The Dragon in the Sword (38 page)

“For Chaos! For Chaos!” cried Flamadin. “I have returned. Now I shall lead you against our enemies. Now we shall know true victory!”

I half-believed that Flamadin was animated by the Sword itself!

The armies were both dazzled and baffled by the crimson light suddenly flooding into the cavern. Sharadim and Balarizaaf were not yet through. I knew that soon the gap must widen further and allow the whole of Chaos to come through, to infect, mile by mile, gentle Barganheem and, eventually, the whole of the Six Realms. And I could see no way now of stopping this encroachment.

“WE
ARE THROUGH! OH, WE ARE THROUGH!”

This was Sharadim’s voice behind me. She had remounted her black charger. She had drawn her own sword. She was riding after us.

Flamadin, flailing and stumbling like a scarecrow, was making for the nearest hull. A terrible stink came off the vessel. The smoke which curled from its chimneys was if anything even more foul than before.

My only thought was to reach him before Sharadim caught up with him, to wrest the Dragon Sword from him and try to do what I could to save those who survived in Adelstane. I knew my friends shared my ambition. Together we began to climb up the hull, choking back our nausea at the stench. All around us now the hosts of Chaos were beginning to stir, grunting, yelling, pointing. Then, as Sharadim rode out of the crimson glare, a great cheer went up.

I looked towards Adelstane and her fiery ring, which still held, her delicate lacy white towers, her superb beauty. I could not let this be destroyed, not while I still had life. As the three of us reached the rails we saw on the main deck the Baron Captain Armiad himself, lifting his own sword to salute Flamadin. Whether by chance or by destiny, we had arrived back on the
Frowning Shield!

So engrossed in their triumph were they that they did not see us come aboard. We were horrified at the condition of the vessel. The few inhabitants who remained were in a wretched state, evidently enslaved to do the work of war. Men, women and children were in rags. They looked starved. They looked beaten. Yet I saw more than one face which held hope when they saw us.

We were able to run for the cover of one of the houses. Almost immediately we were joined by a bony wretch whose dirty features still bore the traces of youth and beauty. “Champion,” she said, “is it you? Then who is that other?”

It was Bellanda, the enthusiastic young student we had first met aboard this vessel. Her voice was cracked. She looked close to death.

“What is wrong with you, Bellanda?” whispered Alisaard.

The young woman shook her head. “Nothing specific. But since Armiad declared war upon those who opposed him we have been made to toil almost without rest. Many have died. And we of the
Frowning Shield
are considered fortunate. I still cannot believe how swiftly our world changed from one ruled by justice to one dominated by tyranny…”

“Once the disease takes hold,” said von Bek gravely, “it spreads so rapidly that it can rarely be checked in time. I saw this happen to my own world. One must be forever vigilant, it seems!”

I watched Armiad lead Flamadin to the stairway of the central deck. Flamadin continued to hold the Dragon Sword above his head, displaying it to all. I looked across the floor of the cavern and saw Sharadim riding towards the hull, calling out to Flamadin, who ignored her. He was enjoying his own strange triumph. The corpse’s features were twisted in a hideous parody of mirth. He swung up from the central deck into the rigging of the mainmast, so that he could be seen by all those gathered below.

I knew that I had a few minutes to get to Flamadin before his sister. Without further consideration, I began to climb, planning to use the network of spars and ropes to reach him, just as I had once used them as a shortcut when moving about the ship.

Hand over hand I went up the spiderweb of greasy ropes, then swung myself closer to the central deck.

Flamadin stood upon a platform now so that he could again display the Dragon Sword. His poor, ruined flesh seemed about to fall from his bones. The gesture, as he raised the blade, was almost pathetic.

“Your hero,” he cried in that bleak, dead voice of his, “has returned.”

Even as I worked my way towards him I could not help but see him as a telling parody of what I myself had become. I did not like the picture. I continued, while I crawled along a spar over the heads of the gathered warriors, to remind myself that I was John Daker. I had been a painter of some description, I seemed to recall, and had had a studio overlooking the Thames.

Flamadin sensed me even as I made to drop down on him. His corpse’s eyes looked up. He had the appearance of a startled child whose new toy was about to be taken from him.

“Please,” he said softly. “Let me keep it a little while. Sharadim wants it, too.”

“There’s no time,” I said.

I let myself go. I dropped beside him. Holding the Actorios before me I reached for the Dragon Sword. I could see the yellow flame flickering at its heart, behind the runes.

“Please,” begged Flamadin.

“In the name of what you once were, Prince Flamadin, give me that blade,” I said.

He winced away from the Actorios.

I heard a commotion below. It was Armiad. “There are two of them. Two the same! Which is ours?”

My hand closed on his wrist. He was far weaker now than he had been. The Sword’s strength no longer filled him. Indeed, it was as if the blade called back its energy and took what was left of Flamadin’s also.

“This sword is not evil,” he said. “Sharadim told me it is not evil. It can be used for good…”

“It is a sword,” I told him. “It is a weapon. It was made to kill.”

A crooked, miserable smile came on his corrupted features. “Then how can it ever do good…”

“When it is broken,” I said. And I turned his wrist.

And the Dragon Sword fell free.

Armiad and his men were climbing up the rigging. All were heavily armed. I think they understood at last what was happening. I looked back into the cavern. Sharadim was almost at the hull and there was an army following her.

A peculiar sobbing sound came from Flamadin as he watched me retrieve the Dragon Sword. “She promised me my soul back, if I bore the blade for Chaos. But it was not my soul, was it?”

“No,” I said, “it was mine. That was why she kept you alive. In that manner you deceived the Dragon Sword.”

“Can I die now?”

“Soon,” I promised.

I swung around. Armiad’s men had reached the platform. The Dragon Sword was shouting in my two hands. In spite of all I had gone through, all I had decided for myself, I found that I was joining in its song, that I was filled with a wonderful wild glee.

I lifted the blade. I sheared through the necks of the first two raiders. Their headless bodies fell onto others below them and all tumbled down to the distant deck in a tangle of gouting blood and jerking limbs.

With the sword in one hand I reached for a trailing rope and swung out over my antagonists, slashing at them as I went. I slid down to the deck, behind Armiad, who had been one of the last into the rigging.

“I believe you wished to settle an account with me,” I told him, laughing.

He looked in horror at my sword, at my face. He mouthed something as he shrank back against the mast. I stepped forward, then placed the tip of the Dragon Sword into the wood of the deck. “I am here, Baron Captain. Settlement is due, I’m sure you’ll agree.”

Reluctantly, his pig snout twitching, he returned to the deck. All his men were watching now. Their bestial faces were intent on the scene.

Suddenly there was a monstrous roar from behind me. I glanced over my left shoulder. The crimson light was flaring still brighter. The gap was growing wider. I saw movement behind it: huge grotesque figures mounted on even stranger steeds. Then I had to return my gaze to Armiad.

Sword in hand, he reluctantly advanced. I thought I could hear a kind of whimpering coming from his fluttering snout.

“I’ll kill you quickly,” I promised him. “But kill you I must, my lord.”

And then I felt a heavy weight land squarely on my back. I fell sprawling, the Dragon Sword flying from my grasp. I struggled to get up. I heard Armiad give a great snort of startled glee. I felt cold lips on my neck. I smelled foetid breath.

Looking up I saw Armiad and his men begin to close around me. I tried to reach the Dragon Sword but someone kicked it away.

And Flamadin, still straddling my back, said through rotting lips: “Now I shall feed again. And you, John Daker, will die. I shall be the only hero of the Six Realms.”

4

O
N
F
LAMADIN
’
S ORDERS
, Armiad and his men seized me. With his strange, awkward movements my doppelgänger walked towards the Dragon Sword and picked it up again.

“The Sword will drink your soul,” he said, “and then it will in turn invigorate me. I and the Sword shall be one. Immortal and invincible. I shall know the admiration of the Six Realms once more!”

He seemed to wince as he grasped the blade, staring at me almost with regret. It was impossible for me to understand what terrible, cold fragments of a soul still moved him, how much of the original darling of the Worlds of the Wheel remained. His sister had been able to stay the progress of his body’s corruption, but now he was disintegrating before my eyes. Yet he hoped for life. He hoped for my life.

Armiad grunted with pleasure. His clammy hands now held my arm. “Kill him, Prince Flamadin. I have so longed to be witness to his death, ever since he first impersonated you and brought upon me the mockery of my fellow captains. Kill him, my lord!”

On the other side of me was something I dimly recognised as Mopher Gorb, Armiad’s Binkeeper. Now his nose had elongated and his eyes had grown closer together so that he resembled some kind of dog. His grip on my arm was tight. Saliva flecked his muzzle. He, too, was enjoying my anticipated death.

Flamadin drew back his arm until the point of the Dragon Sword was a few inches from my heart. Then, with a kind of sob, he made to thrust.

The entire cavern was a mass of noise and moving warriors, all bathed in that same crimson light. Yet I heard one sound above the others. A sharp, precise crack.

Flamadin grunted and paused. There was an inflamed hole in his forehead. From it oozed a substance which might once have been blood. He lowered the Dragon Sword. He turned to look behind him.

There stood Ulric von Bek, Count of Saxony, with a smoking Walther PPK .38 in his hand.

Flamadin tried to stagger towards this new assailant, the Dragon Sword still half raised. Then he had fallen to the deck and I knew the final vestiges of life had deserted him.

Yet Armiad and his men still held me. Mopher Gorb produced a long knife, plainly intending to slit my throat. He gave a strange little grunt and dropped the knife. Another wound blossomed, this time in the side of Mopher Gorb’s head.

Armiad dropped his hold on my arm. The rest of the ghastly crew began to back away. But now Alisaard had leapt forward, snatching up Mopher Gorb’s sword, and she was thrusting, thrusting at the Baron Captain, who defended himself both ferociously and well against the Ghost Woman, but was no match either for her grace or her skill with a sword. She had pierced his porcine heart in moments, then turned her attention on the others. I, too, fought with a borrowed sword. There were too many between me and Flamadin’s corpse. I fought as best I could, trying to reach it. And von Bek, too, had a sword. The three of us were at last standing together.

“Bellanda kept your gun for you, I see!” I cried to von Bek.

He grinned. “I now don’t regret asking her to look after it. I thought I’d never see it again! Unfortunately, there were only two shells left.”

“Well used,” I said gratefully.

Suddenly we realised that we were surrounded entirely by dead men. All Armiad’s disgusting crew were defeated. A few wounded crawled here and there, attempting to escape. Von Bek uttered a cheerful yell of triumph, but this was swiftly cut short by a scream from Bellanda for, making an impossible leap on her great black stallion, there came the figure of Sharadim, landing full on the central deck, the hoofs pounding like battle-drums above the corpse of her brother, the Dragon Sword still in his hand.