Sword of Caledor Read online

  ‘Do you think that we are better than you?’ Tyrion asked, because he could not think of anything else to say.

  ‘You are certainly better than we are at killing mosquitoes, your honour, that’s for sure and I suspect that you are much better at killing almost anything. You have that look about you. And you’re a damn sight prettier than I am, that’s for sure. But I am not sure that you’re a better man than me.’

  ‘I am not a man at all,’ said Tyrion.

  ‘That’s not what I meant. Are you braver than me? Are you morally superior? Or were you just born luckier? I sometimes think that the noble in the big castle on the hill is not a better man than the peasant he looks down on. He was just born into better circumstances – ones that ensured that he got better food, a better education and better training with weapons, as well as the weapons themselves.’

  Tyrion could see that Leiber was talking about something he had given a lot of thought to. This was a matter that had deeply troubled the human for a long time. He was not really talking about the relationship between men and elves anymore – he was talking about the way humans lived, the way he himself had lived.

  ‘Why do you ask me this?’ Tyrion asked.

  ‘Can you see what I’m saying, Prince Tyrion? Can you see what I’m getting at? In my life I have met a lot of noblemen and a lot of them have looked down on me. Argentes for one. And the truth of the matter is that he was not any cleverer than I was, nor any braver nor any better. In the end, he is dead and I am still here. Who is to say who the better man is now?’

  Tyrion understood the point being made only too well. And perhaps Leiber was right to make it. Perhaps it was simply the fact that Tyrion had been born in a different place to a different people that made him feel superior.

  ‘I am still an elf, and you’re still human. It does not matter what either of us think about that, the world remains the same.’

  ‘Does it though, Prince Tyrion? The world is changing. Who knows what the coming centuries will bring?’

  ‘Most likely I will still be here to see. Will you?’

  Leiber did not have an answer for that. Tyrion had not expected him to. Leiber took another puff on his pipe and regarded Tyrion balefully for a moment, then he smiled and laughed out loud.

  ‘I should have known I could not get the better of an elf in an argument.’

  Teclis took a moment away from concentrating on mixing his potions to listen to what his brother was talking about with Leiber. He needed to concentrate. Like his sight, his hearing was not good at the best of times, and the spell he used to keep the insects and the jungle heat and humidity at bay made it even worse. It flattened out all sound as if he had placed a layer of beeswax in his ears.

  He could see that Tyrion was troubled by the human’s words and was giving serious thought to the matter, but his brother was not capable of looking beyond the common prejudice against humans.

  Tyrion really did believe himself to be superior to the human and had ample empirical evidence to back this up. By almost any measure, he could prove himself to be better than the man. He was even prepared to admit it to the human when pushed. What he did not see was the simple fact that he was judging the matter by standards set by himself and other elves.

  Teclis added a pinch of saltpetre and powdered gryphon bone to the mix and smiled sourly. The potion smelled infernal but it was necessary for keeping his strength up and not just his strength. Without these medicines his sight and hearing would be even worse than they were now. He would be more or less blind and deaf as well as decrepit.

  Of course, elves were better looking than humans by any standards. Of course, they were more knowledgeable about lore. Of course, elves were better at all the things that elves were good at than humans were. It was a competition in which all of the rules were made by the elves and all of them reflected to their own advantage.

  No elf bothered to think that there might be things that humans knew that elves did not. No elf ever was prepared to admit that already the humans occupied and controlled a greater portion of the globe than the elves ever had and that this process was only likely to continue.

  All of the elves imagined that just because they lived longer they enjoyed more favour in the eyes of the gods. Teclis felt sure that humans could judge this contest by their own standards and feel superior to elves if they really wanted to; it was just that so far they had not done so. They were still used to thinking of elves as the Elder Race. They were still dazzled by beauty and culture and magic. But that would not last.

  One day, and that day could not be that far off, the humans would see beyond glamour and begin to judge the elves as they deserved to be judged. They would see that the elves were not really so much better than they were, after all.

  They would see that the elves were split into two warring factions. They were, in their own way, just as divided as the human realms. Perhaps more so. He could not think of any human kingdoms that were involved in so bitter a fratricidal struggle as Ulthuan and Naggaroth. Or which had been fought for so long.

  And the humans did not seem to suffer from the madness that plagued the elves: the strange obsessions, the lust for power, the furious desire to acquire knowledge and magical lore that the elves suffered from.

  Of course, these things did affect humans, but not with the same intensity as they affected elves. Some of his own kindred would see that as proof of superiority. The elves felt things more keenly, appreciated things more and moved through the world with much more intensity than humans could.

  Teclis was not at all sure that this did make them superior. It merely made them different. In fact, there were times when he believed that the excessive nature of their temperament was a definite disadvantage. They were capable of focusing on one thing exclusively to the point where they would miss other more important things.

  He finished swirling his medicine and drank it down. It was bitter and the aftertaste tingled on his tongue. He braced himself for the dizziness he was going to feel as it first took effect.

  He thought with some bitterness about his own father, lost in his obsessive pursuit of the secrets of the dragon armour of Aenarion. Prince Arathion had neglected his own children and his own estates and allowed the fortunes of his ancient family to fall into decline as he worked on his own personal obsessions. If Tyrion had not rescued the family finances with his ventures into piracy and trading, they would most likely be living in the gutter now or on the charity of their wealthy Emeraldsea relatives.

  There had been times in his childhood when Teclis suspected he had almost died because his father was more interested in the secrets of ancient sorcery than he was in the well-being of his children. And yet, Teclis could not find it in himself to blame his father. He understood only too well the burning hunger that consumed him. He felt the same way about his own pursuit of magical knowledge.

  Look at him now – he had followed the trail of an ancient artefact halfway round the world simply because it promised to reveal to him some secrets of how it had been created. He’d undergone a great deal of personal discomfort and boredom, and not a little danger, in pursuit of that knowledge and he’d done it without a second thought.

  Of course, he had other reasons. He wanted to help his brother find a weapon that might help him survive when the daemon that pursued them caught up with them, as Teclis feared it inevitably would.

  And he also thought that if he could locate the blade and penetrate its mysteries he might find something that would help his father with his own magical research. He should be the last one to blame elves for their obsession; he knew that only too well. But he could not help but feel that elves judged themselves too favourably and humans not favourably enough.

  And even knowing this he could not help but look at Leiber and his brother and judge his own kin as the better of the two. He was not immune to the normal prejudices but, at least,
he was aware of the fact that he suffered from them.

  And he knew the dangers of concentrating too much on one thing, while ignoring his surroundings. Out there innumerable dangers lurked. They might not be as lucky as they had been this time when the next attack came.

  Was it the effects of the medicine or was something disturbing those nearby bushes? Even as the thought occurred to him, a long-snouted, tooth-filled monstrous head emerged from the undergrowth.

  ‘Watch out!’ Leiber shouted. ‘We’ve got company.’

  They were under attack.

  Chapter Three

  Wet leaves slapped Tyrion in the face, obscuring his vision. Something heavy and scaly and rain-slick slammed into him. Its momentum bowled him over.

  Instinctively, he let himself go with the flow of the motion. Landing on his back in the soggy mulch, he kept rolling and kicked out with his feet, pushing the thing off.

  Fang-filled jaws snapped shut in front of his face. Something slammed into his leg with bruising force. He caught sight of something green and vaguely humanoid. He continued his roll and somersaulted upright.

  On his feet now, blade in hand, Tyrion sought enemies.

  His attacker disappeared into the undergrowth. It looked like a big humanoid lizard, running upright, balancing itself with its long tail. The head was something like that of a dragon, with enormous powerful jaws and massive teeth that looked easily capable of tearing flesh right to the bone.

  It was one of the legendary servants of the slann. A warrior of some sort, although very primitively armed. In one scaly hand it clutched a stone axe tipped with coloured feathers. Only luck had stopped the thing from braining him. As he watched, the thing’s skin changed colour, scaly patterns altering so that it blended in with its surroundings. That chameleon-like camouflage was what had allowed it to get so close.

  Tyrion’s heart beat faster. His breathing deepened. He had a sense that he was lucky to be alive. Judging from the crunching noises nearby some of his own people had not been so lucky.

  He looked around to see how Teclis was doing.

  The glow of a protective spell surrounded his brother. A group of the lizardmen circled him, snapping at him with their massive jaws and striking at him with their axes. His alchemical gear lay discarded at his feet. His fire was scattered. So far, Teclis’s spells had warded off their blows but it was only a matter of time before they managed to do him some harm.

  Tyrion sprang forward, lashing out with his sword. His first blow separated the head from one lizardman’s body. His blade caught another in the chest. Greenish blood flowed and the air took on an odd coppery tang.

  The lizardman shrieked, the sound of its voice like the hissing of a boiling kettle until the note went too high to be audible to his ears. Tyrion twisted his blade, turning it until it grated against rib. He leaned forward, hoping to hit the heart but not sure of the layout of the internal organs that a lizardman might possess.

  Of one thing he was certain – he was causing his victim a great deal of pain, judging by the way it screeched. Its tail curled around, threatening to hit him with the force of a bludgeon. He leapt over the blow, even as two of the lizardman’s companions closed in from either side.

  Tyrion caught one in the throat with his sword, where the windpipe ought to be. Something crunched under the blow and the lizardman fell backwards, mouth open in a silent scream, no sound being emitted from its broken voice box, then the pommel of his blade connected with the snout of the other lizardman with sickening force. It too halted momentarily, stunned.

  Tyrion split its skull with his sword and then wheeled to stab the other as it clutched at its slashed throat.

  With the force of a striking thunderbolt he smashed into the melee, dancing through the swirl of combat with impossible grace. Every time he struck a lizardman fell. Within heartbeats he had turned the course of the battle and slaughtered half a dozen more of the cold-blooded ones. The rest of them fled off into the undergrowth, shrieking and bellowing like beasts.

  Something flickered in the corner of his vision. A dart erupted from the bushes heading straight at him with eye-blurring velocity. He plucked it from the air, careful to avoid its sharpened obsidian point. He had no doubt that the black goo smeared on the blade was a deadly poison. He hurled the thing point first into the bushes from which it had come, but whatever had fired it was gone. The dart stuck quivering in the bole of a great tree.

  Around him, the humans went around finishing off the wounded lizardmen, smashing their skulls or stabbing them through the eye or heart. They were brutal, driven by fear.

  A lot of their cruelty came from that fear. Tyrion disliked this. He enjoyed violence but he had never understood this need to abuse defeated foes that many people had. He supposed one thing bred the other. Fear was parent to cruelty.

  He looked over to make sure that Teclis was unharmed. The wizard stood there, glaring around him, looking for a target for his spells. The battle had been fought so quickly that he had had no chance to unleash his power.

  Tyrion could tell that he was frustrated by that and he could understand why. His brother did not like to feel powerless in any situation – he had experienced too much of that in their youths.

  ‘They are gone,’ Tyrion said. ‘For the moment.’

  ‘How can you be certain of that?’ Teclis asked.

  ‘I can’t,’ said Tyrion. ‘But normally when you kill things to the point where they run away, they don’t come back quickly. Of course, with these slann creatures you can never be sure. They are too alien.’

  ‘Those were skinks,’ said Teclis. ‘That’s what they were called. According to the Chronicles of Beltharius, they are servants of the slann, not the slann themselves.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for that,’ said Tyrion.

  ‘You would do well to do so,’ said Teclis. His brother sounded keen to assert himself, even if only by displaying superior knowledge. ‘Beltharius is the only elf to have left any records of visiting an actual lizardman city, and he barely survived that.’

  Beltharius was the captain of the explorers who had visited the Golden Pyramid of Pahuax back in the reign of Bel Shanaar. He had been one of the few to fight his way out of the city when the great toad-god that ruled it had turned nasty.

  The tale was well known, but his brother had spent a great deal of time in the library at Hoeth, studying the actual journals Beltharius had kept. Before they had made this trip he had studied every scrap of information the elves had ever compiled about the jungles of Lustria and its inhabitants. With his usual thoroughness he had turned himself into an expert on the matter.

  Tyrion glanced around to see how the humans were doing. One of them was on the ground, dead, his skull crushed by one of those stone axes. It had been left buried in his forehead.

  ‘Bastards!’ Leiber said. ‘Those scaly bastards killed him. They killed Fritz.’

  ‘These lands are sacred to them,’ said Teclis.

  Tyrion shook his head. This was not the sort of thing that Teclis ought to be saying to the humans right now. They were upset by the loss of their comrade and they were on edge, ready for violence. It would not take much to turn them against the elves, or cause a violent argument and Tyrion had no great wish to kill the humans and still less of a desire to be killed by them.

  ‘We need to move on,’ said Tyrion.

  ‘We need to bury Fritz,’ said Leiber.

  ‘We could all die if we don’t get out of this place,’ said Tyrion. ‘Those skinks will be back with friends soon, and there will be a lot more of them than us.’

  Leiber looked as if he wanted to argue but he could see the sense of Tyrion’s words. His companions looked torn between their anger and their fear. The way Fritz’s dead eyes stared at the sky was a compelling argument for Tyrion’s case. None of them wanted to end up that way. Heads nodded.


  ‘Dead men spend no gold,’ said Teclis sardonically. Tyrion could have cursed him. Now was not the time for his gallows humour, but that argument too held considerable force.

  ‘All right, let’s go get us some treasure,’ said Leiber. There was a note of aggression in his voice that Tyrion did not like at all. It was possible that before too long it would not just be the skinks that would be numbered among their enemies.

  The rain poured down, turning the track to flowing mud. It splattered off the leaves and splashed down from the giant trees in small waterfalls and the noise of it covered the normal small sounds of the surrounding woods.

  Tyrion envied his brother’s magic even more. His tunic was soaked. His hair was plastered against his skull. The insides of his boots squelched. The rain did not touch Teclis. It stopped a finger’s breadth from his form, leaving him looking dry and calm.

  Leiber spluttered and coughed as he led them along the track. Red mud stuck to his bare feet and made it look as if he was wearing a glistening set of magical stockings. The other humans tramped along with slumped shoulders and miserable expressions in their eyes. They looked as if they wanted to be anywhere but here.

  The ruins emerged slowly from the jungle. At first Tyrion was not sure that they were not simply large outcroppings or hills. It took some effort to discern the shapes of the tumbled down buildings in the undergrowth, but if he looked closely, he could see lichen-blotched, time-eroded statues and the chipped remains of monstrous stone blocks partially buried in moss and peaty earth. Great trees had grown around them and sometimes through them, the power of their long slow growth tumbling even the heavy stonework.

  ‘There must have been an earthquake here,’ Tyrion said in elvish to Teclis. His twin looked thoughtful.

  ‘Or monstrously powerful sorcery. They say the forces of Chaos struck these cities with mighty magics during the first incursion. For a long time, the slann and their lizardmen slaves bore the brunt of the Dark Gods’ attacks.’

  The ground squelched underfoot. It was as if they were moving through the limits of a great swamp.