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

      Getting the Sword of Mercy back to Tasavalta came ahead of everything else. Zoltan, with Woundhealer already in his hands, unsheathed the Blade and without hesitation plunged it deep into his own body, holding himself transfixed with a hand on the black hilt. With his other hand he pulled his own short sword from its scabbard, and used it to run through the first enemy trooper to come at him in the dimness of the fading night. The trooper’s dying counterstroke cut down on Zoltan’s left shoulder, and might have nearly taken off his arm, had not Woundhealer’s overwhelmingly benign force prevailed. The enemy’s sword fell free, Zoltan’s wound closing behind it so quickly that he lost no blood.

      Ben, who had been unarmed except for a short knife and Wayfinder, grabbed up the fallen weapon, and killed two men with it in the next few moments of confusion.

      Zoltan was running now, with Ben beside him, away from the beleaguered Yambu and her young ally. Zoltan struck down another attacker, receiving another harmless sword-slash in the process and Ben smashed another foe aside. Both of them kept on running, their backs to the noise and turmoil surrounding Valdemar and the Silver Queen.

      A flying reptile came lowering out of the sky at Zoltan, talons biting harmlessly, almost painlessly, into his head and face, which were still protected by the magic of the gods. One claw bit through his eye and did no harm, his vision clearing once more with a blink. He could hear, below the harsh gasping of his own lungs, the softly breathing sound made by the Sword of Mercy, mending this new damage to his body as quickly as it happened.

      Even as his eyesight cleared, Zoltan’s killing sword bit into the airborne reptile’s guts. He heard the beast scream, and then fall heavily to earth behind him as he ran on.

      Ben kept pounding along beside him, so far managing to keep up. But now a net of magic fell about them both, a gossamer interference with thought and movement that would have stretched them both out on the ground, had not Zoltan been protected from all injury. His senses and his thought remained clear, and he felt the evil magic only as he might have felt a cobweb tear across his face.

      Beside him, Ben staggered and stumbled in his run, and would have fallen headlong had not Zoltan managed to sheath his own killing blade and catch the huge man under one arm, pulling and hauling him through torn cobwebs. Grunting with the effort, Zoltan kept Ben on his feet until the last shreds of the magic net had been left behind them.

      Still the young man had trouble believing that the two of them were really going to get away; glancing back when they had run another fifty meters, he decided that he and Ben were being greatly helped in their escape by the fact that the attackers were concentrating so thoroughly on getting the Sword of Wisdom into their hands.

* * *

      Valdemar kept hearing someone in command of the Blue Temple forces shouting orders to take that man alive. He knew the order referred to him. There was nothing to do but fight on, Yambu’s warning fresh in his mind, and the Sword in his hands making it substantially harder for the enemy to do what they wanted. If only, Valdemar prayed fervently, this Sword were Shieldbreaker …

      A rough ring of enemies kept forming around him and Yambu. But he kept muttering rapidly at Wayfinder, asking the Sword of Wisdom to show him the best way to escape. Then, keeping up as best he could with the Sword’s rapidly changing instructions, he charged bravely at one Blue Temple weak point after another. The trouble was that soon there were no weak points in the rapidly closing ring.

      Yambu meanwhile stayed on her feet, moving with agility to remain at Valdemar’s back. She kept doing magical things, things he could not comprehend, but that must be serving to keep the attackers at least temporarily off balance.

      But the odds were too great, their resistance could not last. The enemy magic was stronger than the Silver Queen’s if not than Wayfinder’s. At last Valdemar, the Sword in his hands notwithstanding, felt himself overwhelmed by swirling powers, by rampaging physical forms. Gold and blue faintly visible in moonlight, were everywhere around him. Whether the force that finally overcame him was material or occult he could not have said, and anyway it seemed to make no difference.

      Dimly aware that the Lady Yambu was still nearby and shared his fate, he was knocked down, disarmed, made prisoner. Then, with her limp and evidently unconscious body being dragged beside Valdemar, both of them were removed a short distance from their place of capture, to a place where a strange bright light was shone on their faces, and their captors puzzled in mumbling voices over their identity.

      That question having been answered to the winners’ satisfaction—or else determined to be not quickly answerable, Valdemar could not tell which—the pair were moved another short distance. There they were left on the ground, seemingly temporarily abandoned.

      Quickly Valdemar discovered that his arms and legs had been efficiently paralyzed by magic. But within moments after those who threw him down had turned away, he managed to shake free of some kind of cover, evidently a material one, which had been thrown over his head.

      His first use of this limited power of movement was to look for Zoltan and Ben, wondering if they were still alive, and what had happened to Woundhealer. Three or four meters away lay the dim, inert form of the Silver Queen. The young man spoke to the lady quietly, but received no answer.

      The attack, as Valdemar saw when he once more began to obtain a clear view of his surroundings, had been carried out by a small but powerful force of Blue