A Thief in the Night

chapter Twenty-one

The horses screamed as water jumped over the side of the raft and licked at their feet, but Croy didn’t have time to soothe them. He was too busy pushing against a rock as big as a house that stuck up from the middle of the river Strow. Malden dipped his own pole in the water and added his strength, and between the two of them they managed to get the raft moving away from the boulder.

“Slag, are you sure this thing will hold together?” Cythera asked, fear pitching her voice high.

“Yes, I am f*cking sure,” the dwarf shouted back. Slag grabbed at one of the taut ropes attached to the mast as they were all swung about by the current.

Croy had planned on building a traditional raft, a square platform of logs lashed together, but the dwarf insisted he knew a better way. The thing he’d constructed looked more like a spider’s web, with logs radiating out from a central upright mast. Ropes hanging down from the mast braced each log, allowing them to move back and forth and even up and down as the water surged beneath them.

“Another rock!” Cythera cried.

Croy shoved his pole down into the stony bed of the river and heaved once more. On the far side of the raft Mörget howled some barbarian war cry and leaned across the water, pushing them clear with his arms. The raft spun around on the axis of its mast like a wagon wheel, and the sky and the land flashed around Croy until his head felt light, but suddenly Cythera was laughing and the dwarf was jumping up and down, pointing at the far bank. It was only a few yards away. Croy jumped down into the water with a rope and tied off to a boulder there, his blood singing in his veins. He heaved against his line, and the raft beached on a bank of pebbles and sparse grass. Cythera untied the horses and they bolted gratefully for dry land.

Once everyone was safely ashore, Croy dragged their supplies off the raft and then fell back into a patch of grass and just stared up at the sky for a while, glad to be alive. “I didn’t think we’d make it,” he said when he had the strength to sit up again.

The knight rubbed at his wet face and looked around. He found himself on a grassy verge shaded by tall trees. The sun had just come up—for some reason, Malden and Mörget both wanted to get an early start, and they crossed the river in the first blue light of dawn. Under the canopy of leaves it might still have been night.

“I’m soaked to the skin,” Cythera said, reaching for a horse blanket. “We should get a fire going and dry our clothes. Croy. If you please.”

“Hmm?”

“I’m going to disrobe,” she said, shaking out the blanket.

“Oh, yes?” He tried to look innocent.

“You could at least turn your back,” she said.

“I thought, perhaps, as we are betrothed, you might allow me to . . .” He couldn’t bring himself to say the rest. Especially with the way she stared at him.

“Stop thinking of me as your wife,” she said. “At least until we return to Ness. I won’t give you any excuse to send me home, not now. If you start thinking you’re my master, you’ll think you can order me around. Now. Turn your back.”

Croy did as he was told. What choice did he have? It was clear Cythera intended to see this adventure through, regardless of how it made him feel. His back burned as if he felt her eyes on him. When she was finished and told him he could turn around again, he saw she was wrapped completely in the blanket, with only her feet exposed.

They were lovely feet.

He went to see to the horses. The animals looked grateful to be back on dry land, but still they whickered and bucked when Croy approached them. Malden came up behind him, standing well back, as if afraid of being kicked.

“Did we truly need to sell the wagon? With Slag’s improvements, that was probably the most valuable piece of cartage in Skrae,” Malden pointed out. “Are you sure we got good value for it?”

Croy laughed and nodded. Where they were going next there were no proper roads, and they would have spent more time pulling the wagon out of mud or levering it over tree roots than they did traveling. “For Slag, I found this pony,” he said, pointing out the piebald colt. “A good courser for Cythera. And for you, a jennet.”

Malden approached the indicated horse with a look of distinct fear. The roan looked back at him with pure apathy. The thief reached out tentatively to touch the animal’s forelock but the jennet snorted and he yanked his hand away. “You got me a horse,” he said. “Croy, I’m afraid to tell you this, but I never learned how to ride.”

“I assumed as much, and so chose the gentlest, most kindly dispositioned animal I could find. Don’t worry. She’ll do all the work. You just need to hang on.”

“Well,” Malden said, taking a step back, “I’ll do my best.”

“I have something else for you as well,” Croy said with a sly grin. He’d been waiting a long time for this.

He went over to where their supplies were piled in a heap and took out a long bundle wrapped in oilcloth. “You didn’t need this back when we were in civilized country, but now we’re properly in the wilderness I want you to have it.” He unwrapped the bundle to reveal a sword in a thick scabbard. He held it out toward Malden in both hands.

“Ah,” Malden said. “A sword. I don’t think I want to wear a—”

“Not just any sword,” Croy said. “I believe you know this one.” He drew the sword carefully from its special glass-lined sheath. In the firelight it looked ragged and notched, and when it caught the light the blade was revealed as nothing more than a corroded and pitted bar of iron with a weathered point. As soon as it was exposed to the air, however, glistening drops of fuming liquid began to break out upon its length, like steaming sweat.

“Acidtongue,” Malden whispered.

The name was said loud enough to get Mörget’s attention. The barbarian had been chopping firewood. Now he stormed over to where Croy and Malden stood. He stared with open and unaffected lust at the eroded sword.

“One of the seven,” Mörget thundered. “Another Ancient Blade! You had this the whole time, Croy, and never mentioned it to me?”

“It is not mine to speak for,” Croy explained. “Its previous wielder, Bikker, was my teacher. I was forced to slay him in a duel of honor. Now I seek a proper replacement, someone I can train in its use. I’ve had Malden in mind for a long while.”

“Me?” Malden asked. “But—why? I’m no knight. I’m barely a free man, as far as the law is concerned. And I’ve never waved a sword around in my life.”

Croy nodded solemnly. He had known that Malden would doubt himself. Humility was a great virtue, one of the hardest for a knight to keep. Malden, with his low birth, would have an advantage there. “Traditionally it is knights who wield the swords. That makes sense—knights are trained in the use of such weapons, often trained from birth, as I was. My first toy was a wooden sword, did you know that? You, Malden, were born to a different estate. You were never trained for this. Yet this is not, as you say, the first time you’ve ever waved a sword around. You did it once before—with this particular blade.”

The thief blanched, but he nodded. “I suppose I did.”

“This runt?” Mörget asked. “Could he even lift a sword, if he had one to hand? I think it unlikely.”

“You weren’t there,” Croy said. “Together, Malden and I faced the most powerful sorcerer in Skrae. A magician who thought nothing of summoning demons to do his bidding. One such creature was sent to hunt down Malden and destroy him. I wounded the beast with Ghostcutter, but I was too fatigued and injured to finish the job. Malden had to take up Acidtongue then and slay the beast. He did it without thinking, without hesitation. I’ve never seen such courage.”

“It was that or let the thing eat me,” Malden said. “I was so scared I thought I might soil my—”

Mörget chuckled. “You think there’s some difference, little man, between terror and bravery? They’re like the moon in its phases. Sometimes it waxes, and sometimes it wanes, but it’s always there, all of it. We just don’t see it all.”

“Since that day,” Croy went on, “you’ve shown true courage often enough—not least of all when you agreed to come with us on this quest. If we’re going to fight a demon—if you’re going to become one of us and pledge your life to fighting them—this is the perfect opportunity to start learning how.”

“You want me to become an Ancient Blade,” Malden said. “Like you.” The thief didn’t seem to believe it was even possible.

The knight and the barbarian looked at Malden expectantly.

“I’m not meant for your squire, friend,” Malden insisted. “I’m not really the sword-slinging type. Please, I thank you, truly, but—”

“Just hold it a moment. See how it feels,” Croy insisted.

Malden stared at him. Then he glanced toward where Cythera and Slag sat by the riverbank. Croy wondered what he looked for from the two of them. He must have found it, though, for Malden took the sword by its hilt. He nearly dropped it—Croy supposed the thief was unused to a sword’s weight—but then he managed to swing it through the air. Drops of potent acid flicked through the dark and sizzled in the undergrowth.

Malden took a step toward a nearby tree and brought the blade round in a wildly swinging arc. Croy winced at the poor swordsmanship, but he cheered as the sword smashed into the tree trunk with a noise like a hundred angry snakes. Malden jumped back as the tree toppled and fell with a great crash, its leaves thrashing and its branches snapping when it dropped to the forest floor.

The stump it left looked burnt around the edges, but in the middle the cut was clean. After a moment sap started to ooze from the sundered tree.

“In Sadu’s name,” Malden breathed.

Croy coughed politely. The swords were consecrated to the Lady, after all, and not to the Bloodgod.

“Croy,” Malden said, “I can see you mean this as an act of great friendship. I have to admit I’m . . . touched.” The thief stared at the ground. “I worry I don’t deserve it, though. There have been times I’ve not been as—faithful—a friend as I might. There have been times I’ve proven I don’t deserve this gift.” Malden’s arm shook as he spoke, as if great emotion were flowing through him. The tremor made flecks of acid rain on the carpet of pine needles below their feet. “There’s something I must tell you. Something you don’t want to hear—”

Croy held up one hand for silence. “Let the past be forgotten now,” he said. This was a sacred moment. The passing on of an Ancient Blade was a holy rite. “Prove to me, from now on, that you deserve to call me brother.”

“If you do not want the blade, little man,” Mörget said, “I will be glad to take it from you. By force, if necessary.”

Malden laughed, but Croy nodded sagely. “It’s one of our vows,” he said. “If a wielder of the sword proves unworthy, he must be challenged and killed on the spot.”

“I suppose,” Malden said, “in that case I’d better hold on to it. For now.”