Swords: 10 - The Seventh Book Of Lost Swords - Wayfinder's Story by Fred Saberhagen

Valdemar’s sighting. Then almost at once they came in sight of another fallen body, lying nearer to them, motionless beside a slaughtered riding-beast. And then a third man, this one obviously dead, his skull crushed in.
           “No more than a day ago,” Zoltan muttered, looking closely at the handiest corpse and sniffing.
           Soon the total of human dead discovered had reached approximately a dozen, all within a stone’s throw of the ford.
           Ben, peering closely now at the bodies, announced that he could recognize some of the bandits from whom he had so recently escaped. He confirmed that this definitely was—or had been—Brod’s band, though the Sarge himself had not yet been found.
           “Some of them are wearing blue and gold,” Valdemar commented in a subdued voice. “That has to mean Blue Temple, doesn’t it?”
           Ben nodded. “Brod kept his rendezvous with them,” he mused. “Can’t say I’m surprised that a fight started—but over what?” He drew Wayfinder, which he had momentarily put away, muttered over the Sword, turned it this way and that.
           Signs on the ground indicated that riding-beasts, and perhaps loadbeasts too, had galloped here, had run in panicked circles on the flat land where the stream widened and smoothed into the ford. All this could be read according to the tracks, which were quite plain in the moist sand of the riverbank. The imprints were a day old, or not much more than that, drying and crumbling around the edges. But no running animals were now in evidence; whatever mounts and loadbeasts might have survived the fight had evidently scattered.
           Zoltan, darting about on the field of combat more energetically than any of his companions, was seeking among bushes and boulders, bending over bodies, examining one after another in rapid succession.
           The four, exchanging comments, reached a consensus: One side, either Blue Temple or bandits, had tried to cheat the other. Or perhaps both had simultaneously attempted some kind of treachery. Then they had efficiently killed each other off.
           Ben was still leveling his Sword, turning it this way and that, frowning, trying to interpret what the bright blade told him now. Wayfinder’s point was twitching.
           Violent death was nothing new to any of the travelers, except perhaps to Valdemar.
           “Have you seen this kind of thing before?” the Silver Queen inquired of him.
           The towering youth replied with a shake of his head. He appeared to be repelled, and somewhat upset by the unpleasant sights.
           He muttered: “Foolishness, foolishness. Why are folk determined to kill each other? It’s as if they looked forward to their own dying.”
           “I have no doubt some do,” Yambu assured him.
           Now Zoltan, who with a veteran’s callous practicality had begun rifling the packs of the fallen, announced with a cheerful cry the discovery of food.
           The provisions were mostly dried meat and hard biscuit. He began to share them out with his companions. He came upon spare clothing, too, and announced the welcome find.
           Zoltan compared his own right foot with that of a corpse. “I think this one’s shoes may fit me. Just in time, mine are wearing through.”
           There was a cry—really more a grunt—of excitement, from Ben. Not long distracted from his quest by a mere battlefield, he had been guided by Wayfinder to a wounded loadbeast.
           The others saw him pointing the Sword at the animal where it stood amid some scrubby bushes, which until now had screened it from their observation. The load-beast’s harness was marked with the Blue Temple insignia of gold and blue, and it carried a full load on its back. The beast was favoring its right foreleg, streaked with dried blood. There was water here, and some good grazing along the