Hanner was trying to draw it, without success. “I can’t,” he said. “I think he’s glued it into the scabbard.”
“No glue,” Valder said. “Magic. It’s part of the enchantment on it.”
“I think we’ll take it anyway,” the small thief said.
“It will come back to me; that’s part of the spell.”
“Oh, is it? How nice for you. What if you’re dead, though? We didn’t come here just for the sword, innkeeper. You must have a tidy little heap of money tucked away somewhere. I don’t think you’ll be getting much business tonight; if we kill you now, we’ll have until dawn to find where you hide it. And even if we don’t find it, we’ll still have the sword and we can sell that for a few bits of gold, whether we can draw it or not. If you help us out, make the sword work for us and tell us where your money is, we might let you live.”
“You can’t kill me,” Valder replied.
“No? What’s going to stop us? There are two of us, with swords that aren’t enchanted but they’ve got good edges nonetheless. You’re all alone and unarmed, unless you’ve slipped a kitchen knife under your tunic. We’ve been watching this place. You haven’t got a single customer, and your helpers left hours ago.”
Valder felt a twinge of uneasiness. His situation did look bad. The only thing in his favor was the magic of a sword that had not been drawn in more than a dozen years — and an untested aspect of the enchantment, at that. The army wizards had said that he could not be killed, but he had naturally never put it to the test. He stood for a moment, trying to think of something to say. Nothing came.
“Hanner,” the small thief said, “I think it’s time we convinced Valder of the Magic Sword to help us out, don’t you?”
Hanner grinned. “I think you’re right,” he said. He took Wirikidor in his left hand and drew his own sword with his right. Side by side, the two thieves advanced slowly across the room, winding between the tables without ever taking their eyes from Valder’s face.
Valder watched them come, tried to decide whether there was any point in retreating into the kitchen, tried to think of something he might use as a weapon, and watched Wirikidor, clutched in the big man’s hand. The thief, Valder thought, was making a mistake; the smart thing to do would have been to leave Wirikidor behind somewhere, well out of reach. He remembered the odd compulsion that had made people bring him the sword whenever it left his possession back in General Karannin’s camp and wondered if Hanner was aware that he was holding the scabbard.
Idiotically, he also found himself wondering what the smaller thief’s name was.
As the two drew near, Valder moved as quickly as he could, snatching up the tray of oushka and flinging it at the pair. Two swords flashed, and tray and tankards were knocked harmlessly aside, spraying good liquor across the floor. The crystal vessels bounced in a truly alarming manner, but the thieves were not distracted by this unnatural behavior. Either they had seen enchanted glassware before, or they were so intent on their victim that they had not even noticed anything unusual.
All Valder’s effort had done was prove that both men knew how to use swords and that the wizard who had charmed the tankards had not cheated him. He stepped back, not toward the kitchen, but toward the wall.
The two advanced another few steps, then stopped. Hanner’s sword inched up to hover near Valder’s throat, while the other’s blade was pointed at his belly.
“Now, innkeeper,” the small man said, “tell us about that sword and, while you’re talking, tell us where you keep your money.”
Valder watched from the corner of his eye as Hanner’s left hand moved forward, apparently without its owner’s knowledge; his own right hand was open and ready. “The sword’s name is Wirikidor, which means ’slayer of warriors.’ Nobody knows exactly what the spells on it are, because the wizard who made them vanished, but they’re all linked to a Spell of True Ownership, so that nobody can use it except me, until I die.” He was talking primarily to keep the two thieves occupied; Wirikidor’s hilt was less than a foot from his hand.
Suddenly he lunged for it, calling out, “Wirikidor!”
Hanner tried to snatch it away as he realized what was occurring. Valder was never sure exactly how it happened, whether the sword had really leaped from its sheath under its own power or whether he had made a lucky grab, but the sword was in his hand, sliding smoothly out of the scabbard.
Banner reacted with incredible speed, chopping at Valder’s wrist with his own blade. Wirikidor twisted about in a horribly unnatural fashion, so that Valder felt as if his wrist were breaking, but it successfully parried the thief’s blow.
The smaller thief was not wasting any time; his sword plunged toward Valder’s belly. Valder dodged sideways, but not quite fast enough; the blade ripped through his tunic and drew a long, deep cut in his side. Blood spilled out, and pain tore through Valder’s body. He hardly saw what happened next.
Wirikidor, now that it was free again, seemed to be enjoying itself. It flashed brilliantly in the lamplight as it swept back and forth, parrying attacks from both thieves. Valder made no attempt to direct it; his hand went where the sword chose to go.
The character of the fight quickly altered; rather than two swordsmen bearing down on a mere innkeeper, it became two swordsmen fighting for their lives against a supernatural fury.
Hanner’s guard slipped for an instant; Wirikidor cut his throat open. A return slice removed his head entirely, spraying blood in all directions.
With that, Wirikidor lost all interest, and Valder found himself in a duel to the death with a swordsman smaller than himself but far more skilled and obviously much more practiced, not to mention partly armored. Realization of his peril helped him to ignore the intense pain in his side as he concentrated on parrying a new attack.
The small thief, noticing a change, grinned. “You’re getting tired, innkeeper — or has the sword’s magic been used up?”
Valder tried a bluff. “Nothing’s used up, thief,” he said. “I just thought you might prefer to live. Go now, and I won’t kill you. Your partner’s dead; isn’t that enough?”
“Hanner’s dead?” In the intensity of his concentration on the fight the thief had failed to comprehend that. He glanced at his comrade’s headless corpse and was obviously shaken by what he saw.
Valder seized the opportunity and swept Wirikidor in under the other man’s guard, aiming just below the breastplate.
What should have been a killing stroke was easily deflected as the man recovered himself and made a swift downward parry. Still, the attack disconcerted him, and he stepped back.
Valder pressed his advantage, but the thief met his onslaught easily. Even so, Valder noticed that the man was no longer taking the offensive, but only defending himself.
“I’m holding the sword back,” Valder lied. “But the demon in the steel is getting stronger. I don’t like feeding it more than one soul at a time; it might get too strong someday. Go now, while I can still control it.” He was grateful for the popularity of legends about vampiric swords.
The thief glanced at Wirikidor, then at the body on the floor, and his nerve broke. “Keep it away from me!” he screamed as he turned and ran for the door.
Valder let him go, but quickly wiped Wirikidor’s blade on Hanner’s tunic, then picked the scabbard up off the floor and sheathed the weapon. If the thief returned, he wanted to be able to draw the sword again and use its magic.
The thief showed no sign of returning. The pain in his side was growing with every movement, but Valder made it across the room and slammed the door that the fleeing man had left standing open. He leaned against it, tempted just to slide down into oblivion on the floor, but he forced imself to pull off his tunic and wrap it around himself, forming a makeshift bandage over the wound. That done, he looked around the room, at the broken wires on the pegs above the mantel, at the severed head rolled into one corner, at the lifeless corpse by the kitchen door, and at the blood, Hanner’s and his own, that was spattered everywhere. He looked down at the sheathed sword he held.
“Damn that hermit,” he said.
Then he fainted.
