Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery

It was now fall. The forest had clothed itself in scarlet, copper, magenta, black, and gold. Audible from a day’s ride away, the Ca roared angrily with pre-freeze melt-snow from distant mountains. Sunset dropped screaming red on the horizon and went out, and utter darkness closed its wings.

Zire the Scholar had been traveling a long while. He was weary and aggrieved. Yesterday, forest brigands had set on him and stolen his horse. Though naturally he had tracked and tricked them and stolen it back, the horse next cast a shoe, so now both of them must plod.

As night gathered and he spotted the lights of Cashloria, Zire gave a grunt of relief. He had read of the city over a year before, and set out to see it along with others, but during the last hour doubted he would find it at all. Benign unhuman guardians were supposed to take care of the conurbation, for example by protecting it with sorcery rather than city walls. This evening Zire had begun to think they had also rendered the place invisible. But lights shone. Here he was.

Zire was young and tall, and well-made. His hair was, where light revealed it, the rich somber red of the dying beech leaves. His eyes were the cold gray of approaching winter skies. His spirit was not dissimilar: fires vied with melancholy, exuberance with introversion.

Presently, the young man reached a promontory, thick with trees and pillared buildings. Below, the landscape tumbled down, still clad in darkling foliage, roofs, and windows of ruby and jade, to a coil of the angry river. A few lights also marked the river’s course, but mainly it was made obvious by its uproar. They said, in Cashloria—or so Zire had read—“The Ca is foul-mouthed and always shouting.”

Nevertheless, here was an inn, by name the Plucked Dragon.

Lanterns burned, and Zire, having tethered his horse, and maneuvered through a hedge of willows, thrust in at the door.

At once a loud outcry resounded, after which total silence enveloped the smoky yellow-lit room beyond. It was not that the several customers had reacted in astonishment on seeing a newcomer; they were reasonably used to visitors in Cashloria. It was simply that, during the exact moment Zire stepped into the inn, a man standing at the long counter had swung about and plunged his knife between the ribs of another. Everyone, Zire included, watched in inevitable awe as the knife’s unlucky recipient dropped dead on the ground.

The murderer, however, only wiped his blade on a sleeve, sheathed the weapon, and turned to regard the landlord. “Fetch me another jug, you pig. Then clear that up,” jerking his thumb over-shoulder to indicate the corpse.

He was, the murderer, a burly fellow, with dark locks hanging over a flat low brow. He wore a guardsman’s uniform of leather and studs, with a gaudy insignia of two crossed swords surmounted by a diadem. Certainly no one argued with him. Here rushed an inn-boy with a brimming jug, and there went the landlord himself with another inn-boy, hauling the dead body off along the floor and out the back. Even the third man, on whose sleeve the murderer had wiped his knife—not, presumably, wishing to soil his own—made no complaint.

“Cheers and a hale life!” cried the killer, and downed a large cupful in one gulp.

All present, with the exception of Zire, echoed the toast in fast fellowship. And some of them added, for good measure, “And hale life to you, too, Razibond!” “Yes, long life. That dolt had it coming to him.”

Razibond, satisfied, belched. Then his small eyes slid straight to Zire, still poised in the doorway. Those little eyes might just as well have been two more greasy blades. If looks could kill, they might.

“And you,” said Razibond. “What do you say, Copper-Nod?”

“I?” Zire smiled and shrugged. “About what?”

“Oh, you’re blind then, as well as carrot-mopped. Come, let’s have your opinion. You saw I slew him.”

“That? True, I did see.”

“You seem offended,” said Razibond, ugly voice now sinking to an uglier growl. “Want to make something of it, eh?”

If Zire had been in any doubt as to what Razibond meant, further evidence was instantly supplied, as all the other drinkers withdrew in haste, plastering themselves to the walls, some even crawling beneath the long tables. Even the fire crouched down abruptly on the wide hearth, while the girl who had been tending a roast there sprinted up the inn stair with a flash of bare white feet.

“Well?” bellowed ugly Razibond, seemingly further incensed by Zire’s speechlessness.

“Really,” said Zire, “what you do is your own affair. After all, perhaps the man you stabbed had done you some terrible wrong.”

“He had,” Razibond declared. “He refused me use of his wife and daughter.”