Troublemaker

He knew the sword was trouble ever since he first saw it.

All the stories talked about swords that had named. All his time in the army, he’d never once seen a sword with a name, not even the Captain’s sword, and he was nobility, from a line that stretched back to the founding of the Empire.

No, only the stories had swords that had names.

Until he’d found this one, lodged in the rib cage of the only occupant of a forgotten tomb in the Black Jungle. He’d taken the sword and the skeleton had collapsed into rags and dust. In the light outside the tomb, he’d wiped the blade and seen the name etched into the blade.

Twallisth, it said, in pre-Imperial script. Long hours spent as the Captain’s scribe’s assistant meant he had been able to make out that much, even if he hadn’t any idea what it meant. Long and slender, with a slight curve to it, although it was edged on both sides. It gleamed without polishing it.

Everywhere he went, someone wanted it. He lost it gambling once. He threw it in a river. He tossed it to the bottom of a deep mine. He sold it a dozen times, until he figured out that the more he charged, the more trouble he got into. He gave it away to anyone who asked, only to have them eventually beg him to take it back.

No matter what he did, he couldn’t get rid of it. It washed up next to him the next night. The lucky gambler died from a fall from his horse, landing improbably on the blade. Every person he sold it to died a nasty death, and their families and friends came looking for him.

Twallisth, he’d decided, must have meant Troublemaker.

The only person it hadn’t killed was him. He got into scrape after scrape, nearly died a dozen times, been run out of dozens of towns by dozens of mobs. He was wanted in thirty duchies. The Imperial Praetorians had his name and description. He tried to live life simply, tried to make friends, tried to avoid humanity altogether, and no matter what he did, trouble came looking for him.

Now he faced a... a thing, long and black and snakelike, covered with quivering pods of something yellow, glaring red eyes and three gaping fang-filled mouths. He’d only come into the cave to get out of the rain.

Twallisth cut through the beast’s scales like it was built for that one purpose. It screamed and shivered and the yellow pods burst in yellow goo.

He looked for something to wipe the sword with. He’d be damned if he was going to get the goo on his own clothes. Of course, the goo was everywhere, so it was lay down in the goo or head back out into the rain.

“Fine,” he said to Twallisth. “Rust for all I care.”

He was soaked in seconds.

Twallisth gleamed in the rain.