Swords: 08 - The Fifth Book Of Lost Swords - Coinspinner’s Story by Fred Saberhagen Read Free Book Online

waiting on the other side of a thick wall of rock. And the same howling wind that was keeping the winged scouts out of the air would tend to rush the sound away.
           The wizard, for whom nothing had worked properly since setting out on this pursuit, was now beginning to adopt a fatalistic attitude. “I fear that if Coinspinner is arrayed against us…” Karel, with a shrug, let his words trail off.
           But Rostov, as usual when going into action, was ferocious and implacable. “You tell me that the enemy has powerful weapons. I say so do we. And I also say damn their weapons. If we are in the field against them, we must find some way to attack.” Almost as an afterthought, he added: “All of them won’t have stayed to entertain us in an ambush. Part of their force almost certainly is bearing Woundhealer on ahead—and it’s a good bet that those people will have taken Coinspinner too.”
           Working with Stonecutter in the driving rain, a pair of the General’s men were already hacking an incline into the side of a cliff that would otherwise have been utterly impassable. They were incorporating stair-steps at the steeper parts, and making the whole wide and gentle curved enough for riding-beasts to use. Naturally they had begun their labors at a spot out of sight of the enemy above. One man wielded the Sword of Siege, cutting limestone like so much butter, digging stairs rapidly out of the side of a cliff, while his helper slid the freshly carved blocks away and over the edge.
           A few shock troops, with Rostov himself and Karel among them, were to climb the newly created stair and take the enemy from the rear, while the bulk of the General’s three squadrons waited, mounted, ready to attack the ambush frontally at the proper moment.
           And Rostov had one more weapon to bring into action. Calling a well-guarded pack-animal forward, he reached into one of its cargo panniers and pulled forth Sightblinder. The Sword of Stealth looked an exact duplicate of its god-forged brothers, save for the different symbol, in this case the sketch of a human eye, that it bore on its black hilt. At least it looked so to the one who held it; gazing at the reactions in the faces of his people looking at him now, Rostov knew that each of them was seeing something or someone even more awesome than their General.
           A few moments later, halfway up the newly created path with Sightblinder still in hand, waiting for the stonecutting to be finished, Rostov was beginning to wish that he had brought dogs, to help pick up the scent when other indications of a trail were lacking. Well, it was too late to worry about that now. Beside him, Karel had his eyes closed and was muttering—trying to ward off Coinspinner’s imminent counterblow, perhaps. That stroke was coming, no doubt, in some form, if the Sword of Chance was still in the possession of the ambushers. But there was nothing Rostov could do about it, and so he refused to let it worry him.
           In a matter of only a few minutes the necessary rough stairs had been completed. The chunks of rock removed, sliced loose as easily as so many bits of melon, had been pushed tumbling into a depth so great that there was no need to worry about the sounds of their falling alerting the foe.
           And now Rostov, disguised by the Sword of Stealth, and his handful of picked men, moving close past the pair of rock-cutters, wind and rain blasting in all their faces, were at the top of the new pathway.
           No one in sight, as yet. But there was another little plateau not far above. The General, climbing ponderously and carefully, motioned sharply with his arm, and a young scout, much more agile than Rostov, clambered past him.
           After peering cautiously through a notch at the top of the cliff, the lithe young soldier turned his head back and whispered: “No one in sight.”
           That, as Rostov