help of an Ancient Blade. It did not matter which one. I have sought them for a very long time, looking anywhere men with swords gathered. Until today my search was fruitless. From town to town I wandered, asking everywhere. Few men would even speak to me, but in the town of Greencastle I was told there was not one, but two such men in Ness. Sir Croy, and Sir Bikker-champions of your king, each of them bearers of a puissant sword. Ghostcutter and Acidtongue, they are called. I was told that Sir Bikker would be found in a place where ale is sold, if he could be found anywhere.”

Malden and Croy traded a glance. Until a few months ago that might have been true. Bikker had been in Ness-though that man had fallen a long way since he’d been one of the king’s champions. He’d hired himself out as a sell-sword to the sorcerer Hazoth and the traitor Anselm Vry. And then he’d put himself at odds with Malden and Croy. That had nearly ended in both their deaths. Instead “I’m afraid Bikker is dead,” Croy said, still a little out of breath.

“Dead?” Morget asked.

“He broke his oath,” Croy said, nodding, as if that explained everything.

Apparently it did, as far as Morget was concerned. “Ah. So you had to strike him down. I understand. It is part of our duty, our sworn duty, we who bear the Blades.”

Malden didn’t want to talk about Bikker. The dead man had caused him a great deal of trouble once. “Well, you found the other one, anyway. The other Ancient Blade in Ness. Now, what do you want with Croy?”

“There is a task I must perform. The other part of our oath must be fulfilled.” The barbarian’s eyes had gone out of focus, as if he was looking at nothing but the inside of his own skull. As if his thoughts were very far away.

Malden scratched at an eyebrow. “If you specifically need the help of an Ancient Blade, that suggests just one task I can think of.”

“Indeed. I am hunting a demon.”

Croy jumped to his feet, all sign of weariness gone from him. “Where?” he demanded.

There was no word Malden knew that could get Croy’s attention better than “demon.”

The world had its share of monsters. Up in the Northern Kingdoms there were still bands of goblins on the loose, and the occasional troll for a knight to test his steel on. Malden himself had met an ogre, and knew stories of everything from the dread Longlegs of the Rifnlatt to the dragons of the Old Empire. All such creatures could be felled by good swords or by magic, it was said. Demons were different.

They were not of the world. They did not belong there. Instead they were creatures of the Bloodgod, and they abided in his Pit of Souls, that place where all men were eventually judged and punished for their sins. Demons were normally trapped down there with eight-armed Sadu, but they could be summoned to the mundane realm by sorcerers who sought to tap their incredible power. Such a pact was illegal and utterly forbidden, and with good reason. Demons did not hail from the world of living men, and in that world were unnatural things, unbound by natural law. They were enormously powerful and almost impossible to kill. The sorcerer Hazoth had called up two of them before he died, and either one of them might have destroyed all of Ness if they had not been stopped.

Luckily for Malden and his fellow citizens, Croy had been there to slay them. Ghostcutter had prevailed against them, just as it had been made to do. The Ancient Blades had been forged for just that purpose.

And over the last eight hundred years they’d been quite successful at it. The men who wielded them often died in the process, but the swords had all but eliminated demonkind from the world. Now the existence of a single demon anywhere on the continent was a rare-but utterly fearful-occurrence. If the barbarian had encountered one, Croy had no choice but to go and slay it.

“You must tell me everything,” Croy said.

The barbarian nodded. “And so I shall. Two years ago I was hunting in the mountains at the western end of our land,” he said, squatting down on the tiles. “I was after a wild cat that had already tasted human blood, and found it to be good. I went into the hills with only a knife and three days’ food in a sack. Just having a bit of fun, you know.”

“Yes, of course,” Malden said. “Fun.”

Morget squinted at the sky. “I followed the cat’s trail until I ran out of food, and then for five days more. Its spoor took me ever higher, up to a place where the trees grew no taller than saplings, and then to where they thinned out until there was nothing but lichens to eat, and springwater to quench my thirst. From time to time I found the remains of some creature the cat had killed-or so I thought. The carrion was broken open, crushed and sucked dry.

“On the sixth day I found the cat itself, and all its bones ground to dust. There was not much left of it save the head and one paw. The rest had been… dissolved, yes, I think that is the word I mean. Eaten away as if by acid. It was then I knew I hunted bigger prey than I thought.

“I made a hunting blind in the cave of a raven, and sat me down to wait. It was another seven days before I caught my first good sight of the thing I tracked. It came to me at twilight, moving along the bare rock face of a cliff. It was about fifteen feet long, though it was hard to measure. It did not climb, you understand, for it had no legs. It crawled-no, it flowed like water along the rock, living water.” Morget clenched his fists in frustration. “I describe it poorly. I have not the honeyed words of a westerner, forgive me.”

“It’s all right,” Croy said. “Go on.”

“Its skin glistened like autumn moonlight on a brackish pond. The skin had no regular form, but flowed and oozed as it moved. There were shapes under that skin, shapes like hearts and livers and even human faces, that pressed up against the skin from inside, mouths open in soundless screaming. I decided then this was no natural beast.”

“A fairly safe conclusion, it sounds like,” Malden agreed.

“I made myself still, and did not so much as breathe as it came ever closer. I did not wish to scare it away. It came up to the mouth of my cave, and still I held myself in readiness, my knife in my hand. It came inside, into the darkness, and I could barely see it. It flowed up over my bare feet and my flesh screamed at its alien touch, but still I made myself like a statue. It climbed up my body, faster now, as if it had become excited, as if it hungered for me. It was only then I struck.

“Yet how to slay a beast with no muscles, no bones? I stabbed at the shapes like hearts and livers and faces, but my knife could not puncture its slimy skin. It flowed over my chest and part of its substance oozed up to my face. It tried to fill my mouth and nose so that I could not breathe. I stabbed and pulled at it, to no avail. I wrestled with the beast, rolling on the floor of my cave, tearing at it with my fingers. I was so close to death I could feel her hands upon my shoulders.”

“ Her hands?” Malden asked.

“Death is my mother,” Morget said. It sounded like a litany, something the barbarian had said so many times it would spring to his lips without bidding. “When I die, she will be there to bring me home. But not that day! With all my strength I fought against this demon, aye, for demon it had to be-I fought for long hours as it wrapped around me like a cloak, smothering me. Would it absorb me, I thought, until mine was one of those screaming faces I’d seen under its skin?