Chapter 33 #2
“Oh.” The Dervish digested this. “I should have been paying attention.”
“You’re fighting off a five-hundred-year-old curse. Other people can do the geometry. Also they’ve stopped moving, as far as I can tell, which makes it easier.”
Food and ale arrived. Much like the accommodations, they were adequate but not exciting.
The Dervish ate because he had learned, in all those years under Sarkis’s command, to eat when you got the chance.
I won’t do Edmund any good if I faint with hunger.
I’ll just have to go back in the sword for a bit, and that would be annoying.
Zale and Halla went upstairs after dinner, and Dog Violet went out to check on Greathoof. Sarkis and the Dervish were left in the corner of the inn with their thoughts and their ale.
“You’re holding up well,” Sarkis said.
The Dervish snorted. “Only on the outside. Every time they hurt him, I want something to kill.”
“You’ll have a chance soon enough, I expect.”
Hooves and carriage wheels sounded from the yard, and the door rattled as another set of travelers came in. The innkeeper went over to serve them. Under cover of the noise, the Dervish said softly, “Will you promise me something?”
“Anything that I can.”
“Don’t let the sword fall into their hands. They’ll want to do experiments, and…” He swallowed. “I can’t take that again.”
Sarkis sighed. “I can’t promise it won’t happen.
We may both die, you know. But if it does, I promise you that I’ll track them down and take it back.
” He met the Dervish’s gaze with eyes as hard and dark as polished flint.
“I failed both you and Angharad. I swear by the great god that I will not fail you again. Will that serve?”
The Dervish nodded. He looked around again.
And then, very quietly, he told Sarkis about his previous wielder, and where the silver lines had come from, and why.
It wasn’t easier the second time. He suspected that he might only tell that story once more, if he and Angharad were ever fated to cross paths again.
But saying it out loud, even in a whisper, made it a thing that happened in some other place and some other time.
In his mind’s eye, it was very far away, a tiny figure chained to a pebble of stone, and his tormentor was no larger than a fly and had been dead for a hundred years or more.
“He had a wooden box with bars that he would summon me into. And since I was not terribly cooperative, they’d drop a weighted net over me from above.
” The Dervish drew his finger down the side of his beer mug, then back up again.
“It’s strange, but when I have nightmares, it’s never about the pain, it’s about the net pinning me down. ”
“The great god give me strength,” Sarkis said. He wiped a hand across his eyes. “I’m so damned sorry. I’m surprised you can even sit here across from me.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” the Dervish said. He was astonished to find out that he believed it as he said it. “You made the call, when we were under siege. And it was wrong, and we should have died, but that’s all that should have happened. You couldn’t have known about the Smith.”
Sarkis slumped back in his chair. “No one could have known about the Smith. If I live a thousand years—and the great god knows we might—I will never forget her eyes.”
“What I don’t understand is why these people made a saint out of her,” the Dervish said.
“I can see why they want the swords. This”—he slapped his forearm—“looks enough like immortality that someone who doesn’t know better might covet it.
But apparently they have all her writings and descriptions of what she did and …
just … how can you read that and not see what the woman was like? ”
“I know,” Sarkis said.
“She told us herself about all the swords that didn’t work! The ones who went mad inside and the ones who never came out and the ones who came out and never remembered anything past dying…”
“I know.”
“How do you read all that and…” He ran out of words and lifted his hands and let them drop.
Sarkis gazed into his ale for a moment, then said, “Do you remember the Siege of Ern Trefoil?”
The Dervish had to stop and think about that.
“That was the one just after I joined, right? The army was besieging that one outpost, and a half dozen troops of mercs were hired to break it.” He cast his mind back.
“Except that once we got there, the besiegers were in terrible shape. They’d been living off the land for months and it wasn’t great land to begin with.
” He remembered riding a horse into what passed for the enemy lines, and hollow-faced men looking up at him as if they didn’t understand what he was.
One of them had had a pike, a weapon that could have taken him out of the saddle, but the man had just leaned on it, watching the Dervish in sluggish confusion.
“That’s the one. It turned out that some of the things they were eating were not particularly healthy in the long run.
” Sarkis shook his head. “I think we killed maybe a dozen of them. The rest just surrendered. One even asked me if we’d come to relieve them, for the great god’s sake.
” He took a long draw of ale. “There’s a song about it now. ”
“What?”
“A song. It’s considered an old classic.
I heard a minstrel sing it and recognized the descriptions of the heraldry.
The librarians were kind enough to dig me up the history.
It’s about Ern Trefoil all right.” He snorted.
“It’s all about how brave the besiegers were, how the enemy was holed up ‘for seven months and seven more.’ And at last the armies came in and slew the enemy in his hole. ”
“We didn’t slay anybody in their hole. We were there to save the people in the castle, and half of them died on the way back.”
“No, absolutely right. As far as I can make out, the enemy in question never actually came within a hundred miles of Ern Trefoil. But there’s still a song, and people sing it, and everybody joins in on the chorus about how strong and true the besiegers were, even though it was five hundred years ago.
” He set down his empty mug. “Horror becomes valor if you just wait long enough. People turn sinners into saints.”
The Dervish slowly drained his mug, staring at the stains on the wooden table. “People,” he said slowly, “are idiots.”
Sarkis got to his feet. “The great god laughs at the foolishness of men, and we’re no exception. We’ve just given him a much longer laugh than usual.” He squeezed the Dervish’s shoulder. “Get some sleep. Tomorrow, I think, we’ll finally run these bastards to earth.”