The Sword Trick Read online

  Sobraleen was a nice little town. It opened before Evangeline like a flower as the jaws of the dark woods parted. It reminded her so much of home that she nearly dropped to her knees and wept over the cobblestones. Orange, red and yellow brick houses dotted the wide streets. Bright rugs and clothes hung from the little windows. The smell of baked bread and home-cooking wafted on the wind. The townspeople stood chatting happily in the streets.

  Exhausted, Evangeline stumbled forward. Getting revenge was harder than she could have ever imagined. She wasn’t the adventuring type. She had no real skills. She had been robbed three times on her way here. She’d been chased by a flaming dragon after admiring, then pocketing, a tiny chest full of gold and silver coins. But worst of all, she was forced to eat twelve meals with the Treetop Elves as she crossed their territory. All they ate was moss and mushrooms.

  A sudden homesickness overcame Evangeline, and she was overwhelmed by a desire to turn back, forget revenge, forget everything she knew about her father. What would they say in her village if they discovered what she was up to? Little Evangeline, the merchant’s granddaughter, now the cutthroat avenger. What was she doing here? She could just lie to her mother, say she never found the grave. It would be easier. It wasn’t like she owed her father anything.

  He hadn’t even been a real father to her. He was just some stranger buried in a grave, some hero who had swept her mother off her feet long ago. When a daughter had been born and not a son, he just rode off on a hunt one day and never returned.

  After a month, he wrote a letter explaining that he had been captured by some wizard of the wood. Like a dutiful wife, Evangeline’s mother had sent him a ransom. Then he wrote back explaining that on his way home he had been imprisoned by an evil knight, then an enchantress, then a foreign mogul. Ransom after ransom was paid until her family was nearly bankrupt. Finally, Evangeline’s grandfather had enough and wrote to the mogul assuring him that even if he made garters of his no-good son-in-law’s innards, he would see it only as a kindness never to be repaid. Her mother’s credulous heart broke and the letters stopped.

  Evangeline did not hear of her father again until an eager gossip whispered to her that he had been murdered. Somehow Evangeline had gotten it in her head that she should avenge him. Except for the rain trick, she didn’t even know how to use her sword, much less kill a man with it, and for what? For depriving her of her father’s last moments or the years he might have spent with her when he had grown too decrepit to fight? No. It was because she was a girl. If she were a boy, it would be expected of her to take revenge on the man who killed her father. Evangeline was just as good as a son, and she was going to prove it.

  Evangeline left the respectable part of the town and wandered into the dregs. The buildings were gray with soot and flaky with peeling paint; they looked like frozen lepers. Broken men came here to drink like ghosts came to spilt blood. Nothing was clean or pretty, but the denizens would know where she could find a man named Roderick.

  When she heard shouts of triumph and pain, smelled the foul smell of piss and beer, Evangeline knew she was in the right place. She pushed open a rickety wooden door. The glare of a cooking fire sparked through the smoke that belched out over her. Men sat hunched around tables, in groups or in singles, conscious and unconscious. The ruckus they were making stopped only for a moment as she was noticed and then disregarded. Evangeline sighed and strode inside, took a seat in the corner.

  A middle-aged serving wench shuffled over eventually. She leaned over to clean the table with a filthy rag. She gave Evangeline a habitual smile, all lip, no eye.

  “What’ll you be having, my pretty lad?”

  Evangeline tossed gold on the table.

  “Roderick of Sobraleen,” she said, covering the coin with her hand as the woman reached for it. She had learned a thing or two in her travels. “You ever heard of him?”

  “‘Course,” she grinned, showing her gums, “Everybody has, famous as he is.”

  “Where would I find him?”

  “Why’re you looking?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

  Evangeline flipped another coin onto the greasy table top, pushed it toward the others. “None of your business.”

  “It’s your funeral,” the woman said, gathering the gold into her splotchy, stained skirt. “But if you’ll be wise and listen to one who has a few more years on her than a beardless boy, you’ll run home to your momma. That sword’s got the devil’s curse on it, and those who seek it die. So many have come to claim it, the undertaker cannot stop smiling or working night and day.”

  “Where?” Evangeline asked her, putting her hand on her sword hilt.

  “There.”

  The wench gestured over her shoulder to a table at her left. The biggest, meanest, ugliest-looking mountain of a man Evangeline had ever seen crouched drinking a flagon of ale in one gulp. Her jaw dropped open. The wench turned around.

  “No, not there,” she said, and turned Evangeline’s head to the appropriate table.

  Evangeline stood corrected. The first guy was now the second biggest, meanest, mountain of a man Evangeline had ever seen. She gaped at the serving woman.

  “That’s Roderick?”

  “No, but he beat them both fair and square in a hand-to-hand fight. That’s why they’re here, trying to drink away their sorrow.”

  Evangeline reddened. “I didn’t pay you to preach. I asked you where Roderick of Sobraleen is.”

  The wench shook her head, then pointed to a dark-haired man sitting with a large group near the fire. They looked like they were celebrating. All the noise was coming from their table. Suddenly, there was a long burst of laughter with a lot of heads falling back, and Evangeline got to see his face. He looked just like the picture.

  “Thanks,” Evangeline said.

  The other woman stood still. “Will you be having anything other than your death tonight, sirrah?”

  Evangeline stared at her.

  “This isn’t your home, boy; you have to drink to stay, and nary do we serve milk.”

  “Give me an ale.”

  The wench still did not go but stood tapping her foot. Finally, it dawned on Evangeline why. She fished out a silver coin and gave it to her. The woman put down a cup, poured the drink, then crossed herself and left. Evangeline didn’t even touch the filthy thing, just sat watching Roderick.

  The murdering fiend was in a pretty good mood, pulling serving girls into his lap, kissing them and making an all-out spectacle of himself. He sang. He danced. He showed off her father’s sword. It glinted in the candlelight and made Evangeline’s face burn. She was going to kill that son-of-a-whore if it was the last thing she did. Her hand burned on her hilt, and she made plans.

  It would be foolishness to attack him now, when he was awake and with friends, but when he was alone and unconscious... Evangeline would wait for her time. She waited long into the night. She ate dinner and almost fell asleep waiting for him to exhaust himself. Finally, in the wee hours of morning, he went up to bed with a harlot under his arm. She followed but was stopped by the proprietor, who happened to be a neckless lump.

  “And where you be going, youngling?” he asked, wiping his meaty hands on a bloody apron.

  Evangeline looked up the stairs. “I need a room, and I want the one next to Roderick.”

  The man’s tiny pig-like eyes narrowed, and his nostrils widened.

  “I’m just so...awed by him,” she grinned. “I want to offer myself to be his squire.”

  The man looked her up and down until she gingerly dropped coins into his hairy palm. Then he led her upstairs and down a dark tight hall. She could hear people giggling in the first room. The second was hers. The proprietor opened the door, slammed a candle on the table and left. Evangeline rushed over to the dingy bed and put her ear to the adjoining wall, which turned out not to be necessary since it was very thin.

  “So, how did you get such a big...sword?” the woman in the next room cooed. Evang
eline rolled her eyes.

  “From my dad,” Roderick drawled in a thick drunk’s accent.

  Evangeline fell off the bed.

  “The old fool was so damn drunk,” he went on, “he tripped on it, cracked his head on the hearth and died.”

  “Really?” the woman yawned.

  “You want to hear a stupid story?”

  “Sure. You’re paying.”

  “Since I was just a kid,” Roderick began, “my mom told me that my father said I should go and seek him if ever I mastered my sword so well that ‘in the fiercest storm I would need no other shelter,’ ‘cause I could keep the rain off with my skill and my blade. I practiced every day, till I was eight and then I fell out of a tree and smashed my arm.”

  “Oh,” exclaimed the woman.

  “They said I’d never hold a sword again. That I should take up butchering like my uncle, but I didn’t believe’em. I was even a little happy ‘cause I heard that the same thing had happened to my old man. It was like we were the same. I couldn’t let it stop me. He was going to be proud of me. I wanted so much to know him.”

  Evangeline shut her eyes and pressed her head to the wall just as Roderick burst into sobs.

  “So I learned to fight with my left hand,” he said, when he caught his breath. “Took me years, but I did it. Then I went to find him, show him I was his son, worthy of the greatest. And you know what that filthy drunk did? That son-of-a bitch. . . ”

  Evangeline tensed, not knowing if she wanted to know.

  “He laughed at me, told me I was crazy if I thought he’d give me his precious sword for that sorry trick.”

  Roderick’s voice cracked, and something hit the wall above Evangeline’s head. She looked up and saw a sword’s blade protruding through the plaster. She nearly screamed. Then she reached up and touched it.

  “He said the only worthwhile thing he had ever made was that sword. And he’d never give it up without a fight, but I wouldn’t fight him! I couldn’t. He was my father! I told him to go to hell and walked away. I only turned back to say something obscene when he tripped.”

  Evangeline wanted to cover her ears, to run away, anything but hear the rest of what her brother had to say, yet she couldn’t. He continued speaking with difficulty.

  “You can’t imagine what it was like...this big man, a fortress of bone, just fell like a bag of beans, and then his brains were all over the flagstones. I wish I was dead,” Roderick moaned. “I wish I had never heard of him or his stupid sword. I can’t stop seeing him. I can’t get the image out of my head, and I don’t think I...ever...will.”

  There was a dull thud and then silence. Evangeline jumped to her feet, almost cutting her head on the sword.

  “Roderick?” What happened to him? Evangeline ran to his room, pulled open the door. The prostitute was trying to yank the sword from the wall, but it wasn’t budging.

  Evangeline put one hand on her hip and the other on her sword hilt. That was usually enough for most people. The woman smirked. She sashayed over, kissed Evangline on the cheek and left singing. Evangeline wiped her face and closed the door. Roderick was lying on the floor. Her brother was lying on the floor half-naked, shirt and pants open to the world. She knew she should not be looking at his goods. There was something biblically wrong about it, but they were already uncovered. Boy, he was going to make some woman a very happy wife one day, she thought, then averting her eyes dutifully, dragged a sheet over him.

  Evangeline sat down on the bed. What was she going to do now? She glanced at her brother. The sheet was not hiding the one part that really needed hiding. She threw the lone pillow at him. He yelped, turned over, revealing his arse. This was ridiculous, preposterous, insane! Her noble revenge scheme had just collapsed like a knight knocked off his charger. Her eyes fell on the sword.

  Well, Roderick didn’t want it anymore. It only reminded him of their father’s terrible death. It would only hurt him to keep it. She would be doing him a favor. She got up and pulled the sword easily from the wall. It was light in her hands like a feather. She turned it, let the gem hilt glint in the coming dawn light. It was beautiful. The hilt was carved into two serpents twined about each other. She held it up. It was a weapon made for a hero. She looked down at Roderick snoring on the floor. She was as much of hero as he was.

  She spied his sleeping bag by the table and rolled it out. She tucked the sword inside, folded the cloth around it then slung it over her shoulder. Whistling, she opened the door. The old serving wench was standing in the hall. She hurried past.

  “He’s still alive,” she gasped, kneeling by Roderick. “Thank god.”

  Evangeline kept walking. The woman ran up behind her.

  “I know you took the sword, and I’m glad! I hope the ill- luck goes with you,” she cursed. “He was a good boy before it came into his life. Now, look at him! I knew his mother. She’d die again if she saw him like this. He should never have left Sobraleen. Something’s happened to him, something terrible. He never used to drink. It’s hurt him so bad, I think he’ll never recover. I think, it’ll be the death of him.”

  The old monk’s words echoed in Evangeline’s ears, spoke to her conscience. She saw Roderick’s grave right next to her father’s. With that sheet covering him he looked just like a corpse. Damn!

  “Why did you have to say that?” she shouted at the other woman. Then she sighed. “Help me get him on the bed.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m going to save his life.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I couldn’t save our father’s.”