The Seventh Book of Lost Swords : Wayfinder's Story Fred Saberhagen (phonics books txt) 📖

      Progressively the country surrounding the four seekers became more and more a desert. And then one day the river, of which Ben had been so wary, was again in sight.

Chapter Six

      The course of the rediscovered river, as indicated by the vegetation growing thickly along its banks, ran ahead of the travelers and somewhat to the east. A kilometer or so after slicing its way into view between hills to the north, the watercourse emerged from a rocky gorge onto relatively flat land. Becoming visible at approximately the same time was a faint road or track, the first sign of human endeavor the travelers had seen for days. This came gently curving toward the river from the west, with a directness suggesting that the point of intersection would provide a ford.

      Shortly after this road came into their view, the sight of half a dozen scavenger birds, circling low in several places above the near bank of the river, alerted the four travelers to the presence of death. The number and position of the gliding birds suggested that destruction of animal or human life might recently have occurred on a substantial scale.

      Less than an hour after first sighting the birds, the four seekers, advancing steadily but cautiously, their afternoon shadows now gliding far ahead of them, reached the place where the sketchy road descended a shallow bank to ford the river.

      Mounting a slight rise, Ben, who was a little ahead of the others, came to a stop, grunting. The bandits’ flatboat had survived, substantially intact, its encounter with the rapids. It now lay run aground several hundred meters away, a little downstream from the ford.

      Ben pointed, and said to his three companions: “That’s the boat I swam away from.”

      The flatboat’s sweeps and poles, or most of them, were missing, as was the covered cargo, whatever that had been. There was no human presence, living or dead, on the boat or near it.

      Some small four-legged scavengers, whose presence had evidently been keeping the hungry birds aloft, slunk away along the shoreline as the four humans approached. One of the scampering little beasts turned to bare its fangs, until Zoltan slung a stone at it, scoring only a near miss, the missile kicking up a spurt of sand.

      “I think I see a dead man,” said Valdemar in a strained voice, standing as tall as he could and squinting ahead from his great height. “There. Just upstream from the ford.”

      The four advanced, still cautiously, the three who were armed with hands on weapons. It was soon possible to confirm Valdemar’s sighting. Then almost at once they came in sight of another fallen body, lying nearer to them, motionless beside a slaughtered riding-beast. And then a third man, this one obviously dead, his skull crushed in.

      “No more than a day ago,” Zoltan muttered, looking closely at the handiest corpse and sniffing.

      Soon the total of human dead discovered had reached approximately a dozen, all within a stone’s throw of the ford.

      Ben, peering closely now at the bodies, announced that he could recognize some of the bandits from whom he had so recently escaped. He confirmed that this definitely was—or had been—Brod’s band, though the Sarge himself had not yet been found.

      “Some of them are wearing blue and gold,” Valdemar commented in a subdued voice. “That has to mean Blue Temple, doesn’t it?”

      Ben nodded. “Brod kept his rendezvous with them,” he mused. “Can’t say I’m surprised that a fight started—but over what?” He drew Wayfinder, which he had momentarily put away, muttered over the Sword, turned it this way and that.

      Signs on the ground indicated that riding-beasts, and perhaps loadbeasts too, had galloped here, had run in panicked circles on the flat land where the stream widened and smoothed into the ford. All this could be read according to the tracks, which were quite plain in the moist sand of the riverbank. The imprints were a day old, or not much more than that, drying and crumbling around the edges. But no running animals were now in evidence; whatever mounts and loadbeasts might have survived the fight had evidently scattered.

      Zoltan, darting about on the field of combat more energetically than any of his companions, was seeking among bushes and boulders, bending over bodies, examining one after another in rapid succession.

      The four, exchanging comments, reached a consensus: One side, either Blue Temple or bandits, had tried to cheat the other. Or perhaps both had simultaneously attempted some kind of treachery. Then they had efficiently killed each other off.

      Ben was still leveling his Sword, turning it this way and that, frowning, trying to interpret what the bright blade told him now. Wayfinder’s point was twitching.

      Violent death was nothing new to any of the travelers, except perhaps to Valdemar.

      “Have you seen this kind of thing before?” the Silver Queen inquired of him.

      The towering youth replied with a shake of his head. He appeared to be repelled, and somewhat upset by the unpleasant sights.

      He muttered: “Foolishness, foolishness. Why are folk determined to kill each other? It’s as if they looked forward to their own dying.”

      “I have no doubt some do,” Yambu assured him.

      Now Zoltan, who with a veteran’s callous practicality had begun rifling the packs of the fallen, announced with a cheerful cry the discovery of food.

      The provisions were mostly dried meat and hard biscuit. He began to share them out with his companions. He came upon spare clothing, too, and announced the welcome find.

      Zoltan compared his own right foot with that of a corpse. “I think this one’s shoes may fit me. Just in time, mine are wearing through.”

      There was a cry—really more a grunt—of excitement, from Ben. Not long distracted from his quest by a mere battlefield, he had been guided by Wayfinder to a wounded loadbeast.

      The others saw him pointing the Sword at the animal where it stood amid some scrubby bushes, which until now had screened it from their observation. The load-beast’s harness was marked with the Blue Temple