Swords: 06 - The Third Book of Lost Swords - Stonecutter's Story (12 page)

      
When he reached the foot of the ladder, Kasimir could see dim passageways leading off in three directions. At the far end of the passage to his right, he could see torches in rapid motion, as if their holders might be dancing. Kasimir caught a single glimpse of Wen Chang, cloak wrapped around his left arm and rapier active in his right hand, before a door slammed in between, cutting off the physician’s view of his partner.

      
Kasimir ran recklessly toward the action, stumbling through darkness. He burst into the room in which he had seen the Magistrate, to find Wen Chang gone but the situation now well in hand. A lantern burning on a table illuminated the room, and doors in the other walls were standing open. In this room three people remained, two of the Watch having one of their prey boxed into a corner. The man had a blade in each hand, and both were active. But in a moment, after a brief flurry of action, the man resisting arrest was cut down.

      
Kasimir picked up the lantern from the table and brought it close to the fallen figure. No lengthy examination was needed; the man was obviously dead.

      
Hurrying on, Kasimir entered a large room where loot that must be the product of a hundred robberies was stacked in several piles. Here were stolen golden candlesticks, over there a collection of silver plate, on the far side of the room a pile of drinking vessels of horn and wood, inlaid with gold and silver, and small open boxes that glinted with precious metals. When he held his torch closer to another pile nearby he could see the wink of gold from the covers and edges of finely bound books. Whether the Sword finally proved to be in this building or not, the Watch would have a goodly profit from their raid, in the form of a haul of loot, at least some of which would presumably find its way back to its rightful owners.

      
And still shouts and the uproar of conflict sounded from somewhere below. Kasimir found a way down and descended yet another level, estimating as he did so that he must now be very little if at all above the level of the street outside. Here, amid a labyrinth of rooms, torches and lanterns were plentiful. It was obvious that the main drama of the raid was being enacted here.

      
When the physician entered the next room, it appeared to him for a moment that he had just missed all the excitement. The people here had apparently surrendered just before he entered. Four or five men and a couple of women, one or two of them well-dressed and all of them looking sullenly enraged, were being herded together in preparation for their being searched; one of the women was still screaming insults at the invaders, warning them to keep their hands off her.

      
Kasimir looked around quickly, then demanded of the room in general: “Where’s the Magistrate?”

      
One of the patrolmen answered with an economical motion of his head. Moving down another passage in the direction indicated, Kasimir felt a momentary sensation, the plucking of some fading defensive magic, a moment of disorientation as he passed through a doorway. It must, he thought, have been only a third-rate defensive spell to begin with, because the moment weapons were drawn it had faded like some night-blooming flower. There would be no point in calling upon Almagro’s wizard to deal with anything so trivial.

      
Looking for the Magistrate, the physician found himself momentarily alone, out of sight of anyone who had come with him.

      
A faint sound from a dark side passage made Kasimir turn his head. The warning had come just in time; he found himself confronted by a wild-faced man, who struck at Kasimir with a desperate blow. Turning with a simultaneous thrusting motion of the torch in his left hand, Kasimir did his desperate best to parry. The assailant flinched away from the torch at the last moment, and his first stroke at Kasimir missed.

      
Kasimir swirled his cloak, which was partly wrapped round his left arm, and continued with thrusts and feints of the torch in his left hand to do his best to distract the enemy. The man, who had a long knife in his hand, fell back.

      
A moment later Kasimir had drawn the cudgel from his belt with his right hand.

      
The two men stalked each other. Kasimir, doubly armed, felt stoutly confident of being able to hold his own.

      
In this situation time was on Kasimir’s side, and he called out for help. As soon as he did this the other man lunged at him again. Kasimir parried with the torch as best he could, stood his ground and swung his club, hitting his assailant on the shoulder. The long knife went clattering to the floor.

      
A moment later, two Firozpur troopers had materialized in response to the physician’s yell, destroying the local darkness with their torches and taking charge of the howling prisoner.

      
Resenting the time consumed by the scuffle, Kasimir pushed on. He was still trying to locate Wen Chang.

      
Sounds of another scuffle, in a dim alcove, distracted him. When he held up his torch in that direction, its light gleamed on an arc of startling brightness, the flash of a long blade in deadly motion. One dark figure with a long sword in hand was contending against two others, members of the Watch, more lightly armed. One of these two went down even as Kasimir watched, and the other one dove to the floor a moment later, trying to get out of the way of the long blade.

      
Could the full-sized sword be Stonecutter? The light was too poor to tell. Shouting again, Kasimir moved forward. The floor here was worse than the stairway, rotten, weakened, and unsafe; suddenly it bent and crackled under his additional weight. The man with the long Sword—Kasimir was suddenly convinced it was indeed Stonecutter that he saw—turned toward him, for the moment sparing his last opponent.

      
When the stroke of the long blade came Kasimir could do nothing but throw up his right hand holding the cudgel in a sort of defensive reflex, at the same moment casting the rest of his body backward. He felt an impact, but realized that he had survived.

      
Meanwhile the other surviving opponent, the one who had fallen to the floor unhurt, was not willing to give up the fight. The figure on the floor writhed up to strike at the swordsman with some kind of club.

      
Before the holder of the Sword could react, the whole treacherous portion of the floor had given way. The people on it, living and dead, were plunged down to the next level, amid a cloud of dust and debris. The collapse was relatively slow, the impact at the end of it somewhat moderated, but it scattered the combatants and put an end to the fight.

      
Coughing and spitting dust, getting back to his feet as quickly as possible, Kasimir got his back against a wall and looked around for the man with the Sword; but as far as he could tell, he was now quite alone.

      
The borrowed truncheon in his own hand felt strangely weightless, and he looked down at it. At that point he began to understand how lucky he had been not to lose a hand, or at least several fingers. He had felt the jarring impact between oak and steel, and when he looked down at the club still held to his wrist by a thong he saw that only a wooden stump remained of it. Most of the length of the tough oak had been sheared off neatly, only about two centimeters above his thumb and forefinger.

      
As far as the physician could tell no magical power had been involved in the blow. Nor had any been needed. Kasimir stood for a moment looking dazedly at the result, understanding now on a deeper level than the intellectual what must be the almost supernatural keenness of a Sword’s blade. He could appreciate also the determined strength of the arm that had driven the weighty steel behind that edge.

      
Undamaged except for a few bruises, he scrambled about on the reassuringly solid surface of the level where he now found himself, looking for any sign of the Sword, or the man who had been carrying it. But both were gone.

      
More men of the Watch joined him, as well as some Firozpur troopers, and in response to Kasimir’s questions reported that the building was being satisfactorily cleaned out.

      
Not wishing to be delayed by their questions, he said nothing to them about his last skirmish. Instead he asked: “Where’s the Magistrate got to now?”

      
“He’s downstairs, sir.”

      
Again Kasimir plunged on, finding a ladder and going down, angry beyond words at having the object of his search almost within his grasp, then seeing it whisked away again. He had risked his life but achieved nothing, nor was he at this moment a centimeter closer to gaining final possession of the Sword.

      
He had reached what he thought was almost certainly the lowest level of the building—at least it was partially below the level of the ground outside, as he could tell by the view through a barred window—before he again caught sight of Wen Chang. This time he was able to reach the Magistrate’s side before anything happened to keep them apart.

      
He seized him by the sleeve. “Magistrate, I have seen the Sword! For a moment I almost—”

      
“I, too! The man who has it is down here now. Quickly, go that way! Carefully, for he is deadly dangerous.”

      
With gestures and a few hurried words the Magistrate, rapier in one hand and torch in the other, directed Kasimir down one dim corridor, then turned away and plunged down another himself.

      
Kasimir, his own torch fallen and extinguished somewhere behind him, moved into dimness as silently as he could. Then he paused, holding his breath to listen.

      
He could hear only the drip of water somewhere. And farther off, out of sight of the hidden desperation of this struggle, some slum-dweller plunking a stringed instrument.

      
And now, another sound, also faint, muffled by walls and angles of walls. A muffled pounding … Kasimir stalked forward through the dim, half-buried cellar.

      
Then he was once more taken almost completely by surprise. He caught one bright glimpse of a long blade lifted high, in an energetic arm. In an instant, it was going to swing down directly at him.

      
In the rush of movement the hood covering the head of this new opponent fell back, momentarily revealing the face. Kasimir had barely the space of a heartbeat in which to recognize that the figure brandishing the sword—or Sword—at him was definitely Natalia. The light was bad, and he had only a brief glimpse, but still the physician felt certain that he was not mistaken.

      
Again Kasimir could only try to throw himself out of a weapon’s path. He might not have succeeded, except that when the blade came swinging at him there was a hesitation, a hitch in the swing that allowed Kasimir to survive.

      
The enemy rushed past him, and a moment later a heavy door had slammed behind the fleeing figure.

      
Kasimir allowed himself to remain dazed only for a moment. Then, just as he was scrambling to his feet, a shout in the Magistrate’s voice sounded from somewhere behind him.

      
Let Natalia go—he could not be certain that her weapon was the Sword. In a few moments Kasimir had scrambled halfway across the cellar to join Wen Chang and Captain Almagro, who with some of their men were holding a torchlight meeting in front of a closed and very substantial-looking door.

      
The Captain appeared to have relaxed a little.

      
“We’ve got him, and the Sword too! That’s a blind wall on that side of the building. There’s no other way out of that room.”

      
But Wen Chang was already stepping back, shaking his head even as he sheathed his rapier. His eye met Kasimir’s.

      
“Come, quickly!” the Magistrate rapped out, and in a moment was running for a stairs that led up to the level of the street.

      
Kasimir ran after him immediately, ignoring the Captain’s startled, querulous call behind them. Already Kasimir thought he understood Wen Chang’s haste.

      
Wen Chang in the lead, with Kasimir continually a step behind him and unable to catch up, the two of them negotiated the tortuous passages of the main floor, and burst out at last into the night. Wen Chang as he ran was able to gather with him a half-comprehending reinforcement of Watch and Firozpur warriors, a group whose footsteps pounded after Kasimir. The moment they were outside, Wen Chang looked back over his shoulder, beckoning to Kasimir.

      
“The wall of that basement room must give on this alley to our right—quick!”

      
Kasimir and the Magistrate, a small mob of followers just behind them, thundered around a corner of the building into an alley. There was a heavy thudding sound from somewhere ahead, as if someone, Kasimir thought, were still battering on a door and trying to break it down.

      
But before they had run halfway down the alley, Kasimir realized that they were already too late. A moment later they had come to the smoothly carved hole in the lower stone portion of the wall. The cut-out pieces of heavy stone were still lying where they had fallen from the touch of the hurrying Sword.

      
Now someone was coming through the hole. Kasimir stepped back and raised his cudgel. But in a moment the light from the torch he still held in his hand was falling upon the furious, bearded features of Captain Almagro Understanding had come to the Captain too late, and rage had come with it. He now had a better understanding of Stonecutter’s true nature.

      
But the Sword had now vanished in the night, along with the mysterious person who now possessed it.