Jonathan Strahan - Swords & Dark Magic - The New Sword and Sorcery

To come on the apparently unguarded forest city of Cashloria was often a surprise, since it lay, as its name implied, deep in one of the vast ancient forests of Trosp. Enormous pines, cedars, beeches, oaks, poplars, and other trees towered up, for hundreds of miles. A single wide road, in places rather overgrown, eccentrically bisected the area. Once night began, the city was quite arresting. Then its thousands of lamp-lit windows, many with stained glass, blazed in slices between the trunks. Huge old stone mansions, public halls, and various fortresses appeared, but all smothered in among the forest, with trees growing everywhere about them, in some cases out of the stonework itself. In the narrow central valley to which the road eventually descended, where lay the city’s hub, ran the thrashing River Ca, along which only the most courageous water-traffic ventured, and that in the calm of summer.

It was now fall. The forest had clothed itself in scarlet, copper, magenta, black, and gold. Audible from a day’s ride away, the Ca roared angrily with pre-freeze melt-snow from distant mountains. Sunset dropped screaming red on the horizon and went out, and utter darkness closed its wings.

Zire the Scholar had been traveling a long while. He was weary and aggrieved. Yesterday, forest brigands had set on him and stolen his horse. Though naturally he had tracked and tricked them and stolen it back, the horse next cast a shoe, so now both of them must plod.

As night gathered and he spotted the lights of Cashloria, Zire gave a grunt of relief. He had read of the city over a year before, and set out to see it along with others, but during the last hour doubted he would find it at all. Benign unhuman guardians were supposed to take care of the conurbation, for example by protecting it with sorcery rather than city walls. This evening Zire had begun to think they had also rendered the place invisible. But lights shone. Here he was.

Zire was young and tall, and well-made. His hair was, where light revealed it, the rich somber red of the dying beech leaves. His eyes were the cold gray of approaching winter skies. His spirit was not dissimilar: fires vied with melancholy, exuberance with introversion.

Presently, the young man reached a promontory, thick with trees and pillared buildings. Below, the landscape tumbled down, still clad in darkling foliage, roofs, and windows of ruby and jade, to a coil of the angry river. A few lights also marked the river’s course, but mainly it was made obvious by its uproar. They said, in Cashloria—or so Zire had read—“The Ca is foul-mouthed and always shouting.”

Nevertheless, here was an inn, by name the Plucked Dragon.

Lanterns burned, and Zire, having tethered his horse, and maneuvered through a hedge of willows, thrust in at the door.

At once a loud outcry resounded, after which total silence enveloped the smoky yellow-lit room beyond. It was not that the several customers had reacted in astonishment on seeing a newcomer; they were reasonably used to visitors in Cashloria. It was simply that, during the exact moment Zire stepped into the inn, a man standing at the long counter had swung about and plunged his knife between the ribs of another. Everyone, Zire included, watched in inevitable awe as the knife’s unlucky recipient dropped dead on the ground.

The murderer, however, only wiped his blade on a sleeve, sheathed the weapon, and turned to regard the landlord. “Fetch me another jug, you pig. Then clear that up,” jerking his thumb over-shoulder to indicate the corpse.

He was, the murderer, a burly fellow, with dark locks hanging over a flat low brow. He wore a guardsman’s uniform of leather and studs, with a gaudy insignia of two crossed swords surmounted by a diadem. Certainly no one argued with him. Here rushed an inn-boy with a brimming jug, and there went the landlord himself with another inn-boy, hauling the dead body off along the floor and out the back. Even the third man, on whose sleeve the murderer had wiped his knife—not, presumably, wishing to soil his own—made no complaint.

“Cheers and a hale life!” cried the killer, and downed a large cupful in one gulp.

All present, with the exception of Zire, echoed the toast in fast fellowship. And some of them added, for good measure, “And hale life to you, too, Razibond!” “Yes, long life. That dolt had it coming to him.”

Razibond, satisfied, belched. Then his small eyes slid straight to Zire, still poised in the doorway. Those little eyes might just as well have been two more greasy blades. If looks could kill, they might.

“And you, ” said Razibond. “What do you say, Copper-Nod?”

“I?” Zire smiled and shrugged. “About what?”

“Oh, you’re blind then, as well as carrot-mopped. Come, let’s have your opinion. You saw I slew him.”

“That? True, I did see.”

“You seem offended,” said Razibond, ugly voice now sinking to an uglier growl. “Want to make something of it, eh?”

If Zire had been in any doubt as to what Razibond meant, further evidence was instantly supplied, as all the other drinkers withdrew in haste, plastering themselves to the walls, some even crawling beneath the long tables. Even the fire crouched down abruptly on the wide hearth, while the girl who had been tending a roast there sprinted up the inn stair with a flash of bare white feet.

“Well?” bellowed ugly Razibond, seemingly further incensed by Zire’s speechlessness.

“Really,” said Zire, “what you do is your own affair. After all, perhaps the man you stabbed had done you some terrible wrong.”

“He had,” Razibond declared. “He refused me use of his wife and daughter.”

“Or, on the other hand,” continued Zire smoothly, “you are, as I suspected, merely a drunken thug who throws his weight about, that being considerable since he is now running to podge, and slaughters at random. One day you will answer in the afterlife, to an uproar of furious ghosts. Don’t think I joke there, friend Razi. Another life exists than this one, and we pay our dues once we are in it. I imagine your reckoning will be both long and tedious, not to mention painful.”

Razibond’s face was now a marvelous study for any student of the human mood. It had passed through the blank pink of shock to the crimson of wrath, sunk a second in superstitious, uneasy yellow, before escalating into an extraordinary puce—a hue that would have assured any dye-maker a fortune, had he been able to reproduce it. More than this, Razibond had swollen up like a toad. He cast his wine cup to the ground, where it shattered, being unwisely made of clay, and, disdaining his knife, heaved out a cleaverish blade some four feet long.

Zire raised his eyes to heaven, or the ceiling. Next instant, he, too, had drawn a sword, this one fine almost as a wand, and going by the name of Scribe. As Razibond lumbered at him, Zire moved, easy as smoke, from his path, extending as he did so a booted foot. This brief gesture sent the homicidal guardsman crashing, at which Zire leapt onto his back, landing with deliberate heaviness and knocking the breath right out of him. Then, with a casualness truly awful to behold, Zire drove his own bright sword straight in, through Razibond’s leathers, skin, flesh, muscle, and heart. Blood spurted like a fountain, and decorated the blackened beam above.

At the inn once more, only silence held sway. Zire did not wipe the sword, he kept it ready in one hand. He looked contritely about at the stricken faces.

“My apologies,” said Zire. “But I object to dying at this late hour. I would prefer supper. Oh, and my horse needs shoeing. Otherwise, if you want, we can continue the violence.”

No one answered. None moved. The landlord himself, who had ducked below his counter then reemerged to witness the short fight’s climax, stared with mouth agape.