he saw that what he had first taken for a retreat was
in fact a charge. The rearguard, running from
downhill, and already swinging their weapons like
madmen, collided full tilt with Sir Andrew and his
little group who had been riding to their rescue.
The cry and noise of battle went up at once, and the
would-be rescuers, taken by surprise, were many of
them already down in their own blood.
“A trick! An enchantment!” Despairing cries
went up from those riding with Sir Andrew.
It was no trick as simple as switched uniforms.
Denis, dazedly continuing to move nearer, was now
close enough to recognize Dame Yoldi’s face among
those who charged uphill, swinging their weapons,
and shrieking mad battlecries. She was headed
directly toward the little knoll where Sir Andrew
and the surviving handful of his bodyguard and
officers were now surrounded and under heavy
attack.
Sir Andrew might have tried to turn his mount,
break free of his assailants who were on foot, and
get away. But he could not or would not try to flee.
Instead he kept shouting to his traitorous assail-
ants, calling them by name, trying to command
them. He stood his ground, and his bodyguard
would not make an effort to break away if he did
not.
The hammering sound of Shieldbreaker went up
and up, louder and faster now, syncopated into an
irregular rhythm. Already it had drawn around its
master an arc of gleaming steel and fresh blood. Sir
Andrew’s mount stumbled and went down, hacked
and stabbed by half a dozen weapons, but no
attacking point or blade could come far enough
within the arc of the Sword of Force to reach his
skin.
The Knight, tumbled from the saddle of his dying
mount, rolled over on the ground, never losing his
two-handed grip on the great Sword. Even when
Sir Andrew lay on his back it never faltered in its
action. And when he stood upright again, it was as
if the Sword itself had pulled him up to fight.
Shieldbreaker seemed to drag him after it, spinning
his heavy body with its violence, right to left and
back again, pulling him forward to the attack when
one of his attackers would have faltered and pulled
away.
Still, those who an hour ago had been his loyal
friends came on against him by the score, shrieking
their new hatred, calling on their new god, the Dark
King, to strengthen them. Shieldbreaker fought
them all. It smashed their weapons and their bones
impartially, carved up their armor and their flesh
alike.
Denis, hypnotized by what he saw, no longer fully
in control of his own actions, crept a little closer
still. He had a long knife at his own belt but he did
not draw it. It was as if the thought never occured
to him that he might possibly make any difference
in the fight that he was watching.
Sir Andrew’s bodyguard, greatly outnumbered
by berserk fanatics, were all down now, their’ dead
or dying bodies being hacked to pieces by their mad
attackers. But Shieldbreaker protected the man
who held it. It continued to make its sound, yet
faster now and louder. It worked on, its voice still
dull despite its blinding speed, its dazzling arc. It
worked efficiently, indifferent as to whom or what
it struck, indifferent to whatever screams or words
went up from those it disarmed or cut apart, indif-
ferent equally to whatever weapons might be plied
against it. Denis saw axeheads, knives, sword-
blades, shafts of spears and arrows, flying every-
where, whole and in a hail of fragments. Human
limbs and armor danced bloodily within the hail,
and surely that bouncing, rolling object had once
been a head.
The mouth of the Kind Knight opened and he
screamed, surely a louder and more terrible roar
than any coming from the folk he struck. Denis,
creeping closer still as if he were unable to help
himself, saw that Sir Andrew was now covered with
blood from head to foot. It was impossible to tell if
any of it might be his own. But if he were wounded,
still the mad vigor of his movements, energized by
magic, continued unabated.
The Knight roared again, in greater agony than
before. Denis saw that Dame Yoldi, possessed, a
creature of evil hatred, her face hideously trans-
formed, was closing in on Sir Andrew. Her hands
were outspread like claws, as if to rend, and she
cried out desperate spells of magic. Even Denis the
unmagical could feel the backwash of their deadly,
immaterial power.
To the Sword of Force the tools of magic were no
more than any other weapons. They were dissolved
and broken against that gleaming curve almost
invisible with speed, that brutal thudding in the
air. Dame Yoldi’s hatred propelled her closer,
closer, to the man she would destroy, and closer
still, until the edge of the bright arc of force touched
her, hands first, body an eyeblink later, and wiped
her away.
Denis saw no more fox the next few seconds.
When he looked up again, there was a pause. Sir
Andrew stood alone now, knee-deep in a small
mound of corpses, all in his own colors of orange
and black. The Sword in his hands still thudded
dully; for those of his former friends who still sur-
vived as maddened enemies were not through with
him yet. A small knot of them, the wounded, those
who had been slow to charge, the calculating, were
gathering at a little distance, scheming some strat-
egy, hatred forced into patient planning.
Denis hurried to Sir Andrew’s side. The young
man thought, as he approached, that Sir Andrew
was trying to hurl Shieldbreaker from him; the
Sword was quieter now in the Knight’s hands, its
sound reduced to a muted tapping. But if he was
trying to be rid of it, it would not let him go. Both of
his hands still gripped it, fingers interlocked
around the hilt, white-knuckled where the knuckles
could be seen through blood.
Sir Andrew turned a hideous face to Denis. The
Knight’s voice was a ghastly whisper, almost inau-
dible. “Go, catch up with the advance guard. Find
the man who is carrying Doomgiver, and order him
in my name, and for the love of Ardneh, to return
here as fast as he can.”
Denis had hardly got out of sight in one direction
before Sir Andrew, looking the opposite way, was
able to see the main body of Vilkata’s troops in the
distance, a black-gold wave advancing toward him.
A trumpet sounded from that line. On hearing it,
such remnants of Sir Andrew’s corrupted troops as
were still on the field abandoned their hopeless
attack, turning in obedient retreat to join the forces
of their new master.
There, in the distance, that man, whitehaired and
mounted under a gold-black banner, must be
Vilkata himself. In those distant hands a weapon
that Sir Andrew knew must be the Mindsword
flamed, the sun awakening in it all the fires of glory.
To Sir Andrew’s eyes, it was not much more than a
glass mirror; Shieldbreaker in his own hands pro-
tected him from that weapon too. It negated all
weapons except itself.
And it was quite enough, he thought; it had quite
destroyed him already.
Again a horn sounded, somewhere over there in
the army of the Dark King. Next, to the Knight’s
numbed surprise, Vilkata’s hosts that had only just
appeared began a measured withdrawal, going
back over the rise of land whence they had come.
Sir Andrew tried to think that over, his mind work-
ing in a newly confused way. He supposed that to
Vilkata’s calculation the withdrawal was only
sense: why order an army to chew itself to tatters,
to no purpose, upon Shieldbreaker’s unbreakable
defense?
Sir Andrew might have pursued that army, he
might have run screaming at that central banner
bearing the black skull until everyone beneath it
had been turned to chopped meat at his hands. But
they would not wait for him. Vilkata was mounted
and would get away. And anyway he, Sir Andrew,
was too weak to run, to pursue and catch up with
anyone.
Now that the immediate threat to Sir Andrew
himself was over, the strength of magic that had
been given him through the Sword was draining
rapidly away. The dread sound of Shieldbreaker’s
hammer thumped more softly, tapping slower, tap-
ping itself down into silence.
He saw himself as if from outside, an old man
standing alone on a hill, knee-deep in corpses of
those he once had loved. His arms ached, as if they
had been pounded by quarterstaffs, from the drill
that Shieldbreaker had dragged them through.
Careless of the blood, he put the Sword into its
sheath.
It was all Sir Andrew could do now to remain on
his feet.
It was almost more than he could do, to go and
look at what was left of Yoldi.