"Shut up. Not you," I said to the merchant. "Five's my offer."
"Then I will say fifty!"
I sighed lustily. He had not seen the sword's transformation, and not only was I not going to tip him off about it, I gave a warning eye to everyone in the crowd gathering around us to make sure they didn't, either. "Six."
"Sixty!" the merchant responded.
"Seven."
"Seventy!"
"Four."
"E...what?" The runaway freight train just piled into a brick wall.
"You've just tripped into absurdity, brother. The price goes down from now on."
"Why, you can't do that!" His braids flapped with outrage.
I grinned, giving him the benefit of my last dental prophylaxis. He blanched at the sight of my Pervect smile.
"Sure I can. Do you want to make a sale or not?"
"That's the stuff, friend...!" the voice from my hand mumbled out.
"Shut up. Where were we? Four."
"Nay, good Pervect, I am worth at least a hundred times that!"
"Shut up!" I growled out of the corner of my mouth. "Do you want me to leave you here?"
"Nay, I beg you!"
"Then, zip it before someone hears you! Four," I repeated.
"No, sir, please!" The merchant was aghast. He wrung his hands together. "It cost me far more than that! I obtained it from a hairless, old soldier down on his luck."
"Probably out of drinking money," I said, coolly. I had the upper hand, and I wasn't letting it go.
"Give me twenty, at least."
"That's more like it," I said approvingly.
"Then you'll pay it?"
"No way. My original offer was five, and you're going to be lucky to get that."
"Fifteen, friend."
"Nope."
"Ten. That's just a single coin more than I paid for it. That's my last offer."
The truth rolls out if you give it time, and so does the local police force. I noticed a quartet of hairy pikemen trotting down the street towards us with purpose. Someone in the crowd must have decided that I looked dangerous. I could probably get away with stiffing the merchant at nine gold pieces, after his admission, but I didn't feel like tangling with the constabulary. This was supposed to be my vacation!
"Done." With an air of magnanimity I felt in a pocket for the right change and tossed the money onto the table. The coins rang as they clattered to a stop on a brass commemorative coronation platter. "Nice doing business with you."
I turned away nonchalantly, tucking the sword under my arm. In a cloud of hair, a bunch of people rushed toward the table to talk to the merchant, probably to tell him what a sucker he had been to sell a prize piece of cutlery like that at cut rates. I sauntered idly toward the inn.
"By heaven, friend, you are a frighteningly good businessman even for one of your kind."
Normally, flattery feels good, but it had just occurred to me that there was now a ten-coin-shaped hole in my purse that hadn't been there before. I snarled.
"Shut up. I just paid out good money for a sword that I don't need."
I needed a drink. I stalked into the inn, took sole possession of a corner table, planted myself with my back to the wall and my eye on both the front and back doors, and signaled to the barmaid, a fetching lass with long red hair all over her shapely form.
"Hey, babe! Whaddaya got on tap?"
A moment passed while I persuaded the girl that the egg-cups that Ittschalkians drank out of wasn't enough to keep a Pervect alive over lunchtime. By the time she reappeared with a hastily scrubbed bucket filled with beer, the sword could no longer restrain itself.
"By the Smith, it is good to be away from those pathetic artifacts and their master! Unsheath me, friend. I sense that we are in a reasonably defensive location with few potential foes nearby."
It was exactly the same assessment that I might have made of the situation. The main room of the inn was empty except for a few locals chatting earnestly over the long table right in front of the bar, and a couple of oldsters with thinning, gray locks playing a board game under the window on the opposite side of the room. I felt mellowed enough by the first mug of beer to indulge the sword's whim. I pulled it free of its case.
"What hight you, friend?" it inquired, giving me another one of those summing, X-ray looks.
"You mean you can't read it off my underwear band?" I countered. "Aahz is the name."
"Oz?"
"No relation."
"Ah. It was the green color that put me wrong. I hight Ersatz."
"Yeah, sure," I chuckled, taking a pull at the second bucket of beer. "So is every other talking sword in the dimensions, and most of the ones who can't talk."
"But I am THE Ersatz."
"That, my shiny friend, is what they all say." I looked down at the eyes. They were angry. "Okay, maybe the guy who forged you and set the intelligence spell in your metal told you your name was Ersatz, but I gotta tell you, you couldn't be the real one. That sword was made about ten thousand years ago. It fought in about a million battles..."
"One million, four hundred thousand, eight hundred and two—no, three. I have never been defeated."
"Listen, pal, you can spout off fake statistics until you're blue in the...er, steel, but there are hundreds or thousands like you."
The eyes blazed. "There is no one like me! I am unique! I, the leader of the Golden Hoard, am nothing like those hundreds or thousands who may have followed. They are named for me! I was at the side of the hero Tadetinko who saved Trollia from the blazing monsters from Lavandrome! I was in the hand of the conqueror who bested the usurper of the Deveel Corporation! I, and I alone, was the weapon who held back the gate that protected the capital of your very dimension and kept it from becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of that very business concern. I am no imitation! I am the REAL Ersatz!"
At that moment I remembered where I had seen a sword that looked like Ersatz. It was woven into a tapestry that hung on the wall of the Perv Archaeological Museum in the city where I grew up. In particular, I had noticed the unusual pattern of jewels in the golden hilt. About two or three thousand years before I was born, a Pervect named Clonmason had defended the dimension against the invasion of Deveels that had attempted to occupy our main city. He drove them back to their infernal regions with a legendary sword named...
"Nah..." I breathed. "The Golden Hoard is a myth!"
"Indeed," said the sword, "we are not."
I sat back, forgetting even to drink my beer. The Golden Hoard had been renowned throughout the dimensions for thousands of years. It was a collection of fabulous animated treasures whose who seemed to find their way to people who were about to be heroic, so they could save the world from whatever peril had arisen at that time. I knew all about the Hoard. It consisted of all the traditional goodies, one of which some hapless knight comes across just when he was hoping to avoid a major conflict, and finds himself at the heart of a battle royal to save the world, turning up just in time to ransom a fair
lady, or in the hands of a wet-behind-the-ears wizard enabling him or her to make the prophecy that saved a kingdom from certain disaster. They had all been around for thousands of years. I rarely feel awe for anyone living, and almost never for anything inanimate, but I had to admit I felt respect for the slip of steel in my hands. If it was the real Ersatz, it had led more generals than the hope for glory. It was worth a big chunk of change, making ten gold pieces a cheap investment against a potentially enormous return.
"So the crystal, the cup and the book...?"
"Aye, the ring, the flute and the endless purse of money also are members of our order. I am the eldest. The great shield is all to brast," the sword added. "He gave his all for the Liberation of Klahd, four thousand years past. The harp was crushed, stringless, in the rout that followed the Taming of the Centipede Giants. The Great Key was melted down in the fire that destroyed the treasure house at Nox. Yet, that is our fate. I have seen great treasures join us, only to depart this existence, yet satisfied that they had been crafted for just such a moment."