Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Acknowledgements

Introduction

THE JAPANESE SWORD

A Sharp Twist to Destiny

Last Man Standing

A Wolf in Holy Places

The Sword of Merit

Canticle of Abraham and Isaac

Back to the Garden

The Devil’s Blade

Never His Sword

Amir Arsalan and the Sword of Solomon

The Spear of Destiny

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One

Black Blade Blues

A Disappearance in Basra

The Warrior Women of Apartment 3C

Cold Winter’s Knight

In the Fold

Raves for the previous anthologies of Denise Little:

“A winning treat . . . this low-key pub crawl is surprisingly consistent, delivering a punch blend of shocks, laughs and otherworldly action.”

—Publishers Weekly, for Cosmic Cocktails

“Denise Little has put together some really nice collections in the past few years, and it’s gotten to the point where, if I see her name as editor, I know I’m in for a worthwhile read.”

—Chronicle, for The Magic Shop

“Given the career of an English boy named Harry, the creation of an American school for magic-workers was inevitable. Not inevitable was that the place be a fount of intelligent entertainment. Editor Little’s judgment helps make it such, and the comprehensive folk loric expertise she displays.”

—Booklist, for The Sorcerer’s Academy

“Exceedingly well done.”

—Booklist, for The Valdemar Companion

“Familiars is a load of fun to read for the fantasy fan or anyone who wants a good escape. Little has gathered fifteen highly original short stories that deal with magical companions.”—Kliatt, for Familiars

“After finishing this anthology, readers will never look at magic shops and new age/metaphysical bookstores the same way again. Little aptly describes the anthology as a ‘collection of stories of the changed fates and challenged minds of the amazed consumers—both mundane and magical—who dared to shop at a Magic Shop.’ Buyer beware!”

—The Barnes and Noble Review for The Magic Shop

Also Available from Denise Little and DAW Books Enchantment Place

A new mall is always worth a visit, especially if it’s filled with one-of-a-kind specialty stores. And the shops in Enchantment Place couldn’t be more special. For Enchantment Place lives up to its name, catering to a rather unique clientele, ranging from vampires and were-creatures to wizards and witches, elves and unicorns. In short, anyone with shopping needs not likely to be met in the chain stores. With stories by Mary Jo Putney, Peter Morwood, Diane Duane, Laura Resnick, Esther Friesner, Sarah A. Hoyt, and others.

Mystery Date

First dates—the worst possible times in your life or the opening steps on the path to a wonderful new future? What happens when someone you have never met before turns out not to be who or what he or she claims to be? It’s just a date, what could go wrong? Here are seventeen encounters, from authors such as Kristine Kath erine Rusch, Nancy Springer, Laura Resnick, and Jody Lynn Nye that answer these questions. From a childhood board game called “Blind Date” that seems to come shockingly true . . . to a mythological answer to Internet predators . . . to a woman cursed to see the truth about her dates when she imbibes a little wine . . . to a young man hearing a very special voice from an unplugged stereo system . . . these are just some of the tales that may lead to happily ever after—or no ever after at all. . . .

Front Lines

It is only since the advent of battlefront reporting, of turning on your television and seeing actual wars in progress, putting names to faces, “meeting” both soldiers and civilians who are caught in the day-to-day struggle for survival, that war has become more personal and the true price of combat has become real. Diane A.S. Stuckart, Laura Resnick, Josepha Sherman, Jody Lynn Nye, Dean Wesley Smith, and others here visit the front lines of battle, in stories that range from a chemical experiment gone horribly wrong . . . to a young recruit who may hold the key to “understanding” the enemy . . . to a US-Canadian conflict where the team attempting to broker peace is a joint Palestinian-Israeli unit . . . to a half-mortal knight trying to avert a war with the Elfin Host . . . to a Battle of Trenton fought against seven-foot-tall Saurians. . . .

Hags, Harpies, and Other Bad Girls of Fantasy

From hags and harpies to sorceresses and sirens, this volume features twenty all-new tales that prove women are far from the weaker sex—in all their alluring, magical, and monstrous roles. With stories by C. S. Friedman, Rosemary Edghill, Lisa Sil verthorne, Jean Rabe, and Laura Resnick.

Copyright © 2009 by Denise Little and Tekno Books.

eISBN : 978-1-101-05846-6

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Introduction copyright © 2009 by Denise Little

“The Japanese Sword” copyright © 2009 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

“A Sharp Twist to Destiny” copyright © 2009 by Mike Moscoe

“Last Man Standing” copyright © 2009 by Allan Rousselle

“A Wolf in Holy Places” copyright © 2009 by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

“The Sword of Merit” copyright © 2009 by Phaedra M. Weldon

“Canticle of Abraham and Isaac” copyright © 2009 by Peter Orullian

“Back to the Garden” copyright © 2009 by David H. Hendrickson

“The Devil’s Blade” copyright © 2009 by Gail Selinger

“Never His Sword” copyright © 2009 by Terry Hayman

“Amir Arsalan and the Sword of Solomon” copyright © 2009 by Dan C. Duval

“The Spear of Destiny” copyright © 2009 by Laura Resnick

“Stop Me If You’ve Heard this One” copyright © 2009 by Loren L. Coleman

“Black Blade Blues” copyright © 2009 by John Alvin Pitts

“A Disappearance in Basra” copyright © 2009 by Janna Silverstein

“The Warrior Women of Apartment 3C” copyright © 2009 by Annie Reed

“Cold Winter’s Knight” copyright © 2009 by J. Steven York

“In the Fold” copyright © 2009 by Jean Rabe

INTRODUCTION

Denise Little

This anthology owes its life to Errol Flynn. And An tonio Banderas. And Viggo Mortensen. Sean Bean. The various sword fighters in The Princess Bride. Even a Bond girl or two. All gorgeous people, all made ever so much more intriguing when somebody puts a sword in their hand and turns them loose to wreak havoc. I defy any person to watch a swordfight and not feel a thrill in their heart. Swordplay . . . YUMMM!

Part of the joy in the Hollywood version of swordplay is that we know that the hero will prevail, the bad guy will get his just desserts, and innocent by standers will escape getting maimed or run through.

But swords aren’t all Hollywood glitter and flash. Real people died by the sword in the millions. I’ve been on the wrong end of a sword once. One night when I was in college, I was walking home from the library. I went to Rice University, and the grounds there are classically beautiful, with incredible landscaping, including mature hedges and hundred-year-old live oaks surrounding the campus. A guy in black leather jumped out from the hedges, put the point of a rapier at my throat, and said, “Hark! Your money or your life!” Luckily, it was my boyfriend’s roommate—a fencer—enjoying a little April Fool’s joke. But I don’t mind saying that it freaked me out at the time. Years later, when I lived in New York, I got on the wrong end of a gun a couple of times (stories for a totally different kind of anthology). I can honestly say that the sword was scarier.

The Arms and Armor gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York is a symphony of swords from every era, every culture, in every size, shape, and finish imaginable. I love the calm serenity of the Japanese swords, concealing their deadly purpose beneath the gleam of perfect craftsmanship. There are diamond-encrusted court swords, battered cutlasses, rapiers so supple they seem to be in motion even sitting still. Some blades were carried by kings and courtiers. Others were carried by cads. But all of them have stories to tell—real life tales of murder and mayhem. The contrast between the beauty of the blades and the carnage of their purpose is fascinating to me.

I think that is the magic of swords. Swords are elite weapons, once created with the finest technology by the greatest craftsmen of the day, using the most expensive raw materials and trade secrets that, in many cases, their makers carried with them to their graves. Mastering the use of a sword required years of careful training to combine the strength and suppleness of a dancer and the brute force and endurance of a WWE wrestler. Swords might be able to kill in inexperienced hands, but it takes a master to use the weapon to its full potential. Swords are works of high art whose purpose is to kill people. And the killer has to put in enough study for a college doctorate to kill them well. All of that is as different from the violence of a kid mindlessly shooting a rival in a drive-by killing with a Saturday night special as possible. The grace notes of swordplay compared to the mindless waste of a typical killing today are mind-bending—even though there’s no denying that the victims end up every bit as dead.

Great swords have names and personalities and stories attached to them: King Arthur’s Excalibur; Lancelot’s Brightkiller; the Roman soldier’s Blade of Destiny, which once pierced the side of Christ; Beowulf’s Hrunt ing and Naegling; the Welsh sword Drynwyn, which harnessed fire for its worthy owners and called fire down to destroy the unworthy souls who attempted to use it. Their tales may be ancient, but they still fascinate us, and have come down through the lexicon of human knowledge not only intact, but with brio.

Sword stories shine so brightly that even cartoon heroes want in on the action. From The Sword and the Stone to Enchanted, fictional heroes love their swords. Even Luke Skywalker carries a lightsaber, despite the fact that the bad guys have a weapon that destroys entire planets. Me, I’d be looking for something with a little more firepower than a three-foot-long laser beam to use against the evil empire. But I’m definitely not hero material. And it was a pure pleasure to watch all those high-tech sword fights.

I guess the bottom line is that I just love swords. Yes, their only purpose is to draw blood and take life. But they are so beautiful as objects—and even more beautiful in action. If you love swords, too, I think you’ve got the right book in your hands. You’ll find original tales of swordplay, from the flash of Hollywood choreography to the ancient tales of biblical angels wielding swords in deadly earnest. From swords on modern battlefields to Arabian Nights-style tales of clever poor men seeking glory. From the American Civil War to King Arthur. From the tragic to the sublime to the hilarious. There’s something here for everyone. I hope you enjoy the book.

THE JAPANESE SWORD

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Kristine Kathryn Rusch is an award-winning mystery, romance, science fiction, and fantasy writer. She has written many novels under various names, including Kristine Grayson for romance and Kris Nelscott for mystery. Her novels have made the bestseller lists—even in London—and have been published in fourteen countries and thirteen different languages. Her awards range from the Ellery Queen Readers Choice Award to the Romantic Times Book Reviews Reviewer’s Choice Award. She is the only person in the history of the science fiction field to have won a Hugo Award for editing and a Hugo Award for fiction. Her short work has been reprinted in fifteen Year’s Best collections. Her current novel, Duplicate Effort , is part of her Retrieval Artist series, stand-alone mystery novels set in a science fiction universe.

Russell liked all things Japanese, so it should probably have come as no surprise that he would fall for Kuri Tsunoda. She was everything that Susan was not.

Kuri Tsunoda was petite.

She was pretty.

And she was Japanese. A professor of ancient Japanese literature, she became—just that year—a full professor at the university.

Russell was the head of Asian Studies, as he told anyone he met—cabbies, waitresses, and the occasional colleague from a different school. He’d worked his way up from assistant professor of Japanese Studies into creating an entire department, and, Susan thought, he never gave credit where credit was due.

Credit, she knew, belonged to Shogun. The book appeared in the late 1970s and became a bestseller, but the 1980s miniseries took the Department of Asian Studies from a three-man team—one professor (Russell) handling all things Japanese, another handling all things Chinese, and the last handling anything else he could label Asian—to a department with over twenty professors and at least two visiting professors. Russell became the head due to longevity, not to any particular aptitude for administration.

He had hired Kuri Tsunoda. Her classes focused on ancient Japanese literature of the Heian period. Oddly enough, most of the literature was written by women—and even more oddly (or maybe it wasn’t odd at all) most of those books dealt with extramarital affairs.

Susan had heard that Kuri was the most dynamic professor on campus. Her classes jumped in size from twenty the first semester to one hundred the second. She needed two graduate assistants to help her with the workload, and by the end of it all, she had managed to have several lecture classes and four intimate upper class seminars.

On Susan’s worst days, she used to wonder if the intimate upper class seminars were actually about technique. She could almost see Kuri, dressed as a geisha, conducting the damn class with hands-on examples.

But that was after. After the initial embarrassment. After the wedding. After everyone got to see Susan’s humiliation for themselves.

The first phone call came three days after the wedding.

The wedding was between Dominick Constable and Serena de Bary, both of whom were independently wealthy, and both of whom had been famously un catchable for many years. It didn’t hurt that both were also extremely attractive and extremely popular. The entire town knew them, not just the university community.

Some estimates claimed two thousand people came to that wedding. But based on the size of the church (which seated only nine hundred) and the reception hall, the number was probably closer to one thousand.

Of course Susan and Russell went. They’d known Serena and Dominick for decades. In fact they’d all met right around the time Shogun first aired.

Back then, none of them were famous. Now, only Susan had failed to make her reputation on the local stage. Of course, becoming famous was difficult when you took the housewife route. She supposed she could have been a long-term president of the PTA or a children’s rights advocate, but she had chosen to raise her children quietly, keep a beautiful home, and enjoy her life.

Russell, on the other hand, was well known locally, but he was still striving for national attention, although to hear him talk about it you’d think he was known in all four corners of the earth.

Serena and Dominick were famous. Really famous. As famous as professors could get and still remain professors. They traveled all over the world to conferences, giving lectures, and sometimes receiving coveted guest professorships.

Susan wasn’t envious. Russell was.

He vowed to be as famous as they were, but so far, all of his attempts to achieve that sort of fame had failed.

The phone call that shattered her little dream of domestic bliss came after The Wedding. Apparently, Serena and Dominick’s wedding planner—an energetic, organized (and amazingly annoying) thirtysomething—had e-mailed wedding photos to anyone who had asked for them.

Susan hadn’t asked. She never looked at her own wedding photos; why would she want to look at someone else’s? She had, in fact, forgotten about the offer to e-mail them, since it had been just a check-off on the RSVP, along with a choice of roast beef, chicken, or vegan entrees.

Apparently, though, half the town had requested those photos. Which surprised her. After the first call, anyway. By the fifth call, she’d come to expect it.

The first call came from her best friend, Melody Anders.

“Sue?” Melody said when Susan picked up the phone. “Have you gotten your e-mail yet?”

“Nooo,” Susan said. She had been baking chocolate chip cookies for her son’s high school football team. The boys usually went through three dozen in less than five minutes. She didn’t mind; she felt it was her duty to keep them in sugar and chocolate chips, especially when they were leaving that night for an away game. They needed food for the bus trip.

“Well,” Melody said, “I got the wedding photos and there’s one you have to see.”

“I don’t have to see wedding photos,” Susan said. “They’re all the same, even if the couple is uberfa mous and—”

“You have to see this,” Melody said. “Stay on the line. You’re going to need to talk to me after you see it.”

Not even that comment had warned Susan that something was amiss. She’d thought that Melody was going to share a laugh—maybe a bit of skin that shouldn’t have shown or, even better, a roll of fat that no one had known existed.

Susan cradled the phone in one flour-covered hand and went to the family computer. There she tapped in her log-in and waited as her mail downloaded.

“I don’t have wedding photos,” she said, only now remembering that she had never requested them.

“Damn,” Melody said. “Let me send this.”

Over the phone, she heard a bell as Melody’s e-mail program mailed the letter.

“Now try,” Melody said.

Susan downloaded her mail again. Melody’s letter—if it could be called that—landed on top of a wad of spam. Susan clicked it open. Melody hadn’t typed anything in the body of the e-mail. All she had done was attach a single photo.

The photo covered Susan’s screen. The bride and groom stood arm-in-arm with friends from the bride’s academic department. The professors were holding champagne flutes and laughing.

“So?” Susan said. “It’s nice. I’m going to go now. I have to take some cookies out of the oven.”

Melody made an odd sound like a combination sigh and raspberry. “Look in the background. Zoom in if you have to.”

Susan peered behind the gaggle of professors. Other guests were mingling, some looking at presents, and two—

Her breath caught.

Two were necking furiously. Even from a distance, she could see the pale flesh of the man’s hand on the woman’s torso, and the pale flesh of her hand on his buttocks.

She smiled and almost said something disparaging like, “What will people do at weddings?” when she realized she recognized those buttocks.

They were Russell’s.

She zoomed in farther.

The man was definitely Russell. And the woman was definitely not Susan.

“Who is that?” Susan asked in a voice she didn’t recognize as her own.

“I’ll send you the before-and-after shots,” Melody said. “You do recognize the man, right?”

Of course she recognized the man. But it took three more photographs before her mind accepted that the woman kissing her husband so professionally was actually Kuri Tsunoda.

A woman that pretty wouldn’t make out in public with a man as homely as Russell. He was balding, for heaven’s sake. He had what he called a paunch, but which could more accurately be called a beer belly (or two beer bellies). He laughed too hard at his own jokes. He was pompous and silly and—

He was cheating on her.

Susan sat down in front of the computer, trying to sort through her conflicting emotions.

Embarrassment—that was the first emotion she felt. Embarrassment that everyone who went to the wedding and asked for the photos would see this.

Disgust—not at Russell, but at Kuri for being attracted to Russell.

And, following on the heels of that emotion, an odd sense of wonder: Shouldn’t she have been disgusted at Russell for being attracted to such a young woman? Shouldn’t Susan have wondered what Russell saw in Kuri instead of what Kuri saw in Russell?

Was that indicative of a larger issue?

“Susan?” Melody asked. “Are you all right?”

“The cookies are burning,” Susan said, and hung up.

The cookies weren’t burning. They had given up burning a long time ago. Now they were hardened little crisps. They had destroyed the cookie sheet and covered her kitchen in a blanket of smoke. The smoke alarm hadn’t gone off. That didn’t surprise her either. Changing the smoke alarm batteries was one of Russell’s few jobs around the house; of course he hadn’t done it.

She aired out the kitchen, finished making cookies, and deleted the e-mails. She answered another e-mail from her oldest son, who was at away at college, fended off two more phone calls about the pictures, and made Russell his dinner, leaving it in the fridge like she often did on weeknights when he was going to come home late.

(And now she knew why he was coming home late. She shook her head, banishing that little thought. Little thoughts like that were insidious. She didn’t need insidious little thoughts in her head.)

When the cookies had cooled enough, she put them in the Tupperware she had gotten for her own wedding twenty-five years before and took them to her son’s football practice. She asked him if he had everything for the trip (he did) and kissed him good-bye, despite his grimace warning her away from public displays of affection in front of his team.

Then she did what any good American did when distressed.

She went shopping.

Two weeks before, Russell had told her he wanted only one thing for his birthday—a Japanese sword.

And not just any Japanese sword. This one was an antique sword from the Tokugawa Shogunate, one of the first few made after Japan banned the use of European guns.

When Russell had asked for the sword, Susan had protested: How could she find such a valuable thing? And he had given her a card: LAVELL’S CUTLERY—SWORDS, KNIVES, AND BAYONETS FOR ALL OCCASIONS. She had thought it a joke until she’d stumbled across the store at the local mall a week later. Lavell’s actually existed, and had a rather lovely storefront.

She clutched the card like a lifeline. Before she had seen the stupid photograph, she had planned to buy the sword tonight. She was going to continue with her plans, no matter what Russell had done.

Still . . . the stupid photograph made her wonder if the request for the sword wasn’t some kind of test. Had he asked Kuri for the exact same present?

Was he trying to see who was willing to spend the most money on him (and his inflated ego)?

And how many ancient swords could there be in Middle America, especially ancient swords from the Tokugawa Shogunate?

Susan doubted there could be more than one.

And she doubted that one would be authentic.

Still, she drove to the mall, parked, and walked inside through the food court. Her plan had been to eat a nice dinner, do some browsing, and buy her husband his sword, gift-wrapping it (if, indeed, one could gift wrap a sword) and hiding it until that special day.

But as she stepped inside the mall and the scents of greasy hamburgers, mediocre Chinese food, and unbelievably delicious pizza hit her, she stopped and grabbed the wall.

What was she doing? By now, half the town—and probably all of the university—had seen that damn photograph. She should be angry. She should be hiring a lawyer. She should be doing anything except shopping for her husband’s birthday present.

But she felt compelled to stick to her schedule. It was all that she knew.

However, instead of ordering the low-fat (and wretched) Mexican food so that she could keep the figure Russell said he admired, she bought herself a piece of that amazingly good pizza and ate it standing up. Then she went to Cinnabon and ordered two giant Cinnabons. She couldn’t eat all of that, but she decided the situation called for trying.

She washed it all down with a chocolate latte and didn’t even feel bloated.

She used a Sani-Wipe to clean off her fingers, then headed to Lavell’s with the single-mindedness of a toddler chasing a puppy.

At first glance, Lavell’s looked like any other high-end mall shop. It had rich wood paneling and red velvet covering its displays. Silverware sets—made of real, gleaming silver—graced the windows, along with some ornate silver chalices and ornate silver candlesticks.

Still, the sign said cutlery, even though there wasn’t any cutlery visible, aside from the steak knives that went with the silverware sets.

But she stepped inside anyway.

The interior smelled faintly of coffee and silver polish. The silverware in its velvet cases lined the tables dotting the middle of the shop. Silver items of all kinds—from small statues to earring sets—decorated the front.

But the far wall was glassed in, and behind that wall of glass (complete with lock) were knives. And they weren’t kitchen knives either, but knives that looked like they meant business.

She recognized a variety of Swiss Army knives and a Bowie knife from the pictures she’d seen in books. But the rest looked older and more lethal. In fact, they looked so lethal that part of her would wager they had already been used—lethally.

“May I help you?” The male voice was unctuous, just like she would have expected (had she thought about it), but it still made her start.

She turned to find a pear-shaped man with doughy white skin lurking behind the counter. Behind him were the swords. There were rapiers and broadswords, swords with lovely carvings and swords with ornate blades. There were jeweled hilts and carved cases and swords so big that only a giant could wield them.

She cleared her throat as she stared, realizing that she had no idea what an antique Japanese sword from the Tokugawa Shogunate looked like.

“Um,” she said as she stepped forward. “My husband says you sell antique Japanese swords.”

The pear-shaped man squinted at her, as if sizing her up. “Would this sword be for you?”

Of course it would be for me, you moron, she nearly snapped at him. My husband has no honor. He does not deserve a sword.

She shook the thought away, startled at its strength, its vehemence, and its alien tone.

“No,” she said. “It’s for my husband. He wants an antique Japanese sword for his birthday. Something from the Tokugawa Shogunate?”

The pear-shaped man tilted his round head. “We’ve only had one inquiry into such a sword and the couple. . . .”

He clearly had second thoughts before finishing the sentence. The couple, he probably was going to say, was an older man and a petite Japanese woman, clearly in love.

Susan clenched her fists, then slowly released them. “Do you have that kind of sword?”

“Of course,” he said, “but it is expensive.”

Expense was no object. Russell may have been a full professor who barely published enough to get tenure, and she may have been “only” a housewife, but she had managed their finances into a tidy nest egg—not counting the boys’ college funds.

She even had a small fortune set aside for presents. She loved to lavish gifts on her family—or she had. She wasn’t so sure now.

But she was here. She was going to go through with this. She was going to buy Russell’s goddamn present and he was going love it.

“May I see the sword?” she asked.

The pear-shaped man frowned at her. The expression made the top of his forehead look like badly folded paper. It almost made him seem like he was wearing a mask—a mask made of fabric, instead of papier-mâché.

“It’s in the back,” he said. “Just give me a moment.”

He slid—she knew of no other way to describe that fluid movement—through red velvet curtains that separated the front of the store from the back. She almost followed him, but she didn’t.

She was barely holding on. Her schedule. Her plans. Her self-control. She glanced at the knives on the wall. They gleamed, except for the Bowie knife. Blood dripped off the blade.

She gasped and turned away.

At that moment, the pear-shaped man emerged, carrying a black case covered with carved Japanese letters. Kuri would know what the markings said, but Susan didn’t.

“I have a feeling,” said the pear-shaped man, “that a sword will not suit you.”

She clenched her fists again and had to unclench them one finger at a time. She’d taught that trick to her sons, so that they wouldn’t speak until they were calm.

She wasn’t quite calm, but she was calmer. “The sword is not for me,” she said again. “It’s for my husband.”

“Still.” The pear-shaped man slid a silver chalice toward her. “Perhaps this would be better. It is quite lovely. Should it be filled with red wine and be served, the drinker shall fall in love with the server. It’s a bit of small magic, not quite a love potion, yet something that can rekindle a lost relationship.”

Rekindle. Lost. She shuddered. She didn’t want to rekindle anything. Part of her was relieved Russell spent his evenings with Kuri. Maybe part of her had been relieved from the beginning. Maybe she would have remained relieved if he hadn’t flagrantly and without regard to others sucked face with that woman in a public venue—with their friends around, no less. In front of a goddamn photographer.

“No,” she said, pushing the chalice back.

“Or perhaps this ring,” the pear-shaped man said. “It binds the wearer—”

“I want the sword,” she said.

He sighed and opened the case. The sword gleamed. It looked wicked.

It looked sharp.

“It is handmade, as anything from that period would be, and the blade is honed fine. It has been authenticated. . . .”

He droned on, but she didn’t listen. Instead, she ran a single finger over the flat part of the blade, and it hummed, the way a crystal champagne flute would hum if she ran her finger around the edge.

Except this hum seemed familiar. It sang of honor. It sang of shattered dreams.

It sang of loss.

“I’ll take it,” she said.

She signed the receipt without looking at the price, although she did notice two digits before the comma. She didn’t even wince. Russell wanted that sword for his birthday. She would make sure he got it.

She had initially planned to wait three days until Russell’s official birthday, but by then, everything would be different. Friends of his (did he have any? She wasn’t sure any longer) would call him and tell him about the photograph, probably warning him to keep it away from her.

Their son might come home from the away game and see the photograph as well. What would he think of his father grabbing the breast of a woman who was only a few years older than he was? Would he feel a manly pride or would he rush to the defense of his mother?

She didn’t want to find that out either.

Which meant she had to act tonight.

On the way home, she stopped at the grocery store. If she had thought this through during the afternoon, she would have baked a cake instead of cookies—a homemade cake always tasted better than store bought—but she doubted either of them would do much tasting.

She had the baker write “Happy Birthday, Russell” in the top in blood red icing. It looked lovely, although not quite as lovely as “Enjoy Your Last Birthday, Asshole,” would have looked.

Still, “Enjoy Your Last Birthday, Asshole,” might have tipped Russell off to her mood, and she didn’t want to tip him off.

She knew how to dress the house up for a celebration—an adult celebration. She placed an old rug on the dining room floor near the family’s computer. She took the plastic handcuffs from the bedroom and hung them from the back of a dining room chair. Then she wrapped a bow around the sword’s box. She cleaned and set the table, putting out the finest china. Finally, she put the cake on its cake plate in the center of the table, with the sharpened cake knife sitting crosswise on the table before the plate.

She turned on the computer, downloaded the photograph again, and made that the screen saver. It was an excellent photograph. It could almost be something on a birthday card—the kind you gave a lover—For your birthday, a full frontal snogging . . . and then inside . . . with someone you barely know.

The computer had the software to create such a card. She’d made cards before. But she doubted her husband—who loved all things Japanese—would understand the British slang.

He really was woefully uneducated. He’d become an expert in something only a handful of graduate students cared about. He never read books set in the United States. He barely read books at all. The only movies he saw, besides the Japaninmation he made her watch, were subtitled Japanese films.

When had he gotten so dull? Or had he always been that way? Had she taken his fascination with Shogun and all things Japanese as a sign of intelligence?

What was it Serena had said at her bridal shower? Someone had asked her why she had waited to get married. She had smiled and said, Men who seem interesting at twenty are often exactly the same at fifty. And what’s fascinating in a twenty-year-old is pathetic in a fifty-year-old. I wanted a man who lived his life, not studied someone else’s. But to get that, I had to wait. . . .

Susan shivered. Then she sat at the table and waited for her husband to come home.

* * *

He didn’t arrive until ten fifteen, filled with apologies and too much wine. Was that lipstick on his collar? Or just red sauce from the dinner he had eaten despite one waiting for him in the fridge?

She didn’t care. Instead, she smiled at him as if nothing were wrong.

“I thought,” she said, “since Trevor has an away game, we could celebrate your birthday tonight.”

Did Russell shudder? She couldn’t tell. But she could tell from his expression that he was going to beg off. So she led him into the dining room, so that he would see the trouble she had gone to.

He smiled at her when he saw the dressed-up dining room. He touched the handcuffs and this time, his smile seemed genuine.

He hadn’t yet seen the screen saver on the computer.

It would only be a matter of time.

She had planned on some coffee, some cake, a bit of conversation, but she found she couldn’t wait.

Instead, she picked up the cake knife.

“Put on the handcuffs,” she said.

He blinked at her. She understood his confusion. He had never worn them. He had always insisted she wear them. She was used to them now, but in the beginning she had struggled.

He had liked that.

She gripped the knife harder.

“Sue,” he said, and in that tone, she heard complaint.

She understood each tone to his voice, shorthand from twenty-five years of marriage.

But he knew her tones as well, and she used one now. The one she’d used with the boys. The one that said, Screw up and I’ll hurt you.

“All right,” she said. “Put the handcuffs on your left wrist. We’ll worry about your right later, if we need to.”

He frowned at her, but did as he was told.

Then he stood behind his chair, staring at the cake.

“Your present,” she said, sliding the sword toward him.

His face lit up when he saw it. He untied the bow and opened the case. The sword caught the light, looking brilliant, looking strong.

The sword of a samurai warrior.

She could hear it humming.

“I didn’t think you’d buy it, Susan,” he said in his warmest voice. “I didn’t think you’d realize what an investment it is. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“Don’t thank me,” she said. “Take a look at my birthday present first.”

He kept looking at the sword.

“Russell!” she snapped.

He brought his head up.

She pointed to the computer. The image moved slowly, like one of those documentary images where the camera came in closer so that you could see the detail.

His face reddened.

Someone had tipped him off to this, the bastard.

“Ah, I can explain,” he said.

“I don’t need an explanation,” she said. “You have dishonored our family. There is only one answer for dishonor.”

She reached into the box and lifted the sword by its hilt. The sword moved cleanly and elegantly in her hand.

She felt like a warrior. She felt strong and powerful.

“Get on your knees,” she said.

A bead of sweat ran down Russell’s face. “Susan—”

“I don’t have to explain this to you,” she said. “The only answer for such a serious dishonor is to kill yourself. We shall follow the ritual. I will be your second. If you don’t succeed in killing yourself with this sword, I will take it and behead you. Then the family honor will be restored.”

“Susan,” he said, “that’s crazy talk, and you know it. Americans don’t commit seppuku. Heck, I don’t even think the Japanese do anymore.”

She didn’t care. It would be easy to behead him with this sword. One swift movement and his head would tumble toward the living room, on that slight downhill slope to the floor that she had begged him to fix for the past ten years.

“On your knees,” she said.

She pointed to the rug. Beneath it, she had put down some plastic sheeting. It wouldn’t be enough, but it would take care of the bulk of the mess.

“Susan, be reasonable,” he said.

“Get. Down.”

He did.

“I’ll give you the sword if you promise to go through the ritual,” she said. “In case you don’t remember, you take the hilt in your dominant hand, turn the tip of the blade toward you, then carve yourself open from one side of your gullet to the other. Should the pain and blood loss fail to kill you, I, as your second, will complete the job.”

“You are not my second,” he said.

“No,” she said. “I thought I was your only.”

He frowned at her. “Susan, seriously, this is insane.”

The blade hummed in her hand. It moved toward him on its own.

“Take the sword,” she said.

“No one does this,” he said. “No one ever did it. It’s a myth. Scholars now believe—”

“Scholars?” she asked. “People like you?”

“Yes, but—”

“People like Kuri?”

He closed his mouth.

She handed him the sword. His hands trembled, but he turned the blade toward his stomach.

“Susan,” he said softly, “do you realize the kind of strength this takes? I’m a professor. I can’t cut open a fish, let alone—”

“A fish belly,” she finished for him.

He wasn’t going to do it. She could tell. He wasn’t even man enough to turn the blade on her. He could have backed her into a corner if he wanted, but he was shaking, near tears, and pathetic.

The father of her sons.

Sons.

Every family wanted sons. Manly sons, strong sons. Sons who would be ashamed of the adulterous, dis honorable creature on the floor who didn’t have the strength to take his own life.

She snatched the sword back from him. She wouldn’t even have to tell him to handcuff his hands together.

She had brought out the handcuffs because she had been expecting a fight.

Instead, his lower lip was trembling. Tears were pooling in his eyes. His nose was red.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said. “She was just so beautiful. I couldn’t help myself. She was so—”

“Japanese,” Susan said.

“Yes,” he said with relief. “See? That’s why I love you. Because you understand.”

She set down the knife, but she kept her grip on the sword. Then she reached down and grabbed his left hand. She grabbed his right hand and pulled it next to his left hand. It took her only a moment to snap the handcuffs closed.

“Susan!”

She’d never heard that tone before. Pure panic. Sheer terror.

She felt a power she’d never felt before. The samurai who had owned this sword had probably heard that panic. Maybe he had even reveled in the terror. But he had never misused it.

She grabbed her husband by the back of the neck and moved him closer to the computer. She pointed at the image.

“You have dishonored all of us,” she said. “You do not deserve this family.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I don’t. I’m sorry. I’ll do whatever I can to make it up to you—”

“Then stay on your knees, your back straight, and look forward like a man,” she said. “If you can’t take care of the dishonor for yourself, I will take care of it for you.”

She moved behind him, holding the sword in both hands. It gave her a confidence she’d never had before, as if it guided her.

She spread her legs and bent her knees. The sword felt natural in her hands. She switched it to her right hand, holding it lightly—

And then she swung.

Russell screamed.

The blade flew toward him, scraping the top of his balding head, removing some skin and more hair than she would have expected before implanting itself in the computer screen.

It caught his image in the chest and it looked like that hand—the hand clutching Kuri’s breast—fluttered in pain. Kuri’s image leaned back, screaming, before the computer blew up.

Sparks and smoke went everywhere.

Russell ducked, cursing and clutching the top of his head.

The entire wall was black from the explosion.

But the sword’s blade remained pure whitish silver, gleaming in the light.

“Happy goddamn birthday, you fucking asshole,” Susan said, and stalked out of the house.

Later, her friends said she was justified. Hell, the entire town believed her justified.

Even her sons sided with her.

“I wouldn’t have impaled his image, Mom,” said her youngest. “I’d’ve stabbed something else.”

She hadn’t even thought of that. She hadn’t thought of much about that night. Later, she would say she was just reacting, but it hadn’t felt like she was reacting.

It had felt like she was driven.

Half of her friends said rage could do that to a woman. The other half claimed the sword possessed her. Swords like that had legends, they said, and that sword in particular had a reputation for maintaining honor among the family members of its owner.

She’d snorted when she had heard that.

But part of her—the skeptical part—got shaken when she tried to return the sword to Lavell’s. Lavell’s wasn’t there. In its place was a bridal registry, one that claimed it had been in that location for more than thirty years.

Surely she hadn’t conjured up Lavell’s on her own. She had the business card.

And she had the sword.

Or the police did. They kept it as evidence in case Russell pressed charges. Although they had told him not to, since any jury would take one look at that photo (that series of photos, really) and think that Susan had been pretty lenient with that sword.

Still, they weren’t going to return it to her.

“Trust me,” one of the detectives said, “you restored the family’s honor. You don’t need the sword anymore.”

She wasn’t sure she had restored honor. But she certainly got acclaim—and about one week of instant fame. She even became the Sword-Wielding Housewife for one cover of People magazine. Her sons framed it.

She put it in the bathroom.

Of her new house. The one she’d gotten with the proceeds from the divorce. She’d made a deal with Russell (who had worn a bandage on the top of his head for a year, like a flattened turban). She could keep everything she invested and half the profits from the sale of the house; he could keep his copyrights, his Japanese collectibles, and that awful Japanese furniture he had put in his office. She would not take alimony or child support. He could walk away with some of his possessions.

Although he was hard-pressed to find dignity.

Students kept putting the photos up on his office door. Kuri had gone back to Japan, too embarrassed to face anyone at the university again.

And Susan kept searching for Lavell’s. She owed them money. The charge had never gone through on her credit card. She had an ancient sword (albeit in police custody) and one particularly satisfying night, one she’d turned into a series of paid speeches on female empowerment.

Perhaps I took it too far, she would say in front of the dumpy crowds of frustrated women she seemed to attract at the Hiltons and Hyatts and Crowne Plazas that hosted her events. But I let it go too far. I hadn’t realized how much I was ignoring, how much dignity I had abandoned, and how it hurt not just me, but my sons.

She wasn’t sure she believed all of that crap. She still wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t bought the sword but had bought the cake that said, “Enjoy Your Last Birthday, Asshole.”

Given Russell’s lack of courage and his complete inability to save himself, that cake might have been enough to destroy him forever.

She tried not to think of Russell very often. He was a past incident in her life, someone she thought of only when her sons smiled in a certain Russell-like way or in her fencing classes when her rubber-tipped blade bent against an opponent’s breastplate.

She would see the echo of that computer image reacting to the sword’s point. Had that blade gone back in time and stabbed Russell through the heart?

But for that to happen, Russell had to have a heart—and she wasn’t sure he did. All Russell had ever had was an ego, and that was a lot smaller than it used to be.

Even though she had made him famous. Internationally famous. Once, in Cologne, she’d seen a montage: Russell and Kuri necking at the wedding, the sword by itself, and Russell with his makeshift turban.

The montage had made her smile.

She used her phone to take a photograph of it.

And then she e-mailed it to everyone she knew.

A Sharp Twist to Destiny

Mike Moscoe

Mike is a multifaceted writer. As Mike Moscoe, he has written short stories that are frequently nominated for the Nebula Award by the Science Fiction Writers of America. As Mike Shepherd, he has five books out in the Kris Longknife science fiction saga. Three have made national bestseller lists. Look for Kris Longknife: Intrepid at your local bookstore.

“ got to get into the real war,” I told myself for the I millionth time. Fighting from the Green Zone was no way for a professional soldier to earn his pay.

Two of the three choppers protecting this sally were visible overhead. The outer perimeter of a hundred and fifty bored soldiers moved along smoothly under the watchful eye of its captain. The inner circle, forty wary pairs of eyes, stayed close to Congressman what’s-his-name who supported the war and the civilians with him. The congressman had gotten the Persian rugs he’d wanted. Now he was talking to Mary Kayla. Her dapper tan slacks, thin white blouse, and three-inch heels would have been at home in the halls of Congress. Presently accessorized with a camouflage green flack jack and Kevlar helmet, it looked a bit ridiculous.

It did look safe.

Except for the heels.

Well, it was the Emerald City.

I got to get into the real war, I told myself again. Out loud I said, “You ready to head back?”

For a moment, it looked like the guy might have had enough of putting himself and two hundred soldiers at risk walking in the safest market in Iraq, this year of our Lord 2006.

Then he spotted a shop with an oversized sword hanging from its sign.

“I’d love a couple of crossed swords over my fireplace.”

“Major Saunders, the sign says pots and pans, new and repaired,” my interpreter said in a high pitched voice. Then he added, “They also have knives, and they say they have ancient Persian swords.”

“Swords?” I double-checked.

“The sign says so,” the Iraqi added.

“Then let’s go have a look,” the Congress critter said.

“Ancient,” I repeated.

“So the sign says,” the interpreter repeated, then lowered his voice. “But Major Sandy, I suspect the oldest sword there came from some Pakistani foundry last month.”

I signaled the LT of the close-in team. He and ten troopers disappeared into the cool shadows of the shop. A minute later, a sergeant signaled for the rest of the team to follow.

The close-in team folded itself into the store. I hustled to join the next squad. The riflemen went down the aisles. Eyes swept stock, walls, and ceiling. Rifles moved smartly in sync with the eyes.

The Iraqi staff, two middle-aged men and a boy, ignored the soldiers. They stayed out of the way, then pounced like hungry cats as Mary Kayla and the congressman entered. I concentrated on our perimeter, but these were good troops. They did their job, leaving me free to slip back to where the congressman was clearly in lust for a pair of fancy Persian sabers.

“These belonged to my father’s father, a gift to him for leading our tribe in the Revolt of 1920. I would never sell them, but times are hard for a poor family man and I have many mouths to feed. It is true Damascus steel. See the watermark.”

It was none of my business, but no way was that Damascus steel. My Ka-Bar knife hung on my web gear, upside-down for easy access. In a moment, the professional soldier’s knife was in my hand. I barely tapped the saber.

It showed a deep gash from the kiss. The Ka-Bar blade was unmarred.

“Why’d you do that?” the congressman demanded. “Now he’ll want me to buy it and two more.”

The man really wanted that saber. And nothing was going to dissuade him from being taken for this ride. Well, guys like him were probably the reason guys like me were fighting this war.

I took my disgust to the back of the shop. A young sergeant kept watch there. “Major, you sure showed him,” the kid said. “But he ain’t learning no never mind.”

“Looks that way.” I turned, ready to make a full walk of the store’s perimeter.

And found myself facing an old man. Bearded. Elegant in a traditional flowing white robe. His keffiyeh was the black and white of an Iraqi who had made the hajj. But his eyes. They followed me until I came to a halt. They looked through me, seemed to measure me . . . my foreignness . . . my soul . . . my all.

In the dark, it took me a moment to realize they were covered with cataracts.

“I see you are a connoisseur of sharp steel,” the old one said. “What do you think of my collection?” He indicated with a wave of his hand a narrow table against the wall, set with all sorts of blades.

There was a sword, a proper scimitar; I knew without testing it that it would fit my hand and balance perfectly. There were other blades, curved and wicked, designed for slipping in under the rib cage and killing quickly from behind. Some were bejeweled and beaten with silver and gold. One looked to be a Frankish pinion, worn and scarred enough to have been pried from the cold, dead hand of some Crusader nearly a millennium ago.

The temptation was strong to say, “Wrap them up. I’ll take them all.”

But there was one in particular that drew my eye, though it was in the back and half covered by fan cier fare.

The sheath was black leather, soft with age but lovingly cared for. The hilt had no place for fancies. Worn bone was held in place by four solid rivets. When I pulled the blade from its sheath, it showed the true watermark of Damascus steel. In this case, the Prophet’s own ladder to heaven. But it was a thin ladder, less than an inch wide along its foot-long length.

It would easily slip through the space between a rib or under a jaw, to do deadly work.

“This is an assassin’s blade,” I said.

“Some might claim it is from the forges of Alamut itself,” the old man whispered softly, as he took the blade I had drawn. He held it to the light for me to admire, then returned it to its scabbard. When he did, a small pearl of blood welled from his finger.

“You cut yourself,” I said.

“A blade such as this must never be returned to its sheath without tasting blood.”

I’d heard such stories. The jeer that came to my lips never made it out. This old man’s face left no doubt that something truly horrible did lay in wait for anyone foolish enough to ignore the laws that covered this gleaming steel.

“How much for the knife?” I asked instead.

“My son would ask a hundred of your dollars. Tell him his wise old father wants only fifty,” the man said, handing the knife to me with a small bow.

The noise from the front of the store said the congressman was settling his accounts. The sergeant beside me signaled his team to saddle up. I took my small purchase forward as Mary Kayla called over her shoulder, “Better hurry up, you’ll get left behind, Major Sandy.”

The store owner was not smiling when I presented my selection. “What is this?” the Iraqi demanded.

“A knife your father sold me. He said to charge me fifty dollars,” I was not paying much attention to the owner; I was eyeing my troops as they withdrew by the numbers.

“I do not know this blade. And you do not know my father,” the shopkeeper growled.

“I just met him,” I said, turning my full attention to him. This was taking too long.

“You did not know my father. Saddam Hussein killed him in 1992 for rising against him when you Americans did not come.”

I knew the complaint. “But I just met a man who said he was your father. Tall.” I raised my right hand to just below my eyebrows. “Thin, black-and-white head covering, done as yours is. A big hooked nose.”

The Iraqi’s anger grew with each word.

“His eyes were covered with cataracts, but he followed my every move,” I added.

And the Iraqi’s eyes suddenly grew wide. “Where did you find this knife?” he demanded.

“On that table, in the back,” I said. Outside, the company’s sergeant major waited impatiently with a fire team, left behind to play nursemaid to one wayward major. Still I stepped back to where I could see past a pile of copper jugs.

There was no table full of knives against the back wall.

Now there stood stacks and stacks of pans and plates, bowls and jugs.

For a moment, I didn’t know what to make of it. I looked at the dagger, feeling the urge to drop it like some venomous snake, but my hand held on with a mind of its own.

As the shopkeeper reached out his hand, his face was a mask of competing emotions I could not hope to catalog. “I do not accept credit cards from soldiers. Do you have fifty dollars cash?”

Why this sudden change in attitude? I wondered, but my second thought was more of shock. I did have fifty dollars!

Normally, only a fool took a wad of U.S. cash outside the Green Zone. Today I’d expected to buy some wood carvings my wife wanted. But that store had been shuttered as we went by. I still had the money!

And produced it quickly for the Iraqi as the sergeant outside grumbled more loudly.

Then I remembered. Back home in Alabama, you always gave a penny to someone who gave you something sharp. I produced the small coin of Lincoln and added it to the cash.

“What is this?”

“A penny for luck,” I said.

“You will need all the American luck you can find,” the Iraqi said. “You now own a part of my home-land.”

I expected a bit of quiet counseling from the sergeant major for spreading out the guard detail, but he just shook his head. “Major Saunders, I sure hope that doo-dad is worth it, sir.”

I fingered the black leather. “So do I, Sergeant.”

Back inside the wire, I found myself in demand . . . at G1 of all places—that’s personnel to a civilian. “Don’t know who you pissed off, Major,” the captain there said, “but I got orders for you to go the real war.”

“Where?” I demanded.

“Anbar,” he said with a wicked grin.

And I said something a sergeant can say, but a field grade officer isn’t supposed to. “We’ve lost that fight. Haven’t you read the intel report? It was in all the papers.” Some intel weenie had told it straight, and someone had slipped it to the papers. It was no secret.

Someone really didn’t like me.

Three days later, as I dismounted my ride at a very hot and horribly dusty landing zone, I had no reason to change my opinion. Anbar was a hopeless case. The U. S. Army was up to its neck in hot water that was full of local fish that totally supported the insurgency. If we were lucky, our patrols occasionally intercepted a suicide bomber volunteer on his way to Baghdad. We might stumble on a car bomb maker. Nip off a few snipers while dodging the all too plentiful roadside bombs. If we were very lucky.

The colonel running this area of operations didn’t look all that happy to have another major on his brigade staff. “Sandy, that what they call you?”

I admitted my guilt for the obvious nickname.

“You one of those fools who love the desert?”

“What’s to love? It’s hot, dry and dusty,” I said.

The answer was obvious, but it didn’t really answer the question.

“Your old c.o. says you’re hot to trot for civil action. You into bleeding hearts and winning weak minds, Major?”

“Not excessively, sir,” which skirted the question of what was excessive and what was just right.

“When did you start growing that moustache?”

There he had me. Iraqis didn’t think much of a clean-shaven man. The colonel was razor sharp. “When I got my orders for this rotation, sir.”

That pretty much said it all. He put down my folder and eyed me for the first time. “That extra knife you’re carrying isn’t regulation.”

I’d used plastic strip cuffs to hold my assassin’s blade to the right suspenders of my web gear. “Once upon a time the Ka-Bar wasn’t reg either.”

“You going native on me, Major?” he asked, giving me the evil eye.

“Insh’allah, no, sir.” Hopefully that wasn’t too far over the top.

He just shook his head. “I think you and Major Kips will get along just fine,” the colonel said in dismissal, and waved negligently in response to my salute.

Outside the colonel’s office, I asked the sergeant for directions to Major Kips, and got sent down the hall, out into the heat, and across five lines of shipping containers to where I might find said major hanging out with the Haji interpreters.

I found him there with three Humvees, saddling up his squad to head outside the wire. The short, wiry major extended a hand that could have been a vise and asked, “You want to come along?”

“What’s up?

“I’ve been trying to set up a meeting for the last month with a half dozen of Hit’s most influential sheiks. Looks like I finally got my meeting.”

“If they show this time,” a tech sergeant grumbled under his breath.

“They will,” an interpreter said, he in a worn suit, sweat-soaked white shirt, and tie.

“The locals are caught in the bit of the line. These foreign al Qaeda types aren’t turning out to be all that good at handling the power they’ve got. Too much swaggering. Applying Taliban rules. They’ve even taken to marrying themselves off to local girls. If you ask me, we Yanks are doing a better job of being guests. Maybe the local sheiks are starting to notice that. Maybe.”

I double-checked my armor, drew a few extra clips for my M-4, and prepared to see what kind of war I’d gotten myself transferred into. No doubt it would be less dull than the war I’d fought the last four months.

The squad was good. Everyone knew his job and place when we loaded up. The only empty seat was in the third rig—front passenger. I filled it.

The day was hot, the gun trucks moved fast, and the dust swirled. We headed in the direction the guy in the suit pointed. It turned out he was from the sheiks, sent as a sign of good faith.

Or to lead us into a trap.

We left the irrigated farmlands for a small town outside Hit, slowing to wind our way through ancient streets built with camels in mind.

The explosion got the second Humvee.

Major Kips’ rig took the full brunt of it. One minute it was ahead of us, then it was flying. After bouncing off the second story of a brown building, it skidded to a stop on its side, burning.

The hillbilly armor on my rig didn’t do so good. I was slammed against my seat. When I got my breath back, my M-4 looked strangely bent. A hunk of jagged, hot metal now stuck out where the safety had been.

The driver grabbed his M-16 and bolted just as an RPG narrowly missed us. The gunner unseated his machine gun and followed the driver out. I kicked the door open when it wouldn’t open otherwise and fell out of the rig as a second RPG found its target.

Half hidden in a doorway, I struggled to take inventory. No breath, no pistol, no carbine, nothing but two grenades and a couple of knives. I was a great example of a modern American major. Oh, I did have a good supply of bad guys shooting at me from every window and rooftop on the street.

I tried the doorknob. It turned and I backed inside. At a noise, I spun on my heels.

To find myself face to face with a terrified eight-year-old girl.

A second later, a woman covered in black grabbed for her and yanked the kid into a back room, where the two huddled against a wall, a boy of maybe four between them.

So I wasn’t the only one surprised by our sudden shootout.

I dashed through the house and out the back door. Automatic weapons fire came from my left. I headed for it.

An unshaven man with an AK-47 enthusiastically sprayed down the street where my driver and gunner had taken refuge. He paused to change clips as his weapon hiccuped on empty.

As he pulled back on the arming bolt, ready for more spray and pray, I sprinted across the distance to him.

Years ago, my hand-to-hand instructor insisted there was only one sure way to convert a man into an instant rag doll.

I slipped the Iraqi dagger from its sheath. Its thin, razor-sharp point smoothly slid past hair and keffiyeh and buried itself deep in his skull. The shooting stopped; I shook my hand, scrambling his brains.

And caught his gun as he collapsed into an instant, silent rag doll.

Seemed my instructor was right.

I sighted along the Kalashnikov’s short barrel, then ignored the sights, as I suspected they had been ignored before. I lined up the barrel as well as I could against the center of mass of one of the roof shooters. My shot winged his left arm, spinning him around.

My second shot got lucky. His head vanished in a red spray.

Two men in the alley across from me suddenly got interested in me. I ducked into a small alcove. When they’d emptied their magazines into the air I had occupied, I leaned out. Two shots sent both of them running. Two more shots dropped one.

Suddenly, the street was eerily silent. The sound of running feet echoed off the buildings, seeming to come from every direction.

I waited while the silence grew.

In a moment, I was listening to the moaning of wounded.

Fifteen years in this man’s army and I had never knowingly killed another human being. Never up close. Never where I could smell the stink of voided bowels. Or watch flies gather to drink the blood that pulsed from the wounds.

I leaned against the building to keep my suddenly rebellious knees from dropping me into the red mud spreading out from the man I’d knifed from behind.

“Major, you okay?” my driver shouted.

“Yes,” I answered, half lie, half truth.

“Major, Major Kips is bad hurt.”

“You got a working radio?”

“No, sir.”

“We do. Gun Truck One is no worse for the wear,” someone shouted.

“Get a chopper in for medevac. There’s a field not two blocks back.” Someone had been eager to get us.

Twenty minutes later, we had the major on his way home, his brains not quite as scrambled as my knife had left my target. A sergeant with a busted leg rode out with him.

But as soon as we were back on radio net, brigade was full of advice. “You wait where you are. We’ll reinforce you for your withdrawal.”

Withdraw hell. I’d just got there. And Kips had paid too high a price for this meeting for us to just put our tails between our legs and skulk back to the Forward Operating Base.

“You,” I shouted. “Yes, you, the sheiks’ interpreter.” The man stood up from where he’d been kneeling beside the man I’d knifed from behind. He’d pulled the knife out, cleaned it on the man’s keffiyeh, and offered it back to me as he came at my call.

“How far are we from where we meet the sheiks?”

He looked around, seeming to recognize his surroundings again, and pointed down the street. “Five, maybe six blocks.”

“Brigade, we’re only five blocks from the folks Major Kips came to meet. I think he’d want us to keep going. I know I sure as hell don’t want to come this far only to chicken out and go back. I’ll send you a location check when we’re there.” I clicked off.

Brave words. Words I felt. Course, Custer probably felt the same way about things.

So, with the dust of the evac chopper still stinging our eyes, we reorganized our team. Five riding, five walking briskly alongside the Humvee, we made quick work of the rest of our trip into the unknown.

In another age, out goal would have been called a fort. Say in some pre-cannon time. Now its walls showed where rocket grenades and explosives had humbled it. But there was nothing humble about the eight men in formal traditional dress that came out to greet us.

Or the guards that covered their backs.

Keffiyehs and robes said these men held ancient rights and privileges. If there was any doubt of that, sashes showed bejeweled and inlaid daggers at their waists, the kind I’d declined for the simple killer’s knife that once again hung from my right breast.

The interpreter began talking before I said a word.

Our hired man came up and whispered in my ear. “He’s explaining that you are the new man, that the one they’d expected was almost killed on the drive here. He’s telling them how you killed an attacker with your own knife, and others with the rifle you took from a dead enemy. They are impressed,” he said as the sheiks began talking among themselves.

Whatever they decided must have been in my favor; we were invited in for tea. And it dawned on me that I’d gone from spare man along to watch and learn to big man deal maker. I’d never intended to hone in on Major Kips’ show. Now, if there was to be a show, I’d have to direct it.

So I drank tea and talked about the weather and the crops. I admired cute grandkids when they broke in to see the strange Americans . . . and I waited.

I waited very patiently. I was on my third cup of tea when the sheik who appeared to be chairing the meeting asked if he might see my knife. Surprised, but not as much as I would have been a week ago, I pulled it from my webbing and handed it across, still in its scabbard.

The sheik withdrew the blade and held it to the light for all to admire. The others murmured their thoughts in a language lost to me. I had trouble catching my interpreter’s attention. He was eyeing the sheiks, studying the knife, and only occasionally glancing my way.

When I finally could ask him what was going on, he shook his head. “I will tell you later.”

Finally, the senior sheik handed me back the blade, then the sheath. He said nothing, just sat there staring at me intently. I ran a finger along the blade just short of the pummel until blood welled up, then resheathed the dagger.

Wordlessly, the sheik turned to the others. They said not a word, but seemed to easily reach agreement. The sheik turned back to me.

“Why have you Americans allowed wolves to come among us, ripping and tearing at our throats?”

It would be nice if Major Kips were here, fully briefed and experienced with them. But I was all the good guys had. “American troops patrol your streets. You have your own police,” I guessed.

The sheik spat. “Shia dogs with no hearts. They run at the first sound of the gun. We have no police. No one to guard us. No one to work with you,” he said, sweeping his hand around to those who stood behind him. The guards bowed affably.

Very likely those guards had fired at the Shia police, driving them away. And very likely they had helped guide bombers against my own troops. It was tempting to say just that.

But I had come to change that. If I allowed my temper to demand justice for blood already spilled all I would do was drag down an offered dam against the next lake of blood.

“What would you like?” I asked.

“My guards are eager to be our police, but I am a poor man. I cannot pay my guards and pay police. You, you Americans are rich. You could pay for police. You paid the ones that ran away,” he said, raising an expressive eyebrow.

Now it was my time to silently poll my squad. One of the younger sergeants showed anger at the very idea, but most of the senior NCOs’ faces were impassive blanks. It wasn’t their job to make treaties with what passed for local strongmen, but they weren’t reluctant to back up a green officer willing to talk peace. I decided that was enough.

“If we were to pay you to hire local police, what could I expect from you?” What I actually meant was, “What can I tell my boss he will get?” However, these were strong men, and turning myself into a glorified messenger boy would not help our cause.

“I have heard,” the sheik said slowly, “that there is a house where many of these evil men live. Your police could quickly close this down. Five or six heads on pikes would show all that this is not a place that lets evil walk our streets.”

I flipped the assassin’s blade in my hand, then slipped it back in its place on my web gear. “And how much money would you need to pay how many policemen?”

“A hundred thousand of your American dollars would pay a hundred, a hundred fifty loyal police to walk the streets of our town.”

So I went to see the colonel.

And had hardly turned the corner from the “fort” before I elbowed the interpreter. “What were the sheiks saying when you weren’t talking?”

“Nothing much, sir.”

“They have offered their police to work with us. That’s a major change. They must have said something to make as big a change as that.”

My interpreter frowned and looked away. “It is hard to translate what they said.”

“Try me.”

We were back in among date palms before my interpreter said, “There are some who will tell you that the assassins forged each knife for a single kill.”

“That seems reasonable,” I said. “I doubt many assassins survived their missions.”

“Hmm,” he said. “Others will tell you that different spells were put on each knife as it was forged.”

Now it was my time to say, “Hmm.”

“All except one knife that the Old Man of the Mountain had forged just for himself.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, that knife would unite all Four Corners of the world under one rule. His.”

“And did it?”

“No. He never used it.”

“That’s strange. What power nut would create a knife of power and then never use it?”

“Because, as some would tell you, the smith who forged the blade confessed under torture that he had twisted the magic of the knife. It would never work for an assassin, only a warrior.”

“Oh,” was all I said. “A strange story. Why didn’t your Old Man of the Mountain just break the blade and start over again?”

“Have you tried to break the blade?”

“No.”

“Please don’t. The knife protects itself.”

An interesting quandary, I thought to myself, running a finger along the black leather scabbard while trying to figure out how much of this to believe. “Did he make another?”

“No. Some will tell you that while the magic is with one blade, it cannot be shared with another. It is the one.”

I began to see the real problem. “And there was no way the assassin would let any soldier hold the power, even for a while.”

“That is what some would tell you.”

And I thought my talk with the colonel would be hard.

“And what do I get for this hundred thousand dollars?” started the discussion.

“Six dead al Qaeda types and a hundred Iraqi cops.”

“Those three men you killed today. Did they come out of the al Qaeda column or the cops?”

“If they were alive tomorrow, they’d likely be cops,” I admitted.

“I see. Not too unusual.” The colonel walked over to his window. It showed him burned dirt and a wind-raised dust devil. “But I can’t keep chasing them down one by one.” He turned back to me. “We lost Major Kips. He bled out on the way in.”

“Damn,” was all I could find to say.

The colonel stiffened, seemed to arrive at a decision. “We’ve tried bayonets and tanks. We might as well give Kips’ money idea a go. But so help me, Major, if these sheiks of yours take the money and run, or worse, use it to buy more guns and explosives to blow up my boys, I will take that fancy knife of yours and use it to cut your guts up for garters. Do we understand each other?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. This time, he returned my salute like a soldier.

Kips’ squad would need more time to become Sandy’s, but we moved out shortly before midnight, followed by a platoon-sized force that was there to show we meant business. It was they that guarded the strongbox with a hundred thousand in one-hundred dollar bills.

The sheik’s interpreter from this morning pointed us out across the desert. It felt safer off the roads. We stopped where all eight sheiks were waiting for us just short of a low rise. The senior sheik led the way up the hill, but went to ground well short of it. We crawled the last twenty yards.

In the low rolling land before us a small compound sat among date groves. “That is what they call their safe house,” the sheik said.

“It will be hard to approach it without being seen,” I said.

“My guards are already there. They await only a signal from me,” was the first hint I got that me and mine were just along for the ride.

“Do you require anything from me?” I asked.

“You just verify the dead.” This brought a mean chuckle from the sheiks echoed by their guards . . . and my squad.

“Go when you want to,” I said.

He lit a match. A second later the night was split by rifle fire; then a grenade went off. There was more fire, some coming from the house, others from the date grove. Several more grenades sailed into windows; the building caught fire.

An occupant raced from the house, but went down before he got far.

Ten minutes after the first shot, the shooting came to an end. Hunched gunners began slow approaches to the smoldering farmhouse.

No shots discouraged them.

The sheik stood. “Would you like to go see what we can do?” he said proudly.

My team mounted up and headed in. Our platoon tailed us from a comfortable distance and kept its nose out of Iraqi business. It was best that they did that night.

“Your troops were very professional,” I said, standing in the courtyard and surveying how the ambush had been set up.

“Most were soldiers for Saddam. Not bloodthirsty guards that butchered unarmed civilians for him, but real soldiers that gave even your political masters pause in their invasion of 1992.”

I saw no benefit in discussing the past and turned to where bodies were being laid out. One of my tech sergeants was rifling through pockets. “Libyan,” he said as he opened a passport. “That one’s Jordanian, the guy next to him is Syrian. Those two are Saudi.”

Two women, covered head to toe in black, came out, escorted by armed men. Another man carried a woman’s body. I said nothing, but the sheik saw my question.

“That one,” he said, kicking at the Syrian’s body, “demanded three girls to be brides for himself and the two Saudis. They are widows now, the ones who lived. Their families will take them back. They will make some men very good second wives. We are not cruel to our women.”

So the women were the wedge between the foreigners and locals.

“Sergeant, have the platoon send forward the strongbox.” The deal had been done. The price would be paid.

Then my colonel and I would wait to see what we’d bought.

Sadly, the senior sheik that started this did not live to see much of what we had begun. A month later a car bomb killed him. His son took his place and over the next several months worked his way up the seniority among the local sheiks. There were lots of openings. Al Qaeda did not go quietly.

But now American gear and guns had local eyes and ears.

Kicking and screaming, car bomb by roadside bomb, al Qaeda’s fingers were clawed from the throats of the Sunnis of Anbar province. The sheiks did it. My colonel did it, and some hard working soldiers and police made it happen.

So it was that my last meeting with the sheiks in Hit was quite different from my first. As a soldier I’ve said many good-byes full of mixed feelings about going on, leaving behind, and returning to family. But Anbar province tossed in something extra.

The young man who now fully filled his father’s shoes hung back to walk me to my Humvee. His body-guards and my squad kept a watchful, respectful distance as we talked quietly. “You will be glad to see your wife again,” he offered.

“Yes,” I said with a longing smile.

“What will you do with our knife?” he asked, tapping the assassin’s blade on my chest. “Does such a soldier’s knife belong on a mantelpiece?”

“I certainly can’t use it to open letters,” I agreed.

“It is Iraqi. It should stay here,” he said, cutting through the usual stream of words. The Humvee was close.

“Where a soldier can use it to unite all the corners of the world into one? I don’t think that is my government’s policy.”

“I do not think the ends of the earth were that far apart when that blade was forged. I would be happy to unite a few corners of Iraq.” Then he laughed. “And that assumes the blade can find a soldier. We Iraqis are good at begetting assassins. Not so good at making soldiers.”

He had a point, but it would not be politic to agree. “The story behind this blade, does it not seem very strange to you? The powerful man who had it forged could not keep a lowly blacksmith from adding his own magic, so it becomes worthless to the strong man. Is that not hard to believe?” I said, letting my modern American opinion out to play.

“My father died to keep that power from others,” the young sheik said. “Our great men are often so flawed. But who are you to fault our story? Wasn’t your Excalibur yanked from a stone by a mere boy? And at the end, when he was dying from a battle lost, did your people not toss the sword into a lake to rust away to nothing?”

“I think the Lady of the Lake was supposed to keep it from rusting, but you have a point. Magic and sharp steel are not easily controlled.” But I was just stalling. It didn’t feel right, taking that dagger home. What would a blade like that do in America?

I pulled it from my web gear and handed it to him.

He took the assassin’s dagger, then surprised me by handing over a worn copper drachma. “You have respected my customs, guest. I can respect yours.”

“May the knife serve you well,” I said, wondering if I had started the next Iraqi strongman on his way to power and brutality.

Many reasons have been given for the turnaround in Anbar. Who knows how many of them have some truth to them. None give credit to an ancient, mis forged dagger. None probably ever will.

The young sheik was blown up a week after I left.

I don’t know if the assassin’s blade survived the explosion or who has it now.

But I pray for its owner, if he lives.

Last Man Standing

Allan Rousselle

For most of his adult life, Allan Rousselle has lived at either one end of Interstate 90 (Boston) or the other (Seattle), and occasionally along points in between. During one of his several cross-country journeys, he paused to visit the stirring Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument in Montana. Having trained as a historian (although he currently works as an engineer), he has always been fascinated by historical figures who turn out to be more than they first appear. Lieutenant Colonel George Custer, who made his famous final stand at the Battle of Little Bighorn, is one such figure, and the subject of Allan’s story.

Big Chief Yellow Hair and the scout walked their steed and pony at the head of the column, leading the five companies of the Seventh Cavalry through a narrow ravine. Their quarry would be coming into view any moment now. The late June sun stood high above in the big Montana sky, and neither the large grassy hill to their right nor the wall of the ravine to their left put them in shadow. The soft clomping of the soldiers’ boots and the horses’ hooves on the baked dirt track nearly, but not quite, drowned out the sound of the burring cicadas and the rushing of the river ahead and to the left of them.

Scout Curly, ironically dressed in White Man’s clothing—the same blue soldiers’ costume as the men walking four abreast behind him—nodded at Big Chief’s sword. “Why order your men to leave their swords at camp?”

Big Chief smiled as he patted the pommel of his saber. “Unlike the savages, my men won’t be showing up with knives to a gunfight.” His hand shifted to the Remington rifle jutting from its saddle holster.

The soldiers called him general, even though he was a lieutenant colonel. The Lakota called him Long Hair, although he had cut his hair short prior to this campaign. But to Scout Curly of the Crow nation, this white man, this hero of the United States Army, was simply Big Chief.

Unlike Curly, Big Chief was dressed in contrast to the Union blue of the cavalry, favoring instead a light, tanned buckskin outfit with a bright red kerchief around his neck. “The better for my men to see me,” he had often claimed.

Was that a movement along the crest of the hill? Curly shaded his eyes and looked again, but didn’t see anything up there. Still, it could be an enemy scout.

“We are close,” he said. “We should see the village soon. Big Chief, if your men leave their swords behind, why do you bring yours?”

The general lowered his head, chin to chest, in that way of his that the Scout had come to know, and then looked up and shook his blond head, still smiling. “We’re all a bundle of contradictions, Curly. There are two reasons I keep this saber at my side. The first is simply a superstition. It’s become a good luck charm for me, what you might call a totem. It saved my skin on more than one occasion during the Rebellion. The second reason . . .”

Big Chief stopped to stare, and Curly turned to see something most unsettling. It was the encampment along the river, as he had expected, but it was so very much larger than he had expected. Hairy Moccasin had been right, after all. Many tribes had camped together, enough to rival any White Man town Curly had ever seen. Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, and possibly others. His heart beat hard, and the coppery taste of fear played over his tongue as his mouth dried out.

Even as the head of the column came to a stop, the soldiers from behind continued to spill out slowly into the clearing.

From behind him, Goes Ahead spoke up. “Do you see now, Big Chief? There are too many. Better to wait for reinforcements.” Curly shifted uneasily in his seat. He and Goes Ahead, White Man Runs Him, Hairy Moccasin, and the other Crow exchanged glances. To battle this foe would mean a foolish death.

“No,” said Big Chief. “No. Major Reno is coming up from the other side; he may even be attacking at this moment. We finally have these savages within reach. We can’t let them escape now. Company! Prepare for battle!”

As the two-hundred-odd soldiers readied arms and ammo—each with his standard-issue Springfield single-shot carbine and Colt .45 pistol and many with additional arms of their own choosing—Hairy Moccasin gave Curly and the others a nod as he pulled out his Crow war clothing. Curly nodded his agreement, but with heavy heart; if he was to be killed fighting his tribe’s traditional enemies, it would be better to die as a proud Crow warrior than as a White Man’s scout.

Amid the general chatter of the troops and the clacking and slapping of soldiers preparing for battle, Big Chief resumed talking to Curly while checking his ammo belts and adjusting his many holsters. “There’s another reason I brought this with me,” he said, pausing to admire the golden eagle on his saber’s hammered silver pommel. “It’s a reminder. We are like the blade, Curly. The sword is used to cut, but it can also be used to point. You should have seen the president’s face when he heard I’d gone on record saying your kind were being mistreated. . . .”

Big Chief noticed Curly stripping off his shirt and putting on a tribal necklace. “What is this?” He swatted at the feather necklace on the scout’s chest. The soldiers nearby stopped their chatter and turned to pay attention to the general.

“These are eagle feathers, to assist our flight to the spirit world if we should die.” Curly stood up straight and looked Big Chief in the eye. “It is a warrior’s way.”

The general’s face grew red; the lips beneath his tawny mustache became a line. Silence covered the entire company like a woolen blanket. He looked at White Man Runs Him. He looked at Goes Ahead. Hairy Moccasin. White Swan. Half Yellow Face. All of them were dressing for battle as Crow warriors. All were wearing eagle feathers.

“You disgust me. All of you. You think we’ll be killed, do you? The hardest part about fighting these savages is catching them! We finally have them in our grasp, and you’re afraid? Afraid!”

“We are not afraid,” said Curly.

“There are simply too many of them,” said Hairy Moccasin.

“It is better to die as a warrior than as a soldier,” said White Man Runs Him.

The general clenched his fist around the hilt of his saber. “Not cowards, then. Fatalists! Defeatists. I’ve faced worse odds then these against better soldiers. I triumphed at Gettysburg! These savages are poorly equipped, untrained, untested cowards. You! You’re dismissed. All of you. Relieved! When we charge in for the attack, you fall back. That will be all.”

The Crow scouts stared at the ground for a moment, then led their horses to the outer circle of the assembled army, which quietly stood aside to make way for them. There was no point in putting the blue costumes back on.

Hairy Moccasin gestured to the top of the hill and spoke to the men in their native tongue. “When they charge in, we should head up that way. From there, we can watch the battle. If there is bad luck, we will be able to see it coming. Either way, we should also be able to see our new path.”

The scouts murmured their agreement, except for Curly. “I do not want to leave Big Chief.”

“You have not been given that choice. We must follow a new path.”

“I wish to wait and see.”

By the length of the shadows, the time was a couple of hours past midday. The assembled companies’ chatter had quieted as the preparations were nearly complete. The insects continued to buzz in the grassy hillside; the river continued to thrash at its rocky bed. The smell of dry grass, fresh horse manure, and four-days’-unwashed soldiers stirred lazily, if somewhat unpleasantly, in the occasional light breeze. And the longhouses by the river continued to . . . do nothing. There was nobody around. No sounds of children crying or laughing, women beating the laundry on the rocks, or braves playing their war games.

Big Chief stood up on a boulder and motioned to gather the troops around. Curly and his fellow Crows came in as well, but remained in the outer circle.

“We’re going to break into two detachments,” Big Chief shouted to the men. “I want Companies I and L to try to cross the river and make their way south to cut off any Indian retreat. The rest will follow me on this side down to the encampment. If I and L can’t cross, then they’ll take our rear guard. We drive down until we reach Major Reno’s men. Hammer and anvil, men. We stay on the attack until it’s finished.”

He hopped down into the middle of the gathered troops, then pulled out his cavalry sword and held it point down against the ground.

“Let us pray!”

The nearest men reached their hands to the pommel or to the general’s arm, while men farther back put their hands on the shoulders of the men in front of them, all bowing their heads.

“Our Heavenly Father, thank you for delivering us safely to the task at hand. Let Your will be done, and let the righteous prevail in this contest You have set before us. Let our actions here today help to bring about the end of this conflict. Amen.”

A hearty shout of “Amen” spread throughout the ranks.

“Mount up!”

Curly ran up to the general, who had resheathed his sword and mounted his steed. “Big Chief! If we are not to meet again today, we will at least meet again one day on the happy hunting grounds.”

Big Chief Yellow Hair pursed his lips and considered. “It’s been good riding with you, Curly. Don’t you worry about me. I won’t be losing my scalp today.” He smiled. “Remember, Curly: the sword is used to cut, but it can also be used to point.”

With this, the general pulled the saber from its sheath and held it above his head. “Company! Charge!” With that, he slashed his cavalry sword down and pointed it at the longhouses, spurring his horse into a gallop.

The trumpet sounded the charge and the men and horses mobilized immediately. Curly had to wait until the army had passed before he could start making his way to his own horse, which had been left behind by the other Crow scouts. They were already making a fast break up the hill. He was nearly to his horse when he heard the first war cries of the Sioux and the Cheyenne behind him. And to his left.

And to his right.

His heart pumped so hard he could feel the pounding in his ears as he turned around to see the braves coming from across the river by the hundreds. And swarming out of the longhouses by more hundreds. And coming from upstream on the right by even more hundreds.

They fired pistols and rifles as they rode, charging at both of Big Chief’s detachments. Curly watched a bluecoat near the river fall under his horse. Then another fell with his horse. Then the urgency found purchase in his brain; he turned and fled.

So close to his pony. Twenty paces. Ten. Five. Two. Foot in stirrup and up and over and crack! He felt his horse shudder hard even as he heard the rifle fire. Down went the pony, first pitching forward, then falling to the left. Down went Curly with the beast, his left foot briefly tangled in the stirrup. The ground came up fast, slapping his leg hard, his arm, his shoulder, his hea—

—spinning the world is spinning and the earth shouts in a chorus of high-pitched clanging and sharp lights stab his eyes and spinning spinning—

—d hurt, oh, it hurt, and he rocked back and forth, back and forth, holding his head with his right arm because his left was still under his full weight. The spinning slowed down and his eyes began to focus again. He could feel wet warmth pooling around his left ear, but his mind was clearing. The high-pitched ringing in his mind began to fade. He had to get out of here, had to get away before they noticed him. His head . . . it had hit the ground, but he wasn’t shot—not yet, anyway.

He worked his left arm out from under him and got up on one elbow. His left leg was still pinned under his pony. He used his right foot to push up against the horse’s back as he strained to inch his left leg out. Then a quick rest. Strain. Rest. Strain. Rest. It was slow going, but he kept at it. The gunfire and the war whoops raged nearby, but the sharpshooter who had hit his pony had apparently moved on to other targets.

He was almost free when another horse fell nearby, bringing its rider down as well. A Sioux. Hurry! Strain. Rest. Strain. Curly pulled his left leg with all his might while he pushed up on his right, and finally pulled himself free. But the Sioux warrior did not get up.

Curly crouched by the back of his pony and surveyed the battle. Very few fighters still rode; most of the horses not dying on the ground had been driven off to the hills. The bluecoats were divided into several small groups at this point, doing their best to keep their backs to each other and shoot outward at the onrushing horde. But there were so many of the enemy! There were thousands of them, at the very least. And the enemy had repeater rifles and a seemingly endless supply of ammunition. With each caval ryman who fell, their attackers picked up another weapon, another ammo belt.

He looked down. He still had his own regulation carbine and pistol. The ravine was so close, it might provide him with an escape. But how could he get there without being noticed?

Then he noticed the fallen Sioux again. His blanket. Staying bent down as best he could, Curly darted over to the warrior. Whether the Sioux was dead or unconscious, Curly couldn’t tell for sure, but all he needed was to grab the blanket and arrange it over his own clothing as quickly as possible. He relieved the warrior of his pistols, then his blanket.

He arranged his garments so that he could pass for Sioux, but still stayed crouched as low as he could. With so many different enemy here, he hoped they wouldn’t spot him for Crow, but he didn’t want to be shot by a fellow bluecoat by mistake, either. He scanned for his best chance at escape.

There was fighting near the top of the hill where his fellow Crow scouts had gone. For that matter, most of the hilltops and the valley were a confusion of gunshots and yells. He would either have to track back through the ravine and hope to find Major Reno’s men or General Terry’s reinforcements, or move forward and try to blend in with his traditional enemies until he could find a safe place to slip away. Who would be more likely to have a medicine man to help with his wounds?

He turned toward the ravine and noticed the skirmish at a nearby rise. Some forty American soldiers were holed up behind a makeshift entrenchment made from fallen horses. There in the middle of it all, a White Man with tanned buckskin and a red kerchief stood with white-handled pistols spitting fire.

Among the warriors attacking Big Chief’s party was Rain in the Face, a Hunkpapa Sioux whom Curly remembered from a few years prior. Big Chief had arrested Rain in the Face for murder, but the warrior had managed to escape. Rain in the Face had killed men under Big Chief’s protection.

Curly headed toward the rise. One by one, the bluecoats there fell. And as his weapons ran out of ammunition, Big Chief would throw them to the ground and pick up replacements. Even as his own soldiers fell, Big Chief inflicted mortal wounds on the enemy.

Then Big Chief was down to one working pistol. Curly was almost within striking distance of Rain in the Face, who in turn had started marching directly toward Big Chief. Then his last pistol was out. Big Chief lowered his head, chin to chest, as if considering his next witty rejoinder.

He smiled and turned toward Rain in the Face, then pulled out his cavalry sword one last time from its sheath, and held it up as if commanding his men to charge.

Then he turned his wrist, bent his arm and brought the saber’s hilt to his heart, blade pointing up.

Finally, he made a sweeping gesture with the blade, as if clearing the space immediately before him from left to right, and ending with the blade pointing downward by his right side, his head bowed slightly.

This is the swordsman’s salute.

Rain in the Face must have recognized it, or at least intuited what it meant, for he held his arm out, fist closed, and then brought his right fist over his own heart, and then held his hand open, palm up, in the Sioux warrior’s salute. The two men stood there for a moment, as the battle waned throughout the valley. Curly was unsure of what to do.

Then Rain in the Face took out his own pistol, cocked the hammer, and shot Big Chief dead in the heart.

Big Chief Yellow Hair, still holding a wry smile, fell gently to his knees, planting the sword in the ground as he did so. Then he fell over, out of sight behind the horses he had used as a bunker.

Rain in the Face turned away. If he recognized Curly as he walked past, he gave no sign. The shadow he cast was not a long one. Curly was sure that little more than an hour, two at the most, could have passed since Big Chief led the charge into battle although, when he recounted the story later, Curly would keep the brevity of the fight to himself.

Curly would also keep to himself the lesson of the sword. Big Chief had said that a sword could be used to cut, but also to point. It could also, it turned out, be used in other ways. It could salute. And given what General Terry’s men revealed in the days that followed the battle, he couldn’t help but think that the sword had saved Big Chief’s skin, in a literal sense, one last time.

Nonetheless, the battle was now over. The Seventh Cavalry was lost. And by the looks on their faces, the Sioux and the Cheyenne were lost, too.

When General Terry’s army arrived at Little Bighorn, they found that all but one of the bodies of the Seventh Cavalry had been stripped, scalped, and mutilated.

The soul of a warrior who had been scalped was believed by the Sioux and Cheyenne to be condemned to roam the earth, forever denied entry to heaven.

But one man was left unmolested. Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer’s body had been stripped and cleaned, but otherwise left untouched.

To this day, nobody knows the reason why.

A Wolf in Holy Places

Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Over the past twenty-some years, Nina Kiriki Hoffman has sold novels, juvenile and media tie-in books, short story collections, and more than 250 short stories. Her works have been finalists for the Nebula, World Fantasy, Mytho poeic, Sturgeon, Philip K. Dick, and Endeavour awards. Her first novel, The Thread That Binds the Bones, won the Stoker Award. Nina’s young adult novel Spirits That Walk in Shadow and her SF novel Catalyst were published in 2006. Her fantasy novel Fall of Light was published in 2009. Nina does production work for the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and teaches short-story writing through her local community college. She also works with teen writers. She lives in Eu gene, Oregon, with several cats, a mannequin, and many strange toys.

They say that the wheel of fate turns and what seems evil, given enough time, turns to good.

So many of us only have a short time to view events.

My family should have been longer-lived than others in my tale; we were dwarven kind. Our lives were hewn in half, and mine was cloven twice.

I, Regin, was the youngest and the least of three sons born to Hreidmar, a king among the dwarves.

My brothers and I tended in different directions. Fafnir was a mighty warrior who feared no one and wanted to call everything his own. He was so fierce he could frighten clouds from the sky. My father girt him in the best dwarven armor ever made and used Fafnir’s prowess to guard his treasure.

Otr, my second brother, had the power to shift shapes, and swift he was at swimming. He also was a master hunter and fisherman; he brought much meat, fish, and fowl to our table. Learned he was in many magics, but he was playful as well, and spent much time in otter-shape in the river, near the pool below the falls where our Uncle Andvari also lurked, in the shape of a pike.

My own calling was smithing. From everything that came into my hands I could make something useful. I heard the songs of metals: gold, silver, iron, copper, tin, even to the faint tunes of the ores in the rock, and I sang songs to the metals as I worked them to strengthen their purpose and give them extra virtues. Fire also sang to me and I to it; most sorts of fire I made friends with, though some—from baleful sources—would fight me.

With my craft I built for my father a house of gleaming gold set with flashing gems, the envy of all who saw it; Fafnir guarded it. Swords I made for many, and daggers that could slice a hair that fell against their blades, and ax blades that could cut stone as well as ice and wood.

Secure my brothers and I were in our callings, but the gods stopped by for a visit, and after that, everything went wrong.

Here is how it happened.

Odin, Loki, and Hoenir came to my father’s golden palace one evening. My father welcomed everyone to his table; his reputation for hospitality was known far and wide.

Thralls brought meat and mead to the table. We ate with the gods. Afterward, Loki opened his carrysack, saying, “Look what I’ve caught. Is it not fine?” He showed us an otter pelt, still red with blood inside.

A poisoned thorn pricked my heart, for I knew the color of the fur on that pelt. Otr was the brother I loved. He had taught me languages and runes when Fafnir had scorned and beat me.

Otr would never teach nor tease me again.

“You have killed my son! Seize them!” my father cried to his warriors, and all sprang up and clapped arms on the gods, and then my good iron fetters.

“You owe us wergild,” my father said, and though the gods were gods, they could not deny the justice of this. “Give me enough gold to fill my son’s skin, and red gold enough to cover it entirely, and I will consider your debt discharged.”

Fox-natured, red-haired Loki said he would get us the gold, and my father released him. He left, and I followed him from the house, my heart on fire with a wish for vengeance, my brain sick because I knew one did not get revenge on a god without paying a terrible price. Loki was fleet of foot and escaped before I could follow him farther than the road.

I looked up at the starry sky and wondered where Otr’s spirit had gone, whether the Valkyr had come to take him to Valhalla, though he was not a warrior, or if he was a colorless shade in the domain of Hel. The night breeze blew cold and tasted of snow.

I took a lantern and walked the thorny way to Uncle Andvari’s pool. There I saw the dark stain of blood on my brother’s favorite sunning rock, where he had been struck down, and lying in the stain, the stone that had struck the blow, blood-darkened still.

I had been there only a little while, beating at the rocks with a stick in my rage, when I heard a rush of wind. I shuttered my lantern and hid myself among the riverside rocks.

Loki descended from the sky. In his hands he held a glittering net. He cast it into the dark water, and when he gathered it up, in its folds was a pike the size of a man, Uncle Andvari in his fish shape.

“Are you the fish that swims the swift water but knows not to guard himself from danger?” Loki asked. “You are at my mercy now, and I am not known for mercy. Ransom your head from Hel with flame in the water.”

Uncle Andvari answered, “I am Andvari, son of Oinn. The Norns decreed that I would wade in water, and many a falls have I found. Usually I am content with my fate, but would that I were not so susceptible to a god with a net! What price must I pay for my life?”

“All that is in your hoard,” said Loki.

Uncle Andvari changed to his dwarf shape and spoke the rune that opened his treasure hoard below the waterfall. I had never seen it before, though I had heard the songs of its gold when I had come here with Otr. With the rock wall open, the metal’s music was almost overwhelming, songs of richness and craft, the glorious shaping of torques, helms, weapons, necklaces, rings, armbands, and earrings, the harmony of gems. Loki shook out his glittering net and piled all the gold in it. Then he looked at Andvari and said, “All of it, even what you hide in your hand.”

Andvari growled and opened his hand, revealing a gold-granulated ring fit for any king. “You have my treasure and I have my life,” he said, “but my curse goes with my treasure: this ring, Andvarinautr, will kill everyone who owns it hereafter, and the same goes for the rest of my gold.” He went inside the rock where his treasure used to be and shut it after himself.

Loki laughed, closed up his net, and strode past me toward the path to my father’s palace. In my heart a new sickness entered, for the song of Andvari’s hoard had changed just before Loki bundled it up. It sang to me that if only I owned it, I would be happy the rest of my life. My stomach was sour with the need to own that treasure; it swallowed the warning Uncle Andvari had given. I forgot it in the depth of my desire.

I followed the god, faltering, fighting with this new longing in my breast. Gold always sang, uncaring who might hear, but this gold had reached out to me alone, making promises, squeezing my soul and not letting go.

When I arrived at my father’s great hall it was in time to see Loki piling red gold over the pelt of my dead brother until he had covered it up entirely, or so I thought. But my father, wearing his grimmest face, pointed to one whisker that stuck out through the shimmering, singing gold. Loki reached once more into his net and pulled out the ring. It seemed to catch fire from every torch in the hall, gleaming like the sun in his hand. Own me, it whispered, and every dream you have will come true. What a hot spark it lit in my soul. I stared at it until it burned an image in my eye, and then I raised my head and saw that my brother Fafnir watched it, too. His eyes were dark and hard as obsidian.

Loki set the ring down to cover the whisker, and thus was my brother’s death paid for. “You will get no joy from this wergild,” Loki said, “for it carries death with it; but our debt to you is settled.” Then the three gods left our house.

My father sat at the table staring at his new hoard as the thralls cleared away what was left of the meal and snuffed the torches for the night. Father had his pallet moved there beside the table and laid himself down to sleep. I imagined the treasure’s song gripped him as well as the rest of us.

When the house had settled for the night, I waited for the breathing of all those on pallets near me to slow in sleep, and then I rose and crept back to the great hall. Madness gripped me: I was ready to steal from my father. I had already forgotten my brother Otr’s death. But when I arrived, I saw that I was too late. Fafnir had come before me. My father’s body still lay on his blood-stained pallet, but his head had rolled toward the hearth. His empty eyes stared toward me. The low flicker of flames over embers made his frozen features dance as though still alive, though every expression he wore was one of horror.

Meanwhile, Fafnir gathered up all the treasure the gods had left and bundled it into a tablecloth. His eyes glittered in the dimness. He glanced toward me, but I shrank into the shadows, hoping I had not been seen. The song of the treasure still clawed at me. I gripped the pillar I stood behind and restrained myself from running toward the gold.

I watched my brother leave the house, armored in mail my father had commissioned, with the best blade I had ever made at his left hip, that huge sack of loot on his back, and I did nothing, for I had not the strength to face my brother.

This was the first cut that severed half my life from the rest. After my father’s funeral rites, I left his palace and even his kingdom. No one judged me fit to rule in his place, and I could not bring myself to care what happened to the people. Instead, I made my way to the upper world, and there I used my smith skills to make my living.

All the while, I heard the song of that cursed treasure hoard, now near, now far. I knew my brother Fafnir had come to the upper world as well. I worked with this smith and that, using my best techniques, though I did not magic the blades the way I used to in my father’s house; I was not ready to share my secrets.

I came eventually to the land of King Hjalprek, and he received me kindly. I knew Fafnir and the treasure were nearby, for the treasure had left a tiny ice crystal in my heart that always told me where the bulk of it was. As I closed my eyes to sleep each night I saw again the ring, Andvarinautr, and how it shone in Loki’s hand.

Rumors of Fafnir already ran along the roads. They said he had turned into a mighty dragon, that he guarded a huge hoard of treasure, but none could stand against him, for he breathed out poisons and fire. He had polluted a stretch of the river where he went to drink from a cliff thirty fathoms high, and none could go there without being killed by him, and his stench and foulness rode downstream and made the lands barren.

I went there to see with my own eyes what my brother had turned into, and truly, he was a fearsome sight, a worm as long as five men lying end to end, as thick through the middle as a bull, his skin dark and gleaming, his head a wedge, and from his mouth and nostrils came black streams of poison. He had worn a wide track from his cave to the river. From my vantage point high in a tree, upstream of where he went (for the trees downstream were dying and brittle), I watched my brother dip his head and drink. His eyes were open, even underwater, and always he turned his head this way and that, spewing poison smoke.

Even though I saw what the treasure had done to my brother, still I heard its call. I knew I could not steal the treasure; my brother would kill me without a second thought; he could still move faster than I, even in his new shape.

I went back to the king’s court, disciplining my mind to ignore the song of the treasure, and set up my forge, and made swords for the king’s men.

The king’s son, Prince Alf, came home from his reaving with a pregnant woman, Queen Hjordis, as one of his spoils. He had found her on a foreign battlefield; the battle was over, and she and her maid had crept from the woods to confer with her dying husband, King Sigmund, when the prince found her, surrounded by the corpses of fallen warriors, and the ravens come to feed on them. She brought with her the great treasure of the fallen king. Alf was pleased with this woman and married her, promising to treat her child as his own.

When the lad was born, he was bright-eyed and strong-willed, his mind sharp and seeking, and his body sturdy and well-made. Prince Alf asked me to be his foster father, an honor which surprised me, for I was often black with soot, my leather clothes singed by the fierceness of my forge fires, and I sat at the lower tables to keep my stink away from my royal patrons. “You have beaten my father at chess time and time again,” Alf said. “He has nothing but praise for your mental skills, and says you speak many languages, and know the lore of runes, and other things it would be good for young Sigurd to know, as with any son of kings. I will teach him the arts of war, but I desire that you teach him the arts of magic.”

So it was that I became tutor and mentor to Sigurd. There never was a more beautiful child, nor one more quick to learn and grow, and I loved him in spite of myself.

At first I guarded my knowledge and taught him only things other humans might know, but he was so eager and so grateful that I began to teach him much I had learned in the dwarven kingdoms, runes which, carved into a house post, could protect against evil, or carved into a bowl could bring misfortune to the one you gave it to; charms and curses to strengthen or weaken the materials of making; herb lore and metal crafting. I even tried to teach him to understand the songs of wind and water and fire. The only thing I did not teach him was the language of metals, for I was afraid he might learn too well, outskill me in my craft, and displace me in the household, though I knew the thought never crossed his mind.

Sigurd was a wild child and slept sometimes with the hounds in the kennel, sometimes with the horses in the stable. He ran all over and talked to everyone, and everyone loved him. He acted as though he had no royal rank, and this galled me, for his father had been a king, his mother a queen, and she was queen again in King Hjalprek’s court. One day I asked Sigurd if he knew what had become of his father’s wealth, if anyone had told him how much it was.

“Grandfather Hjalprek and Father Alf watch it for me,” he said.

“Do you trust them completely?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “They’re used to looking after things like that. What do I know about it?”

Something in me admired his innocence, and yet that crystal seed of discomfort in my heart made me think him a fool. The world was full of thieves. Perhaps he would learn.

Another time I grew angry thinking about how Sigurd ran about ragged so that no stranger looking at him would know his worth, and I said, “What a great thing it is for you to run around like a stable lad and a vagrant. How can the king and the prince treat you this way?”

“It’s my choice,” he said. “They give me anything I want if I only ask; they begrudge me nothing.”

“Well, then,” I said, “ask them for a horse.”

He thought about it, then smiled and said, “I will.” He was twelve by this time, but looked fifteen. The next day he went before the king, and it went just as he had predicted: the king said he could have his pick of the whole herd. So Sigurd ran off to the woods and met some bearded one-eyed stranger there who helped him pick a horse, a young gray one no one had ever ridden before, not much to look at, but a year went by and the horse grew, and it seemed Sigurd had picked the best of the herd after all.

When Sigurd was fifteen he had the strength of two grown men, and he was skilled in every warlike art, but he still ran around like a ragamuffin and did favors for anyone who asked.

“You should have more status,” I grumbled to him one day as we sat in the shade and played chess. “You should have your own wealth and be counted among the kings! I know how you can get treasure enough that you’d never need more the rest of your life, and you can gain glory and honor at the same time, and do some good for the people in the countryside.”

“Where is this wealth, and who is watching it?” he asked.

“It is just a little serpent named Fafnir watching it, at Gnitaheath, a little way from here.” The crystal in my heart heated from ice to flame, for I thought with one part of my brain that I had hit on the perfect plan: Sigurd would kill Fafnir for me, and the treasure would finally belong to me, the least of sons, the most deserving of sons. Finally I would own the gleaming ring I had lusted after all these years. Another part of me whispered, “Don’t you remember the prophecy, Regin, that the gold will be the death of anyone who owns it? How can you trick your fosterling, this fine boy who loves and trusts you?” The ring’s song sang louder.

“Even I, young as I am, have heard about this Fafnir, and he is more than a mere serpent,” said Sigurd. “I have heard he is so large and fierce and wicked that no one dares fight him.”

“The tales are exaggerated,” I said. “People talk. Your forefathers, the Volsungs, a warrior race, they would not have hesitated to answer this challenge. Have you no spirit for a fight? Are you a lesser man than they? Does the blood run thin in you?”

“Maybe,” said Sigurd. “Anyway, I’m still a boy. Why are you taunting me?”

I set down a captured pawn, looked into the distance, and said, “There is a tale behind this.”

“Tell me,” said Sigurd.

So I told him about the death of my brother Otr, how Loki stole the wergild instead of paying out of his own pocket, and how the treasure drove my brother mad and led him to kill our father. “Fafnir went into the wilds with the treasure, and in his greed he has become this evil dragon, hoarding wealth he will not spend. All of him that was once my brother has been burned out of him except his power. I have lost my heritage and my home and the payment for my brother’s death,” I said. While I told my story, I remembered Otr and how his loss had smote me, and how afterward I had found no peace among my people. Grief came over me again, almost drowning out that crystal shard digging into my heart, nagging at me.

“You have lost everything, and your brother has been evil to you,” Sigurd said. “Make me a sword, the best sword in the world, one with which I can do heroic deeds, and I will avenge you and slay this mighty dragon.”

I went to my workshop and summoned all my skills. Iron I beat and built, roasted it slow in the furnace to make it strong, sliced it thin, bent and beat it again, heated it, quenched it in oil to temper it, and beat it again, ground away the surface impurities, sharpened its edges, until I had the worthiest blade I had ever crafted. I girded its hilt in narwhal horn wrapped with braided metal, and I presented it to Sigurd.

He looked at it both back and front, then raised it over his head and struck down at my anvil, a blow of such force that I had not seen its like before. The sword I had labored over for a span of days shattered.

“Is this your best work?” my fosterling asked me, and I could not answer him, for I had thought it was my best work, even as good as the sword I had made for Fafnir in the old days, with which he had beat every warrior who challenged him.

“Make me another,” Sigurd said.

I went back to work. I recalled metal and fire songs I had not sung since I came to the world above. The iron responded to my songs and grew true and strong and beautiful. I quenched this sword in honey and fed it heat and hitting. By the time I finished, the blade had a patternwork of twisted knots between its edges. It was the most lovely thing I had ever made.

I gave it to Sigurd. “You’ll like this one, though you’re a hard man to smith for.”

He turned the sword this way and that, tested its balance, studied its surface, and then he struck it against my anvil and it broke, and my heart with it. Had I not put song and strength and skill into that iron? Why did it shatter?

“Maybe you are more like your brother than I thought and I cannot trust you,” Sigurd said.

I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t understand what had happened, how my craft had failed me. He stared at me, then went away. I pressed my hand to my heart, where betrayal lay; but I had not thought I would betray Sigurd in this matter of the sword. I needed to make him a worthy sword so he could do my work for me.

Perhaps I had lost my best skills when the treasure bit into my heart, and it was meet that I suffer from unlooked for longing the rest of my days and never would I be satisfied. What else could I expect from a gift of Loki?

Presently my foster son returned to my forge and laid before me two pieces of a sword. “This is all that is left of Gram, my father’s sword,” he said. “My mother has been keeping it for me. Make me a sword worthy of these fragments.” He went away.

I held the pieces of sword in my hands, and oh, that metal had a tale to tell: the sword had been made by Weyland, the greatest smith in history, and had rested in Odin’s hands a while, and had been struck by the god into the housetree of a king so that only one worthy man could pull it out, and that man was Sigurd’s father, Sigmund. The song of that sword Gram drove everything else from my heart, and I heated my forge and sang with my fire; the sword pieces brightened and ran for me, mixed themselves with lesser metals, enobling them, and granted their virtue to my hands and materials so that the sword that formed under the blows of my hammers and in the heat of my forge was greater than anything I had made before. During that forging I lived in a time apart, where I only cared to bring the metal to its fullest powers and beauty; I lost myself in service to that sword, and afterward, when the fires died down and the sword was done, I slept three days, and on waking, ate enough for three men.

When I looked at the sword after my long sleep, it seemed to me that flames ran along its edges.

Then I called Sigurd. “If this sword won’t serve you, I know not how to make a better one,” I said.

Sigurd lifted the sword. Green fire danced up and down the blade. He turned and struck my anvil with a loud ringing sound, and the sword cleaved my anvil and all the way down through the stock supporting it, and the sword did not break.

“Finally, Foster Father, you have given me a blade I can use. I thank you for your labor, and I salute your craft and power. This is the sword I knew you could make.”

He gripped my shoulder, and I felt strong and powerful in my calling for the first time in an age, proud of my skills. I remembered who I was born to be.

Then he took the sword Gram and went away, and I woke again to the throb in my heart that reminded me of the treasure I had not.

At the evening meal that night I saw that Sigurd had housed the sword in a sheath fit for it, and afterward I went to him and said, “Now that you have the sword, it is time to keep your promise and slay Fafnir.”

“My promise is always in my mind, and yet I have a job to do before it. Now that I have the blade, I must go to the old country and avenge my father.” So off he went to the soothsayer, though what he heard from him he did not tell me, and then he took ships full of King Hjalprek’s warriors and sailed off.

All the while he was gone, the crystal sliver in my heart froze more and more of me until all I could hear, dinning in my head night and day, asleep or awake, was the song of that treasure. “Why have you not come for me?” it asked like a maiden immured in a tower. “When will you rescue me? When will you tell me all your dreams so I can make them come true?” It drove me half mad and all my pride in my reclaimed skill and powers drained away from me.

Three months and a day Sigurd was gone, and when he returned in glory, the holds of his ships stuffed with treasure and his blade tempered by the blood of kings, I could not think of anything but the task before us. Scarcely had he finished feasting at the banquet to celebrate his feats before I approached him and said, “Now will you keep your promise?”

“Yes,” he said. “I have not forgotten it.”

The next morning we mounted our horses and rode to Gnitaheath. When Sigurd saw the track Fafnir had made from the hoard cave to the place where the dragon drank, he turned to me and said, “You told me he was like any other dragon, but this is the mark of a monster.”

“This just makes your job easier.” I unstrapped a shovel from where I had tied it behind my saddle and held it out to him. “You know exactly where he goes; dig a hole in the track and hide in it, and from there you can pierce upward into the dragon’s heart.”

“I could drown in the dragon’s blood. What if it burns me?”

I turned from him, my glowing foster son, so fine and strong and big with his last battle, and said, “Well, if you are afraid of everything, I have no more advice for you. You are much less than your father.”

I felt his stare, but did not look at him. He tore the shovel from my grasp, turned, and walked to the track. I took our horses a little way into the forest and climbed the tree I had climbed before so I could see everything.

Sigurd dug a pit for himself swiftly, and as he dug, an old one-eyed, bearded man stopped beside him, and they spoke. Sigurd nodded to the old man and made further excavations: channels running from his hiding pit to the sides of the track. I watched the old man walk off, but between one blink and the next, he vanished. I had thought no one came so near the dragon’s lair.

Presently, after Sigurd had dug a great deal and scattered the dirt, a thundering in the earth came, and then Fafnir stomped along his trail, every footstep shaking the ground. Sigurd lay in his pit, his sword in hand.

When the dragon, once my brother, passed over the pit, Sigurd thrust up with his sword just behind the creature’s left leg. The blow shook the dragon, and blood burst forth in torrents, raining down on Sigurd but running out of the channels he had dug to the sides. Blood-smeared, my fosterling pulled his sword from Fafnir’s heart and slipped out from under him, stepping a distance away, which was a good thing, for Fafnir thrashed both head and tail, knocking over anything nearby.

At last the bloodflow slowed and my brother stilled. He turned his head toward Sigurd and asked, “Who are you, who is your father, who is your family, you rash child who dared to lift a weapon against me?”

“I have no family,” Sigurd said, “and I have no name.”

“You are lying,” said Fafnir, “but I understand. You fear my dying curse. I will call you coward.”

Sigurd straightened and said, “I am Sigurd, son of Sigmund.”

“Well, Sigurd, it will not take my curse to kill you; your death is waiting in two places now. Who urged you to kill me, when everyone knows I am toxic death to all who come near, and those I don’t poison I crush and eat?”

“A sharp mind urged me on, aided by this strong arm, and this sharp sword, with which you are now intimately acquainted.”

“Well, and if that sharp mind was not your own, it was my brother Regin who persuaded you to kill me, and he will be the death of you, and if he is not, my treasure will kill you, as it is the bane of all who own it sooner or later, so I will be avenged and can go into death gladly.” With that, my brother laid down his head and died.

I came down from my tree and went to where my brother lay. “I salute you, Sigurd, for doing what no one else could do. They will write songs about your deed this day.”

Then I stood staring down at the body of my brother. “He was right,” I said. “Your hand held the sword that killed him, but I too had a hand in it, for urging you to do it. I am to blame for the death of my brother.” In the shape of this dragon lay the last of my family, dead; and though Fafnir and I had not been close, still, he was my brother, and some part of me had loved him.

“You were hiding while I slew him. You cannot take credit nor blame for the deed.”

But my grief drowned out the songs of the treasure, and I said, “I made the sword that killed him. I too have fault in his death.”

“It wouldn’t have happened without my hand and heart,” Sigurd said.

I could not tell if he were comforting me or scolding me. I sat down beside my brother’s corpse and touched his side, and it came to me that there was a way for him to live on in me. I dipped my hand in his blood and licked it off, joining the last of his life force with my own. Then I got out my own sword, Riddle, and cut out the heart of my brother. “Foster Son, will you do me this favor? Will you roast this for me to eat?”

He took the heart from me and went to the edge of the wood, where he lit a fire and roasted my brother’s heart.

The songs of all Andvari’s hoard and more my brother had amassed since his dragon-change called to me from where his treasure lay hidden, and the crystal in my heart hummed the treasure tune, too, but in this moment, I could not care. Nor could I bear to contemplate the rest of my plan, that through treachery I needed to kill my foster son so I could gain my heart’s desire. Worn with grief, I slept beside my brother’s corpse.

When I opened my eyes, I looked up into my foster son’s face. He stood above me with his sword raised to strike. “I tasted the heart to see if it was done,” Sigurd said, “and then I could understand the language of the birds. Know you what they said to me? They advised me to eat of the heart, that it would make me wise, and I did it. They said you meant to kill me after I had done your dirty work and take the treasure for yourself. They said you are a wolf in holy places, a killer of men who should be outcast, ready to betray me. Foster Father—” His voice faltered. His eyes were bright, and the corners of his mouth turned down, but still he was firm in his purpose.

I knew then that the birds were right, for the treasure hunger in my heart howled so loudly no thoughts of my long years raising this boy would have stopped me from killing him if he stood between me and my dream. I lifted my chin to bare my throat, and held my beard sideways to give him the stroke.

He did not hesitate, but struck my head from my body.

Then at last did I lose my treasure hunger, now that my head was divorced from my heart. In the instant before death took me, I looked up at my son and smiled.

The Sword of Merit

Phaedra M. Weldon

Phaedra Weldon is a native of the southern states. A graphic engineer, mother of one, and wife, Phaedra has been published in shared universes such as Star Trek and Classic BattleTech as well as several DAW anthologies such as Witch High and Enchantment Place. She is currently working on the third book in her original urban fantasy series, The Zoë Martinique Investigations. You can find out more at www.phaedraweldon.com.

Hollywood, 1927

It was just a stupid sword, some movie prop—right? John Long continued to stare at the sword as it hung on the wall—a sidepiece in his employer’s movie memorabilia display. The whole collection wasn’t the boss’ idea—it’d come with the house, a remnant of the previous owner. An entire wall in the great room was adorned with a collection of knives, daggers, long blades, and this sword.

It’d looked really cool in the beginning when John Long moved into the house of one of MGM’s biggest art directors, to both house-sit as well as intern, but lately it’d just been—creepy. And tonight he was going to sell it. His employer had given it to him as a gift a few weeks ago after John had saved him from a crashing deadline. The employer pointed out the sword had come in handy as inspiration on the next big project, but swords weren’t really John’s thing. His tastes swung more toward the modern—even in the blades of the collection, he preferred the newer, softer designs, knives with rounded corners and pastel shadows.

Swords were boring, dull, a simple phallic extension leftover from a more rogueish era in human history. Now if he could ever come up with a way to combine the two—the modern and the sword—that would be a history-making mark in his career. He had a few ideas for a story that really sang, if he could just come up with the right gimmick.

He checked his watch. John had a timetable for the night. Things to do. Three scripts to read and a stack of résumés to look over—his employer wanted him to read over the list of possible directors of photography he could use for the upcoming project. It wasn’t usual for the art director to hire and fire production crew, but the film’s director had a week scheduled with his latest mistress, and John was available to do the grunt work an assistant director would normally do.

And so of course his boss had passed that grunt work on to John.

He narrowed his eyes at the sword, still sure he’d seen a movement nearby. The room smelled like—jasmine?

“Sir?”

John glanced at the house cook who appeared on his right, the grand living room with its vaulted ceiling a pleasant backdrop. Having a personal cook was one of the many conveniences his employer enjoyed as an employee of MGM, and John was enjoying her talents as well. Her name was Gwen, and she’d been with his employer since he bought the three-story house, just a short distance into the Hollywood hills.

“Yes?”

“You have a visitor, sir. A Miss Constance Bonacieux.”

He nodded. The sword’s potential buyer was here.

“Oh, and Nick St. Paul is at the front door as well,” Gwen piped up.

John swore under his breath. What on earth was Nick St. Paul here for? He hadn’t seen the former director of photography for some time—not since that last disaster over at Universal Pictures when John had been on the production staff and caught the eye of their art director.

He hoped like hell Nick the menace wasn’t after the director of photography job his employer was scouting for. Christ, that was all he’d need. Nick was the quintessential lowlife mooch looking for a hand-out. The man had no artistic talent at all, and never worked well with any director he’d ever been paired with. He floated on the edge of Hollywood’s talent pool, making just enough to get by, never possessing the talent or the hard work it took to make it.

“Show Miss Bonacieux in. Put Nick in the study and make sure he stays there.”

Gwen nodded and left.

Again it seemed as if there was a movement near the hanging sword. Pursing his lips, John shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and continued to stare at it, willing it to move.

Or whatever it was doing.

The smell of jasmine intensified and he turned to see one of the most—if not the most—exquisite samples of the female form he’d ever laid eyes on saunter into his living room.

She was tall and lean. Her stacked heels only added to the power of her height. She wore a smart, tailored blue dress, a stole of what looked like mink, and a large brim hat cocked sideways on her head, revealing only a partial glimpse of her face. Her body was curvaceous and all woman.

He was immediately on edge. Something that saucy couldn’t be good news. John began to wonder if he was about to be the victim of a grift instead of a real deal.

She saw him and her smile broadened. He could just see a thin, pixyish face beneath the brim of that hat. Luminous blond hair cascaded from beneath the hat and fell like soft spun gold on her broad, padded shoulders. “Ah, Monsieur Long.”

He took her hand in his and kissed it. She hadn’t offered it to him to shake. Women like her never shook hands. Her fingers were strong. “Miss Bonacieux, it is a pleasure to meet you.”

“Oui.” She lowered her hand and looked immediately at the wall. She clutched a bag in front of her, a small purse he’d not noticed before. Her shoulders rose upward toward her ears. “Is this it?”

He nodded. “This is it.” He looked at her with a sideways gaze. “Do you mind if I ask you why this sword is so important? I mean you’ve offered to pay me an incredible amount of money for a mere movie prop.”

“Oh, no, monsieur.” She shook her head but kept her gaze locked on the sword on the wall. “This is no movie prop.”

“Eh?” He looked up at it. He could smell roast chicken and onions over the jasmine perfume, and his stomach growled. “You mean this is something more than a studio reproduction?”

“Oh, have you never held it, monsieur? To feel its weight and power? You would know from just a touch that the steel is folded, tempered with the most expert hands. It is an unparalleled weapon. This sword,” she looked at him, “it belonged to a hero. And it was used in real battles to fight injustice.”

“Oh,” he said, thinking maybe he’d agreed to sell the thing too quickly. If it was a real sword, even if its provenance was sketchy, maybe he could have gotten a better price at auction. Or maybe he could have even learned whose sword it was and researched its history. A good story might get the price up another few figures. “A hero? What hero?”

“A French hero, Monsieur.” She looked back at the sword. “Charles de Batz-Castelmore.”

John shrugged.

She looked at him. “You would know him as the Musketeer, Comte d’Artagnan.”

What? He frowned as he looked at her. “You mean this was his sword? The Musketeer sword?”

She nodded. “The Musketeers were noble defenders of justice,” Miss Bonacieux said. “They were selfless in their defense of the king and of France. It was said this sword was given to d’Artagnan by the Cardinal Mazarin. The Musketeers fought for truth with this sword. It never left his side as long as he lived.”

“Then how is it here?”

“It was stolen,” she said and her tone turned hard. He watched her reaction, noting the anger evident in her expression, though she continued to look at the sword. “He went to fight in the Franco-Dutch war and was killed at the Seige of Maastricht. When word returned to Mazarin of d’Artagnan’s death, he called upon God’s holy wrath and cursed the sword that was said to protect France’s defender.”

Cursed? John looked at the hanging relic, his own attitude toward the sword he’d only seen as a potential source of profit now turned one hundred and eighty degrees. He had an actual piece of history in his house. It was fascinating—not that he believed in superstitious nonsense like the lady here. “Cursed how?”

She sighed, the tension she’d been holding inside broken. “No one knows. No one who was there wrote it down. And the curse is only a rumor.” Bonacieux turned to him, her expression pleasant. “Now, maybe we should dispense with our business, no? I had assumed you would have the sword already packed for me.”

“I felt you should see it before you paid for it.” He nodded to it. “I also thought you’d want to have someone authenticate it. You’re turning over a lot of cash on my word that this is the sword you’re looking for.”

“Not necessary.” She smiled up at the blade. “I know it is real.” She looked at him again. “I can hear it sing. Can you not, as well?”

“Ah! John—there you are!”

John cringed inwardly. That was Nick’s voice calling him from across the living room.

Was it so hard to keep this asshole locked in the den?

Nick St. Paul was perfect physical Hollywood material on the surface. He was tall, standing close to five foot eleven. He was broad shouldered, tanned. He had blond hair, even if it was chemically treated, and a chiseled jawline.

But he was also known for being a womanizer. The worst of his sins, in John’s eyes, was that Nick was a bad director of photography. John figured Nick should have been an actor. In John’s opinion, that didn’t take brains. Or a soul. Nick could easily fulfill both those requirements.

Bonacieux turned to look at Nick with a defiant gaze. “Who is this? Another buyer, no?”

John shook his head. “No. Nick is just an unexpected nuisance.” He looked at the superficially attractive man as he strolled toward them. And he didn’t like the look in Nick’s eyes. “Nick, you were supposed to stay in the den.”

“Boring in the den,” Nick smiled at Bonacieux. “And the view is much better here.” He stuck his hand out toward her. “Hello there, doll. Name’s Nick St. Paul. And you are?”

“None of your business,” John stepped in and put himself between Nick and Miss Bonacieux. He glanced back at her. “Would you excuse me while I deal with my guest here? I’ll have someone remove the sword for you.”

“Please.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “The person who holds the sword must be pure of intent, monsieur. If not—” She looked a little afraid.

“If not, what?” He lowered his voice. When she didn’t answer he nodded. “I’ll do it myself. Just please, wait here. I have to take care of something.”

She nodded and John moved past her toward Nick and grabbed his upper arm. He half dragged the man into the living room, several feet away from where Miss Bonacieux stood.

“What the hell are you doing here?” John hissed, his stomach rumbling again. He was starved and now he was irritated. “I thought I told you never to darken my door again, especially after that last disaster in Vegas.”

“This technically isn’t your door,” Nick said.

Which was true, but his employer was so rarely there, it felt like his domain these days. “Not the point, Nick.”

“Hey, hey.” Nick put up both his hands. “Look, I came over here cause I heard you was look’n for—”

“No.”

“Aw, come on, John. Just this one last chance?”

“No.”

“You know I can do it.”

“No, I know you can’t do it, Nick.” John rubbed at his forehead. “You’ve screwed up three films that I know about. That’s three films more than you should be allowed. You talk a mean game but you’re full of it—you don’t have the eye they need for this project. Now.” He held out his hands. “I’ve got list of names to consult. And I’m choosing from that list. Your name is not on it.”

“You’re cold, John. I thought since you got the grunt work, you’d at least take care of your friends.”

“These names are not my choices, Nick. You know that. These are resumes from the director. If you want an opportunity on this film, by all means, go to him. But not to me. I’m just an intern. I can’t help you in this.”

He knew Nick would never go begging an A-list director, which is why John knew it was safe to say this.

Nick looked at Miss Bonacieux. “Who’s the broad?”

“She’s here on business. Now, I’d like to conclude that business and get my night started.”

He smiled. “I heard Gibbons was making an award.”

“I’m designing the possibility.” He nodded in the direction of the door. “Please, leave.”

“She gonna buy that big sword?”

John sighed. “Yes, she’s going to buy the sword.”

“For a lot of dough?”

He didn’t answer.

“But it’s just a prop, right? From one of those like, Robin Hood movies. Right?”

John glared at him.

“It’s not a prop?”

“Nick, get out of my house.” His patience exhausted, John moved to the edge of his leather couch and rang a small silver and black bell. Within seconds a tall, burly man in a gray suit appeared.

“Yes, Mr. Long?”

“Would you please escort Mr. St. Paul out of this house?”

The man in gray smiled. “With pleasure.”

John moved away, intent on returning to Miss Bonacieux and retrieving the sword from the wall.

What he hadn’t counted on was the deafening sound of a gunshot going off just behind him. He yelled out just as Miss Bonacieux did and felt a sudden blow to the back of his head.

John went down on his knees, his vision dimming. Nausea beat a quick path into his stomach and bile rose in his throat.

“Monsieur Long!”

“You, stand back where you are,” Nick said in a calm voice. “Or I’ll kill him.”

John knew the gun in Nick’s hand was pointed at his own head. He went forward on his hands and fought back the urge to give in to the darkness just behind his eyes. His head throbbed at the base of his skull. But he managed to look up.

He could see Nick now as well as the felled security guard he’d hired a month ago. The man in gray lay in a heap only a few yards away. Was he dead? Dying?

“What—” John managed to say. “Why—”

“Money, John. It’s always about money. And you’ve got more of it than me. Or rather,” he sighed, “you have access to more of it. Now, what I’d like to know is why you’re selling that prop to this young lady? How do you know it’s not a prop?”

“I-I don’t know for certain,” John felt coherence returning bit by bit. His head hurt, but the nausea was fading. A little. “I just—”

“Please,” Miss Bonacieux said in a worried voice. “Let him be. It was I that approached him. I-I am an expert on swords, monsieur. And I knew the previous owner of this blade.”

“You knew the owner of this house?” Nick said in surprise.

John also felt surprise. How could someone so young have known the owner of this house? Its history was as vague as the house’s builder. All John had known was the house had remained empty for nearly two decades before his employer bought it.

Which was why it came so cheap and fully furnished. Even though he’d sold most of the stuff inside of it, including a couple of tarnished suits of armor.

“No,” Miss Bonacieux spoke softly. “I did not know the owner of the house—”

John felt Nick’s foot against his side. “Stand up.”

He stood slowly, wobbled as he got to his feet. He took in deep breaths of air so as not to pass out while he tried to find his balance. Nick pointed the gun in Miss Bonacieux’s direction. “Please . . . let’s all move closer so I can see the sword for myself.”

They moved the distance to the wall where the sword hung beneath golden lights. Was it John’s imagination, or was it glowing even more now? How hard had he been hit in the head?

“You did not retrieve the sword then, monseiur,” Miss Bonacieux said abruptly. “You will not have it now.”

“Took you a few minutes to recognize me, didn’t it?” Nick smiled.

John looked from one to the other. “I’m sorry, but do you two know each other?”

“From my past,” Miss Bonacieux said. “Monsieur Nick’s real name is something no longer said in good Christian company.” And she spat at him.

Nick didn’t seem to care. “Really, Constance. Even now your devotion to the Comte d’Artagnan is beyond contention.”

John put a hand to his head. “Would someone care to fill me in on this? Nick, you just shot someone—you might have killed him. You do realize you’ll finally be going to jail?”

“No, John, I won’t,” he said. “I suspected at first glance what that sword meant. Whose it was. But I never really saw it up close.” He shrugged. “The only end I really became most acquainted with in my past was its sharp end.”

John rubbed his face. “You-you’ve had this sword pointed at you?”

“Oui,” Miss Bonacieux answered. “It was this sword that arrested Monsieur Nicolas Fouquet when the king suspected he had pilfered the royal treasury.”

John Long wasn’t a history buff, but having studied films and knowing how the the Musketeers was a story most often rewritten as well as acted in plays and recently on screen, he knew the names. He had to know the characters to set the stage, to look at the characterizations.

He knew who Nicolas Fouquet was. It had been rumored Fouquet would take Mazarin’s place as the king’s adviser. But that relationship had ended badly.

“This is nuts.” John pointed at each of them, still aware Nick kept the gun aimed at his head. “You’re trying to tell me that Nick is the Fouquet? Please, that was centuries ago. And Fouquet was sentenced to life in prison.”

“Oui,” Miss Bonacieux said. “He is who I say he is, just as I am Constance Bonacieux, lover and confident of d’Artagnan.”

John took an unsteady step back. “That’s not—”

“I don’t have time for this,” Nick snapped. “Just accept we are who we say we are. We accepted the gifts from d’Artagnan, the Rosewood diamonds. And from the diamonds we gained immortality.”

“You accepted nothing!” Miss Bonacieux yelled at Nick. She’d thrust her chest out and held her shoulders straight. “Because you were never given one of the gifts. The one you have you stole from d’Artagnan himself.”

Nick smirked and nodded. “Okay, Constance. I appropriated one of the gifts. That way I could survive what your lover was trying to do to me.”

Either this was a dream, he was losing his mind, or both of these idiots were trying to pull the wool over his eyes. “Gifts? You’re talking about something that can grant immortality?”

Miss Bonacieux nodded. “Small gifts to dazzle the eyes and hook the soul to this mortal coil.”

Right. John shook his head. “Look, if it’s the sword, just take it. I really don’t care anymore. But I’ve got a body in my house—one I truly hope isn’t dead—and the police are gonna ask a lot of questions.”

“You cannot have the sword, Fouquet,” Miss Bonacieux said in a firm tone. “You know of the curse. You know you may never touch it.”

“That’s just lies,” Nick spat out. “Lies that you and that idiot cardinal made up to keep others from using it. I never believed in the pious power of the blade. Not when I took the Rosewood diamond and I continued to live. Not when my jailers feared me when I no longer aged. I was left alone, walled inside of that forsaken prison, until finally the walls were torn down and my eyes and face beheld the sun and fresh air again.”

John stared at Nick. What he was saying—it was a mummy story. The plot for movie—and it sounded like a good movie. Maybe if he humored Nick he could get more of the story out of him. “Why the sword? If you can live forever, then why the sword? Miss Bonacieux says it’s cursed.”

“It’s not cursed!” Nick screamed, and John could finally see the first glint of madness behind the man’s eyes. In the four years John had known him, he’d always suspected the man was a little insane.

Now he was sure.

“The king had a great treasury,” Miss Bonacieux said. “And it was in that treasury that the sword was found. Even the king wasn’t sure where he’d gotten it. But Cardinal Mazarin believed the sword to be holy. Sacred. And he blessed it before giving it to d’Artagnan.”

“And while he carried it,” Nick said softly, “he would never die.”

“But that sounds like Excalibur,” John exclaimed with his hands at his sides. “Or any other hero’s sword. It’s just myth and legend.”

“And who is to say this isn’t such a sword?” Miss Bonacieux said. “The sword of all swords? The beginning and the end?”

“But if I’m supposed to believe you both,” John said, “that you’re both immortal, why on earth would you want this sword? What’s the point? Why kill someone in cold blood?”

“Power.”

Miss Bonacieux glared at Nick before looking to John. “I wish to return it to its rightful resting place. To bring it home to d’Artagnan’s tomb. But Nicolas.” She looked at Nick. “He searches only for power. Greed.”

“Touché, Constance.” Nick nodded at John. “And for greed’s sake, please, get it down for me.”

“I will not. You get it down.”

He redirected the aim of the gun at Miss Bonacieux’s head. “I insist.”

“So?” John was not sure he really believed either of them. “She’s immortal. What good would shooting her do?”

“If my head is removed from my body,” Miss Bonacieux said as she looked at John with pleading eyes, “I will not live. If he destroys my brain, I will not live.”

“So, undying as of yet, but not immortal,” was all John was able to mumble. “You think you can sell this thing?” he said as he moved to the sword.

“Yes,” Nick said and took two very cautious steps back. “There are hundreds of societies out there waiting to get their hands on this sword. And they will pay dearly for it. Immortality, when one is poor?” He shrugged. “Not such a great life, John. I have lived in the worst of hovels during my existence. I want wealth. Esteem. And I will have it.”

Nick’s hesitation wasn’t lost on John. “Why won’t you get it down yourself? Just tie me and her up and take it? Make it look like a robbery?”

“Because he is afraid,” Miss Bonacieux said.

John looked from her back to Nick. “What are you afraid of?”

“The curse,” she said.

Nick scoffed. “I’m not afraid, but I see no reason to die for the sword when John would make a perfect foil.”

He looked at Miss Bonacieux. “What would happen if I touched it?”

She looked worried. “I-I do not know.”

Nick took a step closer to Miss Bonacieux, the muzzle of the gun close to her temple. “I don’t have all day, John.”

John licked his upper lip, tasted the sweat on it. He felt the nausea return to his stomach as he approached the sword. It hung from the hilt down, the pointy end closest to him. The hilt hung maybe a foot above his head.

Rational thinking reassured him that he’d touched it before, right? And nothing had happened. And yet these two nut jobs behind him were deathly afraid of the sword, believing it to posses some sort of curse.

You’ve touched it before. His mind continued the mantra over and over. Nothing will happen.

Nothing—

He reached out.

Will—

Holding his breath, he touched the steel of the blade.

Happen—

Silence.

John opened his eyes, not remembering when he’d closed them. His right hand clutched the blade’s end. He could feel the bite of the sharp steel in his palm.

“You’re bleeding,” Miss Bonacieux said.

“Well, it’s sharp.” John looked up at the hilt and with careful precision he lifted the sword off the hooks and took it down.

“So far, so good,” Nick said. “Give it to me.”

But John felt something from the blade. A slight vibration, a song that echoed inside of his mind. An exaltation to the heavens.

Nick had his other hand out. “Give me the sword, John, or I’ll shoot her.”

“Don’t give it to him,” Miss Bonacieux said. “He’ll just kill us.”

But the sword was still singing, beseeching John to do as it asked. He smiled at it as he grasped the hilt in both hands and lifted the tip skyward. He then looked at Nick and lowered the tip, holding the blade down between his feet, the hilt clutched to his chest. “It is not your sword to take.”

Miss Bonacieux stepped back as Nick’s expression turned to an angry scowl. He lunged at John, dropping the gun on the floor in his dash to possess the sword. John found himself moving back from the sword, letting go of the hilt, and for a split second it hung suspended in the air between them.

No one saw this but John.

Abruptly Nick had the sword in his hands, hilt up, point down. He grinned as he held it, his eyes wide with madness. “I have it! I have it!”

John moved back in Miss Bonacieux’s direction and pulled her with him. He didn’t know what would happen, only that something would.

Nick’s expression turned from elation to panic as he tried to lift the sword and found he couldn’t. He tried to let go of it, but to John it looked as if his hands were now a part of the hilt.

“Help me!” Nick exclaimed as he literally tried to back away from the blade. “I can’t let go! What’s happening?”

John watched in fascination as the hilt and sword glowed a golden color. The gold spread out from the center to surround Nick’s hands, his chest, his legs and feet, and then it spread up his chest to his neck. Nick tried to scream but the light filled his mouth. Finally the glow reached the top of his head.

John and Miss Bonacieux looked away, shielding their eyes with their hands until the glare died away.

“Mon dieu,” Miss Bonacieux said in a soft voice. “The curse is indeed terrible.”

John beheld with his own eyes a life-size statue of Nick holding a sword clutched between his hands, the hilt up, the point down. Locked into the gray stone was Nick’s expression, a mask of terror, his eyes wide, his mouth a perfect O of surprise.

“The sword,” Miss Bonacieux said as she took a hesitant step toward the statue. “Why is it gone as well?”

“It’s encased in the stone,” John mused. He stood in front of the statue.

Miss Bonacieux looked from him to the statue. “But why? Why encase itself?”

“Maybe it was better to become a part of the greed that drove Nick? Or maybe it saw a way to hide itself better. Besides, who’s going to believe there’s a real sword of merit inside of that?”

“That is an odd name,” Miss Bonacieux smiled at him. “Why do you call it that?”

“Because as you said,” John said as he kept his gaze on the statue, “the sword was always used for good deeds. But,” he sighed as he looked at Bonacieux, “I’m not sure I know what the reward is. D’Artagnan died.”

“Rewards are not always tangible, John. Sometimes they are simply a soul at peace. But good deeds—no matter how small—are always rewarded.”

There was a groan from the other side of the room. John turned with a happy heart to see the gray man sitting up, clutching his chest. He opened his shirt and rubbed at the body armor beneath. “You okay?”

“Yeah . . .” He coughed. “But I think I’m gonna need a doctor. I think I may have a broken rib or two.”

“I’ll have Gwen call one.” He turned back to Miss Bonacieux. “I’m sorry about your sword.” He looked at Nick. No one was ever going to believe this story. But the best part was that no one was ever going to miss the bastard Nick either. With no body to be found, there wasn’t going to be a bit of trouble about the sudden passing of the guy.

“Would it be a problem if I ship the statue back to France?” The lovely lady smiled at him. “I think it would be safest there.”

John pursed his lips. “Then maybe it was a blessing that Nick showed up. I was going to sell this sword to you—which means I would have exchanged it for greed. It might be that I would have suffered the same fate.”

She said nothing but John got the impression that Miss Bonacieux had known this all along. He knew then she had never had any intention of paying for it. Her intent had been to take it, after the curse had worked on him.

Only she didn’t want it for greed.

Miss Bonacieux finally unclasped the purse she’d been clutching and opened it. She reached in and brought out a small, black velvet bag and held it out to him. “Here is payment.”

He stared at it. “Uh, you sure this is a good idea?”

“Think of it as a gift, or even a reward for a job well done. This is your merit, John Long.”

Shrugging, he took the bag and pulled the drawstring open. With a glance at her he dumped the contents out into his palm. His skin was flaked with dried blood where he’d touched the sword.

A single carat diamond stud tumbled into his palm. He stared at it and looked at her. “This is—”

“A gift,” Miss Bonacieux said. “It is one of the Rosewood diamonds, John Long. They were found amid the treasures with the sword, long before the king understood what it was he possessed.”

The diamond twinkled in his palm.

The burn from the cut stopped. The dried blood remained, but the open wound did not.

“Do you accept the gift, John Long?”

He nodded to her and smiled. “Of course I do, Constance Bonacieux.”

He looked at the statue for a few seconds, moving to the left and then to the right. An idea sprang to life and he half ran, half walked into the living room where he kept his pad and pencils. Returning, he quickly made a loose sketch of Nick and the sword, only he softened the lines and made Nick’s death mask more subtle until there were only indications where his eyes, nose, and mouth should be.

“What are you doing?” Miss Bonacieux asked as she peered over his shoulder.

“Sketching this before you take it.” He smiled at her. “As I’m an intern, my employer is always asking me for inspiration when he doesn’t have time. And you never know when I might actually have to design something with a man holding a sword, right? I think old Nick should be remembered somehow. If not the way he had planned.”

The lady smiled. “Like the sword, the idea has merit.”

Canticle of Abraham and Isaac

Peter Orullian

Peter Orullian has recently been published in other fine DAW anthologies, as well as Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show. For grocery money, he works at Microsoft in the Xbox division. His other abiding passion is music; Peter recently returned from a European tour with a successful hard rock band. He has a New York agent currently shopping one of his novels, which he hopes will allow him to retire from Microsoft and sing and write until everything bleeds.

Isaac: Father, I am sore affeared
To see you bear that drawne sword.
Abraham: Isaac, son, peace, I pray,
Thou breakest my heart . . .

Simon Donne raised the short blade high into the morning air and looked down at his son William, bound and pleading, and waited to be stopped. The chirrup of birds in the cool dawn belied the horrific tableau Simon held for his audience, who watched with memory the reenactment of Abraham’s heavenly commission. And again, for the hundredth time or more, Simon trembled with real fear at the God who’d asked a father to kill his own child.

Simon’s face grew slick with sweat. His eyes blurred with the sting of his own tears. He blinked them away and held his pose. To teach and entertain. But not for the onlookers here in Wakefield, or in any town the troupe came to.

He needed to know.

Needed to understand the test that forged the infamy of the weapon he now held up in mockery of death. The blade of faith.

Would Father Abraham have gone through with it?

Simon’s fingers cramped on the hilt, and the small sword began to shake. He stared down at William, seeking the answer in the twelve-year-old’s face. But the boy showed back only the panic and fear of a good thespian. Playing his part. Unafraid beneath the drama. Had Isaac remained even so? Sure his father would do no harm?

Simon raised the blade higher, preparing to plunge it into the sacrifice.

Some few groans escaped the crowd. A gasp. Others were silent, either deeply reflecting or still half asleep.

And then the sun rose up, piercing the morning chill. Its light cast over the mass a long shadow of Simon’s upstretched arm, like the shadow of a spear quaking in its master’s grip.

The unexpected poignancy caught William’s attention, too. The boy shifted, looking up to see the ominous silhouette weave like a lance raised heavenward.

Simon grabbed hold of the blade with both hands, his breath ragged in his throat. How much now is fancy, he thought, of this thing I (Abraham) would do.

To teach and entertain.

The pageant wagon had started the play cycle with the benevolence of Creation in the predawn light, just as it had since Simon had joined them in 1554—twenty-two years ago.

But the killing had soon come. Cain had killed Abel, God had killed everybody with Noah’s flood, and now Simon as Abraham meant to kill his son. Thirty-two pageant plays, telling the biblical tales (mostly): Conspiracy, Scourging, Hanging, Expulsion, Sacrifice, Slaughter, Mortification, Harrowing . . .

Bad business so early in the morning.

Even with the sun dawning in the east.

It is only a mystery play. To share the scriptural stories.

But it all rattled in Simon’s chest. He wanted to scream. To destroy the tranquility of this mild summer morn in which townspeople now calmly continued eating their warm breakfast bread while watching him relive the nightmare.

A great sob burst uncontrolled from his lips. A yawp out of his heart as the moment drew out with excruciating lethargy. The grief in the sound caused even passersby to pause and look.

The noise also startled Robert Fuller, a guildsman playing the angel today in Wakefield. Bob (as he’d asked to be called), was a parchment maker—a craft with no urgency. But at Simon’s wail, he hurried onstage to stay Simon’s murderous hand.

Simon sighed relief. And together, he and William pulled James Faust (dressed in a ram’s outfit) from a twist of willow branches stage left. James would be God’s sacrifice—a local bookbinder already smelling of the sweaty wool in his costume.

The laughter came with the braying and bucking of the ram. James put his ass into it.

But Simon did not laugh.

In the pub across the commons from the pageant wagon, Simon sat sipping his ale. The quiet, empty room (dawn being early for a pint) suited his nerves after the play. To his back a small fire burned, chasing away the chills—those that came from the cold anyway. And the bite of the ale felt good on his throat, which had grown raw from so many performances. He was not a good singer, but canticle was the play-wright’s form. So he and William had traded snippets of song every morning (weather permitting) for years now. Telling the old story.

His boy sat pleasantly at his side, writing on some parchment Bob had given him. And through the door, the melodies of Adoration came distant and mellow. The three kings come to see the child in the manger and his mother mild. It always reminded Simon of William’s mother, Isabel, who’d died giving their son life.

He could still see the peace in her face, feel the touch of her skin. The day she’d told him she was pregnant, she’d had one simple request: a home.

She’d known what she was asking. Leave the pageant wagons, the play cycle, the role of Abraham. And the initial shock and panic of the request had stolen his breath. But with the thought he’d also felt some ease of his lifelong question about Abraham and his sacrificial sword.

God, he missed her.

The gentle strains of Adoration went on. The cycle would continue all day and well into the night, until the sketch of Judgment played out on the decorated cart in the glare of torchlight.

Such was a sight.

Celebrants at the cycle of Corpus Christi here seated in the dark with the cast of flames on their faces.

Damn fools!

All of them, this seed of Abraham . . .

Like me. Literally.

Simon turned the blade over in his hands, running his finger over the Hebrew inscription. It read simply: blade of faith. But faith in what?

Someone sat heavily beside him. “The cycles are coming to an end.” It was Bob—his angel. “The clergy don’t care for your embellishments to the liturgical dramas. And a new kind of entertainment is said to be replacing us.”

“Is that right?” Simon returned his attention to the short weapon in his hand.

“Professional theaters are opening in many towns these days. And people want more to laugh about, with fewer lessons in their entertainment.”

Simon just nodded his head as another patron entered the pub. The fellow guided himself with a staff, steering his ponderous belly between the tables. The man fell twice as he wove his way toward them. Probably drunk already.

Bob tapped the sword in Simon’s hands. “By ’is wounds it’s strange how you lord over a simple stage prop. What meaning is there in it?”

Simon considered telling him. Why should he care what others thought of his story? But before he could begin, the great big bumbling man ambled up to their table.

“Well met.” Simon raised his mug of ale.

“We haven’t met,” the other said. “I’m Tinker.”

“Then, well met, Tinker. I’m Simon.”

Tinker bowed. “Pleased to meet you. You gave a stirring performance this morning. But now, I’d like to hear an answer to this man’s question. A pub’s the place for stories.”

Tinker leaned in, resting his elbow on Robert’s shoulder. He was ready for the tale.

“It’s a family heirloom,” Simon began. “Passed down for more generations than anyone bothers to count.”

“A relic, then!” Tinker boomed. “I’m a relic, too. More ale!”

Mugs were shortly set before them, as though the barmaid had begun to pour upon seeing Tinker enter. And Tinker’s was gone before anyone could lift their drink. “Proceed, young master,” Tinker said, settling in again.

Simon found his start. “Did you ever wonder what happened to the sword Abraham raised to kill Isaac?”

“Bloody hell, no. Who cares about such things? It’s the moral of the story that counts. Morals must be understood, else there’s no fun in breaking them.” Tinker boomed more laughter.

“Isaac might have cared,” Simon replied. “As have all those descended from this blade.” He ran a finger over the Hebrew inscription again.

“You think this belonged to Abraham? My, you’re deeper in the cups than I am.” Tinker hefted Bob’s mug and quaffed it in a few large gulps.

“Every father passes it to his son with the charge to remember. Remember faith before life. Heaven before mortality.” Simon looked into the meaty features of the man. “Our remembrance is our wound. But history has forgotten.”

Tinker started to fall again, but propped himself with his staff.

“Are you all right?” Simon asked.

“Ah, bloody day, yes. Something in my ears since birth. Makes me dizzy.” Tinker closed his eyes, smiled, then laughed out loud. “I should drink more.”

Simon finished. “I do the play . . . I need to understand.”

“And this is your lad?” Tinker asked. He reached across and tussled William’s hair. “What do you think of all this, my young man?”

William looked up at his father, then across to the men. “Makes one hell of a story.”

Tinker reared back and bawled laughter into the pub rafters, not realizing William meant his comment literally.

“Wakefield has a vicar, Bob.” Simon stood. “I was told yesterday by a grieving widow that he’s the best man south of Edinburgh and north of London. A man who reads in Hebrew, understands Isaiah, and can prophesy out of Revelations. You’re going to take me to him.”

“What good—”

“Hold on there!” Tinker interrupted. “I like your story, Mr. Simon, and would defend your right to tell it. Bloody hell, I’ve probably told that story myself at some point. But a vicar? He’s no help to you. He’s going to talk, and smile, and put his hand out for a little something.”

Simon kicked Tinker’s staff, nearly causing him to fall. “Sounds a bit like you.”

“A vicar!” the man cried, undaunted. “You’re a silly person. Let me make you wise.” He paused, gathered their attention. “Forget it all.”

“Let’s go,” Simon said, tapping William to stand.

“Truly,” Tinker continued. “You’ve a stripling lad there, who bears a good sense of humor. Likes to use his hands, too. Not embarrassed by a father taking his drink while the cock still makes his noise. And you,” he lifted his staff and tapped Simon’s shin, “you make a damn fine Abraham. Very poetic. And it’s summer. A good time to be riding a wagon, and receiving the congratulations of a crowd. What right have you got to be miserable?”

“Let’s go,” Simon said again, this time motioning Bob to stand.

Tinker stood erect, like a thespian delivering a prologue, and chuffed in and out before pronouncing, “You need to abandon this impractical quest. Learn to have a jot of fun. Here, watch.” He called the barmaid over, and dove in face first to her bosom before she could react.

“Come now.” Simon grabbed Bob and William and pulled them out of the pub and up the road, his son laughing at the antics of a stranger who couldn’t stand up straight, and was already drinking Simon’s second, untouched mug.

Wakefield Chantry Chapel squatted beside the River Calder in the late-morning light. The chantry served a practical purpose in addition to its spiritual one, as part of the bridge itself—support on its northern bank. Drawing near, Simon saw, along its west front, five ornately carved panels containing depictions of the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the Coronation of the Virgin Mary

Simon had little use for such places.

His church and worship belonged to the pageant wagon, where he saw an angel come every day to stop his burnt offering.

Bob pointed at one of three doors. “Our vicar serves here.”

Inside, the smell of spent candle wax lingered in the still air. Watery light leaked through windows to the right. And together he and Bob approached the head of the chantry; William followed behind them. At the far end, they found a modest altar backed by stained glass more ornate than Simon might have imagined. Muted red and blue and aqua shone on the white altar linens.

Bob dropped to a knee and genuflected. Simon looked around at empty chairs and a portal in the left corner, where a man dressed in a dark gray robe emerged from the shadows.

“Vicar Michael,” Bob spoke with haste. “We need your help.”

The fellow nodded as he came, unhurried, and sat on a chair in the first row even before greeting them. He motioned for them to sit beside him. Simon eased onto a chair. William sat beside him, immediately setting to work on his parchment again.

Bob reached across and took the vicar by the hand, gathering his full attention. “I’m going to leave Simon to your care, Father. I’ll be in the back if I’m needed.”

Then the man who’d played Abraham’s angel that morning stood, offered Simon a squeeze of the hand, and withdrew.

“Well, what’s this all about?” the vicar asked.

Simon stared. The priest had a kind face, made softer somehow by successive folds about his eyes and mouth. His skin had spotted, too, though the effect was more like a child’s freckles than the blotches of time. And he peered out under wooly brows, made bigger by the absence of hair on his crown. This was every man’s good father.

Simon simply pulled the short blade from his belt and handed it to the man.

The vicar’s brow knitted with some confusion before he raised the weapon for examination. The light was not good, but after several moments, the man found the inscription and looked up shortly with knowing eyes.

Simon and the vicar shared a long, companionable silence, accompanied only by William’s scribbling. Then the vicar’s face softened and he placed the sword on the seat between them.

“Do you know what I do here?” Vicar Michael asked.

“It’s a chantry. You chant dirges for the souls of the dead.”

The man nodded, smiling. “Most of whose lineage belongs to the great patriarch, Father Abraham.”

“You don’t believe the sword belonged to him, do you?”

“Do you?” The vicar priest held the same unassuming smile.

Simon paused at the question, his hand reflexively touching the weapon. But he did not drop the man’s easy gaze. “My father told me the story with details not found in the holy book. He passed the gift to me as a legacy of faith unbroken from the Mount of Moriah.”

“You’re here with the traveling cycle. I saw your performance yesterday.”

Simon said nothing.

“Was your father a storyteller?” the priest asked.

Simon smiled bitterly. “I see. A family of fantasists, that’s what you think, telling each other stories for generations . . .”

“What I think is impertinent, Simon. Tell me why you’re here.”

“Maybe I should go.”

“You’re welcome to leave.” The priest still sat, relaxed, friendly, somehow assured in a way that left Simon unsettled.

But he did not get up. Instead, he placed his other arm around William’s shoulders, now touching the two things he held most dear. And the irony of it struck him: hope on the one hand, helplessness on the other.

“Simon,” the priest began, his voice just above a whisper, “you and I are very much the same. I stand in this place—” he lifted his hand toward the altar “—and I sing the praises of the dead, because we should not forget. Because their lives mattered. And because we learn from their passing and our own devotion to their memory.

“While you—” he gestured at Simon’s chest “—travel from village to village, town to town, proclaiming the stories of the dead to teach and remind us of plain and precious truths. The truth of faith. And of the great promise Abraham earned in Genesis: for his obedience, numerous seed and abundant prosperity.”

“I know the promise.” Simon’s voice edged with impatience.

The vicar priest stared a long moment. “I do not think you do. Come.”

The man stood and retreated toward the darkened portal from which he’d entered. Simon debated whether to follow, the gall of bitterness spreading in his chest. He hated to be patronized.

“Stay here,” he said to William. “I’ll be right back.”

And he followed.

In the northeast corner of the chantry, a staircase wound up to some chamber and down into blackness. Simon descended slowly behind the priest into a small crypt. The scent of sweating stone and unswept floors filled his nose. The darkness was near complete when the man lit a small torch. The room brightened in flickering orange hues, revealing a short line of chiseled caskets.

The vicar walked past the queue to the end, where a shortened tomb sat huddled in the shadows. Their footsteps echoed with hollow refrain off the hard, dark surfaces.

Simon came to stand at the casket’s end. “A child,” he deduced.

“My daughter,” the vicar replied.

His face, in the hellish glow of the flame, reminded Simon of the crowd’s awful stares when night fell on the cycle and the play of Judgment was offered. Except fear and bitterness did not live in the man’s countenance. Loss, yes. But not anger.

They stood together for a long time in the flutter and hiss of the torch, in the company of death and granite and silt . . . and said nothing.

Then finally, “The promise, Simon, isn’t wealth or grandchildren.” The vicar moved the torch near the tomb of his own child, illuminating the graven stone: Emily Gardner. “The promise is reunion with those we love. Endless seed and prosperity mean only that our family bonds will survive death. That is the faith of Abraham in sacrificing Isaac. God tested him, and he proved faithful.”

Simon glared through the darkness. “Then what of Isaac’s test?”

Confusion stole into the priest’s eyes and brow.

“When Isaac went to Moriah he was not a boy as you all believe. He was a man, full grown, twenty-five years and able to prevent his own binding if he’d wished.”

“You don’t know that—”

Simon ignored the vicar. “He went as a lamb to the slaughter.”

Then the familiar smile returned to the priest’s face. “Simon, you only prove what I brought you here to share. Don’t you see?”

Simon did not see.

The priest seemed to refocus, looking deep into Simon’s soul. “I think, my son, your struggle is that every day you relive that moment, but you’ve no need of faith to do it, because you are not truly planning to sacrifice your son. God is not testing you. It is not your story, despite your ancestry. Despite the sword heirloom you carry.”

He came near Simon, placing a kind hand on his back. “We don’t remember or honor the instrument of death. We remember and honor the virtue and faith of he who wielded it. You should throw it away, Simon. Be rid of it.”

But Simon did not hear the admonition.

In his mind, the vicar’s words resounded: “. . . you’ve no need of faith to do it, because you are not truly planning to sacrifice your son. God is not testing you.”

Perhaps Simon now knew how to have, at last, the answer to his question.

When the first charcoal shades bloomed in the east, Simon sat up. He hadn’t slept. A black night had passed in the small tent he shared with William, whose mother had died in childbirth. It was a memory he could not shake. Her hand growing limp in his. The baby still stuck inside her. The quick action of the physician with a knife. Opening the body up to pull the baby free.

Simon hadn’t known how to feel.

A birth. A funeral.

And when it grew quiet and dark each night and he could hear William breathing in his sleep, Simon thought about sacrifice and injustice. But mostly he saw in his mind the pallor of skin . . . and the red of blood.

He drew the short sword to his chest, then. Hugging it tight. I will have my answer today.

Sometime later William awoke and they went to the fire and took bacon and biscuits for breakfast. They hadn’t finished eating when the tones of the canticles began: Creation.

“You seem more at peace,” William observed. “The vicar must have helped.”

Simon looked down at his son. “Helped?”

“You’re not usually happy, Papa.”

“And when did you become so keen to my feelings?” Simon half-smiled.

His boy shrugged.

“I’ve had need of faith, that’s all. Things are better now.”

William smiled in return and the two went to prepare for their scene. They changed in the cold of morning, pulling on the rough costumes. William cheerfully hummed the tunes of his lines as he readied himself. And it wasn’t until they were about to walk onstage that Simon knelt to look his son straight. “Do you believe Abraham would have killed Isaac, William? If the angel hadn’t come, I mean?”

A curious look entered the child’s face. “He loved God. And he loved Isaac. That’s why it was a test. God was asking Abraham whom he loved the most. I don’t know what Abraham would have done. But I think it would be hard to love someone more than your family. Most people can’t even get that right.”

Then his boy spontaneously hugged him. Simon wrapped his arms around the lad, feeling his sword press against his hip.

The blade of faith.

Then they were called into their cycle. Simon heard the voice of God instruct him on the sacrifice. He gathered the child, and father and son trudged together up an imaginary Mount Moriah.

And they sang.

Their voices joined together in a harmony meant to be the voice and will of the Eternal Father. They soon reached their pretended summit, and Simon bound William in a ritual they’d performed a thousand times.

The crowd watched, rapt in a way Simon hadn’t seen before.

To teach and entertain.

But his fingers quaked long before he drew the blade of faith, trembling with a different intention today. Simon paused to look up, to assure God that this was real. Black and bloody, but real. His eyes found only gray skies—the windows of heaven were shut to him.

He sang:

O Isaac, son, I say to thee
God hath today commanded me
A sacrifice, of thee to make
And let the creatures be

Simon pulled his sword. His heart slammed in his chest. Don’t let me do it, my Lord! Don’t let me do it!

William’s antiphonic song rose from the altar:

“Is this God’s will?”

“Yes, son,” Simon/Abraham sang. And he raised the blade of faith high against the grayish light. “My blessing I give you, and your mother’s, too. And God’s.”

“I pray,” sang William/Issac, “turn down my face. For I am sore afraid.”

Then Simon raised the sword, his entire body wracked with fear and trembling. For today, no guildsman would come. Not Robert Fuller. Not anyone. The angel costume lay empty in the changing area behind the pageant wagon. That had been easy to manage in the night and dark when a man can’t sleep . . .

Simon/Abraham pitched forward, canting, “Jesu! Have pity on me, for what I have in mind.”

And that’s when Simon saw it. A look in his son’s eyes. Understanding.

The look of it broke something in Simon that he knew could never be mended. Even if he had his answer to the question of Abraham’s resolve to kill his own son, it might not be worth the price.

Because for Simon, none of this was God’s test for Abraham. Nor God’s test for Simon.

It was Simon’s test for God.

“Stay my hand for once and all!” Simon screamed, breaking the rote canticle. “Or don’t! And prove you are not the God of Abraham!”

Simon felt nothing. Saw nothing. Save the look of horror on William’s face.

But this was the price. The answer must be had. “If you’re there, smite me down and spare my child! Because know this: If you let me murder my son—the last good thing in my life after Isabel died—then you and I are done! Do you understand?”

Simon’s voice carried long at that windless hour, shuttled along under the lowering clouds.

Then the blade of faith was at its peak, and could only be brought down. William lay frozen, looking at Simon, his face screwed tight in a plea. “No, Papa. Please. No. We’re going to be all right.”

In memory, Simon saw his wife’s cut and bloodied body. He saw his father handing him the sword he’d worn all his life and asking him to carry it with pride. He saw drunken bouts and nights when William slept alone in their cold tent.

It was all a bloody business. This life! This tragedy!

Simon quivered like a drawn bowstring over William’s body.

His son looked up, as he did every time, and watched the silhouette of his father’s arm and blade describe nothing so much as a long spear jabbing the sky, and trembling from the furor of the moment.

But Simon stood oblivious. To the crowd. To his son. To himself. He listened only for the voice of Heaven. You are not God if you can let me do this to an innocent! My faith can’t be blind! It must be the faith that you will stop me from this vile deed!

Simon wailed at the sky, “This is your test! YOURS!”

The skies remained mute.

“Do you hear me!” Simon screamed. “I am testing you!”

And he brought the blade of faith down toward his son in a great hammer-fall stroke.

But as the sword’s edge arced, a massive blur from the rear of the pageant wagon caught him and tackled him violently to the boards.

The blade of faith skittered across the cart and fell to the ground, leaving Simon pinned and panting beneath a hulking frame.

Tinker.

“You,” Tinker huffed, “are a silly person.”

The crowd stirred at the abruption. It was not the traditional story of Abraham and Isaac. This angel had stopped Abraham by force. But they sat and waited, eating their warm morning bread.

Simon began to weep.

Tinker did not move, holding Simon safe, immovable. “I think I know what’s going on here, my friend. And I can only ask you this once: Have you grown any wiser? Or will I be taking you to the king’s guard?”

His cheek pressed to the wagon, Simon could barely nod. “I am a fool.”

“No argument there,” Tinker replied, and let him sit up.

What did I almost do?

It wasn’t until William drew near that the weight of Simon’s sin truly fell upon him. It came like the crush of sadness he’d felt when his wife had slipped away. So much so that he struggled to breathe. Shame and fright ripped through him, as did gratitude—his son was alive. But William did not show Simon sad or angry eyes. He simply stood, waiting, as if for an indication of who sat before him: his father . . . or Abraham.

But he did not wait long.

Simon wrapped his boy into his embrace, squeezing him tight. William squeezed back. And they held that embrace blessedly long.

Then William sat beside his father and pulled a bit of parchment from beneath his tunic, handing it to Simon.

“What is this?”

“Open it.”

Simon carefully unrolled the parchment. And something bright and new stirred inside him.

“It’s for us, Papa.” William beamed with pride.

Simon looked down at the page to see the lines of a new play, something they could do stationary. Not on the wagon. Not a mystery. Not liturgy. But something they’d need to find a home for—the timing propitious if Bob’s rumors about the cycles were true.

And by God if it wasn’t good.

Very good.

Simon swept his son into his arms again, which drew applause from the audience. And that sounded mighty right, too.

“We’re putting it all behind us, William, every last bit of it. Perhaps even our names we’ll leave upon the wagon. Genealogy has not been kind to us anyway.” Simon smiled with growing enthusiasm for the idea. “What name shall we take?”

His son had only one thought. It didn’t leave the past entirely behind, but it was the very thing that had made him decide to write his father and him off this wagon. It was the image he’d seen every morning when he lay upon the altar ready to taste the blade of faith, if only for pretend. He’d find a name in that silhouette, so like a spear raised high to deal death, but shaky with doubt.

“We’ll think of something,” his son finally said.

Simon, Tinker, and William stood.

“How about an ale?” Tinker asked, taking up his walking stick once they’d climbed off the wagon stage.

Simon noted the gimp in the man’s stride again. Had God answered Simon’s test with a dizzy, drunken buffoon? Or was that just luck and life? He decided maybe an angel can take many forms. Maybe help comes from the least likely source. Regardless, he learned that whether Abraham would have gone through with it wasn’t the question at all. Simon’s only real question was: Do I love my son more than the bitter legacy of a damned sword? More than the bitter memory of a lost love?

The answer, he now knew, was yes.

Still, he had to ask, “How did you fall on me without use of your staff?”

Tinker hunched his shoulders. “I had the right motivation.” He winked at William. “So, Master William, what’s this new drama you’re writing?”

William’s face lit up as he started to speak. “It’s about betrayal and getting a knife in the back.”

“No, no.” Tinker scrunched his face. “Write about comical things, about things you actually know . . .” He stopped, catching the irony. “Well, never mind. What do you call this new play?”

“Right now, I’m just calling it Rome.”

“All well and good, but don’t forget people like to laugh.” Tinker gimped toward the pub. “However, Rome is quite lovely.”

“Have you been there?” William asked, seeming ready to ask Tinker for details.

“Well, no,” the lummox chuffed, “but I’ve a right to my opinion. Enough with all the questions. What time is it? Are we going to drink or talk? Who’s buying the ale?”

Then Simon hunkered down again to look his son straight. “What do you think of Wakefield, William? Do you think you’d like to stay? Maybe find a cottage to call home?”

His son beamed. “I think Mama would have liked that.”

Simon nodded. “Me too, son. Me too.” And he left the blade of faith where it lay as the three crossed the commons to share their own songs and company.

Back to the Garden

David H. Hendrickson

David H. Hendrickson has published over eight hundred works of nonfiction ranging from humor and essays to scientific research and sports journalism. Recognized as one of the nation’s top college hockey writers, he has been honored with the Joe Concannon and Scarlet Quill awards. He serves on the prestigious Hobey Baker Award selection committee. His short stories have appeared in literary journals, magazines, and the anthology Food and Other Enemies. He is a graduate of Odyssey, the fantasy writing workshop. Born and raised in New England, he lives north of Boston.

“ re you not the firstborn?” the demon asked. A“Should not all that is your father’s be yours?”

Cain dug his fingers into the rocky soil, grasped a weed by its roots, and tore it out. Why wouldn’t the demon leave him alone? Cain crawled to the next weed, his back aching, and to the one after that, until he reached the end of the row. Only an hour of light remained and the fields stretched out for as far as the eye could see. He wouldn’t finish today’s work in time.

“Was not your sacrifice as good as your brother’s?” the demon asked. “You work the soil; he tended flocks. Did you not both give of the fruits of your labor? Should not both of you have been blessed?”

Cain, clad only in a loincloth of animal skin, moved to the next row.

The demon followed. “Why should the fat of the lamb be more pleasing than your husks of corn?”

Cain ripped out the next clump of weeds and flung it aside. His muscles glistened with sweat.

“If you had sacrificed to me,” the demon said, “I would have looked on it with favor.”

“Go away!” Cain said. “All our misery is because of you.”

The demon, short and squat with eyes of darkest black, spread his hands wide. “Your god cursed you, not I. He cursed your mother and father with temptations they could not bear and then cast them out.”

Cain grasped a rock and used its sharp point to tear another clump of weeds out of the stony ground.

The demon bent close. “Was it not your god who caused you to spill your brother’s blood?”

Once again, Cain saw his brother’s smile upon receiving the blessing and felt anew the sting of his own rejection. Rage surged through him. “Go away!”

“Answer me this and I will leave you alone,” the demon said, a smug smile upon his lips. “Why doesn’t your god want you to live forever?”

Cain stopped his work. Live forever? He wiped the sweat from his brow. “Only God and the angels live forever. Man returns to the dust he is made of.”

“Did not your parents tell you of the Tree of Life?”

Cain stared into the demon’s black eyes. “I know of only one tree, that which my mother and father did partake of. The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. I was told of it but once, upon becoming a man, and was forbidden to ask of it again or to go near the Garden.”

“Did you obey?”

“I have not asked of it again.”

A bemused look came over the demon’s face. “But did you obey?”

Cain did not respond.

“You could no more stay away from the Garden than could your parents resist the fruit. Whatever is forbidden becomes beguiling. Your god loves to tempt you, is it not so?”

Cain could not disagree.

“Your mother and father almost became gods themselves, knowing good and evil, needing only the fruit of the Tree of Life to live forever. But they feared your god and hid from him. He cast them out and set Elasiri, the flaming sword, and cherubim to guard the entrance so he could maintain dominion over them.” The demon paused. “They could have been gods.”

Cain looked at all he had toiled over and all that remained. He could have been the son of gods? A god himself, eating the fruits of the Garden instead of laboring in the stony fields from earliest light until the fall of darkness?

“You can still be a god,” the demon said.

“How is that so?” Cain asked. “I am the lowliest of men, the murderer of my brother.”

“Sacrifice to me the fruits of your labor and reject the god of your father as he rejected your sacrifice. Then I will provide you a way into the Garden. You shall feast from the Tree of Life and never die. You shall never want. You shall be a god.”

Cain could not speak. How could this be? After a time, he asked, “But what of the cherubim and the sword of fire?”

“I will provide a way.” The demon drew close, smelling of fire. “Would you not be a god?”

Jula had feared Cain even when he was a boy, quick to anger, the bitter seeds sown of the hard man he would become. Now heavy with their second child, she feared him still.

Flames from the torches flickered, casting shadows on the moss-covered walls of the cave. It was long past nightfall. Where was Cain? Was his blood now spilled in the fields? Could a wild animal have torn him asunder? She felt the roundness of her belly and wondered what would become of them.

Jula awoke with a start when Cain appeared in the mouth of the cave, smelling of fire and smoke. She sprang to her feet. How much time had passed? Where had he been? She held her tongue.

“Get Enoch,” he said, a triumphant look upon his face.

Jula felt a pang of fear. What did Cain want with the boy? She went for him, navigating the labyrinth to the place where he lay sleeping upon a bed of straw. She shook him awake. “Your father,” she whispered.

Enoch rubbed his eyes. He looked so much like Cain had at this age, slight but with the promise of a strength that would come in years. Though only seven, he could already work the fields almost as well as she. Yet he shared none of his father’s rage, accepting their hardships without a word of complaint.

When they returned to the cave mouth, she cried out. Behind Cain stood a demon, short and squat, hiding something behind its back. An overpowering sense of evil flooded the place, making her feel unclean. Its stench filled her nostrils. Foul echoes rang in her ears.

She shivered. “The demon . . . he is not welcome here. This house serves the Lord.”

Cain’s jaw hardened. Anger flashed in his eyes. “From this day forward, we will serve my father’s god no more.”

Jula couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. Turn their backs on the Lord God Almighty? It was unthinkable.

“He has cursed us all. He cursed the ground where we toil.” Cain looked upon Enoch. “Is not the ground cursed, my son?”

Enoch, who had trembled as soon as they came upon the demon, nodded, trembling no more. “Yes, Father, it is cursed.”

Cain turned to Jula. “He has cursed you with the agony of childbirth—”

“An agony I count a blessing,” Jula said.

“Silence!” Anger filled Cain’s face. “My father’s god cursed my offering while he blessed my brother’s. My father’s god caused me to spill my brother’s blood and take on the enmity of my mother and father. Why should I offer sacrifices to one who has cursed us so?”

“But-but it is he who made us in his image.”

“Is this mark in his image?” Cain pulled aside his hair to show the bloodred scar placed upon his forehead after he killed Abel. It was a mark to prevent vengeance taken upon him, but whenever he touched its rough surface or saw it as he gazed into a pool of water, it reminded him that God had set him apart from all others. “It is my father’s god who has cursed us and so I have cursed him. My house and all those in it curse him. This house will serve another. Enmity shall be between this house and our father’s god.”

Jula pulled Enoch close. She fought for words but found none.

“We shall be like gods ourselves,” Cain roared. “We shall live forever and never want.”

Jula looked to the demon. Its foul eyes gleamed. “What have you done?”

Cain stepped closer to Jula, his face flushed. “I have made a sacrifice.”

“But . . . we have no lambs.”

“I have made a sacrifice to one who will honor the fruits of our labors. To one who will not curse those who toil in the fields. To one who will grant us life eternal and the fruits of the Garden. To one who will make us like gods.”

“Father?” Enoch asked. “How shall we be like gods?”

Shuddering, Jula pulled the boy back to her even as she felt him slipping away.

“In the Garden there stands the Tree of Life,” Cain said. “As soon as we partake of it, we shall live forever. Then we shall be gods ourselves.”

Jula’s heart sank. Her head felt light. She tried to steady herself.

“What about the flaming sword that guards the entrance?” Enoch asked.

Cain’s jaw dropped. He strode forward and grasped Enoch by the shoulder. “How do you know of it?”

Enoch shrank back. “I saw it once in the distance and asked Mother of All.” Cain stiffened at the name for his own mother, but Enoch continued. “Mother of All told me I should never go near it.”

“She was right!” Jula said. “Cain, you must not do this. We shall surely die.”

“We shall never die!” Cain roared, clenching a fist and shaking it.

“Father?” Enoch asked. “What does the fruit of the tree taste like?”

The demon stepped forward, still hiding something behind his back. “It will taste like the honey of never toiling in the fields again. It will drink like the wine of never again wanting food nor drink. You will feast at the table of eternal life. You shall be gods!”

Enoch whirled around to face Jula, a huge smile upon his face. “I want to be a god.”

“Do not listen to the demon, my son,” Jula said. “We shall all die at the hands of the flaming sword.”

“You shall not surely die,” said the demon. “I will provide.”

From behind his back he produced a bejeweled sword and slid it from its scabbard. The blade glowed, its light filling the cave.

Jula felt her breath taken away. Enoch gasped.

The blade whooshed through the air, showering brilliant light as it went.

“The god who cursed you,” the demon said, “owns not every sword. With this blade, you shall enter the Garden.”

For a long time, no one spoke. Only the crackle of a torch’s flame broke the breathless silence.

Cain reached his hand toward the sword, his face enraptured, his bare chest heaving.

“Wait.” The demon pointed the blade at Cain’s head, touched the tip against a lock of hair, and flicked his wrist. The hairs wafted down to the cave floor. “Does all your house bow down to me?”

“No!” Jula cried. “We must not.”

Cain grasped her arm, his fingers digging hard into her flesh. “It is not for you to say. I speak for this house.”

“Do what you will with your own life,” she said, letting the words rush out before fear overtook her. “But I will not let you take my son.”

Cain narrowed his eyes. “Then your blood will join Abel’s in the field.”

Jula bowed her head. She shook, though with fear or rage she knew not.

“Does all your house bow down to me?” the demon asked.

Cain bent a knee. Enoch followed.

“All your house?” the demon asked.

Slowly, Jula lowered her knee to the ground, feeling all that had been her life crashing down about her.

“Yes,” the demon said with the hiss of a serpent.

He touched the sword upon Cain’s right shoulder, his left shoulder, and then upon the mark on his forehead.

The demon returned the blade to its scabbard and handed it to Cain. “Enter the Garden and be one with the gods.”

Their journey over, the three stood in dusk’s fading light before the flaming sword. It cut a swath back and forth at the Garden’s entrance, covering the width of about ten cave mouths in the blink of an eye. Elasiri . Its brilliance illuminated the thick interweaving vines that formed a high, impenetrable curving wall that extended to the horizon. Behind it, a great tree towered.

How would they ever get past it? Jula’s fear grew with every fiery whoosh across the entrance. But what scared her even more was the look upon Cain’s face. He stared at the great tree that towered behind the entrance, his raw hunger unmasked. She and Enoch could still run from the flaming sword, but it was too late for them to escape Cain’s consuming desire.

He moved forward, his eyes enraptured, as if forgetting that she and Enoch were even there. He grasped the hilt of his sword and drew it from its scabbard. It glowed, though with a light far dimmer than Elasiri’s fire.

When Enoch took one step to follow Cain, Jula reached out and grabbed his arm. “No! Come with me, my son.”

But with a look of sadness, he shook his head and shrugged her off.

Tears streamed down Jula’s face. She felt as though Elasiri had already pierced her chest, its flames devouring all. The boy would follow his father even if to his own death. She could not bear it.

Jula lingered behind and then, crying out, ran to join them. She had gotten to within ten strides when three angels appeared, their wings beating, filling the air with righteousness.

Cain cowered before them.

Enoch ran back to her. Together, she and the boy fell prostrate, her arm wrapped around his shoulder.

The angels held their arms out wide. “Go away or you will surely die,” the one in the middle said. “You are sons of man. You cannot enter the Garden.”

Cain dropped to one knee for a moment but then rose to his feet again, brandishing his glowing sword. “We worship your god no more. We have come to claim that which is ours. The fruit of this garden is my birthright. Leave us alone or it is you who will surely die.”

The angel turned to Jula. “Why have you forsaken the god of your father?”

Jula bowed her head. “I have obeyed the husband he gave me.”

The angel pointed to her. “You must obey the one true God.”

“Speak not to the woman!” Cain said.

“The angel is right,” Jula said. “Cain, let us turn back now. Let us serve the one true God. End this madness. Whatever you ask, I will do it. I will bow to your every command. If I have ever found favor in your eye, grant me this wish. If you care not to spare my life, spare the boy’s. I beg of you.”

“We will not be cowards,” Cain said, his face clouded with rage. “We will claim our birthright. We will taste the nectar of the tree and be gods ourselves!”

Jula’s hands shook as she clasped them together and begged. “Do as you must, but let me take the boy and leave this place.”

Cain pointed his glowing sword at Jula. He grasped Enoch by the arm. “Run and hide if you will, but we shall eat of the fruit.”

“You shall both die.”

“We shall never die!”

“Do not do this, I beg of you.”

Cain whirled and leaped at the angels. He drew the gleaming sword across one angel’s wing, slicing it off. He drove the blade into another’s chest.

The angel staggered. One of its beating wings fell limp, but from its mouth came the words, “You cannot kill us like you killed your brother. Go away, Cain, before the Lord God Almighty hears of your wickedness.”

Cain slashed the sword across the angel’s throat and severed its head.

As the angels turned and fled, Cain grasped the head and held it aloft. “Victory is ours!” He grabbed Enoch by the hand and ran toward the entrance.

Jula could not move. She remained prostrate on the ground. Where could she go? The god of her father would surely reject her now that Cain had attacked his angels. She had lost her husband first and then her son. Nothing else remained except perhaps the child within her. But how would she and a baby survive? She tried to muster the strength to get to her feet, her legs feeling heavier than ever, but failed, falling to her knees.

Elasiri flashed back and forth. In its fiery light, Jula saw the terror upon Enoch’s face and cried out. “My son!” She staggered to her feet.

Holding the angel’s head as if a shield, Cain thrust his sword into Elasiri’s path. The two blades clashed with a roar like thunder.

Cain dropped to one knee, screaming out in pain. Elasiri’s fire dimmed for the blink of an eye, then blazed back to life.

He stepped back, pointed the blade at Elasiri, and thrust again. The two great swords crashed together. Once again, he screamed.

But Elasiri’s flame dimmed and when Cain thrust the angel’s head into its waning flames, they darkened and went out.

Cain moved to dart through the opening, but Elasiri roared back to life.

Cain grasped Enoch’s arm.

Eyes wide, Jula ran.

The boy resisted, but Cain was too strong.

She wouldn’t get there in time. Jula could see it now.

Cain dragged Enoch close to the roaring flame.

“Murderer!” Jula cried out. They both turned to look at her. “Your own son!”

She drew to within fifteen strides . . .

Enoch fought to get away.

Ten strides . . .

Cain shoved the boy aside.

Five strides . . .

Cain drove his sword deep into her chest. The blade ran through her and out her back.

Jula fell to her knees, agony shooting through her body. Her head rocked back. Blood gushed from her mouth.

What will become of Enoch without me? His father will—

With both hands, Cain yanked her to her feet and flung her into Elasiri’s path.

The heat of its flame hit her first, then its sharp edge sliced her in two. The fire raced over her, darkening as it devoured.

Elasiri flickered out, the stench of Jula’s cooking flesh filling the air.

Cain sprang for the opening, the Tree of Life and immortality now in his grasp. A small hand grabbed his arm, holding him for only an instant before he broke free.

He would taste the nectar of the tree. He would seize what his father had been too craven to claim. He would be a god. Immortal. He would never again want. The demon had been right. The sword had shown him the way. He felt like a god already.

Cain had almost cleared the entrance when Elasiri sliced through the ankle of his trailing foot and lopped it off.

Flames shot up his calf, cooking his flesh. Cain didn’t care. He ran for the Tree of Life, hobbling on the stump with every other stride, ignoring the searing pain. The fruit of eternal life beckoned.

The fire climbed to his knee and up his thigh. Pain wracked his body, but he would not stop.

Not this close to becoming a god.

The Tree of Life beckoned.

He collapsed into a rolling ball of fire. Screaming, he reached one flaming arm out after another, dragging himself closer and closer to the tree.

Then all about him was nothing but fire. Unable to move, Cain watched flames race to the tree he could not reach.

Flames rose up its trunk, devouring as they went. They reached the lower limbs, spreading out to branches heavy with fruit.

The fire consumed the fruit last of all.

Stepping from the distant shadows, the demon watched the Garden burn. He made no effort to keep the smile from his face.

“You killed my mother and father!”

The demon tore his eyes away from the soaring flames and looked at the boy silhouetted against a backdrop of orange and night. “Did I?”

The boy shook with rage. “We bowed down to you and you repaid us in blood.”

“Did I?” the demon asked. “Your mother died to save you. Her blood is not on my hands. Is it not upon yours?”

The boy fell silent for a time. “You killed my father.”

“Did I?” the demon asked. “Did not your father defeat the angels with the sword I provided? Did he not learn how to defeat Elasiri? Was it not you who slowed your father just as he was about to pass through the entrance?” The demon crossed his arms. “Tell me then, who killed your father?”

The boy faltered.

“He would have eaten of the Tree of Life,” the demon said. “He would have been a god. If not for you.”

The wide-eyed boy’s lip trembled.

“Go live with your grandfather Adam and the Mother of All,” the demon said. “They will take you in. When you become a man, return to the caves of your father. You can make a great city there. I will be waiting.”

The boy clenched his fists. “I curse you! I will never listen to your lies. I will make a great city, one which gives birth to a world of men. My descendants will spread without number across all the land and become a great people.”

“Yes, they will,” the demon said, smiling. “I will be waiting.”

The Devil’s Blade

Gail Selinger

Gail Selinger is a writer, college lecturer, and teacher of pirate lore. Active in the Port Royal Privateer re-enactment workshops, she has written The Complete Idiots Guide to Pirates, several pirate-themed romance novels, as well as serious articles for publications for pirate enthusiasts.

1717, off the coast of St. Vincent Island, the Caribbean

The large French guineaman bore down on them from the east, slicing through the gray curtain of morning mist floating above the white-capped waves.

Christopher Taylor, captain of the merchant ship Great Allen, caught the first glimpse of her on a wave’s upswing. He called up to the crow’s nest. “Can you make out her colors?”

Jock strained to see the smallest details through his looking glass, trying to focus through the mist on the flag that flew high on her mainmast.

“Lord, help us. ’Tis black!”

Captain Taylor turned to his first mate. “Mr. Rhys, prepare for battle.”

“Cap’n.” Jock yelled down to the quarterdeck, “ ’Tis Blackbeard’s colors.”

Mr. Rhys turned to his superior. “Captain, tales say Blackbeard spares those who don’t cross him. Belay the orders, please. While we still can.”

“Mr. Rhys, I’ll not sacrifice my profits to a mere pirate. We’re heavily armed. Prepare the guns.”

The sound was deafening and the black smoke of gunpowder filled the air.

Ten- and twenty-five-pound cannonballs flew between both ships, snapping wooden masts and burning sails. Minutes stretched on as the men of the Great Allen cleared away fallen tackle and line, moved their wounded and dead from the deck, and reloaded their guns. Despite the captain’s words, the men were fighting for their very lives, not someone’s profits.

Blackbeard maneuvered the Queen Anne’s Revenge ever closer to his prey. He seemed fearless—for his ship and for his own life and the lives of his men. Ignoring the report of cannon fire or damage to his own ship or men, he paced along the railings, impatient for the moment to board.

The infamous pirate was the first over the gunwale of the Great Allen, firing both his flintlocks, providing cover for his men’s assault behind him.

Slipping his spent pistols back into their criss crossed holsters on the baldric across his chest, Blackbeard unsheathed his cutlass. Men backed up in fear—the pirate’s reputation with a blade was formidable.

He expertly hacked and slashed at the sailors in his path until a wide circumference opened around him. Then he pressed his advantage. All too soon, he was face to face with the captain of the Great Allen.

Christopher Taylor stared in disbelief at the man—or was it monster?—facing him. Over six feet three inches tall, broad in shoulder, and dressed in black from knee-high boots to broad-brimmed hat, the pirate Blackbeard stood before him. Taylor found the reality of the pirate even more frightening than he had imagined him in his first childhood nightmares.

Bristled and bushy black eyebrows framed dark, deep-set eyes. The pirate’s creased brown skin, leathered by years of ocean water and uncompromising sun, gave him an uncivilized countenance. Coarse, coal black hair, long and ungroomed, surrounded Blackbeard’s face in a wild mockery of a halo. The mass of hair extended to the outer rim of the pirate’s ears and down his chest into a braided beard. The pirate had incongruously dressed his beard into six colorfully rib-boned pigtails.

To Taylor’s horror, he saw suffocating smoke curling from this devil’s pigtails around his face. Wordlessly he dropped his saber onto the deck and fell to his knees.

He’d lost the fight, his cargo, and possibly his life. His only hope was for mercy—and he’d never seen a more merciless figure than the towering pirate before him.

“You give orders to dock now and no others will die.”

Taylor complied and waited for the edge of a cutlass to end his days.

Blackbeard smirked at Taylor. He raised the sword to wipe it clean. To his rage, he discovered that the blade was broken, the remaining steel sawed off in jagged breaks. The bloodied hand guard looked like a child’s toy in his large hand. Disgusted, Blackbeard threw the broken weapon onto the deck and searched through the chaos behind him for his first mate.

“Mr. Hands! Find me a better bloody fine sword maker!”

Taylor, astonished, lived to see the next sunset.

For the first time in what seemed to him like hours, he breathed again.

The bell on the door of the sword maker’s shop announced a customer. Mr. Runlon looked up to see a huge silhouette of a man blocking the sun in the open doorway. As this man-mountain stepped farther into the store, Mr. Runlon realized who he was dealing with.

“Captain Blackbeard, sir. Welcome back to my humble establishment. Can I offer you some Madeira?” The sword maker motioned to a table and chairs set to the side of the shop, adorned with a lace cloth and holding a crystal decanter and matching glasses.

Blackbeard crossed the shop in two strides. Flipping the ends of his red silk greatcoat aside, he eased himself onto a delicate chair. Stretching out his long legs, he crossed his ankles, almost hooking together the huge square polished buckles of his low-heeled shoes. The silver filigreed butt of his flintlock protruded from the wide black leather belt that bound his gaudy yellow britches to his wide girth.

“Your special order is ready, as promised,” Mr. Runlon said as he poured dark liquor into a crystal glass for his terrifying patron. Blackbeard downed the drink in one gulp, then held out the empty glass for more. Runlon refilled it immediately.

“As I had mentioned when you first ordered your cutlass, I am honored that the great Blackbeard chose my humble shop for his work.”

Blackbeard said nothing.

The sword maker went on. “This will be an expensive proposition, by all accounts.”

More silence greeted these comments.

“I do require payment before delivery. Ten pounds sterling, as agreed upon.”

“And I require to see my sword.”

“Yes, yes, of course. Silly me, what was I thinking? Please come this way.” Mr. Runlon motioned in the direction of a closed door at the far end of the shop.

The clang of hammer on red-hot steel rang out long before they stepped across the rear threshold of the elegant shop and into the smithy.

Using a clean cloth to avoid marring the bright finish, Runlon removed a cutlass off a stand of completed swords. Nestling the weapon in the cloth, he presented the cutlass tenderly to the famous pirate like a newborn babe.

“Forged to your exact specifications. An impressive forty-one inch blade, sir. My own son, quite robust himself, if I might venture, had to test the balance using both hands. At a forty-five inch length from tip to grip, this is the largest sword we have ever been commissioned to make.”

Blackbeard reached for the sword. The hand guard encased his large, beefy fist with room to spare. He swung the weapon over his head in a series of swift arcs. Mr. Runlon ducked instinctively. The air hissed in protest as the curved blade sliced relentlessly through the heat rising from the blazing forge.

The brass hand guard flashed brightly when struck with shafts of sunlight from the gaps in the wooden walls. The gleam was almost blinding.

Blackbeard squinted at it.

“We just finished burnishing the hand guard.”

“Did we, now?” Blackbeard turned his head and stared at the visibly shaking blacksmith before returning his attention to his cutlass.

“The grip is fashioned from polished black onyx. I believed it would be appropriate for your work. I even took the liberty of making the blade black. The metal coating will serve the double purpose of saving it from corrosion.”

“You did now, did you?” Blackbeard glanced again at the smithy and winked. Flustered, even the blacksmith stopped honing the steel blank on the anvil. The men of the shop stared back at the pirate and awaited their fate.

Blackbeard smiled.

“The completed price for the cutlass is ten pounds, with payment due now, if you please. If you wish to purchase a custom leather scabbard, it would of course need to be specially fashioned at an additional cost of one pound.”

Ignoring the man’s prattle, Blackbeard flipped the cutlass from hand to hand. He nodded with approval at its fine balance. Catching it in his right hand, Blackbeard slid his left thumb and forefinger along the tang of the blade just above the hand guard. Letting go of the hand grip, he watched as the cutlass swayed slightly, then stilled, horizontal to the floor.

Perfect.

“Good sweet spot.” He threw the sword into the air and caught it with ease. “How sharp?”

Mr. Runlon motioned toward the right corner of the workshop near the forge. Punctured hay bales hung from the rafters, next to a scarred, juice-stained wooden table with whole and sliced melons scattered upon it. The sword-maker liked to test his blades.

“Feel free to test it.”

Blackbeard walked past Mr. Runlon toward the bales. A heartbeat from passing him, Blackbeard turned, raised his cutlass, and slashed downward.

The sword sliced Runlon’s right hand clean off.

“Sharp enough.” Blackbeard’s voice was easily distinguished, even over the screams of the shopkeeper and the blacksmith.

Blackbeard caught Runlon by the lapel before he crumpled to the ground. He pulled the unlucky shopkeeper upward to wipe his blade on the man’s coat. Then, as if he were a rag doll, Blackbeard dropped him to the ground and strode toward the door, still clutching the sword.

“Blackbeard!” Runlon gasped even as shock began to claim him. “May you and your blade be cursed and know no peace ever!”

“Won’t need a scabbard,” Blackbeard said. He threw ten coins on the bloody floor. “Nice doing business with ye.”

Runlon collapsed to the ground, sobbing.

“Captain Blackbeard, two sloops are sailing into the inlet.”

“Can you see their colors?”

“No, sir. None flying. They just dropped a rowboat in the water.”

“Fire on them. We know them not,” Blackbeard ordered. “Cut the anchor cable!”

“Are we running?” Thomas Miller, his quartermaster, asked in disbelief.

With a swift backhand Blackbeard knocked Miller to the deck, grabbed the ship’s wheel, and maneuvered through the familiar waters and shoals of Ocracoke Inlet.

“I haven’t run in all these many years of pirating. I’ll not start now.”

Blackbeard tacked his new ship the Adventure round as two naval sloops bore down upon him in pursuit, raising the Union Jack high upon their masts. As the sloops closed within shouting distance of the pirates, they began a constant barrage of musket fire.

“Damnation seize my soul, if I give you quarter or take any from you!” yelled Blackbeard over to the pursuing ships.

“I expect no quarter from you, nor shall I give any,” Lieutenant Robert Maynard shouted back from the lead naval vessel.

“Prepare the eight portside guns for a broadside,” ordered Blackbeard.

The deadly blast from the guns disabled the sloop Ranger. With only one naval ship in pursuit, the pirate’s victory shouts turned to disbelief as Maynard’s ship headed straight for the Adventure.

“Fire at will,” Blackbeard commanded his gun crew.

The naval sloop drifted near enough for the pirates to spot only the helmsman at the wheel and a lone officer, Lieutenant Robert Maynard, standing.

Triumphantly, Blackbeard rallied his men to board the crippled ship. “They’re all knocked on the head but a few. We board and cut them to pieces!”

With grappling hooks and boarding pikes they pulled alongside their prey. As was his habit, Blackbeard jumped aboard first, his men close behind.

Lieutenant Maynard shouted orders. The hatch lids flew open and thirty sailors rushed up from below, firing as they each hit the deck.

Blackbeard bellowed in rage, then jumped into the melee swinging his great cutlass. Attacking anyone within arm’s length, Blackbeard hacked through bodies, tossing the dead and wounded aside, pressing forward toward a face-off with Maynard.

As he closed with his enemy, the pirate drew a flintlock from his baldric. Maynard drew his. They fired at each other. Unbelievably, Blackbeard missed his target. His aim was disturbed as a group of sailors rushed by him.

Maynard did not waste the opportunity. His shot penetrated deep into the pirate’s chest. Blackbeard momentarily swayed on his feet from the impact. Unbelievably, for he should have been dead instantly, he recovered his footing and raised his cutlass. He lashed out at the sailors crowding in on him, and headed straight for Maynard.

Shocked, Robert Maynard drew his sword. He believed he was ready to hold his ground.

Blackbeard charged the naval officer even as another bullet ripped through his body. It didn’t even slow him down.

Maynard blocked the pirate’s charge with his saber. Blackbeard’s down thrust cleaved Maynard’s sword blade off at the hilt. Stunned, Maynard hurled the hilt at the pirate.

It was like swiping at an elephant.

The stunned lieutenant stepped backward and drew his second flintlock. He fired point blank.

The bullet flew true into the pirate’s heart.

But Blackbeard kept advancing, slicing the air with quick, vicious flicks of his cutlass.

Maynard spied a discarded rapier on the deck. He dove for the weapon, rolled onto his back, and stood, rapier en guard. It was a tiny piece of steel, already trembling before the pirate’s massive blade.

Maynard stood ready to meet his fate. Blackbeard advanced until the pirate was directly above Maynard. The stench of sweat and blood and hellish smoke from the fuses lit in his beard was almost overwhelming.

Why wasn’t he dead? The bloody pirate ought to be dead!

But Blackbeard raised his sword, the cutlass poised overhead, ready to deliver a deathblow.

Then he crumpled to the deck.

His crew had attacked Blackbeard from the rear with a boarding pike to the neck.

As if to be sure of the matter, the attacking sailor withdrew the pike and swiftly struck Blackbeard once again in the back of the head.

But it didn’t kill him.

Incredibly, he rose to his feet once again.

Blood spurted from his neck wound. Blackbeard staggered away from Maynard to face another ring of armed sailors. They closed in for the kill, slashing at his great hulk with swords and pikes and anything else they could lay their hands on.

Still hacking at them with his bloodied cutlass, Blackbeard staggered away, pulling the men with him. Even then, he didn’t go down. He drew another loaded flintlock from his baldric, and taking aim, he stiffened for an instant, then toppled face down.

Robert Maynard rushed over to the now still pirate. Crouching he was amazed to find five gaping gunshot wounds and twenty sword punctures riddled the body.

“Secure the pirates and their ship. We’ll take them back as our prize, and a fine prize it will be.”

“What about him, sir?” The sailor kicked Blackbeard’s corpse. “He’ll smell right bad before we get back to Virginia.”

“We don’t need all of it. We’ll take his head. Proof of our deeds for the hundred pound sterling reward. Get James the carpenter to do the deed.”

And so it was that James stood at the side of the corpse and struck downward with a borrowed sword. It barely sliced through skin and muscle. The pirate’s corpse was proving nearly as tough to deal with as the live pirate.

“Try this.” Maynard kicked Blackbeard’s cutlass to the carpenter. Using both hands to hold the mighty cutlass, James was at last able to sever the great pirate’s head from his body in one swift motion.

“How fitting,” Robert Maynard remarked. “Be headed by his own blade. Have the body dumped overboard, then store his cutlass in my quarters.”

That night James rolled fitfully in his hammock, visions of unknown battles flashing in his dreams, waking him in sweat-soaked terror. By day his thoughts dwelled solely on his desire to once again hold the mighty sword stored in Maynard’s quarters.

James fought weeks of mental anguish, focusing hard on his shipboard duties as a diversion from the bloody thoughts seething in his brain.

When the naval vessel sailed up the Hampton River in Virginia it was greeted with loud cheers and much pomp and ceremony. The news of the great pirate’s death and the capture of his crew and ship had preceded them.

James realized his moment had come.

With all the commotion and attention focused on Robert Maynard and the removal of Blackbeard’s head from the bowsprit, James seized his chance. Sneaking into Maynard’s quarters, he took Blackbeard’s cutlass and wrapped it in a piece of worn, ripped sailcloth. Combining the bundle with his other possessions, he left the ship in the general chaos of the landing and headed straight for his favorite inn.

They knew him there. Or so they thought.

“James, ye’re drinking like a man possessed this night.”

“Leave him be,” his friend Henry said. “Don’t you know he’s celebrating? This here lad was the one who cut that Blackbeard’s head clean off with one stroke.”

James rose from the table, his hands visibly shaking. “I’m off. It’s sleep I need.”

He was wrong.

The ship rocked against the crashing waves. The deck was littered with bodies and fallen tackle. James dove for the weapon and rolled onto his back. Blackbeard hovered above him, kicking the smoking flintlock from his hand. His great cutlass raised above his head, he swung down for the killing blow.

James screamed.

“Jamie, lad, roust up.” Henry banged on the door harder. “You can’t be that thick-headed from drink.”

When he heard no sound from the room, Henry walked in, curious as to what he’d find. James lay naked, entangled in the bed sheets, his skin gray in death. His face was frozen in an expression of ultimate terror. His eyes were wide open, his mouth gaping, a thin trickle of dried blood stuck to his chin.

Shocked, Henry crossed himself. Gathering up James’ things, he backed out of the room. Henry ran as fast as he could to the nearest alley. As he ran, the bundle became unmanageable. He lost his grip on his friend’s possessions. The huge cutlass slipped from the folded sailcloth and struck his toes.

“Damn!” Hopping on his uninjured foot, he gave vent to more than a few choice words.

But then Henry bent to retrieve the sword. Having to lift it with both hands, he immediately realized what he now held.

Owned! a dark portion of his mind insisted. He’d never known he had that dark a place in his soul before.

Barely able to swing the heavy blade in front of him, Henry knew he couldn’t use the cutlass, but he knew who’d be mightily interested.

The sword, he thought, could be the making of him!

Chester spotted Henry at the back corner of the noisy grog shop. “What’s this here all about?”

“How much do your shows bring in?” Henry asked.

“A few shillings a night.”

“And how much would it be worth if you had the great Blackbeard’s cutlass for a show?” Henry asked.

“If it were real? A king’s fortune.” Chester said.

“I’ve got it, and it’s real, all right. Cost you ten pounds sterling and cheap I say.”

“That’s a fortune. If you are lying to me. . . . ” Chester warned.

“You know I’ve always dealt straight with you. Tonight, my room.”

Henry sat with a bottle of rum waiting. He unwrapped the sailcloth, picking up the cutlass and admiring it. Then, placing it back in its wrapping and hiding place, Henry swigged another drink. His foot tapped nervously against the floor. His head felt near to exploding, despite his drowsiness from too much drink. Then his eyes shut and the visions began.

The ship rocked against the crashing waves. The deck was littered with bodies and fallen tackle. Henry dove for the weapon and rolled onto his back. Blackbeard hovered above him, kicking the flintlock from his hand. His great cutlass raised above his head, he swung down for the killing blow. Henry screamed.

Chester knocked quietly on Henry’s door. Getting no response, he just entered. Henry was slumped in his chair.

Henry’s eyes were wide open, his face frozen in terror. His mouth gaped with a thin trickle of dried blood stuck to his chin. His skin was gray in death.

Satisfied he was alone, Chester eased onto the opposite chair.

“Who did you in, friend?” Chester poured himself a drink, noticing his hand was not as steady as he’d like.

After a few shots of rum Chester searched the room. He soon found the cutlass in its worn sailcloth wrapping under the straw mattress.

Yes, his friend was dead. But things were not all bad. He had just saved ten pounds. He could mount a play on the demise of Blackbeard, the devil pirate. With a shimmering piece of history in his hands to make a profit from.

Unable to contain himself, he unwrapped his prize. The blade was so heavy that he had to heft the cutlass with both hands, and even then Chester barely kept the point from hitting the wooden floor.

“I’ll have to wait a bit, maybe change my address, seeing the whole blooming city is looking for this beauty. Need a strong actor, too. I’ll have to watch him carefully lest he be tempted to steal my prop.”

He gingerly rewrapped his prize, gave a final salute to his dead friend, and walked back down to the street. An odd, possessive feeling spread from the sword to his fingers to his spine.

Mine . . .

But, though he knew it not, not for long.

A Hollywood back lot, 2009

“Hustle, hustle!” shouted Williams the prop master. “We’ve two hundred extras coming for swords.”

His assistant dug through trunks of old weapons, some of which hadn’t seen the light of day since talking films were invented.

“Sir, look. This one’s ginormous. The blade’s black, all bunged and scratched to shit. Who could lift this thing?” The assistant unwrapped the sword from the musty old piece of cloth to show it to his boss. “I can’t even hold it in both arms.”

“Hand it to Smith. It’s a great villain’s sword. He was some kinda bodybuilder back in the day before he turned stunt man. Smith!” Williams called out. “Come get this.”

Resplendent in full pirate regalia, York Smith walked over. He snatched the cutlass from its wrapping. Gripping it one handed, he flicked the blade through the air.

“Finally, a sword just my size.” Smiling, he walked back to the movie set, a strange electric charge spreading up his hand.

Never His Sword

Terry Hayman

Terry Hayman’s a former Toronto lawyer, actor, and writer of corporate videos who now lives much more happily in North Vancouver, British Columbia, with his wife, kids, lazy cat, and hyper dog. His stories have appeared in a wide range of magazines such as Woman’s World, Dreams of Decadence, Aeon, Grain, and Boys’ Life and anthologies such as Mota 3: Courage and DAW’s own Mystery Date and Hags, Sirens & Other Bad Girls of Fantasy.

Each time I hear the story it becomes briefer, until there is only a happy courtier looking up to see a sword suspended over his neck, held there by a single horse hair. And the import of the sword is all. We men know it is doom, fortuna, the price of power, the fragility of happiness.

But it was the neck below the sword, the smooth, perfumed neck of this man-boy I loved, that truly meant . . .

Ah, it meant everything.

Smell the night air of Syracuse with me, the tang of the ocean swirling even up through the palace of Dionysius the Younger, around his candlelit halls, his stone courtyards, and the northern wing of the servants’ quarters, the stables beside.

Against the inside stable wall, in rutting heat and manly sweat, I pressed the man-boy Damocles. My fingers twisted through his locks, my mouth pressed hard and demanding over his. I tasted the wine of our revelry, the pear he had—

A noise! I drew back.

“Philon?” my lover gasped.

I hushed him with a finger over his lips, but the horses in the stalls around us were startled. They stamped their feet so that Damocles opened his mouth to calm them. Fool! I changed my finger to a hand clamped tight.

“Sst! Listen!”

There, above the rustling of the horses, footsteps echoed along the outside terrace of the servants’ quarters, coming closer. They would pass right by us. Then the sound of a tink and rattle as something small hit the stone floor and rolled. Followed by a deep woman’s voice, aching with pain and worry. “With these I ransom me and mine!”

Then more steps, more small things thrown, and a dark-cloaked shape that looked more bird than human shuffled past the stable entrance, not a body’s length distant from where I held Damocles. Again she chanted, like something from the underworld itself, “With these I ransom me and mine!”

I felt Damocles squeeze his lips tight together as if he were about to giggle and turned all my fury on him to keep him quiet. And inwardly I raged against myself, for it was this very mirth of the boy, his quick wit, his endless bravado that made me love him, fool that I was. For I feared even then that his mouth would one day end him and I would be inconsolable.

The dark-cloaked woman reached the end of the terrace and turned into the courtyard. The sound of rattling and chanting grew faint. I released my grip and shook Damocles hard.

“Tell me the joke!”

Damocles took a great whoop of breath. “It’s May. The Festival of Lemuria. She’s asking evil spirits to leave her family alone.”

“That’s a Roman festival. Not ours.”

“But we have a Roman here in Syracuse, do we not?”

“Mariana!”

“Yes. Our sweet tyrant’s wife, wed to bring us peace. And any moment now we’ll hear the gong. The imprecation that ancient ghosts depart!”

“And Dionysius, does he—”

“Hold the gong?” Damocles smiled slyly and slipped his hand down between my legs, rubbing me through my short tunic there until I could not but respond. “Perhaps not with her. Perhaps not her gong, should she have one.”

I groaned at my weakness and jealousy as I drove my own trembling hands in through the upper folds of Damocles’s robes to feel his smooth chest, his heartbeat that was life itself.

“Whose gong is our grand tyrant ringing these days then?” I said. “Alexio’s? Fotis’? Or is it maybe yours? Is that where you’ve been so many nights lately? Not with the rest of us adsentatores. Nowhere to be found. Yet in the morning, there you are.”

Damocles again gave me his sly smile. “Do you begrudge me my schemes, then? My advancement? Is that not our lot in life, to live by flattery?”

“To use your tongue for words, yes.”

“Though the tongue can do much more?”

A loud crack behind me made me spin toward the stable door. Silhouetted in the flickering light from the palace stood the dark-cloaked woman with the hood thrown back from her hair. Mariana indeed. She had heard us after all, maybe even in our foolery about her religion. In the shadowed blackness around her face, I could see the fury.

She raised her hand to show what she’d used to make the loud cracking sound. A sword. A Roman sword, long and straight as the Greeks’, as our own, with less adornment on the hilt but a much finer point, as if sharpened with obsession. A sword meant not for show. Only to kill.

She stepped farther into the stable and I saw now her eyes were only on Damocles, as though I were a post or piece of dung.

“If I ran you through this night, Damocles,” she said, her accented Greek harsh and cold, “do you think my husband would mourn you?”

“Pardon, mistress?” he answered. Not my queen. Not your majesty, nor even your greatness.

She smiled coldly and stepped closer to Damocles.

“That horse behind you,” she said. “With its tail-root as high as our shoulders. You know that horse?”

Damocles turned languidly to look, then back to her. “It is your horse, mistress. Brought with you from Rome. It believe it carried you as it might a common soldier.”

“Certe, Damocles. His name is Justus.” So saying, she ducked past us and under the gate into her horse’s stall. The huge animal nickered and shuffled about in alarm as she worked her way to its rear. Then it whinnied and jerked. But before I could find my wits enough to grab Damocles and depart, Mariana had exited the stall again. Her sword was now in a scabbard about her waist. Between her two hands was an unwoven rope of Justus’s tail hairs, some thirty or forty at least, each almost as long as Mariana was tall.

Stepping close to Damocles, she suddenly whipped them about his neck and yanked him backward so quickly that he stumbled and sank back against her, his hands scrabbling at hers.

“I know who the evil spirits in this palace are!” she hissed.

Then I leaped to her and grabbed her wrists.

She released the horse hair and twisted free from me, scuffling backward in the shadows as Damocles dropped to the floor. Between heavy breaths she raised her face to glare at me. I saw her shoulders shudder and hands shake. “Have a care, Philon. One who lives unnoticed lives well.”

Then she turned and, from somewhere deep inside her robe, she brought up a hard black bean and threw it across the stable floor where it chittered to a stop in the loose hay.

“With these I ransom me and mine,” she whispered.

She stooped, scooped up the cut tail hairs of her horse, walked back to the courtyard and then inside.

The next day I sat in dread by the feet of the hairy-faced Dionysius as he and we, his adsentatores, lounged in the south atrium. We looked, in truth, like lizards in the hot sun, gathered around the water-collection pool, gazing out over the sea and eating our midday repast—porridge, cooked turnips and cabbage, olives, beans, gopa fish, barley bread, and much too much wine.

Dionysius alone sat on the simple stone bench that ringed the pool, but Damocles had appointed himself personal wine bearer and stood close to Dionysius’ right hand. The tyrant merely had to press his fingers out to stroke the boy’s smooth leg.

And Mariana?

She had not appeared this whole morning and I prayed her late night madness had passed. But Dionysius’ uncle Dion was present. He brooded against the east wall, in the shade of the narrow roof that ran around the atrium. He glared at the white-haired Plato, whom he had invited from Athens, for the old man seemed far more interested in reforming Dionysius than promoting Dion’s status as prime adviser to our tyrant.

“From what vessels does your power pour?” Plato pressed Dionysius now, though it seemed to me our tyrant was barely listening.

“My power?”

“Like wine in fired pots,” the philosopher said, spreading his arms wide significantly.

“To be poured out among my people?” Dionysius frowned across at Dion as he said this, but the hand holding his beaten silver goblet bent backward to stroke Damocles’ thigh also.

“Attending to the greater good. As a ruler must to breed the love and prosperity of his people.”

Dionysius’ lips curled up and he looked from Dion to Plato, then around the atrium. “What do you think, Damocles?” he said at last. “Do I have so much that I can pour it through the streets and dusty ditches of Syracuse?”

“My lord, yes!” Damocles said with such enthusiasm my face burned with jealousy and I dropped it to study my plate of torn bread and fish.

“Yes?” Dionysius raised his thick eyebrows in surprise.

“Indeed, yes, my lord. Not that you must pour it out to the undeserving. But an abundance of wealth? Yes, my lord. Your wine, your food and servants, your raiment and gold. You have more riches that the senators of Rome, the leaders of Athens, even the despots of Carthage.” Did he cast an eye at Dion as he said this? “And your power is for the ages, inspiring love in those you favor, fear and trembling in those you despise. In all things . . .”

Damocles seemed to stumble for just a second and I followed his gaze to see that Mariana had entered the east side of the atrium. As if she’d been waiting for the moment.

She was dressed this day as the patrician beauty she was, her oiled hair gleaming in the sun. Regally, she strode without pause to brush past Plato and sit by her husband’s left side. She took his arm and leaned close to him.

“In all things,” Damocles finished with strength, “you are blessed.”

“Ah,” said Dionysius, his face flushed with either wine or pleasure as he looked at Damocles, not at Mariana nor Plato nor at anyone but his man-boy. Despite this, Mariana cupped a hand over his ear and whispered something to him that made him laugh out loud. He drained his goblet, wiped his mouth with the back of his hairy forearm, and looked more sharply at Damocles.

“You think me fortunate then? My life one of pleasure and power?”

Damocles hesitated but an instant, pretty fool that he was, before declaring himself. “Yes, my lord!”

“And would you like to taste this life yourself, to make a trial of my blessings?”

“Yes, my lord!”

Dionysius laughed again and it was decided. He rose with his face full red. He waved Mariana away, and Plato, and bellowed to his servants to come. He barked at us, his adsentatores as well, guiding us this way and that.

My heart pounded with awful anticipation, yet I could not refuse and rushed about with the others. Dionysius ordered us first to bring out the golden couch from his sleeping rooms and set it under the narrow roof along the west wall where Damocles could look out the wide window at the ocean and yet be shielded from the sun. Before Damocles could sit, however, Dionysius made us cover the couch with his softest embroidered rug.

Wooden sideboards used by the priests in ritual sacrifices to the gods were carried and scraped into position in a great semicircle about the couch. Once the animal detritus was swept away, we covered them in clean cloths then with bowls of fruit—olives and pears and grapes. Kitchen servants brought more bread and cooked fish. And many canisters of wine. As if our meal had been only the beginning of a great feast.

Then Dionysius had us wrap Damocles about with Dionysius’ best white cloak. Against that brilliance Damocles’ smooth limbs and neck, his rounded chin and cheeks, his delicate brow only shone more beautifully. He was like polished bronze glittering in the sun.

Thus set off, Damocles was led to the golden couch and there seated while Dionysius separated out his most beautiful adsentatores, myself among them, to wait upon the new prince. The servants brought us sweet unguents to rub on Damocles’ limbs, a soft garland to place on his head, and incense to burn about him even now in the bright sunshine. Dionysius ordered a harpist to play and a piper to accompany him.

And despite my fear, my heart expanded as I knelt before my lover, rubbing his calves with the scent of sage and cumin, and basking in the wide grin of delight dancing with laughter on his lips. His beauty. His foolishness. I could hardly contain myself.

Still Dionysius waved us on, urging Damocles to give us orders from his shaded throne, to have us feed him like a newborn babe, or dance to the music, or do what we would.

All the while Plato frowned from where he had been sent along the far wall, his mouth nearly vanishing in his beard. Damocles saw it and leaned toward me, pointing and laughing so joyously that I could not help but laugh with him.

Until I looked up.

My mouth went suddenly dry. My hands stopped their scented massage on Damocles’ feet.

For somehow, and I still know not how it was done, someone had lowered from the roof the same sword Mariana had threatened Damocles with last night. It hung point down, turning a slow circle in suspension.

Yes, point down.

Over Damocles’ bent neck.

And what suspended that deathly steel some eight hands above him was a thing so finely wrapped around the hilt that I could barely make it out. Yet just as I was sure that Dionysius’ noon jest was Mariana’s inspiration, so I was sure it was she who had pushed this beyond jesting. She had ordered her sword suspended over Damocles’s head by just one of those hairs she’d cut from her horse’s tail.

Seeing me freeze, Damocles quirked his mouth and looked up. And he too froze. His beautiful bronze face became pale. His lower lip, stained purple from the grapes my fellow adsentatores had been feeding him, quivered. His gaze shot to Dionysius.

My own went to Mariana.

Standing in the shade beside Dion and Plato, she wore a smile so hard and cruel I wished I had been a sculptor, for surely I would have captured that likeness to represent Hera as she struck down another of her rivals for Zeus’ affection. And a part of my heart leaped in sympathy, for her rival was my love; her love, my rival.

Then the spell of horror was broken, and Damocles brushed away the food that hands offered him. Slowly, as if fearing the air flowing off his body might snap the slender hair that held his doom above him, he slid from his golden chair, stepped past me, and out into the sunshine. Toward our tyrant, the man whom he’d believed to be his patron.

Dionysius stood with his weight on one hip, a bemused smile on his lips, but the twitching of his fingers gave his anxiety away. It was not hard to see him as but a shadow of his father, who had fought Carthage to a standstill, took the inner towns of Sicily, liberated their slaves, and helped their poor. For what had Dionysius the Younger done? Resettled a few displaced townspeople? The peasants still hated him.

And yet . . . if he fell, what would become of us? Of Damocles in particular, now so publicly declared a favorite of the tyrant?

“My lord!” Damocles said now, dropping, in abject misery, to his knees before Dionysius.

“Is your feast over so soon?” said the tyrant.

“If it please my lord!”

“You don’t like being such a fortunate man?”

“No, my lord!”

As he said it, a gust of air from the ocean blew through the atrium windows and I heard something like the plucked string of a harp behind me. I turned to see Mariana’s sword dive point-first at Damocles’s rug-covered “throne,” clank off it, and spin down toward me.

The other adsentatores shrieked. I lunged up and caught the sword by its cross guard in the air.

All the room fell silent.

My precious Damocles had gone white as if he had just seen his own murder. Beside him, Dionysius, too, looked pale and shaky. But inside me my blood was suddenly hot, shooting through limbs and face. I took my captured sword by its grip and turned slowly, with as much deliberation as ever my father had done in the wars, with all the balance and determination to kill that marked predator from prey. The living from the dead.

“Mariana,” I said, seeing no one else.

I stalked toward her as a wolf does, half circling and slicing my new sword lightly through the air as I went to warn away all others. I was vaguely aware that Dionysius, who could call in his guard, looked both choked and fascinated. Plato looked horrified. Dion, whom I stepped past as I slid close to that east wall on my way to my target, looked slyly pleased.

And Mariana?

She had not retreated nor paled, though her eyes followed my approach. Neither had she spoken, though she too could have called on Dionysius’ guards or her own retainers.

Only her right hand had moved, the fingers twitching down, a movement stilling those around her so that they took no action.

I stepped before her, sword drawn back with my elbow high, my blood urging me to strike, to thrust this sharpened Roman stick deep into her twisted, jealous heart.

Yet I didn’t. My hand, tight and sweating around the sword’s leather grip, began to shake with the effort of withholding. My gaze was locked on her eyes, which were as dark as they had been last night. Dark. Unrepentant. Unforgiving.

“I see you’ve brought me back my sword, Philon,” she said. “I was wondering where it had gone.”

“Were you, my lady? Were you?” My whole arm trembled now and sweat ran down my face.

“I was.” She held out her hand toward me, almost skimming the sword’s point.

And the most brutal images of war flashed through my mind. I saw my father return from a battle under Dionysius I. He limped into our house with his strong body covered in scabbing cuts, his right leg damaged, his right eye lanced out so that only a blackened, oozing pit remained.

I saw what happened when Carthage and Sparta together attacked us with arrows and swords and fire, hacking and killing, maiming and taking my father and mother and brothers from me. So much blood and stink, followed by rats and the rot of plague.

Whereupon Dionysius the Elder sued for peace and claimed he had liberated us all. Before clamping down even harder, forcing me and all parentless boys into his service, the prettiest into his personal service. Before he died and left us to his son.

But for that I could have been a soldier like my father. Full of . . . glory.

“Philon?”

Her hand was still out, almost brushing my chest as if to reach there and feel my pain. To sympathize or laugh over it, I know not. But the brutality of this was my final undoing.

Oh, so slowly, I lowered my elbow and swung the sword point away from her. Then I dropped to my knees and held the sword up to her, grip first. My own face was down, covered with my loose hair. I breathed as if I’d just run a race, but my cheeks were covered in tears as Mariana took back her sword.

“Vive ut vivas,” she said quietly, without a hint of irony. Live that you may live.

I almost stood and took back her sword, but I did not. My hands were not my father’s. My ways were not his. And, may the gods preserve me, perhaps it was cowardice that stayed my hand. For even then I think I understood what was to come.

Now Damocles is no more. He was killed with sword in hand, I heard, in Dion’s first assault on Syracuse. But I had lost him a decade before that when Mariana made sure he was banished to Athens with the treacherous Dion.

Just as she made sure I was ever beside her and her daughters from that day forward, even when she and Dionysius fled north from Sicily to start a new tyranny in the unsuspecting town of Locri. It was as though Mariana believed she shared some unbreakable bond with me now, one forged over the sword we had both held over each other’s hearts.

Perhaps we did.

Yet this morning, when she called me into her rooms in a panic to tell me Dionysius had left her to sail back to Syracuse (such a constant heart was his!), I could no more weep for her and her daughters than I had for the death of my beautiful Damocles. All my tears had run out on that day I returned Mariana’s sword to her.

So instead, as she faced to the doors whence we heard the feet of the enraged Locrians approaching, and lifted up that same sword she had suspended over Damocles’ head, the sword I could have killed her with, the sword she took from me and thereby broke me, I did as her husband Dionysius had done.

I left without a backward glance. (In my case by the southwest window, in a daring climb which Mariana could not hope to follow.)

Now, having made my way to the sun-bleached rocks of the Locrian shore, I can see in my mind Mariana swinging her sword wildly, futilely, against the hordes of those who want Dionysius’ life but will settle for hers and her daughters’.

Black smoke pours from the windows of the palace. I can smell it even here. I hear cheers for blood and wonder if any will recognize me and want mine as well.

Yet I think I am safe. For I have made friends here who know my story and will vouch for me. They will say I, like Damocles, had a taste of both sword and power, saw the doom in both, and chose neither.

I am only my name, they will say—Philon, he who loves.

Yes, I am. And I am avenged.

Amir Arsalan and the Sword of Solomon

Dan C. Duval

Dan C. Duval has sold twenty short stories, many in the Classic Battletech world (www.battlecorps.com) but also some to several anthologies, including Cosmic Cocktails. After twenty-five years in high tech, building everything from small test equipment to a 10,000-processor supercomputer, he is semi-retired on the Oregon coast, enjoying a far less stressful life.

“This is madness,” Arsalan, amir of Istanbul, whispered to himself, clinging to the heavy wooden door.

The demon, Fulad-zereh, was huge, three or maybe four men tall. It lay upon a palette of multicolored silks and velvets stretching the length of interior of the mud-brick mastaba. It even slept in its polished steel plate armor, for did not Fulad-zereh mean “armor of steel”?

Nor did the mastaba give Arsalan any confidence. It was surrounded outside by desolate dirt and sand, broken only by the scattered bones of whatever the demon had eaten. Judging from some of the ribs and straight femurs, those bones might also include those of whomever it had eaten.

Within a niche in the door that Arsalan held, a human skull had been embedded, yellowed with weather. On the naked bone of the forehead of that skull, someone had written in a smooth hand:

Look closely, traveler, and see.
For once I was as you are
And you shall be as I am.

Arsalan shuddered at the empty holes that once were eyes. “O Farokh Lagha,” he whispered, “most beauteous of women, there must be some other way to redeem you.”

All he had in his hands was a replica of an ancient sword. Even if he did not already know it was useless against the demon because of an evil charm, for a creature this large it would be like attacking a bull with a sewing needle.

Not only that but the demon, named Fulad-zereh, held the sword Shamshir-e Zomorradnegar, the sword once owned by King Solomon, Allah bless his name.

If the stories were true, then only that sword could harm the demon Fulad-zereh, due to a charm placed by the demon’s witch-mother, a charm fixed by the power of the Sword of Solomon.

The sword Arsalan held was based on what was known of that ancient sword. A cubit in length, the length of a man’s forearm, it had no crosspiece to catch a blade during the parry. Unlike a true sword, this ancient iron was straight as an arrow shaft, making it unsuitable for the sweeping slash of the scimitar, and the bulk of its weight was in the tip of the sword rather than in the hilt. As a weapon, it was related more to an ax than to a true sword. A weapon for brute hacking rather than swordplay. It felt greasy and wrong in his hand.

Since the name Shamshir-e Zomorradnegar meant “emerald-studded sword,” Arsalan had spent the last coins in his pocket for the largest emeralds he could find. With no clue how the emeralds were set into Solomon’s Sword, the swordsmith had had to guess where to place them. Since three was a sacred number, the smith had set three of the stones on each side of the leather-covered hilt, covering the heads of the rivets that held the hilt to the tang.

Then again, the great size of the demon could be a help, since it might not notice the tiny differences between the replica and the true sword, any more than a man would note the minute scratches upon the shaft of a pin.

All Arsalan would have to do is to sneak up on the sleeping demon and switch the replica with the true Sword of Solomon, steal away before the demon awoke, and be far away before it noticed that it held a mere replica.

He drew a shaky breath and lifted a foot to step toward the recumbent demon.

Swifter than thought, the demon was at the door, its great clawed hand slamming against the wood so violently that dust shuddered free from the cracks in the wood as the door closed with a bang. More dust settled from the mud-and-thatch roofing as the entire mastaba shook with the might of the demon.

The demon had to crouch within the mastaba. As high as its roof was, the demon was taller still and the tips of its horns dislodged more dust as it shifted its weight. Dust settled into its wrinkled, gray-black skin.

I am doomed, Amir Arsalan thought.

In the demon’s other hand, surely that sliver of metal was Shamshir-e Zomorradnegar. With a warrior’s eye for weapons and a respect for the smith’s art, Arsalan praised the smith that had made the replica for his faithful rendering of the ancient iron.

Arsalan fell to his knees, holding the replica out in his hands.

“O mighty Fulad-zereh, forgive a poor thief and take back your treasure, and let me return to my faithful wife and my many children, that they may pray for you and praise your name to Allah for all their years and for the years of their children.”

The demon had taken its hand from the door and started to reach for Arsalan, but paused when he had fallen to the dirt floor. It stared at the naked iron in Arsalan’s hand. Then it looked at the sword it held. Miracle of miracles, they were as two pearls in the same oyster.

It took a half step back and then snatched the sword from Arsalan’s hand.

“Why, human?” the demon said, its voice so low that it could be issuing from the earth rather than from its chest, could be mistaken for the rumblings of the deep rocks rather than the thrum of air across vocal cords. “Why should I let you live, much less escape?”

Arsalan thrilled as he noted that the demon waved the replica at him rather than the True Sword.

Then he put that feeling away. After all, either sword could kill him if the demon so chose.

Assuming it did not merely kill him with its bare hands or bite off his head with those hand-long tusks.

If it guessed that he was not wholly the poor thief that Arsalan pretended to be, the demon would surely kill him. Death by that sword would at least be swift.

“Have mercy on a poor thief,” Arsalan cried, clasping his hands before him and stretching them out toward the demon’s foot as he bowed his forehead to the dirt.

For once in his life, he had no idea what to say. Sweat popped from his forehead and immediately felt slimy from the dust that it turned to mud.

“Mercy,” the demon said, as if the word had never touched its tongue before. “No. No mercy. I will feed on your limbs and the cruelty of your death will be known far and wide.”

His face still in the dirt, Arsalan’s eyes popped open. Known. That was the key.

“But great lord,” Arsalan said, spitting dirt from his lips between the words. “How will anyone know? I am nothing and no one—beyond my grieving wife and starving children—will ever miss me. None will know of your might.”

Rising to his knees but keeping his gaze on the dirt at the demon’s cloven hooves, he said, “Indeed, the man who hired me to bring him the Sword of Solomon will just send someone else, and another someone, enticing them with the gold with which he enticed me.”

At the mention of the name of Solomon, the demon hissed, for was it not that great king who had bound the djinn and the efreet, who had power over the demons of the earth and the skies? Perhaps not wise to mention the name again.

“That man showed me gold but said nothing of your might or of your great size. If not for me, who will tell your story, who will discourage others from being deceived by this greedy man who will send thief after thief, disturbing your peace?”

The demon took a half step back, its head swaying back and forth as if it danced to silent music. What did this mean? Was the demon considering letting him go? Or was it about to attack?

Dust rained down from the ceiling as its horns scraped mud and thatch from the mastaba’s roof, burning Arsalan’s eyes, making his nose twitch. Not a good time to sneeze.

He raised his sleeve to wipe his nose clear but stopped himself at the last moment. That would certainly not do.

Instead, he rubbed his nose with the back of his finger, until the urge to sneeze went away.

“Great lord,” Arsalan said. His voice sounded pleading but not desperate enough. He pitched it higher and tried to make it waver. “What is the value of a night’s sleep? Of hunting in the hills without becoming the hunted? I will tell stories of your might than will frighten away even the most desperate thief, for what point is having gold when you no longer live?”

When the whining started to grate on his own ears, Arsalan fell silent. Again, he bowed his forehead into the dirt. It was up to the demon to decide, as Arsalan had always known it would be. It never had been otherwise.

If the demon decided to kill him, then he would fight. His fingers touched the hilt of the dagger in the top of his right boot. It would be futile, of course, but the Amir of Istanbul would not simply bare his throat to such a creature of evil.

On the other hand, if the demon let him go, then the true danger began, the greater task to be done.

Still the demon’s head rocked back and forth, as a fakir’s snake would under control of the flute.

So Arsalan waited, tense, looking for some indication whether he would need to fight and die or would continue on with his plan.

The face of Farokh Lagha drifted through his mind, as it often did. Ochre brushed on her ivory cheeks. Eyes dark and half lidded, outlined in kohl. Lips full and promising, reddened with henna. Her life spilled on the ground before his very eyes. Her dead body jerking to life as that fiend wazir Qaram later brought her back to life. And the giant gnarled hand that had reached down from the clouds above and snatched her convulsing body into the sky.

The head weaving stopped. “Go,” rumbled the demon. “Go and tell all you meet that Fulad-zereh is the mightiest of demons. That any who come to find me will die and I shall shatter their bones to suck the marrow. GO!”

Relief, triumph, or fear: whatever that feeling really was, Arsalan clamped it down and refused to do as his body wanted, to leap to his feet and run screaming to the dusty hills, into the desert beyond, and on until demons such as Fulad-zereh were again only the topics of a fakir’s tale.

Instead, he pressed his forehead harder into the dirt and crept backward on his knees toward the door, shouting, “Allah praise the wisdom of Fulad-zereh! Fulad-zereh the mighty! Fulad-zereh, greatest of demons!”

Upon reaching the door, a wise man would have yanked it open and fled.

Instead, Arsalan stood and pulled at the door until it opened enough to pass through, then sank back to his knees.

The hard part.

“O Fulad-zereh! I am worthless and beneath your notice, but I ask of you a boon.”

The demon straightened so suddenly that its horns sank into the thatch above its head. Dirt cascaded down its face and it roared as it shook its head free.

“A BOON!?” The ground shook with the giant’s roar.

This had always been the weakness of his plan. Arsalan had never believed he would be able to trade the fake sword for the true without waking the demon and, if that happened, it was unlikely he would be able to talk himself from the hands of the demon. But then to ask for the fake back. . . .

“Great lord,” Arsalan said, trying to add the whine again, but not too much whine, “the man who sent me would give no money until I delivered the Sword of . . . the sword.” Best not to mention that name again.

At least the demon did not advance on him, instead brushing the dirt from its face with the back of its arm. Arsalan noted that the demon was very careful that neither sword came near its gray-black skin.

“The emeralds I had to buy with the last of my own money, for I could think of no other way to ever hope to escape your justifiable wrath.” Still no attack, so he went on. “My children will starve if I do not return with them. In fact, if I do not return with them, it would be best that I not return at all, in hope that True Believers will have mercy upon my widow and orphaned children. With empty hands, I am simply a failed man, cursed by Allah, and none will help us. Please, I beg, let me have my sword back so that my children will live. Else kill me now that I do not have to see the faces of my children accuse me as they starve to death.”

Arsalan knew in an instant that it did not work. The demon’s face screwed tight in anger and Arsalan knew that the attack was coming.

At that moment, though, more dirt fell from the roof down the demon’s neck, between its skin and the shiny steel armor.

It roared its frustration and jerked, its horns scraping still more dirt from the ceiling. It shook and stamped, trying to shake the irritation free from its back, but did little more than bring more of the roof down on itself.

When it cranked its right arm up to fling the True Sword at Arsalan, he prepared to dive behind the door. Catching the sword point-first with his body defeated the entire purpose of acquiring the sword.

“Take it and be gone, worm!” The entire mastaba shook with the demon’s voice.

The demon froze, its arm still flexed behind its head.

Arsalan’s brief moment of triumph was snuffed out in an instant.

The demon lowered its arm slowly. “You attempt to fool me, human.” Then it shook itself again, trying to rid itself of the dirt under its armor.

That was expected, which was why Arsalan had come prepared. He had even practiced in his head what he would say.

“Fool you, great lord?” he said. “How could I hope to fool the great and wise Fulad-zereh?”

“By pretending to have already stolen my sword when you have not.”

Arsalan dropped his head onto his chest. “True. I had not thought of that.” He looked up again. “But I did trade the swords, so it would not have come to my mind to attempt to deceive the wise Fulad-zereh. There was no need.”

“So you say. But I am not stupid, else I would be confined in a bottle by Solomon the Great or banished by him to the nether reaches. Fulad-zereh proved himself to be wiser than Solomon so you have no hope of deceiving me, little thief.”

Wait, Arsalan, he thought to himself. Do not be too eager. Do not let it think you have planned this all.

Wait. Wait. Wait.

“I will prove it, great lord,” Arsalan said.

“Oh?” The demon’s smile was little more encouraging than seeing its face contorted in anger. “You will convince me with your glib tongue, thief? Already I trust nothing you say.”

Arsalan raised himself to his full height, cocking his head back into a jaunty pose. “I will prove it with my flesh, great lord.”

“Yes?” Clutching both swords in its hands, the demon hunched over again, bringing its face closer to Arsalan’s.

This did not comfort Arsalan, for not only was the demon’s face even more hideous at a close distance, but its breath smelled of carrion long dead.

Arsalan reached into his pouch and withdrew a small leather bag, tied at the top with a rawhide strip. “This is a cure I stole from the far side of the Indus River, guaranteed to cure any wound. It has saved my life numerous times—when I was slashed by the claws of a lion near Damascus, when I was pierced by a jealous lover’s knife in the harem of the Amir of Basra. It will cure any cut by any sword.” He paused. If the demon filled in the rest . . .

“All but Shamshir-e Zomorradnegar, the sword whose cut can never heal.” The demon leered at him, obviously pleased that it anticipated what Arsalan intended.

Perfect.

“But,” the demon went on, “the cut that never heals will kill you.”

Arsalan bowed his head. “Yes, great lord, it will. But not before I can return the emeralds to my family. I will tie off the wound, slowing the bleeding, and thus journey to my home. I will die knowing that my children will live.”

“If you are dead, human, how will you warn others not to interfere with me?” It grimaced. That rictus of its face could not be described as a smile.

A smug demon is even more frightening than an angry one, so said Arsalan’s nerves.

“By my slow and agonizing death, great lord, before the eyes of everyone I know. The longer I live, the more gruesome the story will become, and the more often I shall be able to speak of your might and invincibility.” The demon nodded in agreement. “I promise you, great lord, I will do everything in my power to live as long as I can.” At least that was the truth. After so many lies, the truth tasted good on his tongue.

“Yes, I imagine you would. Proceed.”

Arsalan bowed his head, then held out both his arms toward the demon. “Hold the swords out, lord.”

The demon did so. Though they looked tiny in its hands, both swords were quite large in Arsalan’s eyes. “You would have me cut you, then.”

And deadly looking swords they were.

“Ah, no, lord.” Arsalan said. “With your great strength, you would lop my entire arm off and prove nothing. Besides, you would want to assure yourself which sword is which, no?”

The demon smiled. “True, human. I had already thought of that myself.”

This was the moment that Arsalan had planned for from the very beginning, when Qaram told him of Fulad-zereh and the sword Shamshir-e Zomorradnegar.

He reached up with the back of his right arm and drew it across the blade of the sword the demon held in its left hand. It bit easily through his sleeve and into the flesh beneath.

It hurt. It hurt a lot. But Arsalan was a warrior and it was not the first time a sword had drawn his blood. He took care that the cut was not too deep, however.

The silk darkened as it soaked up blood. With his other hand, he pushed back his sleeve and showed the gash to the demon, blood running over his arm and dripping on the ground below. He loosened the leather bag with a finger and sprinkled the dust within over the gash.

Qaram had not bothered to tell him how much the powder would burn and Arsalan groaned even through his clenched teeth. It did what it was supposed to do, though.

The wound bled even more freely.

It would continue to bleed until he could tend it, but that would be later.

Assuming he lived through the next few minutes. The demon could decide to kill him at any moment.

Looking at the demon’s face, though, Arsalan could see its intentness, its concentration upon watching the “medicine” fail to close the wound. It was hooked.

He tore the sleeve free from his shirt and wrapped it around the wound. It slowed the blood but the bandage became darker, bit by bit, as blood soaked it.

As the demon expected a wound from the Sword of Solomon to do.

The demon thrust its right hand closer to Arsalan. The True Sword. The real danger.

Arsalan closed his eyes for a moment and breathed a quick prayer to Allah for steadiness, his own and in the demon’s hand. As he had said before, there was no point in dying, even as Shamshir-e Zomorradnegar was in his hands.

He raised his left arm, wrist up, and drew it across the sword’s edge. The sleeve parted as easily as a spider’s web and blood gushed, soaking the sleeve in an instant. Arsalan let a groan escape his lips. It would help convince the demon, perhaps.

He drew up the sleeve, exposing his blood-covered limb, and sprinkled the powder across his arm, using up the very last of it.

Yanking that sleeve free as well, he wiped his arm from wrist to elbow, then thrust out his arm and showed the unbroken skin to the demon, top and bottom.

It peered at Arsalan’s arm, even reached out and touched the skin with the claw of its littlest finger. Satisfied, it raised itself to its full height, a wide grin on its lips.

It dropped the Sword of Solomon at Arsalan’s feet.

“You are brave, human, something I would not have expected in a thief. May you live long and tell all you meet of the mercy and the power of Fulad-zereh.”

Arsalan bowed. His right arm ached, so he took up the sword in his left hand.

He lunged forward and slashed the sword across the demon’s knee. Shamir-e Zomorradnegar passed through flesh and bone as through smoke. Black, hot blood gushed and the demon shrieked.

Caught off guard, the demon’s leg crumbled underneath it as Arsalan leaped back to avoid being under Fulad-zereh as it fell.

Still roaring, the demon crashed to the ground, sending dust everywhere, including into Arsalan’s eyes. Half blinded, his eyes burning almost as much as his arm, Arsalan stepped forward and thrust Shamshir-e Zomorradnegar between the edge of the demon’s steel armor and its neck.

The roaring stopped instantly.

Fulad-zereh had been slain by the sword once owned by Solomon the Wise, Master of Demons.

Carefully, Arsalan slid the Sword into the scabbard that he had carried the replica in. A dangerous weapon, indeed, even for the person wielding it.

Stepping around the fallen body, Arsalan retrieved the replica sword and set about what he had sought the demon for in the first place.

In the hills not more than a thousand paces from the demon’s mastaba, Arsalan had established a camp from which he had watched the demon for days, determining when it went out to hunt, when it slept. Watched as it fed.

Though his fire had burned down to coals by the time he came back to it, it was still simple to build it back up. The warmth felt good in the cold desert night and he had set an iron to heat.

His right arm still oozed blood. If he did not treat it, it would ooze for weeks. Qaram had warned him so.

While the fire generated a new bed of coals, he set his prize on the ground near the wooden rack he had built and cut strips from it, hanging them on the rack to dry. His arm ached through the whole thing, but the iron needed to be hot.

Seating himself opposite the drying rack, he took a deep swig of water so cold it made his teeth ache, though the iciness felt good in his throat.

The end of the iron had disappeared in the redness of the coals. It was time.

He stripped the bandage from his arm, which immediately started running blood again, drops that smacked as they struck the sand. He took up the iron and, hesitating only a moment, laid the glowing end on the gash in his arm.

Allah was merciful and he was unconscious before the pain really registered, before he made a memory of it.

When he awoke, the fire had barely burned down, so he could not have been out of things for very long.

His arm ached as badly as it ever had when it had been merely cut. The gash was raw but it no longer bled. He poured more of his water over it, to clean it, but the cold, cold water also felt good, numbing the flesh a bit.

Before he tossed aside the bloody silk sleeves he had used as a bandage, he plucked the sheeps’ bladders from them, the empty bladder from what had been his left sleeve and the one full of sheep’s blood from his right. Fortunately, the demon had not noticed that the replica sword had cut Arsalan on the outside of his arm, while the Sword of Solomon cut the inside of his arm or, rather, had cut the sheep bladder full of blood on the inside of his left arm, leaving the skin underneath unharmed. He wadded up the entire mess and tossed it into the fire, where it crackled and smelled for a while, until it was all consumed and the smoke wafted away.

He reached into the pack he had left leaning against a rock, pulling a clean strip of cloth from it. Linen, rather than silk. He tied it around the wound to keep it clean.

Done. He had completed the task. All that was left to do was to take the prize back to Qaram and yet another step toward returning Farokh Lagha to the living would be done. A long march but easier going that way than it had been coming out.

His eyes starting to droop, he almost missed the motion in the corner of his eye, but rolled out of the way as a sharpened bone struck where, a moment before, he had been laying.

Shamir-e Zomorradnegar was near to hand and he snatched it from its scabbard with his uninjured hand, turning to see a nightmare.

Gray-black skin and features that might have belonged to a human were they not stretched and contorted into a parody of a face. The clothes the thing wore were such tatters that they could barely be discerned from the matted clumps of long, ratty hair that draped not only from the creature’s head, but from beneath its arms, from its crotch, and even from the nipples of saggy, empty breasts.

Arsalan thrust with the sword and nearly dropped it. He had forgotten that it was made not to strike with its point but rather with its weighted edge.

A bone point swept by his face a mere finger’s width from his eye before he could recover.

The crone leaped to one side and jabbed forward again.

Arsalan’s mind noted that the bone knife still had the two knobs of a human thighbone at its end, the point made by slicing the end of the bone off at a sharp angle. A warrior part of him wondered how that point had been hardened enough to be a useful weapon, even as he raised his blade to block another thrust.

Pain ran up the bones of his arm as the bone knife struck the sword, his shoulder feeling as if it had been struck by a hammer.

The . . . thing . . . was no taller than he, but immensely strong. Strong enough that he could die. All it would take would be a single mistake. Even a stumble could be his end.

Fulad-zereh’s mother, the demon-witch. It had to be. Qaram had warned him, though no one had known for sure that the thing still lived.

It did and it clearly knew that Fulad-zereh was dead.

Arsalan blocked high, then blocked low and took a cautious swing that ran head-on into the bone knife with a crash. The witch’s counterthrust nearly threw him from his feet.

Worse, the Sword rebounded as he blocked the strike, its edge less than a fingernail’s width from his nose before he tore himself to one side and ran around the fire.

Attack followed attack, as the bone knife seemed to come from all directions at once. Arsalan began to pant with the effort.

The witch did not appear to be tiring. Though it was difficult to tell through the dirt and wrinkles on the crone’s hide, it did not appear to be sweating, while Arsalan’s eyes stung from the salt running into his eyes from his forehead.

He was going to die.

His attacks became weaker by the swing and the witch did not slow in the slightest. Twice more, the sword became as much of a danger to him as it was to the crone, coming close to his face or chest as the witch battered his defenses out of the way, Actually, more of a danger since he could never get close to the thing.

It pushed him back and back. He knew it was only a matter of time before he tripped and fell and it would be on him and he would be dead. He could not even turn his head to see what might catch his foot. Its attacks came so fast and from any direction, high or low.

It nearly unmanned him with a thrust that looked to be going high and suddenly dropped below his belt, an attack that he beat off with a desperate slash.

He felt his prize pressing at the back of his leg. The crone had backed him to the other side of the fire, between the drying rack and the flames. He had nowhere to go.

Jumping at the crone, he shouted and waved his arms. He startled it enough to give himself a fraction of a second to turn and grab the prize with his free hand, his right, the wounded one.

The skin of his arm felt as if it were tearing as he swung his prize around his hip and right at the face of the crone.

The witch raised its hands to bat the prize away.

Instead, it caught the thing as it recognized what it was.

As the witch looked into the dead face of its son, Fulad-zereh, Arsalan threw the Sword of Solomon.

The sword spun in the air and took the crone in the eye, slicing into the witch’s head as if settling into a loaf of bread.

The crone, the mother of Fulad-zereh, died without a sound, the head of its child still clutched in its hands.

Bathed in sweat, exhausted, Arsalan collapsed to the dirt. He was too tired even to fetch the water skin. But it was done. With the witch dead, he would return to the wazir Qaram and see what more he needed to do to redeem Farokh Lagha. Each step was a step closer to bringing her back to the world of the living.

He panted and stared at the crumpled witch, the hilt of the ancient sword pointed at the sky as if ready for Allah to reach down and take it. A dangerous, dangerous weapon.

But Qaram had said Arsalan would need it to take the dragon’s teeth and that it would be useful in collecting hair from the Ghosts of Eridu, both necessary if the wazir was to discover where Farokh Lagha had been taken.

Grasping its hilt, he drew the old iron sword from the ruins of the witch-demon’s head. No blood touched it, no flesh clung to it. Death to any it bit, a hazard to any who would use it.

It was the key to holding Farokh Lagha in his arms again.

The next day, he would scrape the last of the brains from Fulad-zereh’s skull and hang them on the rack. The brains needed to be dried thoroughly or the potion brewed from them would not be able to heal the wounds inflicted by Shamshir-e Zomorradnegar. Anyone who would wield the Sword of Solomon would have to have such a cure for its eternal wounds.

For like any sword, it had two edges.

The Spear of Destiny

Laura Resnick

Laura Resnick is the author of dozens of short stories, as well as such fantasy novels as Disappearing Nightly, In Legend Born, The Destroyer Goddess, and The White Dragon, which made the Year’s Best lists of Publishers Weekly and Voya. You can find her on the Web at www.LauraResnick.com.

The first time he saw the Holy Lance, he knew his life and his destiny would be irrevocably entwined with its power. Beneath his fervent gaze, the somber sheen of its ancient blade gleamed with the promise of greatness. The fine edges of the spearhead, dulled by time, still held the threat of great and terrible deeds yet to come. The weapon’s hidden power sang to him, a melody of destiny that only he could hear.

“I knew with immediacy that this was an important moment in my life,” he would later say.

According to his own account of that day in 1909, young Adolph Hitler stood there quietly gazing at the spear for a long time, oblivious to his surroundings.

And they were impressive surroundings by any measure. The infamous spear lived in the Hofburg Museum, the magnificent former Imperial Palace of Vienna, the city at the heart of the Hapsburgs’ crumbling empire. The epoch of greatness still lingered uneasily over the splendid capital, but the fading glow of glory would be doused brutally within a few short years. The Great War would bring the old world to its knees, defeated, humiliated, and impoverished. New graveyards would be created across the Continent to bury a generation of young men, and the sea of tomb-stones would mark the passing of their era as well as their lives. The agonized floundering that would follow, the years of hunger and anger, would set the stage for Hitler to create his own new world and establish the Thousand Year Reich—a kingdom ruled by madmen, built on slave labor, governed by fear, and devoted to mass murder.

On that day in 1909, though, as a starving and sadly untalented artist in his twenties gazed in rapture at the Holy Lance, the tumultuous future was unknown to anyone—presumably even to him.

Prior to coming upon the spear, Hitler had looked only briefly at the jewels, gems, and rich heirlooms of the Hapsburg dynasty that which were on display in the Hofburg. He did, however, take some interest in an agate bowl with an obscure pattern that was believed to spell out “Christ.” The bowl was revered by some as the Holy Grail, the receptacle into which the blood of the Savior had flowed as he—sorry, He—hung from the Cross. Others believed it was the bowl from which the Son of God had drunk during the Last Supper.

In fact, it was neither. You can trust me on this.

The bowl was obtained—“pilfered” might be a more accurate word—in Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade. Over the centuries, it eventually made its way into the greedy hands of the Hapsburgs, rulers of a vast empire for over four hundred years. And it was no more genuine than the piece of the “True Cross” that Hitler saw that day at the museum, or a nearby bejeweled artifact identified as a nail from the Cross. Contrary to the claim of the curators, the tablecloth in the museum wasn’t from the Last Supper, either. There was no tablecloth at the Last Supper.

Then again, very little of what’s said about the Last Supper is accurate anyhow.

Heinrich Himmler, whom Hitler had yet to meet, would later become obsessed with such tawdry Crusader souvenirs, convinced that he could achieve ultimate power and resurrection through some combination of talismans, incantations, architecture, and geography. In other words, he was demented. Or at least very gullible.

But Hitler, having seen and dismissed these artifacts at the museum that day, then came upon the spear and understood that this Hofburg artifact was different from all the others. This one had power. This one was the real thing.

This object was dangerous and offered infinite possibilities—or infinite despair, depending on your point of view.

The weapon was known by many names: the Spear of Longinus, the Lance of St. Maurice, the Holy Lance, and—perhaps most fittingly—the Spear of Destiny. Its legend was long and violent. Which perhaps made its relatively humble appearance all the more surprising to the young Austrian gazing at it that day, at the dawn of a new and terrible age.

The blade was about twenty inches long and three inches wide. It was mostly made of iron, though it contained elements of other metals. It was dark gray in color with a gold sheath around its central section. At the lower end of the long blade, two winglike smaller blades were fitted to it by a combination of forging, leather, and silver wire.

There was a small iron nail in the recess of the blade, partly screened by the golden sheath. On the plain wooden shaft, which was nowhere near as old as the blade itself, was an inscription: Lancea et clavus Domini—Lance and nail of the Lord.

The nail, like the silver wire and the gold sheath, was added to the spear over the centuries, after the events on Golgotha had made it famous beyond the land of its origin.

Constantine the Great, who converted the Roman Empire to Christianity and thus turned a Middle Eastern cult into a dominant world religion, added the nail to the spear more than three hundred years after the Crucifixion. He got the nail from his mother, Helena, a narcissistic fanatic who went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem from which the city has yet to recover. She wasn’t the very first collector of Christian relics, but she was one of the most avid. Also one of the most credulous.

A mere thousand years later, Charles IV had the gold sheath added, as well as a new shaft and the Latin inscription. The appearance of the spear had remained largely unchanged since then. Though still far from elaborate, it certainly looked more impressive now, with these added flourishes, than it did in the days when Pontius Pilate governed Jerusalem and Herod Antipas was a puppet of Rome. Back then, it was just an ancient, workmanlike spear in the hands of an ordinary Roman centurion. Its history was rich with local legend, but it was nothing much to look at in those days.

Hitler wouldn’t have known all this as he stood gazing at it in fascination in the Hofburg Museum, of course. But I have followed the spear all my life and, having lived long, know more about it than anyone. Perhaps all that will ever be known.

Hitler, however, knew enough. He knew the legend of the spear, and he sensed what it could offer him.

From that day forward, he became determined to possess it. And once he did possess it, I knew that only one thing could ensure his final defeat: Someone had to get it back.

“A museum artifact?” Major Miller of the United States Seventh Army looked like he might be tempted to laugh at me if he weren’t so exhausted. “You’re kidding, right?”

In late April 1945, less than a year after the massive invasion at Normandy and only a few months since meeting Hitler’s winter counteroffensive in the deadly cold of the Ardennes Forest, Allied forces were rolling across Germany. The daily death toll remained high on both sides of the conflict as Reich forces fought fiercely to protect the Fatherland from the invaders. From his lair in Berlin, Hitler was sending children into battle for the greater glory of Germany, even as his empire crumbled and burned around him. The concentration camp of Buchenwald had been liberated on April 11, Bergen-Belsen on April 15, but Dachau would continue the torture, starvation, and execution of its prisoners until the U.S. Third Army arrived there on April 29. Many of the young soldiers would never quite recover from what they would see when they entered Dachau to free its skeletal inmates and uncover its mass graves of mutilated corpses. Decades later, as elderly war veterans and experienced men, they would still weep if they talked about it.

War, death, hunger, the murder of innocents, the slaughter of children, the waste, the misery . . . This was the same world I had been born into, it was just bigger and more efficient at destruction now. This was the world I had wanted to change.

And I suppose I still hoped to change it. Or at least, after all these years, I suppose I felt compelled to try again. Because, now that the Americans had reached Nuremberg, I was determined to get into the war-torn city, even before the fighting was over.

I had come to the Seventh Army as an intelligence liaison from the SPD, the resistance movement of the German Social Democrats. I wasn’t a Social Democrat—I’ve been apolitical for much longer than the modern parties have been in existence—and I wasn’t even pretending to be German, though it was one of the languages in which I was fluent. But from 1939 onward, some of the best intelligence from inside Germany had come via the exiled SPD, which maintained close ties with underground movements there. It was through the SPD that I had been able to get the information that I knew was essential for destroying Hitler with finality: the location of the Spear of Destiny.

“Not just a museum artifact,” I said to Major Miller. “The artifact. The one Hitler values above everything else he’s looted from all across Europe.”

“And you want me to assign you to the next company going into Nuremberg and instruct them to help you retrieve Hitler’s favorite artifact.”

“I can be very useful in Nuremberg,” I said, seeing he was prepared to dismiss me on the spot.

Miller’s gaze flicked over me doubtfully. I was sturdy but small by the standards of the day. The recent years spent in Europe, working with anti-Nazi movements, had brought enough pallor to my swarthy skin to make me look sallow. I was clean-shaven with short dark hair and dark eyes. I was the sort of fellow most people would pass in the street without noticing. This had not always been the case, but I had long since made a deliberate choice to cultivate anonymity.

“I speak fluent German,” I told Miller. “I know Nuremberg, and I’ve got current intelligence. And I know who among the civilian population can be helpful to your forces. You’ll need their assistance to secure the city quickly, since your orders are to push onward and cross the Danube.”

The tired gaze focused on me sharply as the major snapped, “How do you know that?”

“Knowing things I’m not supposed to know is my job,” I pointed out.

“Hmph.” The major took a breath and considered my request. I knew that President Roosevelt had died a week ago, a loss that added to the stresses of war for the Americans. I was lucky that Miller was taking the time to listen to me at all. “Look, I realize you’re highly recommended,” he said at last, “but Nuremberg is still a combat zone. It’s too dangerous to send you in there just to get Hitler’s goat by confiscating this museum piece, and I can’t spare a combat unit for a treasure hunt.”

I had gotten my recent introduction to Miller from a colonel in the Third Army, which, under General Patton’s command, had advanced across France so fast the previous year that their supplies had to be delivered to them by plane to keep up with their pace.

“I can handle myself in a combat zone, Major. I won’t panic or do something stupid that needlessly endangers your soldiers,” I assured him, sensing that this, too, was a concern. He seemed like a solid officer, one who cared about his men. “And I’m not talking about ‘getting Hitler’s goat.’ Losing possession of this artifact won’t annoy Hitler, it will destroy him.”

“An artifact?” Miller said doubtfully. “A museum piece?”

“Yes.”

“And it’s called the Spear . . .”

“The Spear of Destiny,” I said. “If we get our hands on it, Hitler won’t be able to go on. He’ll crumble.”

“It’s that important to him?”

“Yes,” I said with certainty.

“So what the hell is this thing?”

“How well do you know your Bible?” I asked.

“Pardon?”

“The story of the Crucifixion,” I specified.

“About as well as anyone raised right, I suppose.” He shrugged and added, “But not well enough to know what this spear thing is, or why Hitler cares about it.”

I began explaining. “The Gospel of John tells us that, as Jesus Christ hung upon the Cross at Golgotha, the Roman soldiers prepared to break his legs.”

“I don’t remember that part.” Miller frowned. “What’s the point of breaking the legs of someone already in the middle of his execution?”

“The victim would die more quickly that way.”

“So it was merciful?” Miller said doubtfully.

“In this case, just expedient. Christ was crucified in ancient Judea. Crucifixion was considered an especially humiliating form of execution. It was reserved for slaves and non-Romans—people whom Roman law treated as irrelevant. And this was happening during Passover, a time of big crowds and high emotion in Jerusalem. Christ was a popular figure with certain factions, just as he was unpopular with certain others. All things considered, Pontius Pilate decided it would be prudent to have the body removed from public view before the Sabbath, so he wanted to be sure the condemned would be dead by then.” I added, “It could take a few days to die on a cross, you see.”

“Yes, that part I do remember from Sunday school,” Miller said with a lift of his brow.

“Well, there was a Roman centurion named Longinus who had acquired a local souvenir while drinking and plundering in the hill country beyond Jerusalem. It was a spear. Humble looking, even by the standards of the day. But the Jewish priests from whom he had taken it called it the Spear of David, and it had certain legends attached to it.”

“Such as?”

“They said the spearhead was forged by the hand of God and that it was the weapon with which King David had defeated the Jebusites and established his kingdom on the hill.”

“What hill?”

“Er, Jerusalem.”

“Oh, right.”

“Not much Old Testament taught at your Sunday school?” I guessed.

“It was a long time ago . . . er . . .” He glanced down at the documents on his desk, searching for my name.

“Josephson,” I supplied.

“Right. Sorry.” He rubbed his red-rimmed eyes. “Go on.”

“The Jewish masses of Herod’s time had mostly forgotten the spear, which was already very ancient in those days. But Longinus had picked up some interesting tales from its guardians, while robbing them.”

I remembered him talking about it. Bragging about looting an obscure temple in the hills and terrorizing the elderly priests there. Even through the haze of mind-searing pain, I heard him. And the bewildering events that followed ensured that I never forgot what he said that day.

“The spear was full of power, Longinus claimed. The power of life and death. The power of eternity. It was rich with magic and would reward one who understood its power and cherished it properly.”

“This war is full of black marketeers who’d sure like to meet Longinus,” said Miller.

“No doubt.” I continued, “Anyhow, one version of what happened next is that Longinus felt compassion and wanted to spare Christ further pain—such as having his legs broken—so he killed him quickly with the spear.”

Legend, religion, and history have one key thing in common, which is that they get everything wrong. Longinus was a brutal bastard who wouldn’t have felt compassion for his own dying mother or wailing infant offspring, never mind for a Jewish convict.

“Another version says that the Roman soldiers thought Christ looked dead already, so they might not need to go to the trouble of breaking his legs. And Longinus pierced Christ’s side with the spear to see if the prisoner was indeed dead. You know—the ‘let’s poke him and see what happens’ school of thought.”

“So which version do you believe?” asked Miller.

“Neither. Longinus wanted to show off his new toy,” I said. “ ‘Haven’t you heard, boys?’ he said to his fellow soldiers, smirking and amused. ‘They’re saying this Jew is the Messiah. You can’t kill him by breaking his legs! He’s too powerful.’ This drew laughter from the soldiers, of course, as they glanced up at the nearly dead prisoner. Then Longinus asserted that his newly acquired magic spear, however, could kill anyone—even the King of the Jews. And he thrust it between Christ’s ribs.”

“Oh, wait, this rings a bell,” said Miller, looking a little less tired now that his interest was engaged. “Sunday school is gradually coming back to me, Josephson. Also some art museum that my wife dragged me to, back when we were dating.”

“Portraits of Christ, on the Cross and with a bleeding wound on his torso,” I guessed.

“Yeah, exactly. And a Bible verse . . .”

“ ‘One of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith there came out blood and water.’ John, chapter nineteen, verse thirty-four,” I said.

Like the rest of the Gospel of John, it was written long after John—who was illiterate—was dead. But the verse had the rare virtue of being accurate.

“Blood and water?” Miller said.

I shrugged. “The spearhead may have pierced a lung, where fluid had been gathering while Christ hung on the Cross, suffocating slowly. Or it may have pierced the fluid-filled membrane that surrounds the heart.”

All I remembered was the intense, searing pain as the blade, forged by God and once carried into battle by King David, entered my flesh, pierced my heart, and changed me forever. I did not examine the biological details of my effluvia, given the circumstances.

“So the blood of Christ got on this blade?” Miller asked, immediately grasping the essential feature of the spear’s legend in the Christian world.

“Correct. And ever since then, the spear has been imbued with legend, power, and mystique. It has been revered, treasured, sought after, fought over, and hoarded.”

“Yeah, given the way Catholics carry on about the body parts of medieval saints, I suppose an object with the actual blood of Christ on it would really be the brass ring.” Miller added, “Er, no offense intended. If you’re Catholic, I mean.”

“I’m not,” I said.

The Christian faith began spinning out of my control almost the instant I was taken down from the Cross, unconscious, and I soon thereafter stunned my followers by not being dead.

The power of life and death, Longinus had said. The power of eternity.

I had been within moments of death when he stabbed me. Believe me, when you come that close to death, you know it. There is no mistaking the feeling of your soul departing your body.

And then I was pulled back into my flesh with sudden, startling, brutal force by the blade of destiny piercing my heart. As hot as ice, as cold as fire . . . No, even now, aeons later, I still have no words to describe the sensation accurately. Not in any of the languages I have learned over the centuries that I’ve spent wandering the world in search of my purpose, trying to understand God’s plan.

I was made immortal by the grace of my wound, a remnant of ancient magic from the era before Solomon built the First Temple on Mount Moriah. Methuselah lived more than nine hundred years; I have lived more than twice that long.

Perhaps the spear was a product of Hebrew sorcery that was later lost in the mists of time. Forgotten when the tribes of Israel were scattered and the First Temple was destroyed? Abandoned during the Babylonian exile? Forbidden by kings who feared the power of the priests?

Or perhaps the spear was indeed forged by God. But if that’s so, then throughout the two thousand years that I have carried the wound it made, the Lord God has been inexplicably silent. His face has remained turned away from me for so long that I have finally turned mine away from Him, too. Especially upon seeing, century after century, the horrific deeds that people commit in my name. Most of the time, I wish I had never been born, let alone made immortal.

And sometimes, I blame myself for the way things are. In the beginning, I turned away from everyone—man, God, even myself. Shattered on the anvil of crucifixion and reborn in the icy fire of the spear’s penetrating kiss, I went mad, and I stayed that way for many years. I disappeared from Jerusalem shortly after being taken down from the Cross and regaining consciousness. I wandered in the wilderness for a generation, foraging for food and stealing from shepherds. I had visions, but I don’t remember them. I felt pain, but that seemed normal to me. I was unbearably lonely—and that has never changed.

And when sanity returned at last, and I was able to make my way home . . . my home no longer existed. My family, my teachers, and my students were all dead. The people who called themselves followers of my teachings believed things that appalled and astonished me. Conditions had become much worse in Judea since my disappearance, and people were turning to every wrong answer they could find: violence, zealotry, treachery. When I tried to teach again, I was ignored at best; oftentimes, people threw rocks and rotting food, laughing at me and ridiculing my words.

I realized, in the end, how ordinary I truly was. How unimportant.

The important thing, I eventually understood, was the spear. Not because my blood was on it, but because of its ancient power.

The power of life and death. The power of eternity.

And so I hunted for it, and have followed it ever since, always hoping—often without success—to keep it out of the wrong hands. Always trying to mitigate its influence on the world.

I have never wanted to possess it myself. I have never wanted worldly power, not the kind that the spear promises to those who understand it, who hear its silent song. In fact, from the moment it entered my body, I could not even bear to be around it. The violent intentions that men have brought to it for three thousand years permeate the spear. It drips with the stench of their craving for power, for glory—and for the immortality which, mercifully, no one has yet learned to use the spear to gain.

Only I know that secret.

Ever since Longinus drenched the blade in my blood, no one has tried to use it again to kill. Since that day, its blade has been considered too sacred to use as an actual weapon, though it has been carried into battle many times. And this, I have come to believe, is my true purpose in the world. This is why the blade was destined to be used on me: to ensure that it would never again be used on anyone else. To protect the world from that.

Imagine Hitler becoming immortal and perhaps you can see my point.

“The blood of Christ . . .” Major Miller mused now, in his temporary command post in southern Germany, as the biggest war in world history raged toward its climax. “So how did Hitler hear about this thing? How did he get his hands on it? And why does the most infamous anti-Semite in the world want a Jewish artifact?”

“Ever since it pierced the flesh of Christ,” I said, “the spear has been a Christian artifact. And you may have noticed how conveniently most Christians have ignored the fact, throughout the history of Christianity, that Jesus was a Jew. Besides, are you suggesting that what we know of Hitler’s thinking is consistent in any other way?”

“Ah. You have a point,” he said. “But, Josephson, it’s a long way from ancient Judea to modern Nuremberg.”

You have no idea, I thought.

“The spear has been a focus of obsession almost since Christ was taken down from the Cross,” I said. “The Emperor Constantine, who converted to Christianity in the fourth century, is said to have used the spear’s power to increase his own power. Later, when it came into possession of the Merovingians—”

“Who?”

“French kings in the Dark Ages.”

“Oh.”

“After acquiring the spear, their obscure kingdom grew into an empire that endured for two centuries, until they lost the spear to rivals, who acquired power along with the weapon. Charlemagne—Charles the Great—inherited the spear from his father, along with a kingdom that covered Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and part of western Germany.”

“Not bad for a ruler without radio, air power, or trains,” said Miller.

“And upon taking the throne, he immediately began expanding his territory. By the year eight hundred, his empire extended from central Italy in the south to Denmark in the north, and from the Atlantic Ocean on his western frontier to eastern Germany. As Holy Roman Emperor, he attributed his power—”

“To the Spear of Destiny,” Miller guessed.

I nodded. “He kept it with him night and day, even sleeping with it.”

“How did Mrs. Charlemagne feel about that?”

“He lived and reigned until he dropped the spear one day. Everyone, including Charlemagne himself, thought this was an ill omen, that his letting go of it—quite by accident, mind you—meant its power would now forsake him. And soon thereafter, he died.”

“Yeah, but—”

I continued, “The next ruler associated closely with the spear was Frederick Barbarossa, a German king who became Holy Roman Emperor in 1155, and whom Hitler idolizes.”

“Barbarossa . . . as in Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s invasion of Russia in 1941?” Miller said in surprise.

“Yes. Hitler named the operation after Frederick.”

“Okay, I think I’m starting to see the connection between Golgotha and Nuremberg,” Miller conceded. “So let me guess what happened next: Barbarossa died when he lost control of the spear?”

“He dropped the spear while crossing a river, on his way to the Third Crusade in 1190. Moments later, he drowned in that same river.”

“And so on and so forth,” Miller said.

“Yes. Even Napoleon tried desperately to get his hands on the spear, believing in its power. By then, however, the Hapsburgs had it, and they weren’t about to relinquish it.”

“The Hapsburgs? Whose capital was in Vienna?” When I nodded, Miller continued, “And so Hitler, born and raised in Austria, knew about this thing?”

“He was bound to, given the company he kept: the Thule Society, people interested in magic, the occult, ancient religions, esoteric secrets. He first saw the spear in his twenties at the Hofburg Museum, where it had been resting for a number of years. By his own account, he was instantly transfixed by it, convinced that his fate depended on possessing it.”

“How did it wind up in a museum?”

“The Hapsburgs still knew it was valuable, but over the centuries, their emperors had lost the ability to hear its song.”

“Its what?”

“Er, they forgot what it was for. Or, let’s say, they no longer believed the legends associated with it.” I added, “And then, of course, their dynasty fell.”

“Hold on a minute, Josephson. You’re not saying you believe in the spear’s power?”

“I’m telling you what Hitler believes in,” I said. “With all his heart and soul. After he ‘annexed’ Austria to Germany in 1938, do you know what he did?”

“Had all the Austrian Jews killed?” Miller said grimly.

“He had the spear removed from the Hofburg in Vienna and brought to Nuremberg, the spiritual center of the Nazi movement.”

“A museum piece,” Miller said shaking his head. “Of all the things to be obsessed with when you’re taking over another country. . . .”

“And yet his belief in the spear’s power to turn his dreams into empire was soon proven,” I said. “A year later he conquered Poland, and he continued rolling across Europe, devouring nation after nation.”

Miller shook his head. “But he didn’t conquer Britain, no matter how hard he tried. Stalingrad was a disaster for the Germans, not just the Russians. And now the Allies have invaded Germany and pinned down Hitler in his bunker in Berlin.”

“As long as he has control of the spear,” I said, “Hitler knows that the current situation is just a set-back. Do you have any idea how many attempts to assassinate him have failed? He attributes his survival to the spear.” So did I. “He’s convinced he cannot be killed, cannot be beaten, and cannot lose. Because the spear’s power protects him from ultimate defeat.”

“He can believe that as fervently as he wants,” Miller said, “but it’s only a matter of time before the war ends.”

“This isn’t the first time I’ve heard those words, Major. The question is: How much time?” Seeing that he dismissed the legend of that spear as just legend, I shifted my argument. “Hitler will not give up while he still possesses the spear. And as long as he believes in his own invincibility, the war will drag on. How many more people will die because of that? How many more American soldiers will never return home?”

I could see Miller’s interest sharpen, and he looked alert, fatigue melting away as he considered the core of my argument. “You’re saying that if we get the spear, Hitler will surrender?”

“Yes,” I said firmly.

Actually, I felt sure Hitler would die soon after losing control of the spear. By now, he had taken too much from it not to lose all—including his life—when it fell from his grasp. And then someone less insane in the Third Reich’s hierarchy would assume command and surrender to the Allies. But I didn’t see much point in trying to convince Miller how closely tied to the spear Hitler’s life was by now. The important thing, I was sure Miller would agree, was that Germany would surrender when the Führer died.

Miller stared at me for a long moment, weighing the risks against the potential gain. On the one hand, there was the possibility that I was right, that Hitler—whose mental instability was not unknown to the Allies in 1945—would surrender on the basis of having lost a Christian artifact that Miller had never even heard of before today. And on the other hand was the possibility that soldiers in Miller’s command would die trying to help me secure a museum piece whose loss the unpredictable Hitler would shriek about for a few hours, but then shrug off—if he even learned of it while communications within the war-torn Reich continued breaking down.

“We’ll be in control of Nuremberg soon,” Miller pointed out. “If the spear’s there, then as soon as the Germans lose the city—”

“No.” I shook my head. “The lance is safely hidden. It could remain hidden for years. Hitler must lose possession of the spear itself, not just the city it’s hidden in.”

“Do you know where the spear is?” Miller asked.

“I know where it was. A church. Hitler had it moved after the air raids began. To protect it. I know they built a large underground vault for it, but that’s all I know so far.”

“So we’re not talking about a few hours to find it?”

“No,” I admitted. “At least a few days. Perhaps more than a week. We’ll have to search, and I’ll have to gather intelligence. But I have sources and contacts. Even in Nazi Germany, they couldn’t build an underground vault in a crowded city without anyone knowing. I will find it, Major,” I said with certainty. “If you send me into Nuremberg and give me the support I need, I will find the Spear of Destiny and turn it over to Allied forces. And Hitler will fall.”

“Because of a goddamn Holy Land souvenir?” Miller muttered.

“I’m willing to speak to your commanding officer,” I said, “and tell him what I’ve told you. Answer any questions he may have.”

“He’s not here. And if he were, he’d tell me I must be suffering from sleep deprivation to take this seriously.”

“Then I guess the only remaining question is, how seriously do you think Hitler takes this?”

Miller stared at me for another long moment, then sighed. “Okay, Josephson, request granted. I’ll sign the orders. You’ll leave with the next company moving out. In an hour. Be ready. They won’t wait for you.” He added, “And I hope to God you know what you’re talking about.”

Following a lead from sources inside the city, we found a tunnel in the medieval center of Nuremberg, partly exposed by bombing. At the end of the underground tunnel was a huge, thick, steel door that took us quite some time—and more than a little cursing from the Americans—to get through. Beyond the door was a subterranean vault containing the relics stolen from the Hofburg, including the lance which had pierced my heart almost two thousand years earlier.

At 2:10 p.m. on April 30, 1945, I turned the Spear of Destiny over to the U.S. Seventh Army.

Less than two hours later, inside his bunker in Berlin, Hitler committed suicide.

On May 7, a week after Hitler’s death, Germany surrendered, ending the most devastating war in the long and bloody history of Europe’s Christian nations.

And, burdened my whole life with the legend that I was born to save mankind, I thus finally found some peace of my own.

Miller was puzzled by the speed of Hitler’s fatal reaction to my finding the lance hidden deep beneath the bombed-out streets of rubble-strewn Nuremberg. Surely, the American major later said to me, the embattled Führer couldn’t have received word from occupied Nuremberg so quickly about the spear’s confiscation?

I shrugged and never tried to explain. Hitler hadn’t needed anyone to tell him he had lost control of the Spear of Destiny. He had always heard its seductive song, so he certainly heard its sudden silence; knowing the legend so well, he knew what this meant. And so the most prolific killer in history took one last life—his own. (And also, reports said, the life of his long-time mistress, Eva Braun.)

General Patton subsequently took possession of the spear. I hadn’t gone to so much trouble to retrieve it just to see it fall into the hands of yet another power-hungry soldier. So I petitioned General Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander and a reputedly sensible man, to order that the Christian relics looted from the Hofburg by the Nazis be returned to the museum. All the relics.

Patton died in December 1945, after reluctantly complying with orders to release the spear. So he, too, suffered the fate of those who sensed its power and seized it only to one day lose their grip on it.

Considering how much it had cost mankind, I thought about destroying the spear, but even I hesitate to obliterate something that may well have been forged by the hand of God. So a museum seemed the safest place for it. And, in the quiet, anonymous life I have led since the war, I pray daily that the Spear of Destiny forever remains where it is.

So far, I have not been disappointed. The spear is still at the Hofburg Museum in Vienna, and you can visit it there, if you choose. I, however, prefer to stay as far away from it as possible.

Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One

Loren L. Coleman

Loren L. Coleman grew up in the Pacific Northwest. An avid reader, he became infatuated with stories and the art of storytelling at a young age. He wrote creative works as early as twelve years old and began to write actual fiction stories in high school for a creative writing class. But it was during his enlistment in the U.S. Navy that he began working seriously at the craft, spending off-time during his deployment in the Persian Gulf writing his first novel. Discharged in 1993, he went to work as a freelance fiction writer and eventually became a full-time novelist. His first novel, Double-Blind, was published in 1998. He has since explored the universes of BattleTech, Magic: The Gathering, Crimson Skies, MechWarrior: Dark Age, Star Trek, and Conan. Around the time of this printing, he has sold over twenty novels, a great deal of shorter fiction work, and been involved with several computer games. Currently he resides in Washington State with his wife, Heather Joy, two sons, Talon LaRon and Conner Rhys Monroe, and a young daughter, Alexia Joy. The family owns three of the obligatory writer’s cats, Chaos, Ranger, and Rumor, and one dog, Loki. His personal Web site can be found at www.rasqal.com.

Three knights stumble into a tavern.

Heads turn. A draft stokes up the hearth fire as, behind them, the wooden door swings shut with a heavy slam.

Music, being played upon a lute by the young, handsome bard seated beside the tapper’s longboard, trails off into a few, final, sad notes. Did I say “played”? Enticed. Enticed, as it were, from this humble instrument by a fine and dexterous hand. If ever there was a melody which could be played, then certainly. . . .

Ah, yes. The knights. In the tavern.

The three appear blood-spattered, though as they pass by the hearth fire you can tell it is all mud from a hard ride up the coastal trail. Two of them are tall, raw-boned men with weathered faces and bow-legged gaits. Men used to meat and wine, who spent a great deal of life with their legs forked across the barrel of a horse. The shorter of these has a cut bleeding over his left eye. Hardly more than a scratch, it is, but it does lend him some piratical charm.

The third knight is one to be wary of, turning the tavern’s sweep out of his way with a rough swat. He swipes the wood smoke from in front of his face as if it, or the odor of old wood soaked with cheap, bitter ale, or the road sweat of so many travelers breaking their journey between Shoreham and Southampton—or all of these—offends him. Not so large as his companions, this one, but with a dark, brooding stare and a cocksure swagger that tells of high birth or at least high favor with the local lord.

Handsome, yes, I’ll admit, if not quite so much as the bard, who watches from the longboard as the three boisterous men claim a nearby table that has not so miraculously emptied. Common he may be, this purveyor of song and story, but with his own roguish charm and so very able to turn a head. If given a choice, mayhap the serving wench would smile more favorably upon the bard rather than the butcher. But the law of England is served at the edge of a long piece of sharpened steel, and certainly she knows where her loyalties, among other charms, must lie.

For the moment, however, the knights appear to have other thoughts in mind. They continue to argue—

Sod a poxy Frenchman!

Three arguing knights stumble into a tavern. That is how I meant to begin. Now, where was I? Oh yes.

They continue to argue in both low tones and raised voices, hashing over the finer points of an adventure they have recently completed. They are discordant. They are dissonant.

They are also more than a little drunk already, and very well armed. Several of the tapper’s customers settle their accounts and slip out with a draft and a soft bump of wood as they ease the heavy door closed after them.

“Inkeep!” one of the larger knights shouts. The one with the cut above his left eye. With a mailed fist he swipes at the blood clotting in his eyebrow, smearing it back across forehead. “Service, I say!”

The tapper is a thick-set man with wide shoulders and a wider belly. His trimmed beard is shot through with gray and his eyes are green though bleary with the hearth fire’s smoke. He’s also been a generous man, paying for song and story for his customers with enough food and drink and a loft with clean hay in the barn to keep the bard around for several days. He wrings his hands as he approaches the table, no doubt expecting them to demand the best in the house, but worrying if the lord’s men will even offer to pay for it.

The tapper’s worry does not last long. The high-born knight spins a silver coin over the table, orders, then shoos the man away. He silences his two companions with a glare as he continues his own recounting.

“From the still, pure waters it came. Held aloft by a maiden of such surpassing beauty, she could be no mere mortal.”

The largest knight slams an open hand down against their plank table, cracking the edge of one timber. “The sea was choppy and smelled worse than the Thames at low tide. And if you want to call that horse-headed Breton sailor who sold it to us a maiden, Uther, you’ve been too long away from your wife.”

Hearing this, the young wench’s ears perk up like those of a cat. Hard to blame her. A lonely, high-born knight might be quite generous.

“A lake, then,” Uther says. “On the shores of which a hundred Picts were defeated before the lady might be approached.”

“Picts?” This from the knight with the bloodied brow. “Picts? In southern England?”

“We agreed to the contest, and the rules,” he says with another dangerous glare.

“Hang the rules and the judge along with them, then. We’ve been riding and drinking our way along the coast since Dover and we’re no further along. Besides, if the story’s the thing, we’ve got to find us a right proper teller.”

It would be unfair to say the bard’s ears perk up at this, but the man is no fool he, and he shoves himself away form the tapper’s longboard. His stock in trade is the art of the tale. And quite a good trade it is, with wares of such high quality and respectable value. (Ask for him anywhere along the road from Liverpool through London!)

“My lords,” the fine, young (handsome) bard says, approaching the table. “If you are looking for a teller of tales, a singer of great and mythic songs, I would humbly offer my services. Do you attempt to remember a ballad of Robehod, or mayhap another tale of yore?”

The high-born knight—this Uther—gives the bard a questioning glare. Glares seem to be the man’s weapon of choice, the promise of which is that he shall never run out of daggers to fling about.

“What we attempt is to decide upon a new story, minstrel.” He holds his gaze steady for a moment, long enough for tavern’s wench to deliver two frothy ales and a single glass of wine. She slops a bit of foam and brew onto the table while serving the piratical knight. There may have been a pinch involved. “Perhaps a fresh ear and an unbiased judge is what we need. Set aside your lute and play the magistrate for us, and mayhap you’ll earn some reward.”

Thinking back on the other knight’s promise to hang the judge, it would be fair to say that our bard is not completely eager to settle such a case.

But, in for a pence, in for a pound. “And this tale would be about?”

“How one of us came about this kingly blade.” And all three nod at the fine weapon stuck into the floor next to Uther.

’Sblood! I forgot the sword!

Three knights stumble into a tavern, carrying a sword of polished silver and gold.

Well, not all three of them, naturally. Only one could carry the sword. Easily, as it were. Two might carry it between them, if the third held the door for them. All three might have placed a hand upon its length, though it would mean stepping on each other’s feet and finding it most difficult to arrange themselves around a table. It’s an argument that could be made, at another time.

But here . . .

Three arguing knights stumble into a tavern. One of them, with high-born looks, carries a sword of polished silver and gold. They point their way into the smoke-filled interior, carrying on their debate. Choosing a place to sit, the high-born knight rams the sword point-first into the wooden floor. It quivers, but stands in place. And the three all grab seats around a freshly vacated table.

Yes. That’s it.

The tavern sweep mops spilled ale from the table with a dirty rag. The wench retreats. Our bard gestures for a pint of his own, then sets to examining the nearby sword, which remains stuck into the tavern floor.

“Truly it is a handsome blade,” he admits.

And it is. Inlaid with silver and gold, it carries the appearance of a ceremonial weapon as any lord or king might wield. The edge, however, appears as fine as any battle-worthy instrument. Sharp enough to cut steel itself. When the tavern sweep steps up next to it, the blade is nearly as tall as he. His eyes grow round and fill with wonder. Reaching out, he touches, barely, the sword’s wire-wound pommel, and the blade shimmers and sings as if begging to be freed. Uther puts a hand in the urchin’s face and shoves him away from the knights’ prize.

The bard looks the blade over again and nods. Worthy of a story in its own right, though he is certain that the knights have something more . . . personal in mind.

“A contest, then?” he asks. “A battle of words to be fought here, on this field of exuberance and high spirits?”

Uther raises his own cup of spirits, and washes down nearly half in a single draught. “He turns a pretty phrase, right enough.”

The largest of the knights glowers. “Bullocks his flowering words. My squire can wave a sword in the air, but would flee before a Frenchman. Does the man have any weight behind that nimble tongue is what I’d like to know.”

Striking a pose: “Sir!” our young (and I believe I mentioned handsome) man exclaims, pressing a hand to his chest. “I am the bard. Raconteur extraordinaire! A magician in my own right; the minstrel of Avon.”

“Avon.” The piratical knight frowns. “Upon Stratford? It’s a pizzling market town west of Warwick.”

This deflates the bard only somewhat. “Well, yes,” he admits. “But someday may it be known as ‘home of the bard’ and the cradle of literature. My Avalon.” He toasts the idea, and slugs down a drink of his cheap and bitter ale.

“There could be worse places to call paradise,” Uther admits. He drains his cup, tosses it in the general direction of the sweep, and gestures the tapper for another. A fresh round is brought for all, including the bard, for which he gratefully trades his half-empty mug for the better quality being served by the blond-haired wench at the knights’ table.

“So,” Uther proclaims. “To our game. To the victor goes the spoils, and the others shall bear witness to the tale. And no more interruptions or calls of foul when our magistrate judges the mark,” he commands with a glare at his companions. Standard glare. Quiver full of them.

“Who made him head dragon?” the larger knight mutters, but softly.

Not softly enough, however. Uther pins him with a dark stare. “And you shall go first, Gorlois.”

The large knight leans back upon his stool, threatening to tip it over and spill himself upon the floor. With a final, heavy draught from his ale, he slams the vessel back against the table, chipping the crockery and sloshing more onto the wooden surface than he’s likely drunk.

“A glorious tale it shall be,” he promises. “A story of strength and destiny, such that Igerna will appreciate when I bring it home to her. For we did come upon this sword standing—much as it is now—in the courtyard of a fallen castle. Lost in the wilds north of Dover.”

The bard sips carefully, enjoying the heady ale but wanting it to last. “Standing with its tip buried into the ground?” he asks.

“Yes. Erm . . . no. That would be too easy.” His brow furrows. He stares angrily at the bard. “Where else would you have it stuck then?”

“The blade looks sharp enough to cut metal itself. Or rock, at the very least. Why not have it buried within the castle’s cornerstone? Or a great boulder, set near the fallen gates? Ex calce liberatus!” The Latin comes easily to him. “Liberated from the stone!”

“Yes, by God! That will do nicely.” He elbows his piratical companion. “We may yet have a wager. That is worth a silver by itself.”

He digs into a pouch tied at his side. The coin is chipped and bent, and had long ago lost the stamp of its lord, but it rings true when slapped against the table. Silver. Worth a month’s food for most families. Longer, if they didn’t love their children overmuch.

The knight raises a large fist overhead. “With this hand did I free the sword from the stone. Ex calce lir . . . Ex cal liber . . .” He waves aside the Latin as it twists around his ale-numb tongue. “Whatever it was he said. And no easy feat! For it was a task one hundred and one knights did fail before me. For the hand of God had placed it there for the strongest and bravest of all to take and wield in his task of conquering the land and bringing all under one rule.”

Short. Pithy. Something the bard can work with. It might make for a not half bad ballad, once he dresses it up.

Striking a pose:

“For it was strong the will of our wise Lord only one hand might draw the bright blade hence, and there be known as king.”

It is a work in progress.

There are some cheers, and fists thump against table tops to herald the end of this knight’s tale. The bard’s flourish has certainly helped to raise the volume. Enough, at least, that the knight feels obligated to pitch another poor silver and a few coppers onto the table. The sweep, crouching in the nearby shadows, ogles the blade anew. The tavern’s wench has eyes only for the small pile of treasure beginning to build.

Uther smiles but refuses to commit his support. Nodding to the second knight, who still bleeds from his brow, he asks, “And you, Leodegrance? You stand to inherit lands far greater than any of us, but can you match Gorlois’ tale and seek fame greater than your fortune?”

The bard makes note to watch out for this Uther, head dragon or no. Being (nearly) so handsome as himself, and clever with a turn of phrase as well.

For his part, Leodegrance laughs. “An easy matter,” he promises. “For this sword could not be won be mere strength, as anyone can see. Struck into a great boulder? A half determined blacksmith would free the blade in less than a fortnight. This tale must develop a measure of skill, as well, and perseverance in the face of great danger. The sort of story I might use to enthrall Gwenyffer, once I see my daughter again. The challenge of the Black Knight!” he exclaims, throwing his arms out wide.

Leodegrance’s gesture elicits a few gasps and one shout of pain as the tavern sweep catches the knight’s left hand against the side of his head. The boy clutches at his ear, now red and swelling. He steps forward to take a half hearted swipe at the spilled ale. The bard watches him carefully, that the towheaded child does not get too near the spread of coins, and relaxes only when he retreats to station himself next to a nearby rafter post.

“It was on the trail from Shoreham,” Leodegrance continues. “Where, lost in the wilds, I came upon a knight clad all in dark-polished metal. The demon—for he could be no mortal man—stood guard over the ruins of a lost and forgotten church. Holy ground, it was. This knight could neither set foot inside, nor could he leave it to others. And there, resting inside the pale atop an old blacksmith’s anvil, awaited this magical blade.”

Not a bad start, really. A knight in black armor. The lure of dark magic and holiness, both. But . . .

“Resting atop the anvil? Or set into it?” he asks. As with the first tale, it offends him, the idea of such a prize simply awaiting the hand of just anyone. Such a story lacks drama.

Never mind the problem of a blacksmith’s anvil resting for no purpose inside a churchyard. In the bard’s experience, such details are overlooked in the drama of the moment.

“Why not?” Leodegrance agrees. “Steel-cutter you called it? As did the old king who once wielded this blade, before he was struck a mortal blow by this demon-knight. But rather than give in to the forces of darkness, he staggered into the old churchyard and struck the sword down through the waiting anvil. No test of strength could ever free it. Only the righteous hand of he who slew the black knight could claim the blade, and the mantle to unite the land under one rule.”

One rule again. The bard expects that to be a common theme for the day.

Three would-be kings stumble into a tavern? It lacked poetry.

“ ‘None shall pass!’ the black knight shouted. His sword was six feet of deadly steel.” Leodegrance mimes a few brief sword cuts. “The skeletons and rusted armor of a dozen valiant men lay scattered over the trail. Those who had fallen to his blade over the decades . . . the centuries! He charged forward, and we fought.” More miming. “For the entire day we challenged each other, until darkness fell and the sun rose again. And it was by the light of this new dawn that I finally struck him down, despite having taken this grievous wound from the blighter’s sword.”

Gorlois snorts into his mug, blowing froth out in a spray of humor. “You fell off your mount near Selsey.”

“I say I took an honorable wound from a dark knight who would not let me pass! Who here will gainsay me?”

“ ’Tis hardly a scratch.” Gorlois laughed. “A flesh wound at best.”

“And yet I took both arms and a leg before the dastard fell,” Leodegrance continues as if not interrupted. “Then, pulling free the sword, I took it back to the fallen knight, intent on unmasking my tormentor. . . .” And have Leodegrance stumbles into uncertainty.

The bard knows when to make his entrance.

Striking a pose:

“And pulling back the visor on his helm, nothing remains but sad emptiness, the sulfurous stench, the flight of shadows. For evil wears not the guise of any man.”

He places a hand on Leodegrance’s shoulder.

“It stalks the darkness always. And must be defended by the righteous, and the bold.”

The bard’s warning has men checking over their shoulders, as if the black knight might simply step from the tavern’s shadowed corners. The sweep hugs the post he hides near, though he keeps his gaze riveted upon the standing blade.

Our wench, hands clasped before her, nods. “Wears no man’s face,” she repeats softly. Leans forward to hold herself up from the table, staring through her tresses of oily, golden hair. “Or the face of the fair and beautiful. Isn’t evil all the more dangerous when it comes wrapped in a comely guise?”

Mary’s blood, but that’s good. The bard wants to kick himself for missing such a wonderful embellishment, but has no time for quarrels. He shoos the wench back from the table. “Away! Away, damn Morgana! Or I shall make you the villain in tales as yet unborn!”

The wench retreats, far too satisfied with herself. Has she filched a copper from the small pile? The bard believes she may have.

It does not matter, for Leodegrance adds several coins to the treasure. One shines with the heavy gleam of rare gold. A princely sum, indeed!

“Worth it and more,” he says. “A yarn I shall spin with my daughter for years to come.”

“Though it will have to lack this coveted blade of kings,” Uther promises with a good-natured glare. Yes, good-natured, and how he manages such a look is hard to say. Suffice to say that it is, and he does.

By this time, the travelers who would be frightened away by the three knights have made their quiet exit. What remains is an audience. All of them paying rapt attention to this contest of words. No longer are they pretending to be intent on their meal or drink, or holding their own private conversations. Chairs scuff closer in the dimly lit tavern. Someone throws a stick on the dying hearth fire, but the wood is green and bleeds a terrible smoke. The tapper makes the rounds himself, quietly filling orders for more drink. No one dares call out.

For it is Uther’s turn.

“What my companions fail to mention,” Uther begins, “even as they attempt to steal my glory, is that all of these adventures are part of a larger whole. A series of quests, laid out before the knights of the land that they should be vigilant and daring, and that any future king should know their realm by knowing its paths, its secrets, and most of all its people.”

There are several nods. The bard’s among them. Though in all fairness, his is in reaction to the listeners and Uther’s strategy. Rule the firste: know thine audience.

“For a year and a day we three have ridden hard, overcoming darkness and evil of both mortal and mystical nature. We slew Picts by the score in Northum bria, before they burned more villages. We chased slavers along the Irish Sea. Pulled down a wizard’s castle outside of Exeter. And turned away a landing of French marauders off the coast of Dover. By our feats, we have come to love this land and know the sufferings of its people.”

“Slavers on the Irish Sea?” the bard asks.

Uther nods. His smile is the predator’s grin of a hungry dragon. “A dozen children we returned to their families.” To the accompaniment of several cheers.

“A wizard’s castle?”

“Raising the dead with dark magics, haunting the countryside, and corrupting other knights—lesser knights—with the lure of power and gold.” There are gasps and not a few shivers. The tavern sweep’s eyes are large as saucers.

And does the bard miss how Uther’s gaze slips down to the pile of coins growing on the table? I think not. Rule the seconde: know thine allies.

Three knights enter a tavern. Led by one of high birth and regal bearing.

It comes. It comes.

The bard nods for Uther to continue.

“By our victories, we grew mighty. But when approached by a man who cloaked himself in the robes of a simple druid, one who asked for our trust and our time, it was I, and I alone, who humbly chose to accompany him. While my companions continued their quests, adventures that gained them fame and set them unequaled above all others, I set aside my blade and my armor and visited with the druid a hidden lake of still, pure waters and unsurpassed beauty.”

Yes. This is where our bard had joined the story. In more than one sense. A druid? Why not?

“It was here the druid commanded me to fast, and to wait patiently. And at the birth of a new day, the lady, she came to us. A creature of another age, dressed in silks and glittering scale.”

Embellishment: “Rising up from the lake, glistening, with this blade clasped to her breast like the earth’s child,” our bard offers.

There is a moment of stunned silence as those gathered consider those weighty (and well-delivered) words. Even the sweep, who has had eyes only for the sword, seems to lose himself for a moment as he stares inward.

“The druid asks me to take, it,” Uther says, “but I am unable to move. He orders me again, and still I refuse. Not out of fear or any desire to shirk my responsibility, but that I stand in awe of the moment. His third command charms me, and I am able to wade forward into the cold, clear waters, to accept the blade and the weight of its command. Not that I be coro nated king of all, but that I shall be champion of the land, and that it is the people of the land who shall make me king and keep me king only so long as they thrive and prosper.”

Oh, this Uther-chief-dragon be a dark and dangerous man! A ready warrior with a honeyed tongue and the eye—always the eye—for advantage! Such a bard he might have made. Though in his version, certainly, only one knight would have entered the tavern this day and with this tale. But “a single knight walks into a tavern” lacks all form of drama.

Hence his need for a professional. (Call it Rule the thirde.)

Striking a pose:

“For it was told to him at water’s edge
by her, this Lady of the Lake,
his destiny tied to the land he’d roamed
for all the people’s sake, Uther Pendragon.”

There is a moment’s silence as the bard’s spell holds over the tavern. Then, in a furious uproar, the audience swarms to its feet. Shouts of encouragement nearly drown out the crockery that the tapper’s patrons clash together with enthusiasm. Ale is spilled upon the floor and each other, and even over the three knights, though not one of them complains. The tapper is hardly worried overmuch, as his customers will clamor for their refills all the sooner.

It is quite clear that Uther carries the day. His story, tailored to the audience as well as the judge, is a strong finish to the testaments of strength and skill which came before. Better, even, that his story allows both Gorlois and Leodegrance to keep their tales (and their pride) intact.

And there is still the bard, of course. Who, accepting several glad hands, also secures his magisterial fee by sweeping the coins into a quick pile and spilling them into his own pocket. Swift and sure, before anyone else notices what else has happened to the fabled sword of the night’s adventures.

“The blade!” It is Leodegrance who first sees. “The blade has vanished!”

Another general uproar. This one with a harder edge. Gorlois picks up two nearby patrons, as if the weapon might be hidden beneath them.

From her place of retreat near the tapper’s longboard, it is the tavern wench Morgana who laughs.

“The sweep slipped it out hardly a moment ago,” she says gleefully, enjoying the dismay of those who had treated her roughly.

“Bastard son of a peasant!” Gorlois exclaims. (And likely with about as much truth as he could possibly find.) “After him, Leodegrance!”

The two knights elbow their way through the throng, not a few of which are also pushing out the door ahead of them, thinking to lay their hands first on such a magnificent prize.

Uther does not follow. In spite of the bedlam and his companions’ call to arms, he finishes his cup of wine and sets it back upon the table. He tosses a coin into the cup, for the tapper or the serving wench, whoever likely finds it first. Another coin he fishes from his pouch and presses it into the hand of the bard.

“For a fine evening’s tale,” he says.

The bard makes this coin vanish quickly. What value it had does not matter. It is a retainer, he knows. For performances to follow.

“You do not seem worried over the loss of the blade,” our bard says.

“Perhaps not.” Uther’s shifty glare (try it sometime, not an easy feat) gives nothing away. “Then again, it is the story which is truly important, yes?”

“It could be so.” Cautious. Optimistic.

“So I will travel on to Winchester,” Uther decides, rising. “Then perhaps Wallingford. I shall look for you. . . . ”

The bard sighs and gives his name. “Merle.”

Uther grimaces. “Needs work,” he says. Then shrugs. “Let the sweep keep his trophy for now. What harm can a scrawny scrap of a boy cause, even with a ‘legendary’ blade?”

“Within a fortnight, it shall be part of the tale that the blade was reclaimed by your Lady of the Lake,” the bard promises.

Still, he wonders what mischief young Arthur might cause. There were volumes of this tale yet to be written, told, or sung.

Three knights walk into a tavern . . .

Certainly it wasn’t a bad start. Time-honored and accepted. Though by Winchester, or at least by Wallingford, the bard knows he shall have placed the tale in a more suitable setting. His audience, and Uther Pendragon, would demand it of him.

Good enough for this night, however.

Over a simple table at Camelot’s.

Black Blade Blues

John Alvin Pitts

John A. Pitts learned to love science fiction at the knee of his grandmother, listening to her read authors like Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard during his childhood in rural Kentucky. Now he lives in the Pacific Northwest, and his own science fiction and fantasy stories are showing up in markets like Talebones, Aeon Speculative Fiction, and the DAW anthology Zombie Raccoons and Killer Bunnies. John has a masters in library science from the University of Kentucky and is a graduate of the Oregon Writers’ Workshop. His novel, Black Blade Blues, will be published in 2010. When he’s not writing, he can be found practicing martial arts with his children or spending time with his lovely wife.

The warrior king stood atop the hill, the light of a new dawn cresting behind him. His pompadour, tall and proud as a cock’s comb, blocked the sun, casting his face in shadow. Tiny shafts of light sprayed from the crystals adorning his glowing white armor. The ebony blade he held above his head drank in the light, casting a halo around his up-raised hands.

“I declare this land free from oppression,” he called. His voice rang. “By this sword, made from the shattered horn of Memphisto, and handed down to me from my father, and from his father before him, I cast the goblins from this land.”

He swung the sword to drag it across the rocky crag and make it shower sparks down upon the goblin horde at his feet.

Instead, I watched the sword strike the ferricrete stage and snap. Fully one third of the blade ricocheted toward the goblins, who scattered, squealing.

Actors are so stupid—he was not supposed to actually hit the stage. That’s what special effects are for.

“Cut!” Carl called. Carl was the director.

JJ flung the sword to the ground, sending the goblins into full retreat. “Stupid, useless props!”

The overhead lights came up and the soundstage appeared, shattering the image of a vengeful King of Rock-and-Roll and his mighty sword of doom.

I love my job.

“Everybody take fifteen,” Carl said into his megaphone.

Seventeen extras in horrid rubber goblin suits waddled out to the lot, lighting cigarettes, their large costume heads under their arms.

I stormed over to JJ. “You idiot! You aren’t supposed to actually hit the stage.”

“Damn thing’s too freaking heavy,” he said. “Can’t we use a lighter prop? Maybe one that doesn’t break?”

I knelt down, looking at the pieces. For a moment, I wanted to pummel JJ with the flat of the blade. I’d only likely bruise him. Likely.

Behind me, Carl sighed. “Do we have another black sword?”

“No,” I said. Here goes a second career down the toilet.

“Well, it’s too damn heavy,” JJ groused. “Maybe you can make one out of Styrofoam or something.”

I just stared at the back of his sweaty, overstyled head as he sauntered toward the gaggle of women waiting along the back of the soundstage.

With a sigh, I picked up the sword firmly by the hilt, the broken forged steel blade lying forlornly on the rocks. It was a bad break, snapping midway to the tip. Be a bitch to repair this one. Reforging a sword was tricky business.

Julie had no problem letting me use the forge after hours as long as I covered the expenses and cleaned up afterward. Tonight’s wages would cover fixing this sword and maybe help me afford to make a few more for the cons. Of course, I’d be on my own. Julie was a farrier and a good teacher, but her weapon skills sucked. Believe it or not, there were a group of folks NOT from Pakistan looking to buy handmade weapons these days. I did my level best to fill that niche. Besides, this was a special blade, not some beater we used in the society. I should’ve never risked it here with ham-fisted JJ.

I placed the blade into the crushed velvet nest I’d hand built for it. Who knew the case was better constructed than the blade?

“We won’t need that sword again for a few days,” Carl said, walking up behind me. “Why don’t you take tomorrow off, see if you can repair it?”

Closing the case, I snapped the latches and hefted it up by the handle. “I’ll do what I can,” I said, smiling at him. “Plus, there’s an antique auction in Seattle tomorrow. I’m hoping to get over and see if they have anything interesting.”

Carl laughed. “You’re quite the weapons nerd, Beauhall.”

I stuck my chin up, tilting my head to the side. “You making fun of me, boss?”

He stepped back, hands in front of him, palms out, laughing. “God, no. I would never tease a blacksmith. I mean, with arms like yours. . . .” He trailed off. “And any woman who collects swords, no chance.” He gave me his best Boy Scout grin. “Too many sharp pointy things to be concerned about.”

I smiled. He was cute, in a baby face sort of way. Not a bad director, either. More Ed Wood than Woody Allen, but his films didn’t make me want to hurl. “All right, boss. I’ll see you on Tuesday then?”

“You’ll be bringing me a new ebony steel blade for JJ to abuse?”

“We’re still doing wide-angle shots?”

“Yes. Close up shots aren’t until next weekend.”

“Okay, I’ll have something you can use.”

He grinned, but said nothing further.

I gave him a moment. “So, I’m not fired?”

“Not today.”

“Great,” I said. “We’ll see how Tuesday goes.”

Jennifer, the director of photography, came over shaking her head, complaining about the lighting. She was one of those high maintenance photography directors who was worth every minute of time she sucked out of Carl. She’d have him tied up forever. The hang-dog look on his face as I snuck away almost made me feel sorry for him.

Thing about Carl’s films: most of the shoots happened after hours because nearly everyone on the shoot had a day job, just to make ends meet. Tonight’s was no exception. I had arrived here in Everett’s industrial area around six forty after a hard day at the smithy. A quick shower at home, some decent clothes that didn’t smell like smoke, and a drive-thru meal in me, and I was good to go.

Carl worked a deal with the city to keep costs low so we shot from seven until midnight on good nights. Tonight was not a good night.

It was two thirty in the morning by the time I walked across the parking lot under sodium lights. As I was loading the case into my Civic, one of the goblins, a rather tall guy, black hair and beard, broke away from the smokers and sidled toward me. I didn’t recognize him, but extras came and went with some regularity.

“Excuse me, miss,” he said in a heavy Nordic accent.

“Something I can do for you?”

“I’d like to ask you about your sword,” he said, speaking to my face instead of staring at my breasts. Just made eye contact. It was refreshing.

I closed the hatchback, gripping the car keys in my left hand. “She’s a beauty,” I said, and meant it. I liked that damn blade. But the craftsmanship left a lot to be desired.

“She?” he asked, taken aback. “You believe the sword to be female?”

“Oh, are you of the camp that all swords are phallic because of the sheath thing?” I asked him.

He blinked. “I . . . Well . . . I just wanted to know where you got it.”

Ah, a groupie. “I bought it in an estate sale a couple years ago.”

“Sweden?” he asked.

I laughed. Like I could afford to travel. “Why Sweden?”

“Because, you realize, the blade is Swedish.”

Gotcha. I loved meeting other weapon geeks, but especially loved when they got things wrong. “By the markings on the blade, I’d say Norwegian, but I bought it in Seattle. There is a rather large Scanda hoovian population here.”

“Well.” He smiled. “I see how you Americans would mix up the lot of us—Swedes, Nords—Vikings all.”

“Yes, there was a serious amount of raiding and trading all through the Baltic. The Germanic people got around. And for the record, Beauhall is Swedish, so I get the connections.”

“My error,” he said. “I was led to believe you were Celtic.”

“I get that a lot.”

I stood there, holding my keys, waiting for this to go . . . well, anywhere. He fidgeted a bit, scuffing his boots on the blacktop.

“Well, nice to have met you,” I said finally and walked around to the driver’s side door.

“Why do you degrade it so?” he blurted out.

I looked back at him, standing in the circle of light cast by the street lamp. He was gawkish and his skin almost glowed, it was so white. Black beard, black hair. Something about him struck me as odd.

“Degrade what?” I asked.

“Fafnir’s Bane.”

A song ran through my head. It was one my girlfriend Katie sings sometimes at those science fiction conventions we attend.

I met a Swedish guy in Dublin
who was going to school in France
said he’d show me Odin’s Gungnir
if he could get inside my pants.

“Fafnir’s Bane?” I asked. “You mean Gram, Sigurd’s blade?”

I smelled stone then, like a gravel road when it first starts raining. I’ll never forget that. The guy stepped toward me, keeping on the other side of the car, his eyes huge, drinking in the light. “Yes,” he hissed. “You have become the caretaker, the guardian. Of those who have held that sword, I would expect you to be different.” He paused, drawing in a rattling breath. “I can smell the forge on you.”

Now I was insulted. I’d showered and everything. “Look, I’m exhausted. I’d be happy to talk swords with you after I’ve had some sleep. You could come by the shop one day this week, if you like—”

I fumbled in my wallet and pulled out a slightly bent business card.

“—and discuss it further.” I held out the card.

He straightened, ran his thick fingers through his hair. “I sleep during the day. Work nights.”

Yeah, I bet he did. This was annoying. “I gotta go.”

I took a step back, and he reached for the card. He had big hands, rough from hard work. When his fingers touched mine, I caught a flash of heat and the distinct smell of hot metal.

The contact was brief, but for a split second there was a connection. Forge and hearth, hammers and tongs. This man worked metal, worked it with his body and his soul.

Under that funky costume, I bet he had shoulders like an ox.

“Good night, Ms. Beauhall.” He nodded once, stepping back from me. “I’ll be in touch.”

I watched him as I ducked into the car.

I backed out of the space, keeping him in my mirror until the last moment. He stood there, staring at me with his hands tucked inside the rubber goblin head.

Big hands, thick fingers. I needed to call Katie.

I stopped at the shop. I kept the good swords in a safe there. Julie wouldn’t be in until nine the next day.

I opened the safe and looked at my collection. There was some old blades in there. Some really old, but the black beauty was my favorite.

I was too tired to work, but I really wanted to fix the sword. Maybe tomorrow after we got the order out for Broken Switch farms, Julie would help me repair this one.

The shop was strange at night, cold with the forge banked and the industrial ventilation turned off. I could smell sweat and smoke baked into the timbers of the place. Julie would be up in her trailer on the back of the lot, but the forge faced the main road. I wasn’t exactly isolated, but for a moment, the emptiness scared me.

I placed the two halves of Gram on the anvil—funny how the name filled the blank spot in my brain. It felt right. I leaned against the horse trough we used to cool horseshoes and studied the broken blade.

Another of Katie’s songs swam in my head. Something about a dwarf from Dover and bending over . . . her lyrics trended toward raunchiness. But the line about the dwarvish lover with big hands and their trysts in the dead of night made me think of the Swedish guy back in the parking lot.

Gram ended up in the safe with the rest of my treasures and I slunk home, exhausted and praying for sleep.

Katie met me at Monkey Shines for coffee before the auction. I’d slept poorly, with nightmares of ogres and trolls. When I described the events of the night before, she got really excited.

“He’s definitely a dwarf,” she said over her mocha latte.

Katie lived the fantasy shit like no one else I knew. She spoke Elvish and even some Dwarvish from Tol kien, followed jousting troops like pro sports teams, and delved into myth and legend like most young women followed movie stars or rock bands.

“He was an extra on the Elvis versus the goblins thing I’m doing up at Carl’s,” I said, toying with my chocolate croissant. “I highly doubt a dwarf would be in Seattle working on a low-budget movie. Besides, aren’t dwarves short? This guy was easily six feet.”

Katie waved a hand in my direction, like she was shooing flies. “You are so naive. This isn’t Disney.” She leaned toward me. “If you have the Gram, and this dude is a dwarf, maybe he’ll help you reforge it. Give you some tips.”

“Well, I’m gonna fix it tonight, after Julie knocks off for the day.”

“Oooh,” she said, clapping her hands together. “Can I come?”

I rolled my eyes. She’d bring her guitar and sing while I worked. It was cute, and somewhat annoying. “Fine, but you need to bring the beer for after.”

She sat back, a twinkle in her eye. “No drinking while you are working hot metal,” she said. “I’ll bring something special for after.”

The auction was a bust. There were two hunting knives and a commemorative sword celebrating the end of the Spanish-American War. Nice stuff, but too young for my tastes.

I made it back to the smithy by one o’clock and helped Julie pack up for our trek out to Broken Switch farm. They had seven horses and a pony, so it was after dark by the time we got back to the forge.

“Katie’s coming over tonight while I reforge the black sword,” I said as she filled out the deposit ticket to take the day’s earnings to the bank. “I need to fix it before the shoot tomorrow night. Carl needs it.”

She looked up at me, her half-moon glasses hovering near the tip of her nose. Her complexion was ruddy from working over the fire for all these years. But she had an incredible body for someone in her forties. I hoped I looked as good when I was her age. As it was, being twenty-eight was no great shakes. My arms were great, but I was a little dumpy.

“Make sure the tools are put away and keep track of the propane.”

“I thought I might use the Centaur tonight.”

“The propane would be cheaper,” she said shaking her head. “But I know how you are. Just keep track of how much coal you use. We’re running low.”

I returned to sweeping down the shop. I loved starting a new project. By the time I heard the crunch of Katie’s tires on the gravel drive, Julie had retired to her trailer. I carried buckets of coal from the dwindling supply out back into the building and started the Centaur forge. I’d need a good thirty minutes or more to get the coals heating evenly.

Katie respected places of power. She entered the shop quietly, head bowed, so as to not disturb the fey she was sure were always present at a working forge.

By the time I had the fire banked, Katie had her guitar out and was drinking mead from a tall green bottle. A guy we knew from the Society of Creative Anachronism brewed it. She had three more bottles in a cooler by the door.

I started out with a raw iron bar. I wanted to get into the rhythm of swinging the hammer on something new before tackling Gram.

Between swings of the hammer, I could hear Katie’s sweet voice and the quiet strumming of her guitar.

I took my time shaping the new sword. It would only be eighteen inches long, so I’d add some cuts and stamps on the blade and sell it as an Elvish short sword. The con crowd would love it.

Every fifteen minutes I adjusted the coal, keeping the burning coke piled high, sorted out the clinkers, and banked with good, green coal. It took me the better part of three hours to get the blade tamped out like I wanted. I would temper the edge of the blade by dousing it in water. It would make the metal softer, preventing it from keeping a good edge. We sold these things to frat boys and genre wannabes. Didn’t need anyone killing themselves on one of my swords.

By the time I’d quenched the blade in the trough of water, I was soaked with sweat. My muscles vibrated in anticipation. I felt good.

After midnight, with the second blade, a dagger resting on the finishing table for me to grind down, I stepped over to lean against Katie. She put her guitar to the side and stroked my sweaty hair. I closed my eyes for a moment as she leaned forward and kissed me on my forehead.

“You do good work, my little northwest Ilmarinen.”

I squeezed her hand and opened my eyes. “Ready for the show?”

“I think so,” she said. “Ready to go home and take a long, hot bath.”

“Want company?”

She smiled. “Fix your sword. Then we’ll drink more mead.” A giggle slipped past her lips. “Okay, I’ll drink more mead, you can drink what’s left.”

I patted her on the thigh. “Play me something rousing, my skald.”

Raucous chords echoed across the smithy as I opened the safe and brought out the two halves of Gram. This sword made me nervous.

I’ve only repaired simple tools, nothing as complicated as a sword. The theory was the same, but I broke out in chills. “Man, hope I don’t screw this up.”

A deep voice came from the doorway. “You had better not.”

Katie squeaked, sliding off the desk and holding her guitar in front of her.

The Swedish guy stood in the doorway, his skin glowing in the dim light of the forge. “You offered for me to visit you here.”

“Who are you?” I asked, laying the broken sword on the workbench and grabbing my six-pound hammer.

“My name is Rolph Brokkrson.” He stood just outside, not crossing the threshold. I had left the door open to keep the smoke from accumulating inside.

“If you attempt to reforge that sword, you must not fail.”

I watched his eyes. “Are there some consequences I should be aware of?”

“This is no normal blade, as you well know.” He held my gaze. “This is a test of your skill. If you fail, you will be cursed until the end of your days.”

Katie made a quick hand signal and spat on the floor. She took curses very seriously.

I didn’t find her reaction quaint. Not this time. Energy filled the room beyond anything I’d experienced before. “As long as there’s no pressure,” I said, feeling awkward.

Katie stepped around the work bench, away from the door. “Are you a dwarf?”

He stared at me, but gave a slight bow. “I am of Durin’s people.”

“Holy moley,” Katie whispered. “Like from The Hobbit?”

I barked out a laugh.

“I have read this book,” he said holding his hands palm up. “But it does not tell the true tale of my people.”

“Why shouldn’t I reforge this blade?” I asked. This guy was an escaped lunatic, I figured. I dearly loved Katie, but elves and dwarves were make-believe.

“If you accept this task, you will risk the wrath of Odin.”

I felt my eyebrows crawling up my scalp. Real lunatic. “Odin, like the All-Father? Thor’s dad?”

“One and the same.” His eyes shone for a moment. “But if you insist upon this course of action I would suggest you accept my assistance.”

“How do we know you won’t kill us and take the sword?” Katie asked.

Great, give the crazy guy ideas.

“I will swear on my honor.”

“Honor, right.” I lowered the hammer back to the table. “And why would you do this, exactly?”

“You must use Gram to slay a dragon.”

“Dragon?” Katie chirped. “Like, scales and fire and wings?”

“Yes, that is one form they may take,” he said. “In this case, he is a an investment banker in Portland.”

Katie and I exchanged bemused glances.

“Dragons accumulate wealth,” Rolph assured us. “They are ingenious in their methods.”

We both started laughing.

Rolph waited patiently, and when we’d calmed down asked politely, “May I come in?”

I glanced over at Katie who shrugged. She was excited. A real dwarf and a dragon. I half expected flying monkeys next.

I waved him in. “Welcome to my inner sanctum.”

Katie smirked.

“Not like I own the place and can keep you from crossing the threshold or anything,” I said.

“That’s vampires,” Katie offered.

“Quite,” Rolph said, walking into the shop. “You have a lovely forge.”

“It’s not mine,” I said automatically. “But the Centaur is a real beauty.”

“In what do you plan to quench the blade?”

“If I can reconnect the two halves, and if I don’t completely wreck the blade’s integrity, I thought I’d use a light, sweet oil. Something to really put a hard edge on her.”

Rolph shook his head. “That will work, but if you want the best edge, the optimum choice would be to plunge the glowing blade into the heart of your enemy.”

For a moment I considered JJ and his stupid hair, but dismissed it, weighing it against the twenty-five to life I’d get in the Washington State Women’s Correction Facility in Purdy. “Well, I think the oil is going to suffice. I just don’t have any enemies I’m ready to murder.”

“Suit yourself.” He leaned against the workbench. “I can advise you in other ways, if you want.”

Over the next few hours, we discussed shaping techniques, the proper color the metal should glow before aligning the pieces, and the right type of flux to use while heating. I opted for powdered borax, since that’s what we had in the shop. I had no real source for crushed unicorn horn or minotaur horn this late at night.

I cleaned the ends of the break with a wire brush and dipped the ends in the borax. Then I buried them in the heart of the burning coke.

“You are a competent smith,” Rolph declared as I was drawing and upsetting the face of the break.

Of course, his constant chatter made me want to hit him with my hammer. Katie sensed my stress and offered Rolph some mead. Apparently dwarves love mead. By the time I had the two halves of the blade connected and the dressed metal back in the fire, he’d drunk two bottles. Katie had no trouble convincing him to accompany her in several rousing choruses of carousal and debauchery. He even taught her a verse to “The Dwarf from Dover” that she’d never heard.

By three in the morning, I had set the weld and was dressing the blade into shape. Katie had her head down on the desk. How she slept through my hammering astounded me.

Rolph examined the blade from a distance, never coming around to my side of the worktable. I could see in his eyes that he yearned to work the forge, but he respected my space.

I heated the edge of the sword until it glowed a light yellow and then plunged it into the deep well of oil. The sharp hiss it made woke Katie. Her hair had come out of its ponytail and lay scattered across the front of her face.

“You should be proud,” Rolph said after I wiped the blade down with a cloth. “My old master was the last to reforge this blade. Each time it was used to slay the enemies of the light. And each time, Father Odin saw fit to shatter it once again. I am pleased to have witnessed the cycle renewed once more.”

“Thank you,” I said. The blade felt good in my hand. The balance and weight were better than any blade I’d used in sparring at the Society. “Someone attempted to repair Gram. It was in one piece when I found it.”

Rolph shrugged. “Aye, but the smith failed in the joining. Once this blade is properly imbued with hammer and fire, it will only shatter by the will of Odin himself.”

That thought gave me pause. Was I really that good? I turned the blade, watching how the warm glow from the fire played along its surface. It was beautiful.

“So, now, about the dragon,” Rolph said.

I set Gram on the workbench. “No dragons, thanks.”

Katie yawned.

“But, the glory, the treasure. . . .”

“Look,” I said. “I can use this sword in the movies and make enough money to keep smithing. I have all the treasure I need.”

He followed my eyes to Katie, who drooped in the chair, almost asleep again.

“But Gram deserves glory.”

I could hear the yearning in his voice—the lure of fame and fortune beyond my wildest dreams.

Instead, I raked the coals with a shovel, pushing the coke against the back of the forge to be used later. It would burn down quickly, now that I’d scattered it.

“Do you not want glory?” he asked.

I sat the shovel aside with a sigh, taking Gram into my hands again. “The glory of Gram will be in movies,” I said. “No more bloodshed, just hack actors chasing guys like you in rubber goblin suits.”

Rolph frowned. “You could cleave this anvil in two with that blade.”

“Sure, I believe you.” Honestly I did. The sword sang to me, thrilled me in ways that scared me. I could feel the pulse of power as I gripped the leather pommel. “But I’m a blacksmith. I create. I don’t destroy.”

I turned and opened the safe.

“But you do not understand!” He slammed his fists down on the workbench. The two blades I’d made earlier hopped a bit, sending the longer blade to the floor with a clang.

I tensed. My first thought was for my hammer, instead of the sword I held in my hand. I stared at him, adrenaline slipping into my veins. Gram shuddered in my grip.

For a moment I knew the sword’s need—the vibration as it sought to strike the foe. I shuddered once and slipped it into the safe. Once my hand left the grip, I shuddered again, closing the door with my hip.

As soon as the lock clicked into place, Rolph slumped against the bench, the fires in his eyes quenched in despair.

“So it shall be,” he whispered.

I spun the combination and stepped back to the workbench. He hadn’t moved; his long black hair fell down over his face. For a moment, it sounded as if he wept.

“I’ll take it tomorrow night and let JJ swing it around a bit more. Carl will pay me enough for another ton or three of coal and a good dozen sword forms. I’ll drink mead with Katie and sing raunchy songs while high schoolers and old men buy my swords in hope of becoming Beowulf.”

“He was a fop,” Rolph said. The disappointment was heavy in his voice. “I have searched long for a hint of Gram. To see it reforged is glorious. Perhaps that is enough.”

“It’s time to call it a night,” I said. “I need to be back here in six hours to work. I’ll see you at Carl’s tomorrow night, right?”

He nodded. “But aren’t you going to put an edge on the blade?”

“Are you kidding? And have JJ cut off his left foot? No thanks. I get paid to make everything look as authentic as they can afford. Getting the talent mortally wounded would end all that.”

Rolph sighed. “Oh, for the days of Weyland and Migard. For the Valkyries and the cries of battle.”

“Go home, Rolph. Before the sun rises.”

“Of course,” he said, glancing at the window. “There are not enough of my people left in this world.”

I watched him leave, listened as he drove his pickup truck down the gravel drive. So much for legend and myth.

I swept the shop, packed the last bottle of mead in the cooler, and put Katie’s guitar in her case before waking her.

“Come on, sleeping beauty. Let’s get you to bed.”

She leaned against me as we walked toward the door. “Only if you stay over.”

I flicked off the light and pulled the door shut behind me. Dragons in pinstripes and dwarves in pickup trucks. The world was stranger than the movies.

A Disappearance in Basra

Janna Silverstein

When she realized that she’d been working as an editor for nearly twenty years, Janna Silverstein decided it was time to hop the fence and try to get some of her own work published. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Talebones, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, and the anthologies Swashbuckling Editor Stories and The Trouble with Heroes. She lives in Seattle with two geriatric cats, a growing coin collection, a selection of antique porcelain hands, and many, many books.

Corporal David Kessler sat in a folding chair in the linoleum-tiled hallway, waiting to be called. His representative, Lieutenant Boyer, sat beside him, quiet, focused, but not entirely present. It didn’t matter. Boyer didn’t believe him anyway.

Kessler’s dark blue dress uniform was hot and snug. Unlike the sand-colored camos he was used to, it wasn’t made for comfort. He hadn’t slept the night before. He’d gulped down three coffees before he left, and now he was twitchy, sweaty, and restless.

Damn Malak, leaving him holding the bag this way.

He rubbed his forearm where the skin was still healing. Beneath his shirt and jacket, it itched. He’d have a three-inch long, sharp, puckered scar there. If nothing else, it was proof to him that it had all actually happened.

He rubbed his eyes. He really didn’t want to tell this story.

The chamber door to his right opened and a woman, a sergeant by her insignia, leaned out.

“Corporal Kessler, the Board of Inquiry is ready for you now.”

Kessler stood, straightened his jacket, and he and Boyer followed her into the chamber. The sergeant smoothed her skirt beneath her and sat in a wooden chair before a transcription machine.

The room was smaller than he expected. The stuffy scent of fresh paint hung in the air, as if the curtained-over windows hadn’t been opened since the painters left. He thought it was a very real possibility that he’d get stoned on the fumes before the proceedings were over. That might not be so bad, all things considered.

Three officers sat at a conference table facing him. That was a lot of brass in a very small space. Kessler and Boyer sat at a table opposite the officers.

Kessler recognized them: Major Marchand, a line-backer in a uniform, head clean-shaven, no eyebrows to speak of, hams for hands, sat on the left. Petite, severe Lieutenant Colonel Grigori sat in the middle, steel-eyed, with her chestnut brown hair pulled back in a businesslike fashion. On her other side sat Major Smith, trim in his dress blues, a dark-haired, long-faced beanpole in wire-rimmed glasses.

Kessler felt sweat gathering inside his collar at the back of his neck.

“Corporal David Kessler, please remember that this is a court of inquiry, not a trial,” said Grigori. “We simply want to establish the facts of Major Rafael Malak’s disappearance.”

Kessler nodded. Somehow that wasn’t a comfort.

“Please tell us, in your own words, what happened.”

Kessler had spent the night trying to figure out where to start, what to say, how to explain things without sounding completely nuts. Boyer hadn’t believed him, had told him to say nothing. But in the end, Kessler knew that he couldn’t lie, couldn’t manufacture a mundane explanation for what had happened. The problem was that telling the truth could get him discharged for being just a little crazy. He was damned no matter what he did.

Ultimately, he decided to tell the truth, the least he could get away with. Since Boyer had pretty much checked out and was there only because he was required to be, Kessler figured he’d do the best he could. He wouldn’t perjure himself. From there, it was anyone’s guess what would happen, but at least he’d be doing the right thing.

“Ma’am, on September 14, 2004 at twenty-three hundred hours, Major Malak ordered me to drive him out of Basra. He said he wanted me to take him out into the desert, and gave me very specific directions. We headed northwest and when we couldn’t see any more buildings or signs of civilization, Major Malak asked me to stop the vehicle. When I did, he got out and walked about ten meters off the road. There was a flash of light, and he disappeared.”

Kessler swallowed, licked his lips. Even as he said it, he knew it wasn’t going to fly. The story went from military precision to civilian vagueness far too quickly. It sounded like a lie even as the words hit the air. But Malak’s disappearance—well, that’s how it had happened, more or less.

That morning’s coffee was acid in his stomach. He could taste its dregs at the back of his throat. He wanted to shift in his chair, but he couldn’t fidget. That would be one more sign that he wasn’t being forthcoming.

“He disappeared?” said Marchand.

“Let’s take a step back,” said Grigori. “Why did Major Malak need to make this trip in the middle of the night?”

He didn’t want any witnesses. “He didn’t say, ma’am.”

“And you didn’t ask?” said Marchand.

“No, sir.” I didn’t have to. I already knew.

“It didn’t strike you as unusual in any way?”

Not under the circumstances. “Sir, yes, sir, it did.”

“It seems unusual to me, Corporal.”

Grigori interrupted. “It was just you and Major Malak, yes?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Any reason he couldn’t drive himself?”

He didn’t want to leave the Humvee unattended in the middle of nowhere. Major Rafe Malak had been nothing if not responsible. That’s only one thing you learn after a hundred lifetimes. “Not that I’m aware of, ma’am.”

“Major Malak wanted to leave the city—go northwest, you said. Did he say why?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Our records show no unusual action in that area, no compelling reason for such a trip,” said Smith, adjusting his glasses and shuffling papers about. Kessler didn’t know what to say to that. Maybe Smith just wanted that information in the record. “And you didn’t ask?”

“No, sir.”

“That’s an unusual lack of curiosity for a pretty curious situation, don’t you think, Kessler?” Smith said.

“I wondered, sir, but I figured that if I needed to know, Major Malak would tell me.” That was pretty much standard operating procedure when it came to officers. He wasn’t sure why such an approach should be a surprise. In his experience, one followed orders, did one’s duty, and got through the day.

“You left the base at 23:20,” Grigori continued. “Did Major Malak give you any hint about the purpose of the trip?”

Well, he did. I’m just not sure how it’s going to sound to you. “Ma’am, he discussed the weather. He said it was cool for September, and that he thought the sky was pretty.” That much was true. It was a new moon that night, a million stars in the sky.

“Very informative,” Marchand said sourly.

“There’s one other thing.” That was Smith. “Captain Steven Ash reports that earlier in the day you unearthed a sword during the excavation of a mass grave. He says that this sword wasn’t turned over to him for cataloging and that it’s gone missing. Do you know anything about that?”

Kessler glanced at Boyer. He was studying the edge of his shirt sleeve. No help there. Kessler took a deep breath.

“Yes, sir.”

“Kessler,” Grigori said. “It’s pretty clear that you’re not telling the whole story. Would you care to tell us why?”

Kessler took a deep breath. He knew he couldn’t put it off any longer.

“Ma’am, if I told you the whole story, you’d think I was crazy.”

“Why is that?”

“Ma’am, because the story is pretty unbelievable.”

“We’ll be the judges of that, Corporal. Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

He had to respond to a direct request. And the truth was, if he just got it out, it would be out there and he wouldn’t have to carry it around by himself anymore. It had been a month of hell, remembering what he’d seen and being able to tell no one. Boyer’s response had been bad enough. If they decided he was nuts, well, that’s what they decided.

“Ma’am, we’d gotten a tip about a mass grave just northwest of Basra. Major Malak’s platoon was tasked with investigating the site and digging for remains, three squads. One was posted to cover us while the rest of us looked over the site.”

They picked carefully over a field dotted here and there with the remains of bombed-out mud brick huts, perfect places to hide for ambush. Hard silver sunlight glared off of every surface. The ground was bumpy and rocky, a dry, tan color dotted in places by dull green and yellow weeds, especially along the crumbling hut walls. Once the squad tasked with security finished their sweep and stationed themselves, the other two squads moved in to start their grim work.

Corporal Hartley found the first signs of disturbed ground. The smell was in the air, too, that sour, musty stink of death. Some of the men wrapped bandanas around their noses to try to deal with the stench. The heat just made it worse. They didn’t have to dig deep to find the first remains. The smell hit so hard that Private First Class Stone went off by a wall to get sick. Once they found the first one—skin sliding off her bones, a stained gray rag of a blindfold around her head—it didn’t take long to find more.

Kessler was working at the end of one trench when his shovel hit something hard. His heart began to hammer: explosive device? It didn’t go off. It wasn’t bones; it felt different. And it made a different sound. He looked more closely at the spot he’d been excavating—was it gold? He remembered seeing archaeologists on TV uncovering ancient pottery with soft-bristled brushes. In an attempt to be gentle in the same way, he removed his bandana and used it to brush away more dirt.

What he uncovered was a sword.

It wasn’t like any sword Kessler had ever seen before, six feet long when he finally uncovered the whole thing, the grip alone nearly two feet in length, thick and fluted and made of a reddish-gold metal he couldn’t identify. Hebrew letters shimmered along the length of its scabbard.

Rays of light blasted out of each word, dimming the Iraqi sun. A chorus of voices screamed inside his head, a million voices, a million languages: “I am the Guardian of Gates. I am sorrow and scourge and protector. I strike fear into the hearts of men.”

The sound knocked Kessler on his ass. Pain exploded in his head. He squeezed his eyes closed to shut out the searing light. Terror overtook him. He scrambled away from the trench, shaking so hard he could barely manage his limbs.

Hands grabbed his shoulders, his arms, and he screamed. He had to get away! But he was trapped, bound by other soldiers.

When the pain in his head finally receded, when he stopped shaking, he found himself on the ground, surrounded: their medic, Gennaro, looking like he didn’t know what to do, Major Malak holding onto him, Captain Ash, and a crowd of grunts.

“Kessler!” Malak was calling, his voice loud and odd, as though processed with reverb.

“Sir,” Kessler managed, only a whisper. His throat felt as though it had been scraped with razors.

“Are you injured?”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

“Did you touch the sword?”

Why was he asking that? “No, sir.”

“Can you sit up?” Gennaro asked.

“I think so.”

Gennaro slipped an arm under him and helped him sit. Malak crouched between him and the trench where the sword lay. He looked up at the group around them.

“All right, show’s over,” Malak said. “Hartley, you stay. Everyone else back to work.” The crowd dispersed. “You, too, Captain Ash. Gennaro, I’ll take it from here.”

But Ash still stood over them. “I’ll need to take possession of that sword, sir. It needs to be cataloged and delivered to the proper authorities.”

Malak squinted up at Ash in the bright afternoon light. “I’ll take care of the sword, Captain.” Ash hesitated. “I’ll take responsibility.”

“Yes, sir.” Ash skulked away.

“Hartley, get a tarp out of the Bradley and bring it here.”

“Yes, sir.”

When Hartley was out of earshot, Malak asked, “How are you feeling, Corporal?”

“Like I’ve had the shit kicked out of me, sir. And my ears are ringing.”

“What happened here?”

Malak’s rugged face was sunburned. It made his blue eyes look like they glowed. The pale creases in his skin punctuated each feature, making him look almost like a comic book hero.

But the guy was legend around there anyway, surviving bombings unscathed, his uncanny ability to locate weapons caches based on almost no information. Soldiers in his platoon suffered a lower casualty and injury rate than in other units. He’d once lifted a vehicle off of a soldier. People claimed it was hysterical strength; Malak never talked about it.

He’d had a rough start with the unit, showing up unexpected and unannounced three months before, taking over the special task force. His assignment was confirmed only after he arrived. No one had known what to make of him. With his weird luck and his peculiar charisma, he was still something of a mystery.

Now, his expression was mild as he waited for an answer. Kessler said, “Sir, I looked at the sword . . . and it screamed at me.”

“What did it say?”

Kessler blinked. That was the last thing he thought Malak would ask.

“Sir, it said something about guarding a gate.” Kessler began to shake. The memory of the voices filled him with dread. “It was like, like everyone in the world was shouting at me. . . .” Pain blossomed in his head.

“It’s okay, Kessler, stop.”

And then Malak surprised him again. He put one hand on the back of Kessler’s head, the other on his forehead. Warmth threaded into Kessler’s mind, tendrils of a kind of comfort he hadn’t felt in years, mother love and protection and acceptance. The pain in his head receded. His ears stopped ringing. A slow tide of grief overtook him then, rising up inside him, provoking sobs that shuddered through him. He wanted nothing more than to curl up into a ball and disappear.

“All right. We’re going back to base,” Malak said.

Kessler was only vaguely aware of Hartley’s return, of Malak wrapping up the sword. When Malak turned his back, Kessler felt a breeze around them. Odd: the day was hot and still.

Kessler sat in Malak’s room. He’d finally pulled himself together; he didn’t want anyone else to see him the way he’d been back in that field. He couldn’t stop shaking, though, and as he sat on the chair by Malak’s bed, he crossed his arms and rubbed them, trying to calm himself. The unexpected weeping had scared him more than the chorus of voices shouting him to the ground.

It was the first time he’d felt that kind of pure terror since the first time an improvised explosive device had gone off in his vicinity. He remembered, now, what fear felt like, after months of the kind of resignation that settles in in a combat zone. He remembered what his heart felt like, beating at his rib cage. It would make all the days ahead harder than they’d been since that single, earth-shattering blast beneath the truck, and the sudden certainty that he’d seen his last sunrise.

Except that he hadn’t.

He was the only one that day who hadn’t.

Though the dull inertia of accepting of danger was the norm again, he still jumped at unexpected noises, still reacted a little too dramatically to gunfire and explosions. He hated the unsteadiness such encounters caused, and the weird juxtaposition of resignation and simple, trembling terror.

The sword lay on Malak’s cot, still wrapped in the tarp, its grip end on the pillow as though it were a body laid out for burial. Kessler kept his back to the thing. If looking at it was what had caused the incident, he didn’t want to set himself up for a repeat performance.

Malak pushed a thick ceramic mug of water into Kessler’s hand. Kessler took a sip. The cold water was bracing and felt good going down. He drained the cup, some of it dribbling down his chin and neck. His skin tingled with the cold.

“So. Ask,” Malak said. He sat on the end of the bed, peering at Kessler.

“What happened, sir?” Kessler asked, wiping his mouth. “What . . .” He glanced nervously to his left and behind him, where the sword lay. He had so many questions that he wasn’t sure what to ask first.

“What you heard,” Malak said, “is something no one on Earth has heard in millennia.” Malak paused and pursed his lips. “You said the sword said something about guarding gates. What it said was, ‘I am the Guardian of Gates. I am sorrow and scourge and protector. I strike fear into the hearts of men.’ It announced itself to you.”

“It . . . what? You heard it?”

“Yes.”

“Did anyone else?”

“No.” Malak picked up the sword with two hands and sat closer to Kessler. He placed the wrapped blade across his knees. Malak’s shifting forced Kessler to turn in his seat. He couldn’t avoid looking at the thing. Wrapped, it was quiet. It looked smaller.

“What is it, sir?”

“This sword . . .” Malak said. “I’ve been looking for this sword for a very long time.” His expression was dark.

He took a deep breath. “I’m going to tell you a story, Kessler. You’re the only one I can tell because now you’re the only one who can help me.

“A long time ago, there was a garden not far from here,” he began. “It covered miles, and it was beautiful, and it was full of all the things that humanity needed to survive. The people in the garden were told what they could and couldn’t do, what was and wasn’t allowed. And when they took what was forbidden, and then denied that they’d done it, they were banished from this place, this garden where all the goodness of heaven bloomed, and every living thing pulsed with a light like perpetual dawn.”

Kessler stared at Malak. Was he talking about the Garden of Eden? Why was Malak telling him a Bible story?

He was pretty sure that Malak, the Malak he knew, the Major Malak he drove all over the city, took orders from, and occasionally laughed with, was somewhere else. The man’s expression was wistful, distant. Kessler didn’t think that Malak was aware he was still in the room.

“A guardian was placed at the gates of this garden, this place of wonders. His eyes were closed to the vision behind him, though he could breathe in its perfume. Before him, he wielded a sword made by God himself . . . herself . . . God. You don’t have the words.

“It burned, ignited by the very breath of God. The heat . . . you never felt its like.”

Malak’s eyes glistened. His voice tightened. Kessler couldn’t help but lick his lips, frown a little. He didn’t know what to do in the face of such emotion.

“The guardian watched as the people from the garden trudged out into the wilderness. They wailed as they left, the first grief this world ever knew.

“And there the guardian stayed for forty years, rotating that sword with an endless, divine strength. No rest. No respite. Forty years, beyond God, beyond man, alone, until the garden and its gifts of life and knowledge were lost to men. Forgotten beyond all recounting.

“But the guardian became homesick for God’s loving presence. He couldn’t bear the sweet fragrance of a garden he could never see: roses and lilacs, ripe apples, pomegranates and oranges, pineapple and cedar and rosemary, all in one place, as they would never be again, anywhere. And that’s when he made his fatal error.

“He opened his eyes and looked upon the garden.” A tear escaped Malak’s eye. “So . . . beautiful. It was so beautiful that he dropped the sword in astonishment.

“The sword sank into the earth. Gone. It was gone.

“There was nothing I could do. I dug for it. I had to find it. But it wasn’t there.

“I couldn’t return, couldn’t think of going back without it. I’ve spent . . . lifetimes looking. Lifetimes.”

What did he mean?

“Sir.” Kessler finally spoke up. “Sir, you’ve spent lifetimes looking?”

Malak shook himself. He looked Kessler in the eye. His expression reminded Kessler of his grandfather’s the day his grandmother died, hooded, sad. He looked so old. Kessler couldn’t decide if Malak was crazy or just tired.

But there was something else, a kind of blur in the air behind Malak. It reminded Kessler of a humming-bird’s wings in flight. He rubbed his eyes.

Malak rose from his chair, put the sword on the bed again, and said, “I am not what you see.”

The blur behind Malak intensified. It bothered Kessler’s eyes, made it look like Malak stood in the center of a whirlwind.

“I’m going to ask you to do something for me,” Malak went on. “I’ll be able to explain some of it, but some of it you’ll have to just take on faith.”

Why was Malak telling him this? He was Kessler’s commanding officer; he could order him to do whatever he wanted, within regulations anyway. But Kessler was so bewildered, all he could do was say, “Yes, sir.”

“How are you feeling?” Malak asked.

Kessler took a moment and realized he felt not just fine, but really remarkable: alert, healthy, energized. The distress he’d experienced earlier seemed like it had happened weeks ago.

“I’m good, sir.”

“Good. I’m relieving you for the rest of the day. Go relax. Be ready for a call sometime this evening.”

Kessler stood.

“And don’t discuss what happened this afternoon with anyone. Do you understand?”

What Kessler understood was that, to Malak, this was the most important thing he’d said so far. Not a problem. Who’d believe him? “Yes, sir.”

“In that case, you’re dismissed, Corporal. I’ll see you later.”

At 2300, Kessler was roused from sleep by a hand on his shoulder. In the dark, Malak’s features were unmistakable, mainly because they seemed lit from within by a faint firefly shine, especially around the eyes.

“We need to go, Kessler,” he whispered.

Kessler sat up, rubbed one eye. The major wore camos but had no other gear with him. Under one arm he carried the tarp-wrapped sword.

“Sir, I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but you’re glowing.”

“Yeah, that happens. Get dressed. I need a driver.”

Kessler got out of his cot, left on his T-shirt and boxers, and pulled on a pair of pants and his boots. He reached for his gear; Malak stayed his hand.

“You won’t need that.”

Kessler looked at Malak in disbelief. “Begging your pardon, sir, but—”

“You’re beyond the reach of any mortal weapon tonight. Trust me. I don’t have much time.”

Malak wore a haunted expression. His skin looked odd, as though his beard, his pores had disappeared.

They were leaving the base and Malak wanted him to leave his armor and weapon? Kessler didn’t like it.

But he knew Malak pretty well. After three months driving the major around the city, between dodging bullets and digging up bodies, they’d spent some time talking. He knew Malak to be nothing if not level-headed, straightforward. He’d had a moment that afternoon after he left Malak’s quarters, wondering if combat exhaustion had overtaken him.

But he kept coming back to the sword, to the sword screaming, to Malak’s plain admission that he’d heard the sound. And now, that disturbing glow. Something was going on here and he had to see it through, find out what was happening.

“Let’s go, sir,” he said finally.

The road north was deserted in the moonless night. They’d exited the city quickly, its empty streets and blocky buildings quiet save for the distant sound of the occasional military vehicle rumbling on pavement. Kessler stayed focused on the road, waiting for directions from Malak, who’d pointed him to the unlit, ruler-straight, two-lane highway they now cruised along. Sand and occasional patches of vegetation were visible along the road’s edges in the stretch of the Humvee’s headlights.

Kessler’s focus was deliberate because there was another source of light that he was concerned about.

The glow Kessler had detected around Malak in the barracks grew as they drove farther from the city, a light like the reflection off of polished metal. The swaddled sword lay in Malak’s lap, blocking the light emanating from his legs.

Malak’s voice was changing, too, sounding hoarse and descending in tone. The last time he spoke, it sounded as though several people were speaking in unison—not the harsh scream Kessler had heard that afternoon, but a carefully modulated group of voices bearing a compelling authority.

It was beginning to creep him out, the sound of Malak’s voice, his inability to resist the instructions Malak gave him, this inexplicable midnight drive. Loyalty was one thing, but this mysterious expedition was beginning to feel far more sinister than any duty he’d ever performed.

“I need to prepare you, Kessler,” Malak said. “You’re going to see things that no one has ever seen and you need to be ready.

“Back in my quarters I told you that I’m not what you see. I’m changing. It started when you uncovered the sword.

“I told you that I dropped this sword back at the beginning of the world. When I touched the soil, I became like it: profane, earthly, human. Except that I couldn’t die. I’ve searched for it ever since, lived lifetime after lifetime in every part of the world.

“When you uncovered the sword in that trench, you could hear it because you were its discoverer. I heard it because like calls to like. This sword—its source is divine. We’re the same.

“And now, whether I want to or not, I’m changing back. I’m becoming what I once was, and I’m going to be drawn back to where I came from.”

It was too much. “Sir, can you stop for a second?” Kessler asked. “I need to catch up.” Kessler took a deep breath, adjusted his hands on the steering wheel. Glanced at Malak, who waited quietly beside him. He looked like the man Kessler knew, but so dramatically different. “You’re saying you’re an angel?” he asked finally.

“That’s right.”

“You’re saying that wherever we’re going, when we get there, you’re going to sprout wings and fly away?”

“It’s not like that. You’ll see.”

“Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t believe you except for the whole, um, glowing thing.” Kessler glanced at Malak. The major grinned.

“Why is this happening now, sir? Why did I find the sword instead of whoever dug that trench?”

Malak didn’t respond for a moment. He seemed to be looking out the vehicle windows for the answer. “Search me,” he said.

“Maybe it was waiting for you. Maybe . . . maybe it knew you were coming.”

Malak didn’t answer, just kept peering out the window.

“What did you do to me back there in the field earlier?” Kessler asked. “You put your hands on me. . . .”

“I healed you. Before God placed me at the gates, I was a healer. After I left the gates, I returned to that task. I’ve spent many lives healing.” He sighed. “Got tortured for it during the Inquisition. In early America.” He turned and looked out the passenger-side window. Tapped the sword with his fingers. “You all pray for miracles but you fear them. You reject the evidence of your eyes.

“Stop the vehicle and shut the lights,” Malak said.

Kessler pulled the truck over.

“Come with me.”

Kessler couldn’t help himself. He unbuckled his seat belt and got out of the Humvee. He walked around to Malak’s side of the truck. Malak was taller than Kessler knew him to be, broader somehow, and the impression of enormous, fast-beating wings at his back was stronger than ever.

Standing by the vehicle’s rear passenger-side quarter, Kessler couldn’t move. This wasn’t Malak’s compulsion. A rising terror gripped his throat, shallowed his breath.

Malak held the wrapped sword in both hands before him. His eyes blazed.

“David, you’re my witness. After a thousand lifetimes, I don’t want this change—remember and tell whoever asks. I’ve lived in this creation and, garden or no, it’s more wondrous than heaven, but you people don’t see it. That’s your punishment. You deny the evidence of your eyes. You’re in paradise and you don’t even know it.

“When they ask you why I didn’t turn over this sword, you tell them that it’s being returned to the ultimate authority. Tell them this exactly: It’s not a tool of humanity and it won’t be used for human purposes.”

“I don’t understand, sir.”

“Doesn’t matter. They will. Stand back, now. Stay there.”

Malak turned and walked off the road. With every step, he glowed more brightly.

Kessler leaned back against the Humvee, his legs weak; he felt nauseated. Was the light affecting him this way? Or maybe the surpassing strangeness of the day was finally catching up to him.

Malak turned, unwrapped the sword, and pulled it from its scabbard.

The blade burst into flame and the air erupted with a crack of thunder. In a clear sky, lightning zigzagged from horizon to horizon. The fire was so bright Kessler lifted a hand to shade his eyes.

Malak swung the blade, creating trails of fire before him in a blazing figure 8. The movement was so fluid that the blade seemed like a natural extension of Malak’s arm.

Malak wailed—the million-voice choir, so loud that Kessler fell to his knees with his hands over his ears. Malak, too, fell to the ground. His body seemed to inflate; his clothes tore, ignited, and fell away in glowing cinders. New musculature rewrote the geography of his frame. His back and sides erupted: arms and wings pushed themselves out of his torso. Malak screamed again, writhed with growth and change. Like his clothes, his hair burst into flame and fell away, revealing new features, new faces emerging on each side of his head. The wings, ponderous and powerful, enormous eagle’s wings with a span of at least twenty feet, shined liked burnished bronze and lifted him into the air.

Kessler looked carefully: Malak had four arms and four wings. His wings sprouted from between his front and back arms. They beat the air like an impossible pinwheel that rotated Malak as he rose and lifted the ground’s dry dust into the wind around him. With each turn of his terrible new body, he revealed a new face illuminated by the inferno emanating from the sword: lion, eagle, ox, and man—the man Kessler had known.

Malak approached Kessler on the air, sword before him, and his words rang out: “You have seen the rebirth of Raphael and so you shall be called Shahid—witness.” Malak floated before Kessler in the maelstrom and raised the sword. “Bear my mark and remember me!” the angel said, and drew down the sword. Kessler thrust up his arm to ward off the blow. The blade sank into his flesh, branding the cut into his skin. Kessler screamed with the pain.

The last thing he saw before he passed out was Malak being dragged upward into the sky as if by unseen hands, a blazing comet speeding away from Earth toward heaven, his glowing, human eyes staring at the receding world beneath him.

Kessler sat outside the hearing room, just as he had earlier in the day. He and Boyer had been asked to step out while the officers consulted with each other.

Boyer hadn’t said a word; Kessler hadn’t expected him to.

So now they waited, but for what, Kessler didn’t know.

A half hour passed in edgy silence before the door opened. Marchand rolled by like a tank, not acknowledging Kessler at all. Smith, a clutch of manila folders neatly tucked under one arm, nodded as he walked past, and kept going. The sergeant stuck her head out of the doorway again.

“Corporal Kessler, the Lieutenant Colonel would like to speak to you alone,” she said. Kessler glanced at Boyer, who shrugged. Useless. Kessler went back into the hearing room. Grigori still sat at the conference table.

“At ease, Corporal,” Grigori said as Kessler entered.

The sergeant left and shut the door behind her.

“With your report, we’re closing this investigation,” Grigori told him.

Kessler blinked. Had he just heard right?

“Ma’am?”

“Major Malak deserted his post and took Iraqi property with him, but we hold you blameless in this incident. You were under compulsion and couldn’t have changed the course of events even if you tried.”

They were taking him at his word? He couldn’t have been more surprised.

“Thank you, ma’am.” He couldn’t keep the bewilderment out of his voice. “Permission to speak freely?”

“Go ahead, Corporal.”

“You’re letting me go? That’s it?”

“You’ve told us everything we need to know. We’ve been waiting for this, frankly. We’ve known Major Malak’s true identity for quite some time. We’d hoped he’d choose to use the sword to help us, to help the people of Iraq. . . .”

“But that’s what he said,” Kessler interrupted. “The sword’s not a tool of humanity and it won’t be used for human purposes.”

“Precisely. I told them, but they wouldn’t listen.”

In the back of his mind, Kessler wondered who “they” were, then decided he didn’t want to think too hard about it.

“Raphael was right,” Grigori went on. “The sword was of heaven, not Earth, and it wasn’t forged to expel terrorists or political parties we don’t agree with. More’s the pity.” Grigori sighed. “You’re dismissed, Corporal.”

That was good, because all Kessler wanted was to get out of that room and put the entire business behind him. He turned and headed to the door. When his hand was on the doorknob, Grigori said, “Shahid.”

Kessler turned. Answering to his new name suddenly felt natural. “Ma’am?”

Grigori stood. Light slowly emerged from within and around the lieutenant colonel, a hard, metallic light that Kessler had never expected to see again. He had to squint to see Grigori through the glare. “You’ve been touched by the divine,” she said, her words a chorus of sweet female voices. “We’ll be watching you now. Just so you know.”

Kessler’s abdomen trembled. He stilled it. He’d survived an IED blast. He’d heard the voice of heaven. He’d faced an angel. If he could get through all of that, he could get through anything.

The Warrior Women of Apartment 3C

Annie Reed

An award-winning fiction writer, Annie Reed lives near Reno, Nevada, with her daughter, husband, a number of thoroughly spoiled house cats, plus a few kamikaze quail just to make life interesting. Annie’s short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and numerous DAW anthologies, including The Future We Wish We Had.

Pre-wedding jitters drive the best of people temporarily insane. My roommate, Wendell, wasn’t the most tightly wrapped person to begin with. When he showed me the sword he bought for his wedding ceremony, I thanked my lucky stars my room had a solid door and a working lock. Just in case.

“You bought a sword,” I said, somewhat unnecessarily since the thing was right there on my couch in all its tarnished, ornate glory.

“Yeah, off eBay,” he said. “Isn’t it cool?”

Wendell was deep in battle mode. Again. In Wendell’s case, that meant blowing video game bad guys to smithereens from the comfort of his battered recliner. A beer sat on the floor at his feet next to a bag of half-eaten microwave popcorn. Wendell had moved his recliner to the exact middle of the living room, just far enough away from the television that I’d have to high jump over the controller cord if I wanted to cross in front of him to get to the kitchen. Considering I didn’t jump—or skip or hop, for that matter—this pretty much guaranteed I wouldn’t be interrupting his game.

I was never very good at video games. Wendell said that was because I was a girl. As if. I just didn’t care enough to spend hours and hours learning how to destroy things that didn’t really exist anyway.

Wendell, on the other hand, lived for video games. Even so, ever since he and his girlfriend, Clara, had set their official wedding date, he’d been outdoing himself. I guess he needed to stockpile time with his inner game geek before he moved out of my apartment and into Clara’s. From what I’d seen, dear old Clara didn’t look like the type to put up with hours and hours of gaming every night. That was the nice thing about being roommates. I didn’t care how long Wendell zoned out in his computerized never-never land. I had a television in my bedroom, so it wasn’t like he was hogging our only one.

I leaned over the couch and peered at the sword. It was a pretty hefty thing, a thick blade with some sort of design etched on the tarnished cutting edges and a deeper design carved into a dirty white hilt. It looked old. Really old.

What was he planning? Wendell, and especially Clara, weren’t the type to dress up in medieval costumes for their wedding. As far as I knew, their wedding attire would be boringly traditional all the way, complete with black tux, lacy white wedding dress, and bridesmaid outfits a drag queen wouldn’t be caught dead wearing.

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said. “But how could you afford this?” Wendell wasn’t living with me just because I was such a stellar roommate.

“Got it cheap. It’s just a replica. Cost me more for shipping than it did to buy it.”

Cheap, huh? That sounded like something that would attract Wendell. But why would someone want to unload a sword so bad they’d eat everything except the shipping charges? The sword didn’t exactly look like a replica. Did replicas tarnish? And what was that reddish-brown stuff in the deeper crevices of the hilt? Could that actually be dried blood?

“So,” I said, drawing the word out. “How are you going to . . . incorporate . . . this thing into the ceremony?” It was probably wishful thinking to hope that Wendell planned to use the sword on Clara right before she said, “I do,” but a girl can dream.

Buttons on the game controller clacked, and fake metal sounds came out of the television as Wendell engaged yet another digital character in a fight to the death.

“It’s this cool thing I read about,” he said. “It’s like a separate vow for a warrior.”

A warrior. To do what? Love, honor, and cut Clara’s head off?

I told myself to behave. Clara wasn’t my most favorite person in the world, which had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that my cat had to live in my room 24/7 in my own apartment thanks to Clara’s allergies. But Wendell loved her, and that meant I had to put up with her. At least until after the wedding.

I left the sword on the couch, squeezed between the coffee table and the back of Wendell’s recliner, and went to retrieve a soda from the fridge. I thought about making some popcorn for myself. Just the residual smell of hot butter substitute from the microwave set my stomach growling. That’s how the manufacturers of the stuff suck you in—with smell. I didn’t like the actual popcorn all that much. I tried to summon up the smell of burned popcorn to make the craving go away.

“Hey, Rose?” Wendell yelled at me from the living room. “Can I ask a favor?”

I shut my eyes and popped the top on the soda can. “Sure,” I said, wondering exactly how bad this would be. Clean the bathroom? Make him a sandwich? Order take out, my treat?

“Um, Clara’s coming over later.”

Great.

“Can you keep the sword in your room while she’s here?” he said. “She pokes around in my stuff after . . . you know. . . .”

“After you’ve poked around in her stuff?” I really didn’t want that mental image rumbling around in my brain, but some lines are too good to resist.

“After I’m asleep.” He actually sounded ticked off, and not because Clara searched through his things. Note to self: don’t tease Wendell about his love life. “I don’t want her to find it,” he said. “I want it to be a surprise.”

He was going to surprise her with a sword at their wedding. Only Wendell would think that was a good idea with someone as controlling as Clara.

“Sure,” I said, and took a long, long drink.

Anything to help out a friend.

A sneeze woke me up.

This was disturbing beyond just the loss of what had been a pretty good dream.

First of all, it wasn’t my sneeze. Second of all, it didn’t sound like my cat’s either. Third of all, I recognized the perfume. I should have locked my door after all.

“What are you doing in my room?” I asked Clara.

She jumped.

“I thought you were asleep,” she said.

No kidding.

My nightlight gave off just enough light for her to snoop around my room. Her hair was a mess, and she held the front of a bathrobe—Wendell’s, I saw—tight against her throat. Probably got right up out of bed and didn’t bother to put anything else on besides the robe. I didn’t need that mental image either.

I rubbed my face, trying to really wake up. My cat hopped down off the bed and wound around Clara’s ankles. Clara sneezed again. Good kitty.

“Well, I’m not asleep now,” I said. “I’d really like to know why you’re in my room.”

Clara’s mouth set in a stubborn line. “I want to see it. I know you have it in here.”

It? “What in the world are you talking about?”

“It. I know you have to have it. He doesn’t have it anywhere in his room.”

“I don’t have any idea what you’re—”

“Whatever he bought for the wedding.”

She meant the sword. So much for Wendell’s big secret. Although I might be able to help him salvage some part of the surprise since she didn’t sound like she knew it was something out of King Arthur’s court. All I had to do was keep her from noticing where I’d stashed the box with the sword.

She scanned my room with the practiced eye of a professional snoop.

“You’ve been in here before,” I said.

Another sneeze. “Have not,” she said and sniffed.

Then she proved me right. Not only had she been in my room, but she knew where everything was supposed to be and what was out of place. She bent over and hefted a plastic storage bin away from the side of my bookcase. I’d leaned the box with the sword against the bookcase, covered the top of the box with a sweatshirt, and put the plastic bin in front to hide the rest. I probably should have put the box under my bed, except that’s where I stashed a lot of my stuff, and that didn’t leave enough room for the sword.

“Hey!” Not only had she barged in my room, now she was rearranging it.

I started to get up but my feet got tangled in the sheets. By the time I got myself un-mummified, my sweatshirt was on the floor and Clara had hotfooted it out of my room, the box with the sword in her arms.

I should have left well enough alone. This really was Wendell’s problem, but I was pretty ticked off by this time. Who did Clara think she was? I didn’t care if the sword was supposed to be part of her wedding or not. She’d crossed the line.

She had the box open when I got in the living room. She hadn’t turned on a light, but she didn’t really need to. Wendell had left the television on with his game on pause, and that gave Clara just enough light to see what was inside the box.

“Oh, my God!” she said.

“You weren’t supposed to see that,” I said, still annoyed. And a little sad now too for Wendell and his ruined surprise.

“How did he . . . do you know what this is?”

Her hands hovered over the open box. She looked like she wanted to touch the sword but wasn’t sure she dared.

“Um, it’s a sword, right?”

“It’s not just a sword. Look at the hilt.”

She pointed with a shaky index finger at the spot where I’d seen dried blood.

“So?” I asked.

“It’s white. Dyrnwyn. White Hilt. That’s what he called it. This sword belonged to Rydderch Hael of Alt Clut.”

She might as well have been speaking gibberish for all I understood her.

“Wendell got it off eBay,” I said. “It’s just a replica.”

“No.” She shook her head vehemently. “This is no replica. This belongs in a museum.”

“How would you know?”

She stopped looking at the sword long enough to give me a withering glance. “It’s my job to know. Well, not exactly my job, but it will be someday. I’m a history major, which you’d know if you cared to learn anything about me.”

True. I’d never asked Wendell what she did for a living, but as far as I knew, she didn’t know all that much about me either.

“If it belongs in a museum, how could Wendell afford to buy it on eBay?” I said.

“I don’t know. It’s worth a fortune.”

That’s when her expression turned avaricious.

“Oh, no,” I said. “This is Wendell’s. You can’t sell it.”

“We’re going to be married. We could both use the money, and I know just whom I should offer it to first.”

Typical Clara. Appropriate everything. Like my room. Like Wendell’s surprise.

“What we’re going to do is take that back to my room and not mention any of this to Wendell,” I said.

“So he can use one of the Thirteen Treasures to do something dumb at my wedding ceremony? I don’t think so.”

She reached for the sword, her inhibition at touching it smothered by greed. I reached for her, my annoyance outweighing my better judgment. My cat streaked by, indulging in that favorite late-night tradition of tearing through an apartment at top speed for no apparent reason. The cat stepped on the game controller, and the sound of metal striking metal and really cheesy music blared from the television, all at the same time Clara grabbed the sword by the hilt and I grabbed her.

The sword caught on fire. From the tip of the sword to the hilt, orange flames danced along the blade, and the smell of hot metal filled the air.

Clara shrieked, my cat hissed, and I tried to remember exactly where I kept the fire extinguisher before she dropped the thing on the carpet and the whole apartment went up in flames.

“Dyrnwyn!”

That yell came from the television.

Before I could even process that the hero of Wendell’s video game was there on the television screen looking at us, or more particularly at the flaming sword, words just as incomprehensible as those Clara had said just a few minutes ago poured from the speakers. With a crash of sound as loud as a thunder-clap right overhead, the world went black.

I had the mother of all headaches when I woke up.

It took me a couple of minutes before I felt like opening my eyes, which was probably a good thing. Viewing the impossible too quickly isn’t good for anyone’s psyche.

I expected choking smoke and hot, crackling flames. What I felt instead was something smooth and hard beneath me. I must have fallen on the floor, only whatever this was didn’t feel like carpet. I still had a handful of robe. Clara. Here’s hoping she didn’t break her neck, or I’d have some serious explaining to do to a heartbroken Wendell.

I tried to move and groaned a little when my head throbbed in response. Next to me I heard an answering groan, and somewhere in the distance, something roared. A deep, bone-rattling sound.

“Hurry. On your feet.”

A male voice. Not Wendell’s.

I opened my eyes fast, then tried to open them for real because nothing around me was real.

I was surrounded by dirty gray stone walls. Torches attached to the stone by iron brackets provided a flickering, dull light, just enough to barely let me see what looked like a big wooly rug hung in a doorway at the end of the room. Patches of something slimy and faintly glowing green clung to the stone. The place looked wet and dank and should have stunk like a sewer, but I smelled nothing. The stone was too smooth, the patches of glowing green gunk too uniform to be natural. The torches gave off no heat, but I wasn’t cold either. I’d gone to bed in just a T-shirt and underwear. I should be freezing.

Next to me, Clara screamed. I turned to look at her, blinked hard, and felt like screaming myself.

Clara wasn’t Clara anymore.

All her main features were still there. Same narrow nose, same close-set eyes, same stubborn chin. But her skin was unnaturally smooth, like it was made of soft plastic. The little birthmark on her chin was gone. In fact, all the imperfections of her face were gone. Her eyebrows looked painted on, and her hair resembled a solid piece of fake suede with lines that were supposed to be hairs etched into the material. She had no pores in her skin. When she opened her mouth and screamed again, her teeth were a solid line of white.

“What happened to you?” I asked. My voice sounded shaky and strange. Flat. Almost like I was hearing myself talk over a telephone.

“To . . . to me?” She pointed a finger at me. “What happened to you?” She poked at my arm. I didn’t feel it. “You’re not real!”

She was right. I wasn’t. The skin on my arms was as smooth as her face. I’m not exactly furry, but thanks to my parents’ genes, I wasn’t hairless either. Except now I was. Smooth and hairless, pore and scar free. The scratch my cat gave me on the back of my right hand yesterday morning was gone.

I got to my feet in a hurry, which didn’t do my head any good, but I was too scared to worry about a headache. What had happened to us?

The wooly rug moved. Clara screamed again. The rug turned out to be a man dressed in a fur tunic, or what passed for a man and a fur tunic wherever we were, and he had Wendell’s sword in his hand.

“Time to leave,” he said. His voice had that odd electronic transmission sound to it too.

“You have our sword,” I said. Stupid thing to say, but my brain wasn’t capable of polite conversation right about then.

“My sword,” he said. “You brought it back to me. For that I will protect you with my life.”

Great. We were someplace we needed protecting.

“Where exactly did we bring it?” I asked.

“Here,” he said.

Now that was a nonanswer answer if I ever heard one. “Could you be a little more specific? Because, I have to tell you, this place doesn’t look like anyplace I’ve ever seen.”

He had the same kind of flat, plastic-smooth face that Clara did, only he had a bumpy discoloration on his cheeks and chin that passed as a beard.

“You’re Rydderch,” Clara said, the hesitation and awe in her voice making her sound like a little girl. “If that’s your sword, that makes you Rydderch.”

“At your service,” the man said. He nodded his head in a formal way toward Clara. “Now—both of you—we must leave before the horde discovers us.”

“The horde of what?” I asked.

“Goblins,” he said.

Goblins.

Right. Because in this world hordes were goblins, not angry commuters stuck in bumper to bumper traffic on the I-5.

That’s when it clicked.

I remembered where I’d seen this room before. Where I’d seen torches in iron sconces on a dirty gray stone wall. Where I’d seen a wooly rug of a man, not with a sword in his hand, but a crossbow. Where I’d seen fight after fight involving goblins and monsters and truly disgusting things that went bump in the night.

Wendell’s video game.

We were stuck in Wendell’s damn video game. Me and his annoying, controlling, last-person-I’d-want-to-be-stuck-anywhere-with fiancee.

Oh, man. If I got out of this alive, Wendell was going to pay. Big time!

I spent the next five minutes trying to convince myself I hadn’t gone completely insane. Because sane people aren’t transported by a magic sword inside a video game where their bodies are transformed into cartoon caricatures so a digitized wooly rug of a man, who used to be a real man about a million centuries ago, could lead them down a fake stone passageway to escape from an army of bloodthirsty goblins.

Oh, yeah. I was sane, all right.

The digitized version of Clara, still clutching the video game rendition of Wendell’s robe tightly around herself, had apparently decided to embrace insanity for all it was worth. As we trudged along behind Rydderch through a ridiculously long stone corridor, she peppered our resident hero with question after question about his life and the sword Wendell bought on eBay.

Every now and then Rydderch stopped to battle a slimy, squirming thing or what looked like an animated skeleton that jumped out at us from alcoves and niches in the stone walls. We cowered behind him while he slashed and hacked and jabbed his way through a computer programmer’s idea of flesh and bone. For the most part, the gore wasn’t all that gory. Wendell’s game must have been rated T for Teen. I had to resist yelling, “Score!” every time Rydderch dispatched another make-believe monster into the ether. That wouldn’t have been the sane thing to do, not to mention the noise might bring the rest of the goblin world charging down the corridor straight at us.

Between battles, Rydderch told us that after he died—ironically not in battle—he’d woken up in a strange place. “Not this world,” he said. “It was incomplete somehow. Flat and barren of people.”

An earlier version of this game?

“What did you do there?” I asked.

“I wandered,” he said. “I discovered things that led me to other places and other things.” He shook his head. “It was not a fit world for a warrior. After I discovered all that existed to discover, I found myself here.”

Rydderch’s first world didn’t remind me of any specific game, but then again, I wasn’t a video game freak.

Much of what Clara asked him meant nothing to me. They discussed battles he’d fought when he was still alive. Names and dates and political intrigue from a long ago era. I let my mind wander as he talked about Nudd and Mordaf and the burning of Arvon. While the details might excite Clara—nothing like a little primary research to take her mind off the impossible—I was much more interested in how we were going to get out of here and go home. I missed my apartment. I missed my cat. I even missed Wendell and the aroma of freshly microwaved popcorn. Nothing smelled like anything here. I guessed scent wasn’t something video game programmers had to worry about.

“Have you ever tried to leave?” I asked during a lull in his lurid tale of a sword fight in which he’d first discovered his sword’s unique ability to burst into flame.

“Leave?” He snorted at me. “One does not leave the afterlife.”

“I’m not dead,” I said.

“You are here.” He gestured with his hand at the dank corridor. “You would not be here unless you were dead.”

Clara’s flat eyes grew wide and her birthmark-free chin quivered. “I can’t be dead. I’m getting married in three weeks.” She started to sniffle but no tears fell down her cheeks. “I have to pick up my dress tomorrow.”

Rydderch looked at her, neither pity nor annoyance in his expression. Come to think of it, he only had the one bland expression, even when he fought.

“I won’t ever see Wendell again!” Clara covered her face with her hands as the realization sank in. Pretty soon her shoulders started to shake as she sobbed.

I hate to admit it, but standing in that impossible place, I felt bad for Clara. We didn’t get along, to put it mildly, but she really did love Wendell. And in his own way, Wendell loved her. I was pretty fond of Wendell myself. Maybe I needed to make more of an effort to like her.

“We’re not dead.” I put a hand on her shoulder. “We can go back. We just have to figure out how.”

“You don’t even know where we are,” she said around hiccupping sobs.

I had a pretty good idea, but I wasn’t insane enough to share it, even with Clara.

“We’ll figure something out,” I said.

Rydderch got us moving again. No one talked this time. Clara shuffled along with her dry eyes and morose expression. Rydderch kept his hand on the hilt of his sword, the blade stuck through the leatherlike belt at his waist. Every now and then I heard scraping sounds from the corridor behind us, but every time I turned to look, I saw nothing but more darkly empty space. Still, if intuition counted for anything, we were about to be attacked any minute. We really had to get out of there.

I was pretty sure the corridor was the same as a level in Wendell’s game. How did he move up a level? All I knew was he crowed about his victory every time he made it to a new and more difficult level. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the television screen in my living room. The clanging of metal on metal. Wendell’s fingers punching buttons on the controller, moving the character on screen around as it delivered kicks and blows, swung its sword, and shot arrows from its crossbow.

That was it. To get out of this never-ending corridor, we were going to have to fight, and fight something more than the things Rydderch had slain so far. Like the goblins chasing us.

“Stop,” I said.

Rydderch pointed at the corridor in front of us. “We must keep going forward.”

“Not if we want to get out of here.”

“They’ll catch us,” Clara said. “If I’m not dead already, I really don’t want to die here.”

“Then we fight.” I grabbed a torch and yanked it out of its iron sconce. “We can do it.”

For a man with no expression, Rydderch managed to let me know without saying a word that he thought I was an idiot.

“Look,” I said. “It’s three against—” I didn’t know how many goblins constituted a horde, but there had to be a way to beat them. Levels always let the players win. Eventually. “Okay, I don’t know how many, but there are three of us. And I don’t know about you guys, but I’m getting really sick of this place.”

Rydderch and I engaged in a short staring match.

“You’ve never run from a fight, right?” I said, playing on all that Big Bad Warrior King history he’d been telling Clara. “Just because you’re dead is no reason to start now.”

He stared down his nose at me. “I have never run from my opponents.”

Right. He’d been doing a pretty good job of it so far.

“So let’s quit running away.” I grabbed another torch and held it out to Clara. “Gotta start somewhere if you want to get back to Wendell.”

She looked from me to the torch, then glanced back the way we’d come. For some reason, even though torches lit our way, back behind us the corridor faded into gloomy black. A programming glitch, most likely. Or else most players didn’t turn around and chase the bad guys down.

Clara knotted the belt at her waist, cinching it up tight to keep the robe closed. “For Wendell,” she said as she took the torch from me.

If she kept this up, I might want to marry her myself.

She brandished the torch in front of her, a steely look in her digitized eyes. “And my thousand-dollar wedding dress,” she said.

Or not.

I lost track of how many things we fought.

First it was the horde of goblins. A horde turned out to be twenty, all of which were afraid of fire. Lucky for Clara and me. We kept them at bay with the torches while Rydderch dispatched them with his sword.

Once the goblins were all dead, a hidden panel in the stone wall slid aside. When we walked through, we found ourselves in a series of caves. Where we found, of course, a cave troll. Or three.

Cave trolls don’t die easy. For one thing, they weren’t afraid of fire, so the torches were no use. Slingshots, of all things, did the trick. Clara and I found slingshots and plenty of small rocks in the cave. We ran around and between and under the trolls while we pelted them with rocks. While we kept their attention on us, Rydderch skewered them with bolt after bolt from his crossbow. Pretty soon the trolls were dead and we moved up another level.

After that came huge pantherlike creatures with enormous fangs and the ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound. If there had been any buildings to leap. On the next level we were faced with flying reptiles with huge teeth and poisonous barbs on their tails.

And so it went. In each level we fought increasingly harder opponents. We found whatever weapons we needed, even if some of the weapons, like the slingshots, seemed laughably inadequate. By the time we got to the final level, I’d picked up a wicked curved dagger, an invisibility potion, the slingshot, and a crossbow of my own, complete with what seemed to be a never-ending supply of bolts. At least I hadn’t run out. So far.

Clara had stocked herself just as well. Weapons practically bristled from the belt at her waist.

If Wendell could only see us now.

What if he could? What if we weren’t controlling our own actions, but instead a series of button clicks decided whether we won or died? That was just a little too weird to think about.

I knew we’d reached the top level when I saw what had to be the last thing left to fight—a humongous glowing centipede-type creature with pincers like a crab, a stinging tail like a scorpion, and a mouth full of jagged teeth that would have done a great white shark proud. To top it off, this thing was the size of a ten-story building. The digitized ground shook beneath our feet whenever it moved one of its dozens of legs.

“We can’t fight that,” Clara said.

She shrank behind Rydderch while I frantically scanned our surroundings. We happened to be in an enormous flat area paved with the same dirty gray stones from the corridor umpteen levels ago. The ground faded into a dull, misty background in the distance. I couldn’t see walls or houses or hills in that mist, or even the indistinct bony branches of leafless trees. Not only that, I couldn’t see anything in this barren area we could use for weapons to fight what Wendell would no doubt call the Boss. We’d have to use whatever we already had on us.

In which case, we were screwed.

“I will kill it,” Rydderch said.

“With what?” I asked. He’d be swatted aside with one flick of one of the thing’s legs if he tried to use his sword. Bolts from his crossbow would be about as effective as trying to kill a grizzly bear with toothpicks.

He ignored me. He stepped forward, looking as kingly and noble as his expressionless self could, and drew his sword.

And damned if the blade didn’t catch on fire, just like it had when Clara picked the sword up in my apartment.

In all the battles on all the levels before, the sword had been only a sword. No fire, no glowing energy, just a video game version of a finely honed blade. Yet here, when we definitely needed a little extra help, it looked like we had it.

Too bad the flaming sword didn’t make a difference.

The centipede from hell took one look at Rydderch and the burning blade, picked him up in a pincered leg, and tossed him and the sword aside like they didn’t matter. Then it turned its attention on the two of us.

Clara screamed. Gone was the warrior woman who’d battled her way through monsters too numerous to count while dressed in nothing but Wendell’s robe. The weapons hanging from her belt might as well have been charms on a bracelet for all she was going to use them.

I slapped her hard across the face. “Wendell,” I said. “Remember him? How you’re getting married and you want to live to see the love of your life again?”

The monster centipede made a chittering, scritching, scraping cry. Its sheer size magnified the sound to almost unbearable levels. This must be what little baby dinosaurs felt right before a T-rex ate them.

“I can’t help you,” Clara said through chattering teeth. “I can’t—”

“Yes, you can.” I grabbed her hand. “Together, right?”

I didn’t give her time to answer. I ran to where Rydderch lay sprawled on the gray stone, hauling Clara along with me. We had to dodge centipede feet on the way, which was like dodging redwoods falling from the sky, but we made it.

I couldn’t tell if Rydderch was still with us or not. If he’d been real, blood would have been splattered across the stones, but here he was simply still, his eyes shut, his sword still held loosely in his hand.

I grabbed the invisibility potion from my belt. We only had one shot at this, Clara and I. I could have tried this on my own, but I hoped if I actually beat this thing, I’d find myself back in my own apartment. I didn’t want to have to explain to Wendell why I left his fiancée behind.

I handed the potion, which happened to be in a stoppered bottle, to Clara. “I’m going to grab the sword,” I said. “Right before I do, I want you to pour this potion over both of us. Got it?”

She nodded.

“On three,” I said.

On one, she pulled the stopper from the bottle. Two, and I bent over to reach for the sword.

“Three!”

The invisibility potion felt like someone had covered me with a fuzzy blanket. Not warm but scratchy and hard to see through. I still managed to draw Rydderch’s sword from his hand.

Nothing.

I held the sword aloft and shouted, “Cowabunga!” because it was the first thing that came to mind.

The sword caught on fire.

Not only that, a brilliant white-hot light shot out from the pointy end of the sword and sliced through the air about a foot to the left of the centipede.

If I hadn’t been under the blanket of invisibility, the light might have blinded me. As it was, the energy beam made the sword almost impossible to hold. I struggled to point the sword at the centipede’s head.

The monster screamed at us. No mistaking the rage in that sound. Clara, still holding my hand in a death grip, dropped the potion bottle. She scrambled after it, pulling me along with her. I lost my balance, lost my battle trying to hold the sword steady, and swung the thing in an arc as I tried to stay on my feet.

Somehow I managed, in all that, to cut the monster’s head off with the beam of energy.

We didn’t get a victory celebration. We didn’t even get the satisfaction of watching the centipede’s head splat on the gray cobblestone. One minute we were fighting for our lives, and the next minute the world around us went black. No fade to gray, just black.

Game over.

Clara packed up the sword and sent it back to the person who sold it to Wendell. Even though she swore up and down our adventure as digitized video game characters was just a hallucination brought on by a severe allergic reaction to my cat, she still used barbecue tongs and oven mitts to get the sword back into its box. Allergic reaction, my eye.

Wendell wouldn’t talk to me for a week. Clara had decided all on her own to return the sword—not that I wanted it around my apartment any more than she did—but Wendell got mad at me, not her, because I let her see the sword in the first place. I would have been more upset at the silent treatment except I was too busy cuddling my confused cat and making microwave popcorn just to enjoy the smell.

One night two weeks before the wedding, as I was walking through the living room inhaling a bag of popcorn, Wendell told me he decided not to be mad at me anymore. “It wasn’t really your fault,” he said. “Clara always manages to get the better of me, too.”

I decided to let that go. He’d never believe me if I told him I beat the Boss in a medieval sword and sorcery game while Clara wanted to run and hide.

“Besides,” he said. “I found something better for the ceremony.” He grinned. “Way better.”

I stopped inhaling. I knew that grin. “What did you buy?”

“It was a super great deal.”

Oh, no.

“You’re going to love this.” He waved a computer printout at me. “I paid for express delivery. It should be here tomorrow.”

The printout was from eBay. One silver chalice, antique, motivated seller.

I put down the popcorn, shoved my wallet and keys in the pocket of my jeans, and shrugged on my jacket.

“Where are you going?” Wendell asked.

“Video game store,” I said.

His jaw dropped open. “You? Why?”

“Research.”

I needed a game guide for an adventure game set in Camelot. Preferably one featuring Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and the quest for the Holy Grail.

Just in case.

Cold Winter’s Knight

J. Steven York

J. Steven York is the author of roughly a dozen novels and many short stories that have appeared in various anthologies and magazines. An avid collector of toys, he and his wife, fellow author Christina F. York, each year fill their VW Beetle to the roof with toys and donate them to launch their local holiday toy drive. He also produces a weekly web comic called “Minions at Work,” photo-illustrated using action figures. He and Chris live on the Oregon coast and maintain a shared Web site at www.yorkwriters.com.

“ne more Rum Caribbean.” The barmaid slid the O colorful tumbler toward me and the plastic cocktail monkey fell off the glass and joined his discarded brethren in a pack on the bar. I didn’t make eye contact, though the barmaid was a pretty, pouty-lipped blonde, though she was smiling, because earlier I thought I’d seen a hint of pity there. What the hell could she want with me? I was broken.

I shifted on my stool awkwardly, my right leg, in its Frankenstein brace sliding against the brass rail. In my knee, something shifted, and I wondered if the grinding of shattered bone and shredded ligament was just my imagination, or a backhanded way of justifying more rum. “Keep the tab running,” I said, and she hovered uncertainly for only a moment before turning to check on the dark-haired woman at the far end of the bar, nearly the only other patron in the place.

I removed the cherry, speared through with a translucent gold plastic sword, out of the drink and set it carefully on a napkin. I took good slug of the drink, sweet and bitter all at once, and neither in a good way. The Rum Caribbean was the current house special, and its chief virtues were its low price and the copious quantities of cheap, no-name rum used in its making. Otherwise, it was a stupid-ass drink for a ski-lodge bar and it didn’t belong here.

Neither do I, I thought bitterly, glancing out through the floor to ceiling windows at the crowded, sun-dappled slopes. It was a beautiful day. The new powder that had fallen last night shined with promise like a virgin’s smile. I watched the chairlift climbing the side of the mountain and ached to be up there, my face red from the crisp chill of the air, snow hissing under my skis as I rocketed down the north slope, flying over moguls, slicing through trees, taking to the air to tumble head-over-heels, body twisting, laughing at gravity even as I bent it to my will.

Not happenin’. Not now. Maybe never.

I took another too-sweet gulp of rum, looking for the numbness I wanted rather than the cotton-headed feeling that I was achieving instead. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. It was my year off from college, my chance to enjoy myself and the pleasures and freedoms of adulthood for the first time. I had a job as a ski instructor, a room in a chalet that I rented with five other guys, and a small trust I’d inherited from my grandparents. It was all supposed to be gold.

Then, six days into the season, I’d found the hole left behind by a rotted stump. I remembered the shock as I heard the bones snap, as my face slammed into the snow even before I could figure out what had happened to me. I remembered, in a kind of detached blur, the agony as my friends rolled me over, the scream that couldn’t have come from me. I remembered their faces towering over me, frosty breath making clouds against the deep blue sky. I remembered the ride strapped to a sled behind a ski-patrol snow-mobile, the helicopter ride off the mountain, the emergency room in a city I’d never seen standing up.

When it was all over, when they’d pinned my leg more or less back together and taken away the pain-killers that made it easier not to think about what had happened to me, I called one of my housemates, and after much begging, persuaded him to drive down off the mountain and bring me back to the chalet. And there I stayed, bumming rides to the lodge, frittering away my trust on cheap booze, and watching my friends, tiny on the slopes, growing more and more distant from my life. I’d be lucky if I could walk without a limp, the doctors told me, and I’d certainly never be able to ski again.

A gas-fire crackled in the big stone fireplace and the blender whirred as the barmaid made another slushy concoction, just as out of place as my rum drink, for the dark haired woman across the bar. I looked at her. Her face was narrow, pretty in an angular sort of way, and her straight black hair fell carelessly across one eye. Her fingers were long, her nails red, and she toyed restlessly with her empty margarita glass, waiting impatiently for the next drink.

I looked down at the pack of monkeys, which I’d lined up at some point next to their ring-shaped watering-hole, and placed the latest one on the end. The others, I noticed, were green, but the latest one was orange. Their leader, I decided, and took another drink, a sip rather than a gulp this time.

Why did I come back here? I’d asked myself that a hundred times. The answer was clear enough. I just didn’t like it. I had no place else to go.

I’d begun drifting away from my parents when I was still in high school, and that seemed to suit them just fine. I had a phone number in Las Vegas for my mom, a number that nobody ever answered, and my father—Well, I hadn’t seen him for three years before I got the call that he’d been killed in a car accident. I skipped his funeral to go white-water rafting.

College had just been an excuse for leaving home, a destination because I needed a destination. I’d gone for an MBA, just because it seemed like a good way to make money. My grades were decent, if not outstanding, and I had been thinking about law school after my “crazy year” was over.

But in truth, I still didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do with my life. I had lots of acquaintances, lots of party pals, but as I’d learned since my accident, precious few real friends.

Make that none. I wondered if ever, in my entire life, I’d had a real friend.

Take another drink.

I took another deep draw on the well-of-rum, and tried to remember the last time I’d eaten. I glanced at the cherry, red as a Christmas ornament, sitting on my napkin. Breakfast!

I picked it up by the little plastic sword, took the stem in my other hand, and tugged. But instead of sliding off the golden plastic blade, the stem snapped. I sat the stem aside, and frowning, took the cherry between my fingers and pulled.

It wouldn’t budge.

My cotton-candy brain was annoyed at the puzzle. I considered just eating the cherry right off the sword, but I held it up to the light instead. Something dark was visible through the slightly translucent flesh. Now I was annoyed. My cherry was defective! It still had its—whatever you call it—seed—pit—stone . . .

“If you think yourself worthy, draw the sword from the stone.”

The woman’s voice seemed to come from nowhere. I looked around, but there was nobody behind me. The barmaid was talking with the dark-haired woman at the end of the bar. The conversation was animated, and I got the impression the woman was being cut off.

I had a pang of fear. Don’t let her do that to me!

“The fair lady needs your aid, Sir Knight. Are you worthy?”

Worthy? Aid? Disembodied voices should at least have the decency to make some kind of sense. All I knew was I didn’t want my supply of cheap rum cut off.

Sit up straight. Act sober. Eat something.

I grasped the cherry tightly between thumb and forefinger, sticky red juice running down my hand like watered-down blood, took the handle of the sword, and pulled. The sword offered surprising resistance. Amazing resistance. Yet I was determined not to be defeated. Harder I pulled, my muscles strained, my resolve tested. The sword should have snapped, the cherry should have been turned to pulp, yet it had only just begun to move, slipping a little, then grabbing in the cursed stone. Pull!

Then the sword came free all at once. The cherry went flying and I felt myself falling backward. A very bad word blurted through my lips as I braced for the agony that was certain to come when my injured leg hit the floor.

Then I landed on my butt, rolling back, trying to take the brunt of the fall with my shoulders, not my broken leg. My head hit the ground painfully, then my legs came down . . .

The agony never came. My head and butt hurt a bit, but it was a minor thing. I lifted myself up on my elbow and as I did, reflexively brought my knees up. My bad leg bent.

Another moment of panic. What had happened to my brace? But there was no weakness, no pain. My leg was just fine, and for a moment, that was my entire world.

“Is this the best that the lady can send to face me?” The voice was high and shrill. “She must be truly desperate to send a clumsy lush such as yourself.”

I looked around. The bar was gone. I was on a vast, smooth plain that seemed to be made of polished wood. In the distance, I could see a broken ring of ponds half a mile across, and great translucent cylinders, big as mountains, towered up into the black sky. What the hell was this place?

I sat up and was surprised to see a sword sitting next to me, four feet long, made of translucent golden plastic. I reached down and picked it up. Though it was plastic, it seemed surprisingly solid and had considerable heft. Though my body had stopped falling, my mind felt like it was still tumbling, and it was something to hold onto.

“Well,” said the taunting voice, “the errant knight at last finds his weapon. Face me!”

I shook my foggy head and looked up. In front of me stood a tower of bar napkins, each as big as a king-sized blanket, and on top of the napkins crouched a man-sized orange cocktail monkey clutching a huge toothpick in his right hand, a fringe of red cellophane on one end. As I tried to take this in, the cocktail monkey flicked his long, curly tail and brandished his toothpick like a sword. “Stand up, Knight—if you can!”

Still clutching the sword, I staggered to my feet. Nothing around me made sense. I was on the bar, or some mad dream version of it, but the bar seemed to curve off into the far distance, and float into a space that was, and was not, the room it should be in. I could see the back bar looming in the sky on one side, and the sunlit windows on the other, each seemingly miles tall and a horizon away. In the black sky overhead, the lights burned in blackness like a chorus of suns. Around me was a landscape of martini glasses that towered like trees, paper-umbrella bushes, glass-ring lakes, olives and pickled onions scattered like fieldstones, rock salt gravel, ice-cube boulders, and lemon-wedge hills. It was like Dr. Seuss on a three-week bender.

“This isn’t happening,” I said to myself, certainly not intending to talk to a six-foot-tall cocktail monkey.

The monkey tossed back its head and laughed, so high and piercing that it made me cringe.

The orange monkey passed his toothpick sword to his tail, which curled tightly around the handle, and clambered halfway down the tower of napkins. His translucent features were somehow frightening as he sneered at me, like a demon made of Jell-O shots. “Oh, it’s happening, Knight. It’s as real as the blood I’ll soon spill from your veins!”

I looked again at the sword in my hand. I swung it back carelessly, but somehow didn’t manage to drop it. “Hey! I don’t want to fight anyone.”

He scrambled closer, leaning out to free one hand and point the sword at me. “You will fight me. You took the challenge when you pulled the lady’s sword from the stone.”

“Sword? This is just a toothpi. . . .” I stopped short, suddenly realizing that my argument wouldn’t carry much weight considering the monkey’s chosen weapon. I had a sudden vision of a rare steak stabbed with a cellophane-tipped pick, blood oozing around its base, and with it a flash of fear. Insane though this was, something made me think that I had reason to be concerned.

I stepped back, arms wide, rock salt crunching under my feet. “Hey, I don’t want trouble.”

“Yet,” said the monkey, “trouble is what you’ve found.” He jumped and landed on two feet in front of me, standing tall for the first time. Did I say six feet tall? More like six and a half. He took his stance, hooked one arm behind his head like a fencer, and extended his wooden sword, point aimed straight at my face.

Unable to think of anything better to do, I clumsily raised my sword in front of me. The monkey suddenly danced forward, striking the plastic blade so hard that my hand stung, then danced away again. “Defend yourself, fool!” The monkey hopped from foot to foot, moving from side to side, keeping just out of range of my blade. “A poor knight the lady has chosen this day. At least give me sport!”

“I told you,” I said, “I don’t want to fight.”

The monkey sneered. “I told you, you don’t have a choice.”

He lunged at me, the point of his weapon slicing my hand. The pick looked like wood, but the point cut me like a razor. I snatched back my bleeding hand, clutching it to my chest.

The monkey only laughed at the look of terror on my face. “Fight or die!”

I thought of a third option.

I ran.

I ran like I’ve never run before. Though I was terrified, it was good to have my leg back, good to feel bone and muscle moving in harmony, something I’d always taken for granted before.

The orange monkey dropped to all fours, sword again clutched in his tail, and bounded after me. “Seize him! Seize the coward!”

Suddenly, from behind every martini tree and umbrella bush, green monkeys appeared, some also with toothpicks, others with plastic cocktail spears. They screamed and charged at me from every direction.

I dodged and weaved between them, using the sword to drive them back, to knock aside their weapons. I whirled, turning my attention from one to the next in rapid succession.

As fast as I drove one back, another replaced it, and I found myself surrounded.

Then, suddenly, I was through them, and I ran. I ran until my lungs burned, my legs ached, and I could hear my heart pounding in my ears.

But the monkeys fell behind, their cries growing more distant, until at last I heard the monkey king’s voice call out to me in the distance, “Run if you will, Knight! I still win!”

But then they were gone, and I wandered the familiar and yet strange land that the bar had become, waiting to wake up from my dream. But it didn’t end, and I staggered, exhausted and aimless, through lemon-lime canyons, past rock-salt dunes. I laughed bitterly to myself. “I could use a drink.”

Then ahead, I spotted something different, a gleaming tower of stainless steel. It took a moment for me, in my diminished perspective, to recognize it as a cocktail shaker. Lacking any other destination, I stumbled toward it.

“Come to me, my knight.” The woman’s voice, warm as a hot toddy, smooth as aged bourbon, seemed to come from all around me, but I somehow knew that it was drawing me to the tower. “Come to me,” it said, and I followed.

I emerged from a bramble of pink paper umbrellas to see the base of the tower and the door that waited for me there. I stepped inside, and soft light suffused the interior, showing me the spiral staircase that curved around the inside.

I climbed. I was already tired, and the stairs seemed to go on forever, but still I climbed, using the sword like a walking stick at the end, until I reached a landing in a circular room that seemed to fill the cap of the shaker. There were windows all around the circumference of the empty room, and a woman, in a flowing, champagne-colored satin gown stood waiting near one of them. She rested her hands gently on the knobbed end of a crystal staff that I soon recognized as a swizzle stick.

I approached her. Her hair was dark and curled high on her head. Her features were fine and beautiful, despite an abundance of small wrinkles. She looked to be in her forties, yet I had the strange feeling that she was much, much older.

She smiled sadly as I approached. “My poor, wounded knight. Kneel before your lady and receive my blessings.”

I wasn’t about to kneel before anyone, and yet, when she held out her hand, I found myself dropping down onto one knee, not because I was forced to, but because it just seemed like the right thing to do.

My sword sat, point-down, in front of me, my right hand on top for balance. She reached down and touched the back of my hand, her skin soft against mine, her fingers tracing my wound from its beginning at the base of my index finger down to the very bottom of my thumb. There was no pain, only a warm tingling, and then she drew back.

I looked up and saw that my hand was whole again, not so much as a scar remaining. “Thank you,” I said.

She smiled. “It is the least I can do, and sadly, the most. Some wounds run deeper than flesh, and are not so easily healed.”

“You’re this lady they keep talking about.”

She smiled. “I am the Lady of the Well.”

“Shouldn’t that be the Lady of the Lake?”

“The Lady of the Well drink, my child, and this is my domain, though you would scarcely know it from the way those foul monkeys run amok.”

“You want me to fight them for you? I can’t fight them.”

She laughed softly, a deep sadness there. “It is not that you can’t fight them, child, it is that you won’t. And I didn’t ask that you fight them for me, only that you fight them for yourself.”

“Well,” I said, “I’m not fighting. Not for you, me, or anyone.”

She tilted her head and looked at me. “Is that so? Rise, and walk with me.”

I stood and tucked the sword into my belt. I followed her as she glided gracefully toward a balcony that I hadn’t noticed before. I looked out the windows, and it seemed that we were very, very high, much higher than I could possibly have climbed. There were monkeys everywhere, scurrying in packs across the bar, like candy-colored ants. “How did it come to this?” I asked.

“Not by my wish. It is my desire only to offer warmth and comfort to the weary, pleasure to the suffering, joy to the sad. Yet there is a weakness in the soul of humans that leads many to drown themselves in my well, suffocate their souls in my gifts. It is the tragedy of my existence.”

“It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to you,” I said. “We humans are a sorry lot.”

“I don’t believe that, child. But you are flawed.”

I nodded.

“Flawed, but not beyond redemption. Not if you can find the courage to fight.”

We stepped out onto the balcony, looking down on the great sweep of the bar. Blurred by distance, I could just see the barmaid, striding across the sky like a titan. But the lady directed my attention downward. More and more monkeys scurried along, joining into ever larger packs, converging as they moved on some urgent mission.

Then the lady raised her eyes and gestured with her scepter toward the far end of the bar. “If you won’t fight for yourself, my knight, then will you fight for her?”

And suddenly, with crystal clarity, I could see the dark woman sitting there, her head hanging as she stared into her drink. I could see the empty, lost look in her eyes, a look I knew well. I’d seen it in the mirror a lot lately.

“She is one of the lost ones, my knight. She stands on the edge of the abyss, and will not even feel it as she begins to fall. The monkeys sense this, and they gather.” She looked me in the eyes. “Do you see it now?”

Did I say the monkeys looked like ants? Army ants: hungry, devouring anything in their path, devoid of mercy and eager for fresh meat. They streamed as one toward the dark woman, who waited, oblivious to her doom. I wanted to call out, to scream a warning, but I knew she’d never hear me. “What can I do?”

“Face the monkey king. Defeat him and she will be spared, for this day at least.”

I looked down, and as the monkeys converged on the dark woman’s drink, I saw a single orange dot leading the way. “I’ll never catch him,” I said.

The lady smiled sadly. “That is your curse and your gift, my knight. He is never far away.” She tapped my shoulder with her scepter, and again I seemed to fall. But this time I was ready. I landed, crouched, sword ready, and looked up to see the shocked, translucent face of the monkey king. Then his lips curled into a cruel smile. “You find your courage too late, Knight. We outnumber you a thousand to one.”

It was true. Behind him, monkeys crowded in from every direction, forming pyramids, standing on each other’s shoulders to make room for more, until they surrounded me like a multicolored wall made of stained glass.

I tried unsuccessfully to swallow the lump in my throat, and my heart hammered in my chest like I’d just run a marathon. “No,” I stammered. “I’ll fight you, and you alone.”

The monkey king chuckled. “That’s not how it works, Knight.”

“What are you,” I said, trying to act confident, “a coward?”

The monkey frowned and drew back, studying me. Then he passed his toothpick sword, still stained with my blood, from his tail to his hand. “I will enjoy this, Knight.” He advanced on me with deadly purpose.

I had a moment of sheer panic. What was I doing? I didn’t know how to fight with a sword, and this mad hallucination clearly did. He would cut me to ribbons, even sooner if I couldn’t control my fear.

I gritted my teeth and stood my ground, my attention focused laser-sharp on the hated monkey. I shifted from side to side, trying to anticipate his moves. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was fast and agile. I had balance and strength.

Suddenly, he dashed forward, thrusting. I jumped to one side, batting its weapon away with my blade.

The monkey swung wildly. I ducked as the sword whistled over my head.

The monkey regrouped and his sword’s point sought my chest, but I stepped back just out of range.

I stabbed with my sword, but the thrust was flicked aside. But the monkey was more hesitant, more wary. I thought maybe I saw just a trace of fear in those marmalade eyes.

I pressed my attack, slashing and jabbing, dodging the occasional counterattack. The monkey fell back and I pushed him along the circular wall formed by his companions.

I started to feel the fear fade, my confidence grow. And that was my mistake.

I pushed the monkey king back against the wall, cornering him. My blade stabbed for his heart, when suddenly the tail flicked over his shoulder like a whip, grabbed my wrist, and pulled it aside. Meanwhile the monkey jabbed his toothpick sword down. I screamed as the point stabbed deep into my knee.

I folded, nearly dropping my sword, blinded by tears of agony. I expected the killing blow, but it did not come. I could not see, but I could hear the monkey laughing.

“You know me, Knight. You know who I am, and that’s why you fear me so. I’m the one who took your grandparents. I took your father, I’ll take your mother yet, and in my good time, I’ll take you!”

In a moment I was seven years old, looking at the two caskets being lowered into the ground, listening to the adult whispers that my grandfather had been driving drunk when the accident happened, watching my father and mother later that evening, falling-down drunk and fighting over nothing while I cowered under the table, wanting nothing but for the screaming to stop.

Then I was older, making the decision to skip my father’s funeral, not because of the funeral, but because I couldn’t bear to hear the whispers this time, to have the awful truth verified.

Then I was dialing the number in Las Vegas on Mother’s Day, knowing that Mom wouldn’t answer, and secretly hoping she wouldn’t, because if she was there, she was probably drunk.

And then I was again looking at the taunting face of the monkey king. My fingers tightened on the sword, and agony turned into rage. I used the sword to push myself to my feet. The monkey must die!

I’d said I knew nothing about fighting with swords, but I remembered my first ski instructor explaining the things skiing and fencing had in common, the balance, the body moves that were the same. I remembered laughing nights around a bonfire, my friends and I fencing with ski poles until the fire burned low. I knew more than I gave myself credit for. I could only hope I hadn’t realized that too late.

Ignoring my wounded knee I pressed the attack, catching the monkey king off guard. My anger fueled me. I stabbed, I slashed, I cut and parried. My knee threatened to buckle time and again, but I clenched my jaw and held myself up by sheer force of will. The monkey fell back again and again. He tried his trick with the tail again, only to have the tip of it sliced off by my sword. And then, he was distracted, just for a moment, and I knocked his weapon from his hands.

Around me, thousands of translucent monkeys screamed in alarm, but they made no move to help their leader. The monkey king stood before me, his hands raised. “Mercy,” he begged.

“All the mercy that’s in you, you can have in return,” I said, and stabbed my blade into his chest. The monkey king screamed and then shattered like glass into orange fragments that bounced across the wood-grain firmament of the world. Then around me, the other moneys began to shatter as well, at first one by one, then faster and faster, until I was surrounded by piles of multicolored fragments that glinted under the many suns of my little world.

I slumped against my sword, the agony in my knee threatening to overwhelm me.

Suddenly, the lady stood at my side.

“My knee,” I gasped though clenched teeth.

She shook her head sadly. “You’ve won the battle this day, for yourself and this woman. But now I can offer you only hope, not comfort.”

“The fighting isn’t over, is it?”

“The fighting never ends,” she said, reaching out so her fingers brushed my cheek.

I lurched on my stool, like someone waking from a dream. But as I looked down at the broken remains of the monkeys, I knew it had been something more than that. I was suddenly stone sober, and for one short second I was free.

“I made you another,” said the barmaid, plopping the coaster down and setting another frou-frou drink in front of me. From the rim of the glass, an orange monkey grinned at me. Sober. I wondered how many more drinks it would take to undo what had been done?

I reached out a hand, hesitating just short of the glass, fingers trembling. I closed my fingers into a fist, and with my last ounce of will, knocked the glass over. Rum and fruit juice glugged out of the glass and into the gutter behind the bar. The monkey fell off the bar, clattering somewhere unseen on the floor.

The barmaid turned at the noise. “I’ll get you another one.”

“Don’t bother,” I said. I pulled out my wallet and peeled off a few bills. Then, fishing my crutches from corner of the bar where I’d propped them, I hooked them under my arms. I hesitated, looking down at the little plastic sword on the bar, glittering in the bright lights. I carefully picked it up and poked it through the vest pocket area of my sweater like a stick pin. Never know when I’ll need it next. Then I made my way around the bar. My knee hurt, reminding me I was alive.

I glanced out the windows at the slopes. I’d get back out there somehow. And if I didn’t, well, there was more to life than that.

The dark-haired woman looked up at me as I approached, blinking as though just awakened from her own dream. What did I see there in her eyes? Not pity. Maybe—Maybe it was hope.

“This isn’t a pick-up line,” I said, “but my name is Sam, and as possibly the only skier in the place, I could use some company. Can I buy you a cup of coffee over in the café?”

She smiled slightly and glanced at the stool next to her. “You could sit down and have a drink with me.”

I shook my head and held out my hand.

She hesitated, looked into my eyes, smiled more openly, slipped her fingers into mine, and slid off the stool, and as she did, a plastic monkey crunched under her foot. She looked down, at first puzzled. Then she began to laugh, like music. Like hope.

We left the bar together, my Winter Queen and me.

In the Fold

Jean Rabe

Jean Rabe is the author of two dozen books and more than four dozen short stories. When not tugging on old socks with her dogs, she edits anthologies, magazines, and newsletters and dangles her toes in her goldfish pond. Visit her Web site at www.jeanrabe.com.

“ou can almost hear the doink-doink,” Melvin Dabrowski said. The New York Times reporter folded his lanky frame into a chair one row back from the defense table.

Drina de Arroyo was directly behind him, leaning so far forward her chin nearly touched his shoulder. “You can almost hear the what?”

“The doink-doink, Drina.” Mel turned sideways so he could see her. He gave her a loopy smile that accented the lines at the edges of his eyes. “Didn’t you ever see Law & Order? Back when it was good, with Lenny Briscoe?”

“Yeah, I’ve seen it. But I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The doink-doink,” Mel continued. “The two chords at the beginning of the courtroom scenes. This case is just colorful enough to be made into one of their episodes, don’tcha think?” He faced forward again and drew a narrow notebook out of his pocket. Mel was old fashioned—no tape recorder or BlackBerry or laptop. Drina favored her wafer-thin Mac.

She was the junior courts reporter for El Diario la Prensa, the largest Spanish daily in the city, and though she’d gotten to the courthouse more than an hour before Mel, he’d gotten the better seat. Mel somehow always got the best seat, like it was reserved for him. He looked somewhere between fifty and sixty, though Drina had heard he’d celebrated his seventieth birthday a few months ago. He’d been a fixture in the Times newsroom for the past four decades, mostly covering cops and courts. Mel told her once that the managing editor didn’t have the cojones to fire him and was trying to nudge him into retirement by handing him oddball stories like this one. She got these sorts of assignments simply because she was only one year removed from J school—and in this case because the senior courts reporter was on vacation.

“Doink-doink,” Mel said. “Here we go.” He was the first one out of his chair when the judge came into the courtroom and the last one seated. He scribbled down the opening statements, then worked a kink out of his neck.

“State’s exhibit one.” The prosecutor held up a sword and faced the judge.

A singular sword, Mel wrote. He’d more than done his research on the weapon and was upset he’d not visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art the day it had arrived. Mel was a regular at the museum. Forty-one inches long, weighing just shy of two pounds, point of balance seven and a half inches from the cross. He knew they would cut some of this background material from his story or turn it into a sidebar and bury it; they’d been cutting a lot lately. Width of the finger ring is slightly larger than an inch, and blade thickness at the base is point two inches.

The prosecutor stood in front of the jury now. “The coroner confirms that this is the murder weapon and the defendant’s fingerprints were the only ones on it.”

Mel continued to write: The hilt is clearly the medieval cruciform style, though incongruous is the ring that is part of the forward guard arm that was bent out from the guard and curved during the forging. It appears to be made from blackened steel, and the corner of the cross arm is chipped, a marring that occurred two centuries past. The wooden grip looks metallic, the cord binding having picked up bloodstains and taking on a silvery-black sheen. The grip is so short it can be used only one-handed.

The prosecutor placed the sword on the edge of his table and called his first witness. The fluorescent light danced along the blade and held Mel’s attention.

The blade dates to the mid-1300s, according to the Arabic inscription near the guard, though it is actually older. Double edged, folded many times in its making like a Japanese sword, there are a few nicks, one resulting from the defendant Percy Sullivan striking a metal pole with it as he tried to kill his quarry.

Mel’s pen hovered above the paper. Quarry? The prosecutor had used the word victim—first victim.

“Quarry,” Mel said. He thought it more accurate. So what if his prose had been turning a tad purple of late? “Unsuspecting quarry.”

The blade, he added, has grooves on both sides of the central fuller, is straight, and the maker’s mark stamped on it hints of Italian workmanship. And yet the anonymous British collector who donated it claimed the sword was forged in England and was either King Arthur’s Excalibur or Lancelot’s Brightkiller—or at the very least a sword wielded by another knight from the fabled Round Table. Mel shook his head as he wrote that last sentence and directed his attention back to the witness. This sword was never given a name.

“I saw Percy do it.” The witness, a plump, pimply-faced man with greased-back hair, nodded to the defense table. Sorry, Percy, he mouthed. “I was just coming back from my break. I had a leftover brownie, and I thought Percy’d eat it. Had too many nuts in it for me. Anyway, he . . . Percy . . . was in the sword room again.” The witness ran a hand over the top of his head, and then wiped it on his pants. “Percy walked through the sword room a lot. He liked to look at the suits of armor and the Japanese stuff.”

“That was Percy’s downfall,” Mel whispered. He scribbled faster.

“Just tell us what you saw.” the prosecutor prompted.

The witness smoothed his hair again. “I saw Percy do it.”

Percy Sullivan had worked as a security guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for twenty-two years, habitually lingering by the rotating displays of armor and swords on his rounds. His favorite was a Tibetan sword from the fourteenth century. Its pommel was gold, and that alone made it far more valuable than the sword on the judge’s bench. Percy also hovered around the samurai exhibit, with all of its sword mountings, armor, archery equipment, banners, and batons—all on loan from private collections.

Two days before the murders, the sword on the judge’s bench arrived and was put on display immediately. It had been gifted to the museum’s permanent collection and was shown inches away from the small-sword that the Continental Congress had awarded to Colonel Marinus Willet in 1785 for his action against the British. On the other side was an Iron Age Celtic sword dating to the mid-first century BC.

“Percy told me it wasn’t King Arthur’s sword, that new one we got, or Lancelot’s—despite what the note card in the case said. Percy said if the sword really was Excalibur that British collector wouldn’t have donated it, said it would have been worth too much to part with.” The witness seemed pleased that he’d imparted that piece of information.

The prosecutor cleared his throat. “Please, just tell us what happened.”

Mel continued to scribble.

That night Percy hovered in front of the new sword, like there was something special about it and he couldn’t look away. It wasn’t easy to see all the details at night. The museum conserved electricity and there was only enough for the cleaning crew and security guards to see by, certainly not enough to make out the intricacies of the exhibits. But Percy used his flashlight so he could look at the things he really liked.

It was oddly quiet that night. The building was old, and pings and creaks, pops from the furnace—being early April it still kicked on once in a while—and the sounds of traffic outside usually intruded. But that night everything was muted, the loudest sounds being the clicks coming from Percy’s heels as he walked.

He stopped in front of the display case, shining his flashlight on the new sword. The black pommel seemed to drink in the light, and shadows danced along the blade like writhing worms. Percy touched the glass.

“The cleaning crew was just coming in the hall,” the witness testified. “They brought their own noise with them, ’cause one of them had a little radio strapped to his belt. Not one of those Walkmans or those little things where you download music and listen to it through earphones. This was a regular old radio, and the station was playing something Latin or such. You couldn’t understand the words. I couldn’t anyway. But it was loud. I had called to Percy, asking him if he wanted the brownie, but I don’t think he could hear me over the music. Anyway, it was real creepy, like it wasn’t Percy. He didn’t look right, you know? His eyes were funny.”

“Objection, Your Honor. The witness is—”

“Sustained,” the judge said.

The prosecutor took in a deep breath. “Just tell us what happened.”

Mel’s pen hovered above the paper, his gaze flitting between the witness and the sword on the prosecutor’s bench. I should have prevented all of this, he wrote. Then he drew a line through the sentence.

Percy raised his elbow and slammed it into the glass. The case was thick to protect the items inside and Percy shouldn’t have been able to break it so easily, but he did. No alarm went off, though there were wires connected to the case and to the main system. There was only the sound of the radio, surprised shouts from the cleaning crew standing dumbstruck like proverbial deer caught in a car’s headlights, and the sharp intake of Percy’s breath as he reached inside and touched the pommel.

He shoved his flashlight in his pocket with his other hand, the beam angling up and hitting the ceiling high overhead, creating a full moon that looked down on him and the cleaning crew. He pulled the sword out of the case and raised it above his head, swinging it in a figure 8 like King Arthur ready to do battle.

“Death to thee! Thy blood shall be mine!” The words came from Percy, but it didn’t sound like him. He was speaking in an odd accent, English, and his voice was deeper, almost melodic. “Drop to thy knees and pray to thy gods.”

Then Percy charged across the floor, heels clicking faster than they’d clicked in many years, spittle flying from his lips, eyes wide and fixed on the three men who made up the cleaning crew.

The closest man was carrying a cardboard box filled with spray bottles and rags and a short-handled squeegee. Percy lopped off his head with one swing and advanced on the next man before the body hit the floor.

The other two shouted something in Spanish. Percy drew back on the sword and swung it in a level arc at the man who had been pushing a massive floor buffer. The black blade bit into the man’s side and he staggered against the buffer. The last man ran. Percy finished the one in front of him, bringing the sword up and down in an executioner’s swing. A moment later, he was running after. . . .

His next target, Mel wrote. “If only I’d visited the museum when the sword came in. If only I’d been paying attention.”

Drina leaned forward and tapped him on the shoulder. She whispered so softly he had to strain to hear her. “What did you say? Did I miss something?”

He shook his head. No, I did, he mouthed.

Mel absently took notes through the rest of the day’s testimony:

The first policemen on the scene describing the three bodies. The lead officer recounting how his partner was gutted trying to subdue Percy and how he drew his weapon and intended to shoot Percy. But Percy dropped the sword and fainted.

The coroner detailing the wounds on all the victims.

The defense attorney occasionally objecting to the assistant D.A.’s questions.

Mel kept his eyes on the sword most of the time, so lost in thought that he didn’t hear the judge gavel an end to the day’s session.

Drina tapped him again. “Mel? Melvin? You all right?”

He nodded. “Just tired, I guess.”

“Weird case,” she said, as she closed up her laptop and slipped it in her satchel.

“I guess,” Mel repeated.

“See you tomorrow. That’s when they start putting the shrinks on the stand.” She stared at Mel a moment before shuffling out of the courtroom.

Mel was the last to leave. He stopped in the restroom to splash water on his face, not bothering to dry his hands. He waited there for a while, listening to people walking in the hall outside. He looked at his watch: a little past five.

He waited a few minutes more, then made his way downstairs and along Center Street, and then to a coffee shop where he thumbed through his notes for hours, looking at his scrawl but seeing something very far beyond the words and this city.

Shortly before 11 p.m., shift change, he was outside central booking at 1 Police Plaza. No one watching, he cast his first spell.

“I could have prevented this,” he said, now looking like an aging patrolman. Minutes later he was inside the building and heading downstairs to evidence lockup. He’d thought about letting the sword sit down here through the duration of the trial. Then he’d get it when it finally went back to museum.

But that might prove too risky.

More lives might be lost if someone else succumbed to the sword’s will—and that would mean more blood on his hands.

Mel kept his head down and adopted a limp and conjured a clipboard to hold. From forty years of covering cops and courts he knew no one stopped an old guy with a clipboard. He nodded at the officers he passed on the stairs, waggling his fingers and speaking ancient words at one who paused and tried to place his face.

He had helped forge the sword, long centuries past, when he went by Merlin rather than Melvin, long before he added the surname Dabrowski, which meant “from the oak grove.” Indeed, Merlin was from an oak grove, and it was in that grove he had once tried to bury the sword.

He glided past a detective who was filling out a stack of forms.

The swordsmith he’d hired used the pattern method, at Merlin’s insistence, because the metal was inferior and needed to be strengthened. The entire process had taken a little more than a month.

The smith had hardened four thin rods of wrought iron in a charcoal pit. Then Merlin lent his magic to stoke a fire unnaturally hot. “As hot as hell,” Merlin recalled saying. The smith twisted the rods tight, like a woman’s wet braid, and then with a hammer welded them to form the center of the sword. Merlin nurtured the flames until they were bright white and the air became so warm that it was painful to breathe.

He passed a clerk carrying a cardboard carton filled with small bags of potato chips and pretzels for the break room.

The smith had folded the metal repeatedly; how many times Merlin did not bother to count.

“The true magic of a weapon is in the fold,” the smith had said.

Then he had hammered a V that would become the blade’s edges. A part of the blade became the handle, and Merlin used his magic to form a shallow trench down the center of each side. The smith called this feature the fuller. Merlin thought it a trough along which blood could run.

Down the hall a young officer leaned against the wall outside the women’s restroom door, obviously waiting for someone. Merlin gave him a faint smile and continued down the hall.

It had been winter, and so the smith thrust the sword into the snow outside to cool it. Days later, Merlin helped him grind and file the flat of the blade—the wizard not physically laboring as the smith did, but calling up an enchantment that would make the edges impossibly keen and thirsty. Again Merlin enhanced the smith’s fire, staring at the flames that lapped at the sword, seeing himself reflected on the strip of folded iron and envisioning the weapon in Arthur’s hand.

The sword was to be Arthur’s; Merlin had deemed that the king should have a weapon finer than any human could fashion. He’d intended to call the weapon Excalibur.

Once more the blade was cooled, quenched in blessed water Merlin had taken from a nearby abbey. The smith said the sword had a hardness like none other he had made or had ever seen.

Merlin turned at the end of the hall, nearly bumping into a frumpy-looking woman pushing a cart filled with doughnuts. She stopped, and he shook his head. “Not hungry,” he told her. She squeezed past him, the wheels of her cart squeaking annoyingly.

The smith welded an iron crossguard for it and added to that a rounded pommel of softer iron, which he wrapped with the finest thin leather cord. Merlin managed the polishing, using magic rather than his hands and adding the Arabic inscription: maker of kings, wanting a language that local men could not translate.

It truly was to have been Arthur’s sword.

Though he could not sense it, Merlin knew the sword was ahead, behind a door at the end of the corridor. There was a desk outside, and an officer sitting at it, looking through a ledger and humming an old Broadway show tune.

Something had gone horribly wrong toward the end of the sword’s making. It was not yet considered finished by the swordsmith, but Merlin had nevertheless hefted it and tested it and cast more magic into it, wanting to make it an insatiably ravenous thing that would help Arthur on the battlefield. Merlin had cut himself in the midst of the enchantment, and the sword drank deep of the wizard’s blood, the blade darkening as if it had been made of blackened metal. In his surprise and pain, Merlin had lost control of his spell, the enchantment twisting and warping the sword’s heart.

A part of Merlin’s soul spilled into the blade that day, but it was not a good part, and the sword that was to be Excalibur became an unnamed length of metal that cried out for blood and begged its wielder to sate it.

The sword fought to gain control of Merlin, but the wizard’s will was strong and he bested it, thrusting it into the scabbard that had been crafted just for it, burying it deep in the woods where no man was expected to ever find it.

Merlin waved the clipboard at the officer, catching his attention.

“I need to double-check the evidence inventory for the Sullivan trial,” he said.

The officer scowled and looked at his ledger, opening his mouth to object, but Merlin waggled the fingers of his free hand.

“Certainly,” the officer said, buzzing him in.

Merlin made certain the door closed firmly behind him.

The sword was in a big, clear plastic bag on a low shelf in the back next to a box of other pieces of evidence. Plastic. Merlin shuddered. After its forging it had been tightly sheathed in a scabbard lined with fleece, the wool’s lanolin intended to keep the blade from rusting. He wondered if the museum had been gifted that sheath, and just who the donor had been; his magic hadn’t told him that, only that the sword would appear at the museum sometime this year.

Merlin had settled himself in New York in the late 1960s, waiting for the sword, and had established himself as a reporter, both as a means to earn a living and to gain access to all the places the sword would appear. His magic had told him that from the museum the sword would go to the courthouse on Center, and then to this very evidence lockup room.

Fortunately, his magic had revealed no future locations beyond this place for the damnable blade, meaning he was to catch up with it here and take it forever away from the hands of men. But he’d hoped he could have caught it earlier, at the museum, before the security guard had succumbed to its power and killed innocent men.

Plastic. A thing of evil beauty should have a more fitting sheath.

“This was meant to be Excalibur,” he hissed.

Excalibur had come to Arthur, but it was a different sword, forged without Merlin’s help—though per his instructions—and more beautiful than the sword in plastic.

Merlin had forgotten about the ill-made weapon he’d hidden beneath the oak grove and busied himself with helping Arthur rule the kingdom. So preoccupied, Merlin was unaware that Mordred found the accursed thing and subsequently fed it the blood of dozens of men before Arthur killed him. The wizard had set about to find the malicious blade, feeling responsible for the rampage, but he guessed that someone must have taken it from the battlefield and buried it with the dead. And so since he could not magically locate it, he occupied himself with various other concerns through the ensuing decades upon decades.

Two centuries past the sword was unearthed by an archaeologist who went on a killing spree and beheaded his fellows before being killed himself. Merlin tried to regain the sword then, but he lacked the magic that could bring the blade to him. He had to go to it, and by the time he got there, it was gone. It had a way to hide itself between feedings, he guessed, and so he missed it again when it was displayed in a British museum forty years after that; a woman fell victim to the sword’s power and killed her family before being subdued. How did the sword choose its wielders?

The nameless sword surfaced in another bloody incident after that, and—of course—disappeared again. Merlin was in anguish, feeling guilty for helping create such an abomination, and vowing to get it out of the hands of men even if it was his last earthly act.

So since he could not discover where the sword was at any given moment, he concentrated on where it would be. He looked to the future, and his mind brushed the Metropolitan Museum of Art, then the city court building on Center Street, and finally this evidence lockup. He set himself up as Melvin Dabrowski and bided his time; he actually enjoyed his role as a newspaperman and savored the bustle of New York City.

“You were too strong for Percy Sullivan, and for Mordred,” Merlin said. He stared at the sword through the offending plastic. “You controlled them, and led to their downfall. Good that you were never gifted to Arthur, and good that I learned my lesson and left sword-making entirely to the smiths.”

His fingers touched the plastic, making it crinkle. He traced the Arabic engraving. “And good that I finally caught up with you. Your malevolence will end here.”

Merlin had discovered a perfect resting place for the sword. A new high-rise was going up in Brooklyn in place of a strip of old brownstones that had been torn down. The building’s footprint would be deep, and this unnamed sword would rest at the very bottom.

“I’ll take you there now,” Merlin said. “I’ll . . .” The wizard shuddered and swallowed hard. Then suddenly his fingers clawed at the plastic, ripping it so he could get to the leather cord wrapped so tightly around the pommel. It fit well in his hand, as if it had been made just for him. “I’m thirsty,” he said. “So very, very thirsty.”

He raised it above his head and swung it in a figure 8 as the dark part of his soul that had helped birth the blade claimed him.

“Death to thee! Thy blood shall be mine!” The words spilled out of Merlin’s mouth, in the strong, melodic voice he’d spoke with centuries ago. He’d lost some magic through the centuries, and the sword had gained some power.

The detective he’d passed minutes ago, the one who’d been filling out a stack of forms, came in and headed to the closest shelf, looking for something. But he stopped in his tracks when he saw the old patrolman waving the sword.

“What in the name of . . .” was all he could get out before Merlin ran him through.

“Death to thee! Thy blood shall be mine!” Merlin shouted to the officer at the desk outside the door. One swing and he lopped off the man’s head. Two patrolmen he spotted at the end of the hall were next, followed by the woman pushing the doughnut cart near the elevator.

His legs suddenly strong and young, muscles fueled by the sword that had just feasted, he charged three officers who sped around the next corner, guns drawn. “Drop to thy knees and pray to thy gods.”

A small part of Merlin watched from a distance, realizing why he’d found no future location for the sword beyond 1 Police Plaza. It wasn’t because he would capture the sword and bury it—it was because the sword would capture him.

The patrolmen fired their guns simultaneously.

Merlin’s body gave out before the ambulance arrived.

Drina de Arroyo folded herself into a chair one row back from the defense table and pulled a narrow notebook and pen out of her coat pocket. She was in the spot that had been reserved for Mel, but he hadn’t shown up today. A reporter from the Daily News speculated that somehow Mel must have landed a bigger story—the slaughter at 1 Police Plaza last night.

Merlin hated borrowing Drina’s body, but he saw little choice. His spirit was fading from the world, and he didn’t have but a day or two before he would join Arthur and Lancelot and the rest.

Another New York Times reporter was covering the Sullivan trial in Mel’s stead. He sat directly behind Drina, leaning so far forward his chin practically touched her shoulder. “What did you say, Drina? You can almost hear the what?”

“I said, you can almost here the doink-doink, Drina replied.

Merlin would make one last attempt at the wretched sword tonight.

“Doink-doink,” Drina repeated. “Here we go.”