Kaz the Minotaur

Chapter Seventeen

The group selected to hunt Argaen Ravenshadow would, by necessity, be a small one. Of the two hundred or so knights the Grand Master now had under his command, a good quarter of them would not be fit for very much activity for at least a few days. Still more were needed back at the keep to guard the walls of Vingaard and start clearing the debris left over from the stone dragon’s departure. All in all, the Grand Master was stretching his resources to the limits when he assigned fifty knights to his nephew.

Darius, Tesela, and Delbin, of course, all insisted on coming along as well. To the knight, it was a sense of duty, of honor. The cleric insisted that they were likely to need her healing skills where they were going. Kaz suspected her real reason was Darius himself. Adversity had thrown them together.

As for Delbin, he did not need a reason, and Lord Oswal was more than accommodating when it came to the kender. If he stayed behind, without Kaz to watch over him, the knights rightly feared that he would pilfer everything in sight, plus, no doubt, some things that were not.

Those riding with the party were personally chosen by the Grand Master, and the entire expedition was supplied with whatever could be spared in the way of food and materials.

Just before noon, they started out the front gates. There was no cheering, for those riding forth might be heading to their deaths, and nearly every knight remaining behind manned the walls against equally uncertain destiny. When Kaz looked back, just before Vingaard Keep became too distant, he saw that the men on the walls were still there, silently watching.

The shortened day passed without incident. There were signs of occasional goblin activity, but not one of the creatures was sighted. The column avoided villages and other settlements. Until people could be brought to understand what had happened, it was best to give civilization a wide berth.

The most promising sign of the day was the presence of the bright sun. It was encouraging. Certainly it raised spirits.

Just before nightfall, a scout reported signs that a relatively large band of men, some riding and some on foot, had been in the area earlier that morning. They, too, were headed in a southerly direction. No evidence indicated that they were heading toward the same destination as the column, but the thought nagged at Kaz. Who could they be?

When night came at last, there was some debate as to whether or not they should press on. Common sense won out. Everyone needed rest. A perimeter and watches were established. Kaz felt as if time had slipped back several years and he was once again in the great war. He wondered what they would do if Argaen’s unliving servant returned under cover of darkness.

He felt the twin edges of the blade, admiring the workmanship of the metal axe head. His face reflected back at him, crystal clear despite the dim light of the night sky. Kaz studied the image for a minute wonderingly, when something registered. The minotaur stared at the axe head, at the handle, and then at the sharp edges…

That was it! The area where the axe had been chipped after it had struck the rocky hide of Argaen’s monster was whole and unbroken once more! Sharp as ever again! He also recalled a moment in the vault, when the unliving beast had shied away from the minotaur’s seemingly futile attack with the battle-axe. Could the stone dragon actually fear the axe? Granted, the weapon was somehow magical, but why would a creature that size, magical itself, fear Sardal’s gift?

How powerful was the battle-axe? Could it do anything else besides mend itself? Kaz grunted, recalling how, before, he had found himself carrying the axe after leaving it behind. A one-time fluke, or would it come to him again if the need arose?

“Kaz?”

Kaz looked up at Bennett, who seemed disturbed about something. “What, human?”

“We may have trouble-trouble that you might be familiar with. Would you follow me?”

Kaz arose and followed Bennett.

They moved toward the eastern side of the camp. One or two knights stood guard in the camp; the rest, along with the minotaur’s companions, were asleep. The only other knights awake were those on sentry duty on the edges of camp.

The countryside consisted of small hills covered with wild grass and ugly, twisted trees. It was not a region Kaz would have voluntarily traveled through, but dire circumstances seemed to delight in forcing him to cross it again and again.

“What is it you want me to see?”

“Nothing, perhaps, but the knight ahead of us reported something I felt you would appreciate being told about.”

The knight on guard duty saluted Bennett and looked uneasily at the minotaur. Bennett cleared his throat and told the man, “Describe what you thought you saw.”

“Milord.” He was a Knight of the Crown, such as Huma had been, but much older, a veteran who perhaps had decided to stay with that particular order rather than move on to the Order of the Sword. “I would not have even mentioned it, milord, but I was told that all strange things, no matter whether they seemed like a trick of the eyes or not, should be reported.”

“What did you see?” encouraged Kaz.

“It was only for just a moment, mind you, but I thought I saw an animal. Just a glimpse of one, but it did seem real. The odd thing was, it looked to be completely white, only not like some of our horses. More like that of a corpse.”

“White like a corpse?” Kaz grimaced. “What sort of animal did it appear to be, knight?”

“I cannot say for certain, for I only caught a glimpse. A large cat, possibly, or-or-”

“A wolf?” the minotaur finished for him.

The knight nodded. “A wolf. Yes, it could have been a wolf.”

Bennett glanced at Kaz. “That cannot be possible. You know that, minotaur.”

“You came for me, which means you’ve enough doubt to think it possible. It may be that Argaen knows a few more tricks than we thought. He keeps surprising me with his Sargas-be-damned ingenuity!”

“Dreadwolves!” Bennett shook his head. “I’d thought never to hear about them again. I thought everything concerning Galan Dracos could be buried from sight and mind forever.”

“For a dead man, the renegade mage does seem to pop up in one way or another, doesn’t he?” Kaz considered. “With your permission, Bennett, I think we should talk to some of the other men on guard duty.”

“Very well.”

The first man they spoke to reported nothing. The second man proved no more informative than the first, and they spent even less time with him.

Bennett seemed to think the whole thing pointless. “Perhaps there is an albino wolf out there. I have seen albinos in other species from time to time, and they do tend to be nocturnal.”

“Perhaps.” Nevertheless, Kaz continued on.

It took them a moment or two to locate the next nearest sentry, for the man was standing on the ether side of a small rise. It was a good place to keep watch, for the knight avoided the light of the moon and anyone approaching would have to be right on top of him before noticing him.

“You there,” Bennett called out softly. While he spoke to the guard, Kaz, his axe resting lightly against his shoulder, peered around. Something was making him uneasy.

“Milord?” The man turned but did not abandon his post, as was proper.

“Have you seen anything tonight that you have not reported… anything at all?”

The other knight peered at them, trying to make out who stood next to his commander. In this place, each of them was little more than an outline. “Nothing, milord, unless you count a couple of carrion crows. They seemed to be going nowhere in particular.”

“Hopefully they’ll keep right on going,” Kaz muttered, his back almost to the man. The light of Solinari caught the mirrorlike finish of the metal axe head and glittered in the minotaur’s eye.

Beside him, Bennett turned and sighed. “I think we should cease this. There’s nothing to be gained. If anything should arise, we will be forewarned by those on watch.”

“I suppose so.” Kaz lifted the axe head from his shoulder. As he did, both his reflection and that of Bennett caught his eye momentarily.

“Is that all, milord?” the guard called out.

Kaz froze, then carefully glanced back to see where the knight was standing. The guard was directly behind them.

‘That is all. Return to your duties,” Bennett replied.

Turning away, Kaz lifted the axe so that once again the side of the head would reflect everything behind him. He saw the same odd, distinct reflection of his own visage and Bennett’s shoulder. Of the other knight, there was not even a shadowy outline.

Yet, when he turned back again, Kaz could see the dark form of the man, still there.

The knight on guard duty was casting no reflection in the mirrorlike surface of the axe head!

Kaz hesitated. The sentry, his attention fixed on the surrounding countryside, paid him no attention. What does it mean?

Noticing the minotaur’s strange behavior, Bennett, too, had stopped. “Is there something-”

“Quiet. Wait a moment,” Kaz whispered. The minotaur, axe ready in one hand, stalked over to the other knight. “You!”

The man turned around slowly. “What is it you wish, minotaur?”

“Your name.”

“Alec, Knight of the Sword.”

“Alec”-Kaz tightened his grip on the battle-axe-”do you know what the phrase Est Sularis oth Mithas means?”

There was a short pause. “I cannot recall at the moment.”

Every muscle in the minotaur’s body tensed. “I didn’t think so.”

The battle-axe came up in a vicious arc that should have ended with the flat side striking the unsuspecting Alec. There was only one problem. Alec was neither unsuspecting nor a knight. Kaz’s swing sailed a foot above the false knight’s head even as the man ducked and his longsword flashed out.

“Kaz! What are you doing?” demanded Bennett.

The minotaur parried a powerful thrust and growled, “We may be under attack at any moment, commander!” Another swing of the axe proved as futile as the first. “In-in case you haven’t figured it out by now, this isn’t a knight!”

“Paladine!” Bennett unsheathed his own sword and started forward, but Kaz yelled. “Forget me! Warn the camp! Go!”

Bennett paused for a second, then nodded his head and ran. He withheld a shout, for fear of giving away their discovery to anyone waiting beyond the camp. Quiet and caution were important now.

As soon as Bennett vanished, Kaz began to regret sending him away. He was finding the imposter quite a deadly swordsman. The man was tall and, between his arm and longsword, had a lengthy reach.

They traded blows for several seconds, but something seemed to be eating away at his opponent’s determination. The knight imposter was hesitant in his movements.

Of course! “Your friends seem to have abandoned you, human!”

Kaz had struck the right nerve. “Unlike you, minotaur, we are faithful to our mistress. They-they would not abandon me!”

In the background, Kaz could hear the shouts of men in the camp. His opponent began to fight with renewed vigor. It seemed, the human was correct; the camp was now under attack.

“We will overrun your Solamnic friends, beast, but don’t worry. You won’t be alive to see it!”

“I’d wager you wore a black suit of armor five or six years ago,” Kaz snarled. “You’re dead wrong on two counts, though, guardsman! First, the knights defending the camp will prevail, and second, I plan to be very much alive!” He gave the human a grim, toothy smile. “Yes, you look to be one of the Black Guard. By the way, I saw your warlord, Crynus, die. He had become quite a madman by then.”

The guardsman’s sword wavered.

The battle-axe caught him in the chest and across the neck. It sliced through the breastplate without slowing. Slowly he toppled to the ground, his head only loosely attached to his neck.

Cursing, Kaz stood his ground and waited for some sign of a new foe. Nothing.

Moments later, several knights, Bennett’s aide Grissom among them, came running in his direction. Kaz turned toward them with relief, only to find half a dozen swords pointed in his direction.

“What’s this?” he growled.

“What have you done to the man on watch here, minotaur?”

It was obvious that neither Grissom nor the others knew exactly what had transpired here. Kaz knew that some of the knights distrusted him, but not to this extreme.

“Talk to your commander, human! I was the one who discovered our danger!”

Grissom hesitated. “Why would you betray them? You once fought for the same side.”

Kaz sighed. How many times would he have to explain this?

“Have those weapons lowered, Sir Grissom! The minotaur is an ally, a valuable one!”

At the sound of Bennett’s voice, the other knights stood aside. Grissom saluted his superior. “My apologies, milord! All we knew was that you had come into the camp warning of danger!”

“Do not apologize to me, Grissom. Apologize to Kaz; it was his honor you impugned.”

“Milord?”

Bennett looked at his aide critically. “Is that so difficult to understand? Must I apologize for you? I certainly will, because he deserves it. After all, he may have saved all our lives.”

Grissom exhaled sharply and turned back to Kaz. “I apologize for my quick judgment, minotaur. I assumed that there was only one person who could be responsible for this.”

“They killed the man who stood guard here,” Kaz explained to the man, “and one of their own took his place so that no one suspected. We’re fortunate we caught them before they could really get organized.”

“They tried to attack the camp only seconds after I was able to warn the men,” Bennett interjected. “They were hardly expecting the entire camp to be awake and ready. One wave came in. We killed perhaps six or seven and wounded a few more. We lost only one man besides this one. They fled almost immediately afterward. The cowards!”

“I don’t think we’ve seen the last of them. This man was one of the warlord’s Black Guard, Bennett.”

“There seemed to be quite a few of them roaming around in central and southern Solamnia. Kharolis, too. Raiding runs have increased noticeably.” To Grissom, Bennett said, “See if you can find the body of our brother who gave his life here. Before we leave tomorrow morning, he and the other man will be given rites. Double the guard for the rest of the night.”

“As you command, milord. What of this one?” Grissom tapped the body with the tip of his blade.

“Have someone gather the enemy dead. We’ll have a separate pyre for them-and wish them ill on their way to their mistress. If we leave them as is, they might become breeding ground for some plague, and that’s the last thing we need.”

Two knights were left to stand guard while all but Grissom went in search of their dead comrade. The aide saluted and returned to camp to take care of the other orders Bennett had given him. The Grand Master’s nephew stayed with Kaz.

“How did you know he wasn’t one of us? I don’t know half the men in my command. Too many of them are from outside the Order of the Rose.”

“Est Sularis oth Mithas.”

“ ‘My Honor is my Life.’ It’s the code by which we live. What about it?”

“He couldn’t tell me what it meant if his life depended on it-which it did.”

Kaz had a theory about the dwarven axe’s name, Honor’s Face. What had the dwarf been like who had forged such a unique weapon? Had he been aided by some mage, or visited, perhaps, by the god Reorx himself? Kaz now believed that the mirrorlike flat side of the axe head apparently reflected the faces and forms of only those with honor, those who could be trusted. Enemies, beings without honor, cast no reflection-a handy tool that the minotaur wished he had known about earlier. He wondered if Sardal Crystalthorn had known of it.

Sardal Crystalthorn. He had almost forgotten about the other elf. Was Sardal in league with Argaen? Kaz decided it was doubtful, or else the elf never would have given him the dwarven battle-axe. Giving such a fine weapon to Kaz, in addition to saving his life, was not the act of a dark elf.

“Minotaur?”

Kaz blinked. “What, Bennett?”

“It might be good if you got some rest. You look nearly asleep on your feet.”

It was true. Buried in his thoughts, Kaz had been drifting further and further from consciousness. Elves and magic battle-axes could wait until morning. Sleep was a luxury that Kaz had been unable to afford of late. He needed to catch up now, before they came upon Argaen Ravenshadow.

They were not bothered again that night, though the watch remained fully alert. The dawn came with Kaz and the others feeling only slightly refreshed. A full day of rest was really in order, but no one was willing to sacrifice that much time. There was a sense of urgency where this mission was concerned.

As they drew ever nearer their destination, Kaz began to worry about the human, Darius. The young knight rode close to Tesela and often talked to her, but Kaz, glancing back now and then, also knew the man was looking up into the heavens more and more, with a fatal stare. He knew what Darius was looking for: the stone dragon that had left him for dead.

Kaz had seen that look before, during the war. Darius was waiting for the beast to come and try to finish the task. It was almost as if he felt that it was unfair he should have survived when the others had perished. Such beliefs led to foolish, even suicidal, actions. The Knights of Solamnia, Kaz thought, were too eager to die. What bothered the minotaur more was that he knew his own race was susceptible to such compulsions.

Even Kaz was becoming too pessimistic. In an effort to ease his mind, he reached into one of his pouches for one of the dry biscuits the knighthood had provided. They had little in the way of taste, but they were solid and filling. Long used to such fare, Kaz discovered that his fondness for them was actually growing-another sign, he was sure, that his mind was rattled.

What he touched in the pouch was not one of the biscuits, however, but rather a scrap of parchment. He grasped it by one end and pulled it out. It was a rolled parchment that someone had sealed with amber. Where, Kaz wondered, had he- Of course! With all that had happened to him, he had forgotten completely about this little item. This was the parchment that Sardal Crystalthorn had asked him to deliver to Argaen Ravenshadow. All this time… He wondered what message the dark elf had sent along. Again the minotaur wondered: Could Sardal be in league with the magic thief?

Kaz decided to break the seal and see what Sardal had written.

The amber proved to be more of a problem than he would have expected. A flick of his thumb should have broken it off, but his nail kept sliding away. In exasperation, he pulled out a dagger and worked on it. The dagger, too, slipped from the seal.

Cutting around the amber turned out to be a tricky maneuver, what with trying to hold on to the reins and the bouncing of his horse. Nonetheless, he managed to trace a circle, and the seal fell to the earth. Kaz put away his dagger and started to unroll the parchment.

A golden void opened up before him.

“Kaz!” someone cried, possibly Delbin.

“Pala-” The minotaur had no chance to complete his oath before his horse rode blissfully into the void. The search party, everything, vanished.

The void was beautiful, inspiring, but Kaz had no time for such contemplation. It was all he could do to hang on as the horse fell and fell and fell and fell… until it seemed they were destined to keep falling until the Final Day. Not once did his steed give any indication of panic. It still tried to gallop, apparently ignorant of its predicament.

At last their descent began to slow. The minotaur felt his own movements begin to decelerate. In a matter of seconds, it became nearly impossible to do anything but breathe, and even that was becoming increasingly difficult.

Like a fly trapped in honey, he thought helplessly. A fury was building within him, one that in combat made him a terror. Now, though, it did nothing but further frustrate him. For all his strength, he was unable to move, to defend himself.

As he and his mount came to a complete stop, so, too, did his capacity, even to breathe. Kaz was certain he was going to die now. He waited for suffocation to wash over him. It did not. He almost wished for it, for now came the fear that he was meant to be trapped in this void forever, ever staring off into the beautiful golden nothing.

“Aaahh, minotaur!” a voice boomed all around him. “What have you done to yourself now?”

He knew the voice. It was Sardal Crystalthorn who had snared him.

“Kaz!” Delbin shouted.

Several of the knights were forced to restrain their horses. Bennett stood in the saddle and looked around in vain for the minotaur. Darius cursed, and Tesela prayed to her goddess for some clue as to what had happened to the minotaur.

Bennett sat down. “The Abyss take that dark elf! This must be his doing! He’s been watching all along, waiting for the proper moment!”

“Do you-do you think Kaz is dead?” Darius finally ventured.

“No, but I think the thief must have captured him somehow.” Bennett turned to look at the others. “We have to move on. Kaz’s only chance-our only chance- is to find the elf before he grows any stronger! With any luck, we will be able to save the minotaur. Wherever he is, if he lives, Argaen Ravenshadow will know.”

Tesela removed her hands from her medallion. “I can feel nothing where Kaz is concerned, but that may mean very little. There’s no trace of him in this area. That much I can say with confidence.”

Bennett nodded, as if that were the confirmation he had been waiting for. As far as he was concerned, there was no more time to waste. “It’s settled, then. We move on.”

As the knight turned to signal the others, Tesela and Darius exchanged looks of uncertainty. If Kaz was a prisoner, spirited away by their enemies, what chance did this small force of knights have against such formidable power?

Nonetheless, no one even suggested turning back.