CHAPTER 24
The door hit him in the side and he awoke in agony. He rolled over, groaning, away from the door and whatever was pushing in against it.
Tandellin slipped through the opening and looked down to see what was blocking him.
“Gods!” he said. “What happened?” He bent down to try and help.
Valder looked up at him and feebly waved him away. “I’ll be all right, I think,” he said. “I need something to drink.”
“Right,” Tandellin said, “I’ll get you some ale.” He looked up to see where the nearest keg might be, and for the first time noticed the rest of the room.
“Gods!” he said again and then decided that that wasn’t strong enough. “By all the gods in the sky, sea, and earth, Valder, what happened here?”
“Ale,” Valder said. He did not feel up to explaining yet.
“Oh, yes,” Tandellin agreed. He stood and headed for the kitchen, making a careful detour around Hanner’s corpse and the surrounding pool of blood. Valder sank back and closed his eyes until he heard footsteps returning. He opened his eyes and tried to sit up, with his back to the wall. After a brief struggle, he managed it and accepted the mug Tandellin offered.
The ale helped. After he drank it, his throat no longer seemed to be stuffed with felt and his breath was no longer actively painful, if he kept it shallow. His side was still roaring with pain, and his head throbbed, but he felt better.
“More,” he said, holding out the mug.
Tandellin fetched more.
After that, Valder felt almost human again. He arranged himself more comfortably against the wall. “Know any healing spells?” he asked.
Tandellin shook his head.
“Know any good wizards who might? Or witches, or theurgists?”
“I can find someone — but healing spells are expensive.”
“I have money,” Valder said. “That’s not a problem.”
“You weren’t robbed? There was just the one man?”
“There were two, but the other one ran. I don’t think he took anything, unless he sneaked in the back way while I was unconscious, and I doubt that he did that, because, in that case, he would have tried to finish me off.”
“Oh. Well, you certainly took care of that one; his head’s clean off. Was he the one who wounded you?”
“I know his head is off, Tan; I’m the one who took it off, remember? And it was the other one who cut me; they both attacked at once.”
“Oh,” Tandellin said again. “How sporting. What should we do with this one? We can’t just leave him there.”
“Of course not. Look, get me another mug of ale and see if there’s something I can eat cold, and then you can start cleaning up. I think we can bury him out back; I don’t want to take the trouble and the wood to build a proper pyre. I’m not very concerned about seeing that his soul is freed to the gods, if you see what I mean.” He glanced down at Wirikidor, lying innocuously at his side, and a thought struck him.
“Leave the head, though. I think we’ll put that on a pike out front, to discourage any other thieves who get ideas about this place.” He had not seen a head on a pike in years, not since he was a boy, but he thought it would make for a fine warning.
“We’ll probably have to sand down that floor to get the bloodstains off,” Tandellin remarked.
“Might be easier just to replace the boards, or paint over them,” Valder suggested.
The door behind him opened again, admitting Sarai. As was her custom, she had arrived later than Tandellin because she took charge of feeding their daughter, Sarai the Younger, before leaving home.
She looked down at Valder, sitting on the floor bare-chested with the bloodstained remnants of his tunic wrapped about his middle, then looked around the room, taking in the headless corpse, the spattered blood, and the general mess.
“I take it you had a rough night,” she said.
Valder stared up at her for a moment, then burst out laughing. The laughter was cut short by renewed pain in his side, but he smiled up at her and said, “You could say that, yes.”
After that, his problems somehow seemed less serious. He pulled himself up into a chair and supervised the cleaning up, the disposal of Hanner’s body, and the disposition of the head. No pikes could be found anywhere in the inn, but Tandellin improvised one from a boathook from the landing and set it up outside, near enough that its connection with the inn would be apparent, but far enough away that odor would not be a problem. Below the head he tacked up a sign that read, “THIEF,” in large black runes, in case anyone might miss the point.
When the inn was again fit for customers, Tandellin set out to find a wizard who could heal Valder’s wound, leaving Sarai to attend to the handful of travelers who drifted in, despite the cold and slush. Valder himself did not feel up to moving about much. Instead, he sat back and watched and thought.
He had not expected anyone to try to steal Wirikidor, or for that matter to try robbing him at all, though he did keep a goodly supply of coin securely hidden in his own bedchamber. The possibility had simply never occurred to him.
That, he realized, had been foolish.
The thief’s head would probably serve to discourage further attempts for a time, but it would also remind people that there might be something worth stealing. Something would have to be done about that.
He had heard that there were people in Ethshar of the Spices who would guard one’s money, for a small fee; they called themselves bankers. That suddenly seemed like a good idea. He had enough gold and silver tucked away to tempt an entire horde of thieves, he realized. He had nothing in particular that he wanted to spend money on, now that the inn was properly finished and supplied, so it just accumulated. He would do something about that.
The only other theftworthy item, really, was Wirikidor. It was far too late to quash the stories of his magic sword, and he would never convince anyone it was gone while a sword still hung over the mantel: That meant he would have to dispose of it somehow, if he didn’t want some young idiot to cut his throat while he slept in order to steal the fabled Valder’s weapon. He would not die of a cut throat, if Wirikidor’s enchantment held true, but he doubted he would enjoy the experience.
That was rather a shame; he had liked having it on display above the hearth.
The next question was what to do with the sword. Its magic was still strong and still as quirky and inconvenient as ever. He had not died, as the spell had promised he would not, despite losing an incredible amount of blood — but he had been seriously wounded. The sword would still fight for him, but only against men and only until he had killed one. The ownership spell still linked it to him; he was not sure whether it had actually jumped into his hand, but Manner had been unable to draw it, and he could not imagine any reason the thief would have been stupid enough to bring Wirikidor within reach had the spell not been working.
He shifted in his chair, and his side twinged. That reminded him of his wound all over again. What good was a magical spell that guaranteed his life, if he could still be cut to pieces? That might be worse than death. That infernal old hermit had promised the sword would protect him, but he thought he might well have been better off without any such protection as this. He smiled bitterly.
He should, he thought, have been able to avoid the blow. The little thief was a good swordsman, true, but Valder had once been at least competent, and he had possessed size, strength, and reach in his favor. He sighed. He was getting older and out of shape. He had not drawn a sword in more than a decade; no wonder he was out of practice! His reflexes had slowed, as well; he was thirty-seven, no longer a young man.
Not that the thief had been much younger, but even a few years could make a difference. Besides, the thief had obviously kept in practice.
Thirty-seven — he had not thought about his age much, but he was undeniably growing older. What did that mean as far as Wirikidor was concerned? Obviously the sword would not prevent him from aging, any more than it had saved him from being slashed. What would happen when old age came? Would he just deteriorate
