the elf’s face. “Fulfilled in all its particulars.”
“Behold the sword Blind Fury!”
Glandurg brandished the weapon aloft and the other dwarves crowded around.
They had all heard stories of the great treasure of their tribe, but none
of them had ever seen it before. Never in the memory of a living dwarf had
the enchanted sword left the deepest, strongest treasury.
It was worth seeing. The golden hilt gleamed, throwing sparks and
highlights where the sun’s rays caught a bit of carving or granulation at
just the right angle. The rubies and sapphires set in the hilt glowed with
inner fires and the fist-size emerald in the pommel flashed and flamed.
In fact, it was downright gaudy.
That was fine with the dwarves, whose taste for gaudy is perhaps exceeded
only by Las Vegas architects. But it was also deadly. The double-edged
blade glittered in the sunlight with a sinister brilliance that threatened
to outshine the hilt. The blade was as wide as a man’s palm and nearly as
long as a dwarf was tall and the magic of it twisted the air around it
like heat waves in a mirage.
Glandurg could not conceal his glee. “One stroke! One stroke and the
Sparrow is finished! Nothing can stop Blind Fury and he who wields it
cannot be harmed in battle.”
“Can we see?” Gimli asked eagerly.
“Yes,” Ragnar said. “Show us.”
The others took up the chorus. “Yes. Yes. Show us.”
Glandurg smiled and nodded. Obviously the sword had gone a long way toward
restoring his tattered prestige with his followers. He didn’t tell them he
had asked King Tosig for it before setting out and received a rebuff that
singed his beard.
He marched to the edge of the clearing where a log nearly two feet thick
lay against a head-high boulder.
“Observe the log,” he said. He wound up and swung at the log with all his
strength.
Blind Fury whistled through the air and Thorfin jumped back as the tip
removed the bottom six inches of his beard. With an evil hiss the weapon
missed the log completely and bit deeply into a boulder, cleaving the rock
to the ground.
The dwarf looked around. Thorfin was fingering the end of his newly
trimmed beard and several of the other dwarves were looking at the newly
split boulder with a combination of wonder and skepticism.
“I meant to do that,” Glandurg told the watching dwarves. “Now stand back
and give me room.”
The others needed no urging. They backed off to give him a good twenty
feet of room in every direction.
Glandurg hefted the sword. In the back of his mind it came to him that
there were stories about how Blind Fury got its name.
“Now watch,” he said. This time he did not specify a target.
Again he raised the sword over his head, braced his feet apart and swung a
mighty blow. He was aiming at the boulder but the blade’s arc flashed past
the stone and on around and into the oak tree beside him. Glandurg was
dragged along helplessly but Blind Fury sliced through the three-foot
trunk as if it wasn’t there.
Slowly, majestically, the tree rocked, teetered and began to fall-straight
toward the watching dwarves. Dwarves scattered in every direction as the
oak crashed down on them. The trunk itself missed Glandurg by scant inches
where he stood holding the enchanted sword.
Wiz looked up from where he was checking some wiring in the computer room.
“What was that crash?”
Jerry, who was closer to the window, looked out. “Just a tree falling up
on the hillside.”
“Oh,” Wiz said, turning back to the wiring. “Nothing important then.”
A curse! Yes, that was it, Glandurg remembered. There was a curse on the
sword. Dwarfish faces began poking out among the still-shaking leaves of
the fallen tree. Somehow they didn’t show the respect they had a few
minutes ago.
“Well, that’s enough of that, isn’t it?” Glandurg said. “Hand me the
scabbard, will you?”
Thirty-nine: PROTECTION
It was just after dawn and Wiz was finishing up an all-nighter on a
workstation when a shadow swept over the window. He jerked his head up in