Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword of Avalon (47 page)

Something hit him from behind; he went down once more, limbs still responding even when thought was gone. “Tirilan!” he cried as what remained of his sword was knocked from his hand.

 

 

 

“POTNIAAAA!” VELANTOS SCREAMED, THE twin axes scything a circle of death around him. In ages past, the Kouretes had taught men to shape bronze into weapons, and then how to use them in this deadly dance. Beyond the gathering of russet cloaks he could see Galid’s gilded helmet. While Mikantor kept the giant occupied, the members of his guard were making a barrier around him. But like everyone else here, they had trained with sword and spear and shield. The smith laughed as he realized that no one knew how to defend against the double-ax technique that Bodovos had taught him. Forge-hardened muscles flexed and flowed as he struck, the sharp blades shearing through leather and muscle and bone.

This is the third time, you bastard,
he thought as he plowed into them, and for a moment instead of Galid, it was King Kresfontes of the Eraklidae whose face he saw.

Like a voice from another world he heard Mikantor’s cry.

Velantos’ right-hand ax lopped off an arm as he whirled and saw Mikantor on the ground, foes gathering around him like wolves on a fallen deer. A sideways leap brought him into the midst of them, Castor and Pollux jumping in his hands. Blood sprayed as one ax sheared through someone’s throat. The hammer end of the other slammed into a head, and suddenly the ground was clear before him. He bestrode Mikantor’s body, arms swinging, and laughed again as he saw them cower.

He dared a glance downward. Was the boy dead? But no, he had got a grip on a piece of spear and was trying to rise, though his helmet was gone and blood from a head blow was streaming into his eyes.

“Woodpecker—get up, lad—” Velantos said in the Akhaean tongue, in case the boy should think him an enemy. “It’s time to go. Get up, boy, and hold on to me.”

Groaning, Mikantor made it to his knees, got a grip on the smith’s belt and pulled himself upright, swaying as Velantos struck at a foe who had thought this would make him vulnerable, but not falling down. More by instinct than design the boy batted away the next weapon that came at them.

Velantos grinned. “Forward now—we’re a three-handed monster, and no one will oppose us—” They lurched toward the hillside. The surviving Companions battled toward them, the less scathed protecting those with more serious wounds. Not all of their allies had panicked. From the woods a flight of arrows discouraged their enemies.

“I’ll take him, sir—” said Ulansi as they reached the trees. “You’re the best one to guard our backs now.”

Velantos nodded, and turned as the Ai-Zir boy and Lysandros got Mikantor’s arms across their necks and dragged him away. Galid was yelling from across the field, but the enemy warriors recoiled at the sight of the smith standing there. They gestured and shouted like figures in a dream. Velantos looked again and realized that neither blood loss nor darkness was affecting his vision. A mist was rolling down the hillside, shrouding those who still lived in a ghostly veil.

“Follow us if you dare!” he cried. “Land fights for us! Come and I cut you down!” He took a step backward and then another, until he was hidden by the trees.

Velantos could hear men moving nearby, but he could see nothing but branches. Still, it was a safe bet that to move upward would be better than down. Slipping one of his axes through its loop and holding the other ready, he began to work his way among the tree trunks. The battle fever had receded enough for him to start limping on the leg that had been injured at Tiryns when a voice brought him to a halt, ax poised.

“Sir—don’t hit! I’m friend!”

A slim form appeared before him and he let out a long breath as he recognized the man as one of the dark folk of the moors.

“Come, sir, I take you to the others—we gather at the old tomb on the hill.”

At least,
thought Velantos as he followed the twisting path his guide found through the forest,
in this weather I am unlikely to be hit by lightning.

By the time they reached the road at the top of the downs, the stresses of the fight were catching up with him. He did not seem to have any serious wounds, but his cuts were aching and muscles had stiffened enough to make him wince with every move. But as they came into the campsite among the trees, any tendancy to self-pity disappeared.

The air was heavy with the scent of blood, the ground crowded with wounded men. Tirilan moved among them, with Ganath and Beniharen. As she bent to give water to one of the Lake Folk, in her fine features Velantos recognized for the first time Anderle’s disciplined severity. He gazed around him, searching for Mikantor, and felt something unclench within him as he saw the younger man sitting up, a bloodstained bandage around his brow.

It was only then, as the moment when he realized that Mikantor had fallen came back to him, that Velantos remembered that on the ground beside him he had seen the broken half of the leaf-shaped sword. He swayed where he stood, unable to suppress a groan.

“It is the smith!” someone cried.

“Sir, are you hurt? Let me help you—”

Velantos shook his head, pushing aside Ganath’s supporting hand. Mikantor had heard and was gazing at him, his face brightening in joy. The smith closed his eyes. The sword had broken.
His
sword.

“Come and sit down—we have hot soup—come now . . .”

He could not resist the hands that led him toward the fire, could not evade Mikantor’s welcome.

“Once more you saved me! I thought I was dead, and then I heard you calling me, and I thought I was back in Tiryns and had overslept after some evil dream!”

“Saved you!” Velantos forced himself to meet the boy’s eyes, his face contorting in pain. “After my sword betrayed you! The sword
I made
!” The sword Anderle had sworn was not good enough. She had been right, after all. . . .

“Velantos—” Mikantor laid his hand on the smith’s arm. “It was only bronze . . . and the giant had an arm like a tree. Against that blow, no blade could stand.”

“You don’t understand,” Velantos whispered. That sword had been the best he could fashion, made with all the skills he had learned in the City of Circles. It should not have broken. He should have been able to shape a blade that would endure. “But I am glad that I reached you in time . . .”

“You are mourning a broken sword,” said Mikantor, the light leaving his eyes. “I am mourning my men. Acaimor is dead, and Rouikhed, and far too many of the Ai-Akhsi and the men of the moors. There are other swords, but I can never replace those men. . . .”

Hearing the pain in his voice, Tirilan came up behind him and bent, the folds of her cloak falling around him like the wings of some great bird. Mikantor sighed and leaned against her, the anguish in his face beginning to ease.

Adjonar patted his shoulder. “We will always honor them. The miracle is that so many of us survived. Our discipline held. We learned.”

Pelicar, who had settled down beside them, gave a nod. “If the men of the tribes will let us teach them, we will do better another day. And we gave them a savaging. The scouts who have gone back to spy on Galid’s men say that the giant is coughing blood, so that sword of yours did not entirely fail!”

It broke . . .
Velantos gave him a dark look. He drank the soup they gave him, though the spreading warmth did nothing to ease his aching heart.
They do not understand. I fought well, but Mikantor has many warriors. I am a smith. Only I can craft the weapon that will protect him, and I failed.

He did not protest when Ganath washed his wounds and bound up the worst of them, and presently, for there were many who had far more need for the services of the healers, they left him alone.

And so it was Velantos, distracted neither by the body’s pain nor by the need to treat it, who first noticed when the old men arrived. Or perhaps, he thought later, it was some other sense that had brought him upright and staring as they came into the circle of firelight, dressed in kilts and capes of deerskin, and carrying a burden wrapped in yellowed cloth.

At first he thought them scouts, for they clearly belonged to the people of the elder race who had been helping Mikantor, but he had never seen any of that folk who were so old, their black hair gone silver, the brown skin hanging loose on the fine bones. They were old, he thought as they looked about, both in years and in wisdom, so old there was not much in this world left for them to fear. They did not seem overly impressed by the tall warriors, and though they nodded respectfully to Mikantor, they continued to examine the company.

Velantos felt his skin chill as one by one those dark faces turned toward him. One of them said something to Grebe in the elder tongue. Mikantor’s foster brother pointed, and they came to where he sat on the other side of the fire.

“He asks are you the one who shapes metal—” said Grebe. “The one from a far land.”

If Velantos stood, he would tower over them, though he was not the tallest man there. Still sitting, he nodded. Grebe said something more and turned back to him.

“I tell them that you made all the swords for our king’s Companions.”

And the one that mattered most,
thought Velantos,
failed.
But he did not say that aloud. His gaze kept turning toward the bundle the strongest of the old men was holding. What was it? He could feel the throb of power. The elder gestured and the burdened man came forward. He spoke again.

“He says . . . this is for you.” Grebe paused, seeking for words. “Long time ago, light came in the sky. Hit earth, set it on fire. The fathers of his fathers find this stone—but they know now it is not stone. It is metal from the stars—”

The old man spoke again, and Velantos understood, not with his ears but with his soul.

“Some of our people saw when you bore the lightning. Our fathers hammered this with stone and made a club, but the god will give you the power to shape it. You take it now, make a sword such as your people use—”

The old man put back the wrappings and held out a rough pillar of dully glinting dark metal half the length of his arm.
Iron . . .
thought Velantos, bracing against the weight as the elder set it in his arms, a mass of iron such as he had never seen.

“A Sword from the Stars . . .” he whispered, remembering what the god had promised. He saw Mikantor watching him, eyes wide and dazzled as his own must be. He lifted the iron. “I will forge a new sword for you—a Sword from the Stars for the hand of a king . . .”

TWENTY-TWO

W
ith each verse Velantos heaved at the bellows, watching the light pulse through the coals as the fire fed on the blast. With each push the warm glow flared on the walls of the smithy, for he had waited until darkness so he could gauge heat by the color of the flames. Outside, the rain had started up once more, the drip of water from the eaves blending with the whisper of the fire, but in the smithy, thank the gods, it was dry.

In the midst of the coals the crucible was beginning to glow. The mass of iron lay at an angle within it. It was too big, really, but he had broken two of his hammers and shattered the surface trying to crack it cold. Perhaps it would melt from the bottom—that worked sometimes with scrap bronze.

“Do you want me to ply the bellows, sir?”

Velantos looked up and saw Aelfrix, who was polishing a bronze spearhead. He had forgotten the boy was there. He shook his head.

“Keep on with the bronze,” he said.
I wish
I
could.
He glanced at the worktable, where he had left the wooden bowl filled with crumbled bits that had flaked off when he tried to hammer the star metal cold.

The euphoria with which he had received the gift from the elder folk had lasted for barely a day. Long before he got the iron back to the smithy on the Maiden’s Isle he had begun to realize that no one he knew of had ever worked with so large a piece of iron. His experiments with Katuerix had taught him only that it would not behave like bronze. The smith of Bhagodheunon had not been able to melt bog iron, but perhaps this star stuff would be different.

Fine words,
he thought bitterly. But his whole prayer could have been expressed in a single phrase—
Please, Goddess, don’t let me fail. . . .
If he was unsuccessful with a bronze sword—and when he was learning to shape the leaf-shaped blades he had ruined several—he could melt down the metal. If he destroyed this piece of iron, the gods were not likely to send him another meteor.

He straightened, sweating in the waves of heat the came off the forge. The charcoal blazed with the radiance of the rising sun in his own land, not the pallid, mist-shrouded orb that he saw in this chill northern isle. That was hot enough to melt bronze. Was it the right heat to soften the iron? He did not know, but he had to try
something
.

“Now you can work the bellows,” he told the boy. “Keep the coals at just that color.”

He glared at the crucible as if the heat of his gaze could ignite it. Some of the priests said that the stars were balls of fire. If so, how hot must they be? Could this metal be melted by any fire made by men? The crucible was white-hot now. He peered at it and swore—the shape of the iron had not changed so far as he could see.

A breath of air lifted the hair on his neck and teased a spurt of flame from the coals. He looked over his shoulder and stiffened, seeing Anderle in the doorway. She let the leather rain cape slide from her shoulders, shaking off the water before hanging it on a post by the door.