Sightblinder's Story Read online

  The others frowned at him, then Ben’s face brightened suddenly with understanding. “Yes, we’ve been following Sightblinder, or trying to. If that peasant, or whoever he is, is in some room of this tower just below us … and his Sword is doing an imitation of Shieldbreaker—yes, that would do it.”

  “Ho, on the roof!” The voice was powerful, and so loud that some manner of magic, or Old-World technology perhaps, must be in use to augment it.

  “Do you suppose we ought to answer?” Yambu whispered very softly.

  Mark and Ben exchanged frowns, giving the question silent consideration.

  “Ho, there! This is the master of the castle speaking! Let your ladder down for us at once! You are trapped, and I will show you mercy if you come down now!”

  * * *

  After exchanging looks with her companions, Yambu made answer with a rock, which she handled over to the edge of the roof with wiry strength, and dropped just over the head of the stair below. Prudently she refrained from looking over the edge to observe the exact result. There was an explosive crash, and small rock-fragments sang through the air in all directions.

  There were no more shouted demands after that. Listening carefully, the three on the roof could hear the people on the stairs quietly retreating.

  Things settled down for the time being into a waiting mode.

  The only place from which anyone could see the top of this tower was the top of the only higher tower, where the aerie was, at least a hundred meters distant. And if the three retreated under the lookout’s shelter they would be invisible even from there, and probably immune from any speculative stones or arrows launched from that high place.

  The afternoon was wearing on. As was perhaps inevitable, the talk among the three people on the roof turned to the Swords and their various powers. Long before the day was over, Mark had time to reminisce about the occasion upon which he had carried Sightblinder into the camp of the Dark King himself.

  “And the Sword of Stealth has another power that is more subtle than the one of which we are always aware. The verse tells it: ‘his eyes are keen…’ I scarcely understood it at the time, but when I looked at the Dark King and his magicians, I could see their evil.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Wood, ascending the exterior stair that curved around the tower, with the great Sword Shieldbreaker thudding softly in his right hand and a squad of picked troops at his back, knew that he had reached the top of the stair no more than a few minutes behind his quarry. Quite possibly it had been a nearer miss than that. He did not actually see the wooden ladder being pulled up out of his reach, but he saw the supports where it had rested, and he surmised its very recent removal. And Shieldbreaker was now signaling the near presence of his enemies. Wood could not see or hear them on the roof above, but he knew that they were there.

  He smiled lightly to himself. He could hear a duplicated thudding, keeping time like a faint echo with the sound of his own Sword, and in the first moment after the Ancient Master heard that echo he realized where it must be coming from. It was coming from the Sword of Stealth, in the impostor’s possession; and that Sword now had to be somewhere very near at hand.

  Before calling on his prey to surrender, Wood took a moment in which to survey the general situation. Whoever was on the roof might well be trapped there, though for the moment in a snugly defensible position. Plainly there was no way but this stair to reach the tower’s roof from the outside, short of using chains and grappling irons slung over the parapets—matters might eventually come to that—or by flying. The wizard took a moment in which to curse the decision that had made him send his griffin away with Amintor. But there was no help now for mistakes already made.

  The outside stair on which he stood was undefended by any roof or even a railing. It curved three quarters of the way around the central tower, and at several points well above its curve, too high to be reached, were windows, indicating the presence of interior rooms. But there were no windows below the stair, or otherwise readily accessible from it. And not only were the windows high, but they were narrow, not much more than archers’ slits; perhaps a child or a very thin adult might have been able to squeeze through one of them. And not only were the windows high and narrow, but they were slightly overhanging the stair, each pair of them built out in a small projecting bartizan.

  It was quite possible, of course, that some kind of trapdoor gave access to the roof from inside the tower. The impostor, who had been seen looking out of one of these tower windows, could have gone up to the roof from the inside and then pulled the outside ladder up. Wood could wish now that he had personally taken a more thorough inventory of the castle and its architecture during his brief peaceful tenure.

  Only minutes ago, before starting up this outside stairway, he had detailed men to search the interior of the tower for a way to reach the roof, or at least the upper floors, whose existence was indicated by the windows. Those men were to report to Wood before they closed in on their quarry, but so far they had not reported any success in finding an interior way up.

  He was being foiled for the moment, it seemed, by some more of the architectural whimsy of Honan-Fu.

  Now the Ancient Master, with his Sword ready—truth to tell, he had never been much of a swordsman—and speaking in his most terrible amplified voice, called upon those who were above him to surrender.

  “Ho, on the roof! Ho, there! This is the master of the castle speaking! Let the ladder down for us at once! You are trapped, and I will show you mercy if you come down now!”

  There was only silence up above. His answer came in the form of a heavy, head-sized rock, dropped over the edge of the parapet by anonymous hands, hands that worked blindly but still managed to choose their aiming point with what would have been deadly accuracy had it not been for the Sword of Force. Shieldbreaker altered the rhythm of its monotonous thudding voice just slightly, putting mild emphasis upon a single syllable. The blade moved as if with its own volition, pulling Wood’s hand after it in a single economical movement. Shieldbreaker flashed in the sun, arcing above the wizard’s head. The rock, precisely intercepted in midair, shattered into a hundred screaming fragments, none of which touched Wood. The soldier who was just behind him on the stair muttered a low oath; one of those stone fragments had left a bloody track across his face.

  The Sword of Force, the keenness of its edges undented by that blow, again was almost quiet, chanting its low rhythmic song of rage and barely suppressed violence as if it were singing to itself alone. And still the gentle echo of its counterfeit persisted, coming from somewhere nearby.

  With a silent, emphatic gesture Wood ordered his squad back down the stair; even though his Sword would protect him personally against rocks or any other weapons, his escort was vulnerable here, and there was no point in wasting useful men.

  The sound made by Shieldbreaker subsided as the Ancient Master carried it back down the stairs, and the echo of its imitation faded from his hearing also.

  Once he had reentered the tower again, the wizard detailed a few of his men to make another ladder, or else bring one of the proper size over from another tower if that would be quicker. Of course, even if another ladder could be set in place atop that exposed stair and somehow kept there, the top of the central tower would still be very easy to defend. Undoubtedly there were more rocks up on the roof, and even when rocks were exhausted, still only one man would be able to come up a ladder at a time. And anyone standing on that last stone step, where it would be necessary to stand to set the ladder into place, would be an extremely vulnerable target to more stones dropped from above. A man carrying Shieldbreaker might win through, of course —depending on how much the defenders knew about the Sword. Wood did not intend to take unnecessary personal risks to get at them, nor did he mean to hand over the Sword of Force to any of his subordinates.

  Remaining inside the tower himself, he led a quick exploration of the accessible levels, and confirmed what his people were telling h
im, that these ended one or two floors below the top. So it was possible, he supposed, that the only way to get into those upper levels without tearing part of the tower down might be from the roof. But yet Wood could not be absolutely sure of that—and suppose the impostor was able to get out some other way, and do more damage?

  Still, every course of action had its risks. The Ancient Master decided to temporarily abandon his search for another way into the upper rooms, and started toward the highest tower of the castle, from whose top it ought to be possible to see the top of the central tower, and who was on it. Before he had even reached the base of that tower, a report was brought to him. A small flyer, carrying some object, had been seen to land on the roof of the central tower. One witness said that the thing the flyer carried had been a water bottle.

  Wood swore oaths of great intensity. He yearned for his griffin, to be able to go and pluck the renegade water-carrying beast out of the sky. Draffut had somehow perverted Wood’s corps of winged scouts, or some of them at least, to the cause of his enemies.

  But in a way the news about the water bottle was reassuring—if water was being sent by that means to the people on the rooftop, that suggested they were pretty effectively prevented from getting it any other way.

  * * *

  On the roof of the central tower, Mark, Ben, and Yambu rejoiced to receive the written note that the flyer had brought out to them from Triplicane, along with the unnecessary leather bottle of water.

  The handwriting of the note was recognizably Zoltan’s. In it he assured them that Honan-Fu’s counterattack was going to be launched tonight.

  From her small pouch of personal belongings, Lady Yambu got out a little metal mirror, and began an effort at heliographic signaling to some of the boats in the lake, and then to the people in green and gold uniforms who were now gathering on several of the small islands. There were a number of boats near those islands now, and enough constabulary troops in gold and green on boats and islands to make it unlikely that Wood would want to send out his own amphibious force, risking his own remaining fleet of lake-going craft, to challenge their possession. But her signaling drew no response.

  When the three on the roof strained their eyes in the direction of distant Triplicane they thought they could discern another gathering of boats along the dockside there.

  Their talk came back to their enemy, and the Sword he carried. The sound of Shieldbreaker had faded away very quickly after Yambu dropped that discouraging rock. And with Shieldbreaker withdrawn, its voice muted, the echo-sound presumably made by Sightblinder had faded too.

  “Where is Sightblinder then?” Ben asked, scowling.

  Yambu had a logical answer ready. “Well, if it was not on the stairs when we heard it, then it must have been in one of the rooms just below us.”

  When the people on the rooftop at last peered cautiously over the parapet, they were just able to catch a glimpse of someone passing inside one of the projecting windows below them.

  “Should we call out to them?” Mark asked his companions.

  Before they could decide that question, a deadly distraction came from the direction of the castle’s highest tower, in the form of a desultory bombardment with rocks and arrows. Their tower was too far away from the other, more than a hundred meters distant, for this attack to be effective, and it was not pursued. But the three on the roof tended now to stay within the shelter of the lookout’s roofed shed.

  Continuing to take a cautious inventory, they discovered a trapdoor in the approximate center of the roof. On the upper side of the trap there was no sign of any lock.

  Mark asked: “What do we want to do about this? Open it and see what’s under us, or block it up?”

  Ben offered: “We’ve more or less come to the conclusion that the Sword-bearer is probably down there. What do you say, do we go after his Sword again?”

  They debated it a little, and Ben’s tentative effort to lift the trap discovered it to be locked somehow from below. Mark eventually decided it would be better to block the trap, for the time being.

  It was not hard to find the proper materials for the job of blocking the trapdoor. The pyramidal pile of defensive rocks, in the busy hands of Mark and Ben, was soon being transferred right on top of it.

  “There,” Mark grunted some time later, setting the last rock in place atop the reconstructed pile, and pausing to wipe sweat from his face. “You might be able to push that trap open from below now, but I doubt there’s another man anywhere who could manage it.”

  Ben squinted at the pyramid of stones and shook his head. “I wouldn’t care to try.”

  The three on the roof got through the day, taking turns napping in the shade of the lookout’s shelter. As old soldiers, they were all accustomed to not thinking about food for long intervals, and otherwise they were comfortable enough for the time being.

  The patience of experience saw them through the day.

  * * *

  The night began with the three people on the roof taking turns at watchful listening and rest. It was about two hours before dawn when the enemy made an almost silent attempt to put a new ladder into place upon the upper end of the external stair. Lady Yambu happened to be on watch at the time. Listening attentively and timing her moves carefully, she put another rock neatly over the edge. This time the Sword of Force was evidently not on hand to fend it off. The missile fell for almost the full height of two men before it struck something. There was a muffled impact, followed by a fading, wailing cry, as of a man departing under the full acceleration of gravity. There followed the faint but rapid sounds of scurrying feet going back down the stairs. Then silence reigned again.

  * * *

  Early in the night there had been a discussion among the leaders of Honan-Fu’s assault force as to whether they should try to recruit Draffut to pull some of their boats into position for the final attack. In the end it was decided that they should all row themselves into position, leaving Draffut to do whatever he thought best to help them in his own way. The Lord of Beasts had indicated that he would do something, but perhaps because he did not trust their human councils he had kept his exact intentions to himself until the flotilla of constabulary boats were ready to put out into the lake.

  Zoltan watched from a distance as the Lord of Beasts left the lake and moved up into the hills, his head overtopping half the trees he passed. Draffut passed out of Zoltan’s sight for a while, and when he returned he was carrying the stripped trunk of a pine tree that had been twice taller than himself. When he came down among the people again they could smell the aromatic sap oozing from the torn bark.

  Draffut announced to Zoltan and those near him that this was going to be his scaling ladder.

  The boats did not begin to move into their final positions for the assault until about midnight. Honan-Fu’s planning allowed several hours for them all to get into position. The idea was to put men ashore simultaneously on all sides of the island, getting ready to assail every part of the castle’s perimeter at once.

  Knowing just where Draffut planned to land, Zoltan could see the Beastlord wade ashore, for the moment undiscovered by the castle’s lookouts. The towering figure emerged from the water on the spit of sand that extended from the island’s northern end, and before the enemy had spotted him, he was running toward the castle. When he was within reach of the wall that towered over him, the Lord of Beasts wedged the base of his tree trunk into the sand, and leaned the upper end against the castle wall, which it slightly overtopped.

  At this point shouts of warning, cries that trembled on the verge of being screams of terror, went up from Wood’s human lookouts. Draffut responded to them at once, with the most bloodcurdling bellow he could produce. In the next moment he was swarming up his improvised ladder, and a moment after that he was crouched apelike atop the thickness of the wall.

  The sentries who had been manning that portion of the wall were there no longer, having delayed not a second in getting out of Draffut’s way. Th
ere were a few more, now standing paralyzed with terror at a little distance, and Draffut waved his arms at them and bellowed again, effectively frightening them away.

  Now he could get down to work. Wrapped around his body under his thick fur Draffut was wearing a couple of rope ladders, fabricated by the women of Triplicane in twenty-four hours of intensive work. In a moment the Beastlord had looped an end of one of these ladders over a merlon on the nearest parapet, then tossed the rest of the ladder out over the wall, so that the other end, if its length had been correctly calculated, would now be trailing on the ground.

  He trusted that the people in the boats were already responding to his noise, and that by now the first troops of the landing were no more than moments from the beach.

  Moving rapidly along the top of the wall, edging past a slender watchtower already abandoned by its defenders, Draffut disposed of his second rope ladder in the same manner as the first, and at a distance of some thirty meters from it.

  As he was engaged in this operation, an arrow flew at him from somewhere, and stuck in a fringe of his heavy fur, almost between his eyes. It would be too much to expect that he could frighten all of the enemy away, and now some of them were waking up, regaining at least a minimum of courage. It was time for him to see what he might be able to accomplish at ground level, before his advantage of surprise and shock was entirely dissipated.

  He let himself over the inner surface of the castle’s thick outer wall, hung briefly by his hands, and then dropped into a courtyard. The shock of his huge weight dropping on the bones of his legs and feet was tremendous, but he was almost immune to internal injury of any kind. The powers that enabled him to heal others worked almost automatically within his own body.

  From the courtyard where he had landed, a small postern gate opened through the outer wall. It was defended by some guards, and Draffut, three times as tall as a man, moved boldly toward them. He was able to frighten away this gate’s defenders with another bellow and a blow of his fist against the wall near them, making the stones quiver. Then he sprawled on his belly to get a good look at the gate. There was an inner gate, a simple affair of wood reinforced with iron bars, and easy enough to pull open. When this was done he lay there groping with one hand beyond the inner gate, into the deep penetration of the wall, until he reached an outer gate and could punch it open too. Now he had provided yet another means of entrance for the attackers.