The Sword of Rhiannon

VII. The Sword

She might be both Sark and devil as the others had said. But whatever she was, she stopped Carse’s breath and held him staring.

She stood like a dark flame in a nimbus of sunset light. Her habit was that of a young warrior, a hauberk of black mail over a short purple tunic, with a jeweled dragon coiling on the curve of her mailed breast and a short sword at her side.

Her head was bare. She wore her black hair short, cut square above the eyes and falling to her shoulders. Under dark brows her eyes had smoldering fires in them. She stood with straight long legs braced slightly apart, peering out over the sea.

Carse felt the surge of bitter admiration. This woman owned him and he hated her and all her race but he could not deny her burning beauty and her strength.

“Row, you carrion!”

The oath and the lash brought him back from his staring. He had lost stroke, fouling the whole starboard bank, and Jaxart was cursing and Callus was using the whip.

He beat them all impartially and fat Boghaz wailed at the top of his lungs, “Mercy, oh Lady Ywain! Mercy, mercy!”

“Shut up, scum!” snarled Callus and lashed them until blood ran.

Ywain glanced down into the pit. She rapped out a name. “Callus!”

The oar-bank captain bowed. “Yes, Highness.”

“Pick up the beat,” she said. “Faster, I want to raise the Black Banks at dawn.” She looked directly at Carse and Boghaz and added, “Flog every man who loses stroke.”

She turned away. The drum beat quickened. Carse looked with bitter eyes at Ywain’s back. It would be good to tame this woman. It would be good to break her utterly, to tear her pride out by the roots and stamp on it.

The lash rapped out the time on his unwilling back and there was nothing for it but to row.

Jaxart grinned a wolf’s grin. Between strokes he panted, “Sark rules the White Sea to hear them tell it. But the Sea Kings still come out! Even Ywain won’t dawdle on the way!”

“If their enemies may be out why don’t they have escort ships for this galley?” Carse asked, gasping.

Jaxart shook his head. “That I can’t understand myself. I heard that Garach sent his daughter to overawe the subject king of Jekkara, who’s been getting too ambitious. But why she came without escort ships—”

Boghaz suggested, “Perhaps the Dhuvians furnished her with some of their mysterious weapons for protection?”

The big Khond snorted. “The Dhuvians are too crafty to do that! They’ll use their strange weapons sometimes in behalf of their Sark allies, yes. That’s why the alliance exists. But give weapons to Sark, teach Sarks how to use them? They’re not that foolish!”

Carse was getting a clearer idea of this ancient Mars. These peoples were all half-barbaric—all but the mysterious Dhuvians. They apparently possessed at least some of the ancient science of this world and jealously guarded it and used it for their own and their Sark allies’ purposes.

Night fell. Ywain remained on deck and the watches were doubled. Naram and Shallah, the two Swimmers, stirred restlessly in their shackles. In the torchlit gloom their eyes were luminous with some secret excitement.

Carse had neither the strength nor the inclination to appreciate the wonder of the glowing sea by moonlight. To make matters worse a headwind sprang up and roughened the waves to an ugly cross-chop that made the oars doubly difficult to handle. The drum beat inexorably.

A dull fury burned in Carse. He ached intolerably. He bled and his back was striped by fiery weals. The oar was heavy. It was heavier than all Mars and it bucked and fought him like a live thing.

Something happened to his face. A strange stony look came over it and all the color went out of his eyes, leaving them bleak as ice and not quite sane. The drumbeat merged into the pounding of his own heart, roaring louder with every painful stroke.

A wave sprang up, the long sweep crabbed the handle, took Carse across the chest and knocked the wind out of him. Jaxart, who was experienced, and Boghaz, who was heavy, regained control almost at once though not before the overseer was on hand to curse them for lazy carrion—his favorite word—and to lay on the whip.

Carse let go of the oar. He moved so fast, in spite of his hampering chains, that the overseer had no idea what was happening until suddenly he was lying across the Earth-man’s knees and trying to protect his head from the blows of the Earthman’s wrist-cuffs.

Instantly the oar bank went mad. The stroke was hopelessly lost. Men shouted for the kill. Callus rushed up and hit Carse over the head with the loaded butt of his whip, knocking him half-senseless. The overseer scrambled back to safety, eluding Jaxart’s clutching arms. Boghaz made himself as small as possible and did nothing.

Ywain’s voice came down from the deck. “Callus!” The oar-bank captain knelt, trembling. “Yes, Highness?”

“Flog them all until they remember that they’re no longer men but slaves.” Her angry, impersonal gaze rested on Carse. “As for that one—he’s new, isn’t he?”

“Yes, Highness.”

“Teach him,” she said.

They taught him. Callus and the overseer together taught him. Carse bowed his head over his arms and took it. Now and again Boghaz screamed as the lash flicked too far over and caught him instead. Between his feet Carse saw dimly the red streams that trickled down into the bilges and stained the water. The rage that had burned in him chilled and altered as iron tempers under the hammer.

At last they stopped. Carse raised his head. It was the greatest effort he had ever made, but stiffly, stubbornly, he raised it. He looked directly at Ywain.

“Have you learned your lesson, slave?” she asked.

It was a long time before he could form the words to answer. He was beyond caring now whether he lived or died. His whole universe was centered on the woman who stood arrogant and untouchable above him.

“Come down yourself and teach me if you can,” he answered hoarsely and called her a name in the lowest vernacular of the streets—a name that said there was nothing she could teach a man.

For a moment no one moved or spoke. Carse saw her face go white and he laughed, a hoarse terrible sound in the silence. Then Scyld drew his sword and vaulted over the rail into the oar pit.

The blade flashed high and bright in the torchlight. It occurred to Carse that he had traveled a long way to die. He waited for the stroke but it did not come and then he realized that Ywain had cried out to Scyld to stop.

Scyld faltered, then turned, puzzled, looking up. “But Highness—”

“Come here,” she said, and Carse saw that she was staring at the sword in Scyld’s hand, the sword of Rhiannon.

Scyld climbed the ladder back up to the deck, his black-browed face a little frightened. Ywain met him.

“Give me that,” she said. And when he hesitated, “The sword, fool!”

He laid it in her hands and she stood looking at it, turning it over in the torchlight, studying the workmanship, the hilt with its single smoky jewel, the etched symbols on the blade.

“Where did you get this, Scyld?”

“I—” He stammered, not liking to make the admission, his hand going instinctively to his stolen collar.

Ywain snapped, “Your thieving doesn’t interest me. Where did you get it?”

He pointed to Carse and Boghaz. “From them, Highness, when I picked them up.”

She nodded. “Fetch them aft to my quarters.”

She disappeared inside the cabin. Scyld, unhappy and completely bewildered, turned to obey her order, and Boghaz moaned.

“Oh, merciful gods!” he whispered. “That’s done it!” He leaned closer to Carse and said rapidly while he still had the chance, “Lie, as you never lied before! If she thinks you know the secret of the Tomb she or the Dhuvians will force it out of you!”

Carse said nothing. He was having all he could do to retain consciousness. Scyld called profanely for wine, which was brought. He forced some of it down Carse’s throat, then had him and Boghaz released from the oar and marched up to the afterdeck.

The wine and the sea wind up on deck revived Carse enough so that he could keep his feet under him. Scyld ushered them ungently into Ywain’s torchlit cabin, where she sat with the sword of Rhiannon laid on the carven table before her.

In the opposite bulkhead was a low door leading into an inner cabin. Carse saw that it was open the merest crack.

No light showed but he got the feeling that someone—something—was crouching behind it, listening. It made him remember Jaxart’s word and Shallah’s.

There was a taint in the air—a faint musky odor, dry and sickly. It seemed to come from that inner cabin. It had a strange effect on Carse. Without knowing what it was he hated it.

He thought that if it was a lover Ywain was hiding in there it must be a strange sort of lover. Ywain took his mind off that. Her gaze stabbed at him, and once again he thought that he had never seen such eyes. Then she said to Scyld, “Tell me—the full story.”

Uncomfortably, in halting sentences, he told her. Ywain looked at Boghaz.

“And you, fat one. How did you come by the sword?” Boghaz sighed, nodded at Carse. “From him, Highness. It’s a handsome weapon and I’m a thief by trade.”

“Is that the only reason you wanted it?”

Boghaz’ face was a model of innocent surprise. “What other reason could there be? I’m no fighting man. Besides, there were the belt and collar. You can see for yourself, Highness, that all are valuable.”

Her face did not show whether she believed him or not. She turned to Carse.

“The sword belonged to you, then?”

“Yes.”

“Where did you get it?”

“I bought it from a trader.”

“Where?”

“In the northern country, beyond Shun.”

Ywain smiled. “You lie.”

Carse said wearily, “I came by the weapon honestly”—he had, in a sense—“and I don’t care whether you believe it or not.”

The crack of that inner door mocked Carse. He wanted to break it open, to see what crouched there, listening, watching out of the darkness. He wanted to see what made that hateful smell.

Almost, it seemed, there was no need for that. Almost, it seemed, he knew.

Unable to contain himself any longer, Scyld burst out, “Your pardon, Highness! But why all this fuss about the sword?”

“You’re a good soldier, Scyld,” she answered thoughtfully, “but in many ways a blockhead. Did you clean this blade?”

“Of course. And bad condition it was in, too.” He glanced disgustedly at Carse. “It looked as though he hadn’t touched it for years.”

Ywain reached out and laid her hand upon the jeweled hilt. Carse saw that it trembled. She said softly, “You were right, Scyld. It hadn’t been touched, for years. Not since Rhiannon, who made it, was walled away in his tomb to suffer for his sins.”

Scyld’s face went completely blank. His jaw dropped. After a long while he said one word, “Rhiannon!”