own or at some direct command from their human
masters, had melded themselves into a tight formation
and were flying directly at the approaching cloud,
intent on investigation and perhaps attack. But just
before they reached the cloud their formation recoiled
and burst, its members scattering. Mark
had the impression that they had been brushed
aside like so many insects, by some invisible power.
In a flash understanding came. The gods were
coming to take charge. Through his pain and blood
and fear Mark gasped out a sob of deep relief.
Humanity had hope of being saved, by the beings
who had made the Swords, from powers that were
too much for it to manage. He had seen gods handle
savage and rebellious men before. Vilkata,
shrunken to the stature of a noxious insect in their
presence, might be crushed before his horror could
reach over the whole human world. Mark’s own
Sword might be taken from him too, but on the
scale of these events that would make little differ-
ence.
The cloud, no longer serving any purpose of con-
cealment, was being allowed to dissipate, and it
vanished quickly. The handful of beings who had
ridden it were walking now, already entering the
parade ground at its far side, and approaching
quickly. The sea of humans occupying the open
space parted at the deities’ approach. Four gods
and one goddess, each tall as Draffut, came striding
forward without pause, and Mark got the impres-
sion that they would have stepped on people with-
out noticing had any remained in their way.
Towering taller and taller as they drew near, the
five advanced, marching straight for the reviewing
stand. Mark thought that now he could recognize
some of them individually. Four were attired with
divine elegance, wearing crowns, tunics, robes
ablaze with color, gold, and gems. But one, who
limped as he strode forward, was clad in simple
furs.
Again Mark glanced back quickly at the platform.
Vilkata was out of striking range, and still closely
surrounded by his people and his magical attend-
ants.
The Dark King had sheathed the Mindsword
now, and was issuing terse orders to certain of his
wizards. In the next instant one of these magicians
gave a convulsive leap that carried him clear off the
platform. He fell more heavily than Mark had
fallen, and lay writhing helplessly on the ground.
Mark could guess that some protective spell of this
man’s had somehow impeded the divine progress;
and that when the spell was snapped, like some
ship’s hawser in the docks, he who had been hold-
ing it was flattened by the recoil.
Whatever magic had been in their path, spells
perhaps triggered automatically by their intrusion,
the gods had broken their way through it; they were
irritated, Mark thought, looking at them, like
adults bothered by some maze of string set up by
children.
At last the four gods and one goddess halted their
advance. They stood on the parade ground only a
score of meters from the platform, their heads still
easily overtopping that of the Dark King who faced
them from his elevation. Everyone else on the plat-
form was kneeling, Mark realized, or had thrown
themselves face down in abject panic, and everyone
near him on the ground also. He and the Dark King
were the only two humans within a hundred meters
still on their feet. How curious, Mark wondered dis-
tantly. The only other time in his life when he had
seen deities as close as this, why that time too he
had been able to remain standing, while around
him other humans knelt or huddled in collapse ….
The limping god was moving forward. In the
silence that lay over the whole camp, his ornaments
of dragon-scale could be heard clinking as he
lurched to within one great stride of the platform.
That is Vulcan the Smith, thought Mark, staring up
at the fur-garbed titan-he who took off my father’s
arm. Vulcan paid no attention to Mark, but was
looking at Vilkata. As far as Mark could tell, Vilkata
did not flinch, though when the god halted he was
close enough to the platform to have reached forth
one of his long arms and plucked Vilkata from it.
Wind came keening across the camp, blowing out
of the bare, devastated lands surrounding it. Other-
wise there was silence.
A silence abruptly broken, by the voice of Vulcan
that boomed forth at a volume appropriate for a
god. “What madness is this that you fools of
humans are about? Do you. not realize that the
Swordgame is over?”
Vilkata summoned up his best royal voice to
answer. “I am the Dark King-” It was no surprise
at all to Mark that the King’s voice should quaver
and falter and quit on him before the sentence
ended. The only wonder was that the man could
stand and speak at all in such a confrontation.
Vulcan was neither impressed nor pleased.
“King, Queen, or whatever, what do I care for all
that? You are a human and no more. Hand over
that tool of power that you are wearing at your
side.”
Vilkata did not obey at once; instead he dared to
answer once more in words. Mark did not hear the
words exactly, for his attention had once more been
distracted by something in the distance. This was
another cloud, and it looked as unusual as the first.
This cloud was not rolling down a mountainside,
only drifting through the air, but its path was at a
right angle to those of other clouds and the wind.
Now the strange cloud was hovering, hesitating in
its slow passage. It appeared to be maintaining a
certain cautious distance from the scene on the
parade ground. With Sightblinder still in hand,
Mark could perceive in this second cloud also the
presence of figures of human shape but divine
dimensions. There was one, a perfect essence of the
female, that he thought could be only Aphrodite. He
could see none of the others so clearly as individu-
als, though all of their faces seemed to be turned his
way.
The distraction had been only momentary. Now
Vulcan, made impatient by even a moment’s
temporizing on the part of this mere human king,
thundered out some oath, and stretched forth his
arm toward Vilkata. With a swift motion the Dark
King drew the Mindsword from its sheath-but not
to hand it over in surrender. Instead he brandished
it aloft.
Vulcan cried out once, a strange, hoarse tone, like
masses of metal and rock colliding. The lame god
threw up a forearm across his eyes. He reeled back-
ward, and fell to one knee. Mark could feel in the
ground under his own feet the impact of that fall.
Just behind the Smith, the four other deities who
had come out of the cloud with him were kneeling
also.
Once again a long moment of silence held
throughout the camp. The distant airborne cloud
was moving faster now, departing at accelerated
speed. Mark gazed after it numbly for a moment.
The gods had failed. The thousands of human
beings massed around him were cheering once again.
Now Vilkata was speaking again. After Vulcan’s
thunder the King’s voice sounded puny, but it was
triumphant and confident once again as he shouted an
order to the kneeling gods, their heads still higher than
his own. “Follow me! Obey!”
“We hear.” The ragged chorus rolled forth. The
wooden stand, the earth, vibrated with it. “We follow,
and obey.”
The huge wardrum boomed to life again, and from
the crowd went up the loudest roar yet. The mad
celebration resumed, twice madder than before.
The gods on the parade ground were climbing
ponderously back to their feet. “Surely this is Father
Zeus!” Vulcan cried out, pointing with a tree-sized
arm at the Dark King. “He who has been playing that
role among us must be an impostor!”
The Smith’s divine companions roared approval of
this statement, and launched themselves
spontaneously into a dance, that looked at once
ponderous and uncontrolled. The ground shook; Mark
could see the tall flagpole swaying in front of the
King’s pavilion. The crowd of humans in the vicinity
of the reviewing stand began to thin, with everyone
who was anywhere near the dancing gods being
eager to move back. Yet they remained under the
Mindsword’s spell, and many joined the dance.
Mark stood drained, exhausted, leaning on his own
Sword. With pain stabbing at his forehead, and blood
still trickling into his eye, he watched the maddened
gods and had the feeling that he was going mad
himself. But surely he ought to have expected
something like this. If one of the Swords
could kill a god-and with his own eyes Mark had seen
Hermes lying dead, the wound made by Farslayer
gaping in the middle of the Messenger’s back-then
why should not another Sword have power to make
slaves of other gods?