Knights of the Rose

Chapter 10

At sunset, Eskaia stood side by side with Hawkbrother on a low rise, overlooking the camp. They did not touch, but for now, an occasional glance served as well. They had also measured precisely and now kept between them a distance that pleased them without displeasing Eskaia’s parents or the Gryphon warrior’s elder brother.

Closest to them were the captured sell-swords, most of them unbound save for a few who had refused to give their word of honor not to escape. Amidst them stood Pirvan and Tarothin, with several of the captives in a circle around them.

“What does your father mean by so wearying Tarothin?” Hawkbrother asked. “The Red Robe pretends valiantly, but I see grave sickness on his face. Better he should have stayed behind. Skytoucher might have been unable to heal him, but the two could have taught each other much.”

Eskaia ignored the criticism of her father. “I think Tarothin is using a modest truth spell. One that will let him tell if a sell-sword lies.”

“Better to make the man unable to lie.”

“That demands more strength than Tarothin has.”

“All the more reason for his resting in safety,” Hawkbrother said.

Before they could quarrel over this, they saw Rynthala of Belkuthas riding up with half a dozen of her mounted archers. Close behind her rode Sir Darin, with a similar number of the Solamnics. As the two parties dismounted and began to unload scavenged weapons from their saddles, Darin and Rynthala somehow contrived to end up standing close to one another. Eskaia was prepared to wager all her armor and her second-best mount that this was Rynthala’s doing.

“They seem to find each other’s company pleasant enough,” Hawkbrother said.

No need to ask who they were. Eskaia smiled. “Why not? You tell me if she is not a fine woman. I say Darin is intelligent, honorable, brave, and good to look upon.”

“I wonder that you have not set yourself at him, if he has so many virtues!” Hawkbrother said. Eskaia heard an edge in his voice that had not been there since the battle ended.

She turned and stared. His wide brown eyes seemed moist from more than dust, and that neat mouth was set in a hard line. Eskaia stared for a further moment, cursed herself, then licked her lips.

“Hawkbrother, I beg your pardon. You are not jealous, are you?” Her mother had always said that more than a trifle of jealousy in a man cast doubt on both his honor and his intelligence.

“In truth-oh, somewhat. Perhaps a little more. How do you regard Darin? Did you praise him to make me jealous?”

Eskaia let out a long breath. “Paladine and Habbakuk be my witness, no! If I did anything that foolish-you could take me away and do to me whatever Gryphon men are allowed to do to foolish women.”

“I have not that right, and if I did your parents would say more than somewhat against it, perhaps my brother as well.”

Eskaia sighed. “I shall have to speak to my parents on this and other matters, before many days pass. Also my brother, who may feel freer to do something foolish because he has not a chief’s burdens.

“But as for Sir Darin-I was saying about him what I have known myself since I was not yet a woman. To me, he has always been something between an uncle and an elder brother. He was, as much as our parents, my teacher and Gerik’s in weapon use and many other matters.

“I think he walks a little apart from most, because he was raised and taught by a minotaur. He fears that some flaw in the minotaur’s teaching may someday lead him to injure another, and dishonor Waydol’s memory.”

“Waydol was the minotaur?”

“Yes.” Daring, Eskaia reached for Hawkbrother’s hand and gripped it. “I have always regretted never meeting Waydol. I think you would have regretted it. I think you would have respected him, too.”

“I think anyone who knows Sir Darin would say the same,” Hawkbrother replied. He might have said more, except that Eskaia’s delight moved her to kiss him-starting on the cheek but working around to his lips.

He replied, at first, with restraint, but before long with his arm around her. When they stepped apart at last, both were a trifle breathless, but Eskaia hoped the smile on Hawkbrother’s face was mirrored on her own.

“Well, my friend,” she said. “Our first kiss.”

“Better than our first quarrel, which is what I feared,” Hawkbrother said. He looked ready to kiss her again, but at that moment they noticed that Pirvan was done with the sell-swords and looking at them.

They did not, however, step apart.

The sunset light through the lancet window in Sir Marod’s study now glowed rose-almost the same hue as much of the stonework of Dargaard Keep, or the emblem of his rank embroidered on the cloak hanging over his chair.

He leaned back in the chair, imagining that he heard his joints and the chair’s creaking in unison, and stared at the map on the far wall. It was a splendid map, hand-colored on the skin of several large deer sewn together, the whole framed in half a dozen different kinds of wood, all so aged, darkened, and polished that it was impossible to tell what they had been as living trees.

It was also more than a hundred years old, but it showed plainly enough every place that was in Sir Marod’s thoughts at the moment. It showed Bloten, whose keep had some days before reported the departure of Sir Lewin and his company, well-supplied, armed, and mounted, and bound over the mountains for good or for ill. It showed the Khalkist Mountains and Thoradin, whose dwarves would have a busy year if matters went awry.

It showed the desert and its western fringes, the land where Aurhinius’s host, Pirvan’s company, and (if what Marod had heard was report instead of rumor) numerous sell-swords wandered about on separate business. It could not have shown where any of these were, although Marod would have liked to be able to say, of Pirvan’s whereabouts, more than “somewhere between the Khalkist Mountains and the Abyss.”

It did not show Belkuthas, though the citadel had first risen not only before this map but before the art of map-making was known to men. No doubt it had not been inhabited a century ago, perhaps with the consent of the dwarves, perhaps by their wish.

Sir Marod leaned forward again, and drifted into a reverie that allowed Knights of Solamnia to use certain small spells, for keeping swords sharp, water pure, and maps up to date.

Even in the reverie, though, he did not forget the problems the spell might cause, entirely apart from violating the Oath and the Measure in ways that both gods and men might oppose. Of late, those who claimed to speak for the kingpriest had found harsh words to use about wizards-White, Red, and Black Robes, alike. Marod’s transgression of their strict prohibition might waken anger in places where the Knights of Solamnia needed goodwill.

Also, not all magic-users were staunch allies. Some might see spying on the enemies of the kingpriest as a way to win favor withheld from their comrades. The Solamnic Orders already had too many factions without inviting vipers to nest in their armor.

The gods might not have spoken unequivocally on this matter. Pirvan himself had once known and even used a minor spell without injury to his later career as a knight. Recently, however, the good sense of men sent a plain messenger.

Sir Marod felt coldness against his cheek, but warmth over his back, and sat up with a start. The last light had departed from the window, and he felt a stiffness in more joints than his knee. He’d spent too long in an awkward position in this chilly room.

A second candle stood on the table before him, where there had been only one-and that first candle was burned to a stub. Sir Marod groped for his cloak and discovered that someone had draped it over his shoulders.

“Elius?” he said. Then he remembered that his former squire had been dead for ten years. The man who stepped into view was a candidate young enough to be Elius’s grandson.

“Your pardon, Sir Marod,” the young man said. “I didn’t think you’d want to be hauled off to your bed like a drunkard, but it would be ill-done to let you take cold. When I saw you waking, I sent to the kitchen for a posset cup. It should be here in a moment.”

“Thank you,” Marod said. He groped for the young man’s name and was relieved to find it behind only the fog of sleep. “Thank you, Candidate Grandzhin. Have the posset sent to my bedchamber. If I can fall asleep on this table, it’s time I was in bed.”

“At your command, Sir Marod.”

Pirvan was about to open the council of war, but he noticed two faces missing.

“Where are the kender?”

Everyone looked at everyone else, as if seeking the answer on other faces or in the thin air. Gerik finally said, hesitatingly, “I think I heard one of them-I don’t know which-say to the other that they should take watches up by Zephros’s men.”

Not everyone cursed, but those who did included Pirvan. “The little fools,” he added. “If Zephros’s men see them, they’ll say the truce is broken and the kender will die slowly!”

“There’s a saying in Karthay,” Haimya put in. “ ‘The definition of futility is telling a kender not to go somewhere he wants to go.’ ”

Even the Gryphons laughed at that, and Threehands added, “Kender are hard to see even by day, let alone by night, and Zephros’s men have not seemed overly desert-wise. Besides, the kender may give us extra warning if Zephros’s men do turn truce breakers.”

There was nothing else anybody could propose in the matter of Zephros’s men, except to give them more bloody noses if they started another fight. Pirvan also intended that the knights send a message to Istar, for passing on to Aurhinius, but since Zephros deserted from Aurhinius’s service, no one expected miracles or even results from that.

The sell-swords were another matter.

“None of them can pay a ransom without stripping themselves bare,” Darin said. “Then they would have no choice but to perish or join up with Zephros’s band, as they originally seemed intent on doing.”

“Nor are they the only ones,” Tarothin said. His voice rasped like that of a man with lung-fever, but the words marched out audibly and in good order. “I have read hints in the minds of some of the captains, of many other bands of sell-swords now on the way to join Zephros. Zephros, not Aurhinius.”

“The kingpriest,” Haimya said, “or those about him, who seek to undo all the victories won by reason in the past generation. Including ours,” she added, and if her voice had been applied to the kingpriest’s throat it would have decapitated him on the spot. Even Pirvan shivered as he heard it.

“Which means that we need to march to Belkuthas as quickly as possible,” Threehands put in. “Unburdened by prisoners, either. I trust none of those dung-eaters out of my sight.”

Pirvan ignored the implied solution; honor would demand a quarrel if Threehands took offense, and that would end nowhere good. “We can take their oath, to not fight against us until they have paid ransom. Then we can put the sigil of the knights on their weapons. No one will enlist sell-swords with such weapons. They can throw them away, of course, but then they will be disarmed.”

“If the kingpriest is behind this, Istar’s treasury will buy them new weapons,” Haimya said. “But I doubt we can do better.”

“So be it,” Pirvan said. “Who says otherwise?”

None did, either because they agreed or because they were too weary to put their disagreement into sensible words. At least the sell-swords and Pirvan’s party were safe from each other, and both from Zephros’s men, until sunset tomorrow.

Bloodier battles had been fought to win less.

At the crest of Shammal Pass, Sir Lewin of Trenfar had dismounted to save his mount. Now he stood holding its reins, as the remainder of his company and its pack animals moved down the first rough hundred paces of the far side.

A young knight came up and saluted. Lewin recognized Sir Esthazas of Narol, Knight of the Crown for barely a year.

“All well?” Lewin asked.

“All well, in spite of the risks of this night passage,” Sir Esthazas said.

“Are you questioning my orders?” Lewin said.

“No, you yourself spoke of this passage as fraught with danger.”

“You remember correctly. Have you forgotten what else I said?”

“That we hide ourselves from dwarven spies by traveling at night. But-”

“Yes?”

“I beg your pardon for what may seem-what you said-but-”

“I will grant pardon for anything you say without hesitation,” Lewin snapped.

“Then-why assume the dwarves are enemies? Also, if the tales run true, they have night vision like cats. How then can we hide ourselves from them, even if we need to?”

“Never assume friendship from folk without proper notions of honor,” Lewin said. “And as for their night vision-it is easy to believe old tales about the other races, and so make them into fearful monsters to frighten children.”

The light of Solinari was bright enough to show Lewin the other knight’s flush. That reminded him just how young Sir Esthazas was-and also, that his mentor had been Sir Niebar the Tall, Knight of the Sword, friend to Sir Pirvan the Wayward, and outspokenly overfond of the other races.

Sir Esthazas would bear watching. Lewin was prepared to believe in spies deliberately assigned to his band, and in tales borne out of zeal. But insulting the young knight would only raise doubts about Lewin’s own honor among those whose goodwill-or at least, cooperation-he needed.

“I ask your pardon, Sir Esthazas. You raise these questions for the same reason I do mine, for the safety of our company. I can find no fault with that, and apologize if I seemed to do so.”

Lewin did not remember how or whether Sir Esthazas accepted the apology. He was too busy mounting up, and as he did, examining the trail before him. Some of the rougher parts seemed to have been worked at with hammer and chisel. To make an impossible passage merely difficult, or to slow what might have been a quick march, to keep enemies within ambush range longer? Dwarven work, either way, in this part of the Khalkist Mountains.

Sir Lewin prodded his mount into movement, and took his place in the rear of the column.

“Have we a clear road home?” Rynthala asked.

“To Belkuthas?” Darin said, meeting question with question.

“Of course.”

“Never think ‘of course’ when leading warriors,” Darin said. “Seldom will all your band see a matter the same way. Always say exactly what you mean.”

“Well, then I will say that you seem to have appointed yourself my teacher in war. You also address me as a child.”

“Which offends you more?”

If Rynthala had thought this splendid warrior capable of a jest, she would have taxed him with making a rather foolish one. However, it had become her firm conviction that Sir Darin Waydolson had no vestige of humor in his composition.

“If you have eyes, you can see that I am no child. It might be harder to tell what experience I have in war.”

“By your own words, you ride at the head of a war band for the first time in your life.”

Rynthala wanted to shake some of the literalness out of that splendid head. However, shaking Sir Darin would be a task somewhat akin to shaking a full-grown pine tree. Rynthala knew herself to be no weakling, but not adequate to such a job.

“Very well. I say you give advice whether I ask or not.”

“Also, I give it when you are uneasy about something that has nothing to do with today’s battle. This makes you less willing to listen gracefully.

“Is the matter that concerns you the elven embassy coming to Belkuthas? The council of war did speak of it in confidence, but they spoke of it at all only because you mentioned it. So I think I violate no confidence by asking you.”

Darin had used about five words for every two he had really needed, and remained unsmiling and sober the while. However, he had also gone to some lengths to be polite. Rynthala decided she would repay him in the same coin.

“I had not thought I was so uneasy as that, but yes, the embassy is much on my mind. If anything happens to it to give Lauthin a grievance, that grievance will be against my parents. Never mind if it happens three days’ travel from Belkuthas; he will say that somehow they ought to have prevented it.

“Then the Silvanesti will have their excuse to move against my parents. They hate half-elves, those who rule in the south now do. They hate them more than they hate humans or Kagonesti, or even the kingpriest!”

Darin’s massive hands twitched. In another man, Rynthala would have said he was about to try taking her in his arms. She had a full quiver of ways to deal with unwanted attentions, but wondered if any of them would work against a man of Darin’s size. On the other hand, he seemed very unlikely to offer such attentions, and, if he did, she was of two minds about whether to take offense.

Darin instead put his hands behind his back. Then he looked at her with an intensity that held no hint of desire, but appealed far more than if it had.

“Your family’s honor stands in the balance, then?”

“Yes, against enemies where in justice one might have hoped for friends. Can you help?”

“Your family’s honor will be as sacred to us as our own, if we become their guests.” Rynthala tried to keep her face still, and Darin rewarded her by going on. “Even before we are guests, we all wish peace in this land, and therefore no harm to the elves.

“Of course, they may feel we are more likely to do them harm than give them protection. I have yet to hear of Silvanesti admitting they could not deal with any and all foes. But if we can protect them without their noticing, I am sure we shall do as much good as necessary without having to waste time arguing.”

Rynthala heard indignation in Darin’s voice, and thought she saw a hint of a wry smile on his face. Perhaps he was not altogether without feelings-or even humor.

Weariness and an unease that was not quite yet fear ate at High Captain Zephros, from within and without. He felt as if he were infested with both worms and fleas.

Nothing about this journey into the sun-blasted wilderness had been agreeable. He had ceased to be surprised by bad luck; if he had not, he would have ceased to be leader even of this motley array of mutineers, deserters, and street scourings.

That might still come about, as a result of this day’s fighting. His men counted fourteen dead and more than forty hurt, some of whom would need burial rather than healing before the last moon set. They had needed to ask for a truce to remove his losses, which by law and custom gave the victory to the enemy.

An enemy, moreover, consisting of flea-ridden desert barbarians without civilized leadership, and Solamnics under Pirvan the Thief, called a knight, but in truth the worst enemy the kingpriest had. Zephros had had a chance to remove that thorn in Istar’s side, and all he had to show for it was a casualty list of the kind that had driven stouter warriors into desertion or flight.

Zephros’s hearing was acute, and the desert night was silent, with even the normal camp noises subdued. So he heard the footsteps outside his tent and the sentry’s challenge, then a sudden silence. At that silence he drew his sword, remembered in time to save his dignity that a tent wall offered no protection for a man’s back, and met the visitors standing beside his camp table.

There were two of them. One was a Captain Luferinus, of an old Solamnic family that had curiously never produced a knight of any order. He was outspoken in his praise of the kingpriest’s goals and power; whether this had been rewarded in Istar, no one knew. Rumors did run that he knew more about the Servants of Silence than it had been safe to say aloud these past ten years.

The other was a figure in a brown robe with a hood, of almost elven slenderness but otherwise ambiguous as to race, sex, and much else that distinguished one person from another. Zephros decided to call him “he,” and feigning politeness, lit a second candle from the one already on his table.

That only showed him that the face within the cowl was still in shadow. It had to be a trick of the light or his fatigue, but Zephros thought there might be only shadow where the face ought to be.

“Greetings. Forgive my poor hospitality, but the wine is all gone to the hurt, and the hour is late. I will listen if you are brief.” His servant unfolded two camp stools, then at a nod from Zephros departed, with a cautious backward look at the hooded man.

Luferinus was the first to speak. “Zephros, I do not believe those we both serve will be happy with today’s events.”

“Not unless they are fools, which I think we all agree they are not.”

“They are, if they leave you in sole command here,” rasped the shadow face. Zephros would have made a gesture of aversion if he had not been too angry to think of one.

“Oh, and you can do better?”

“You shall do better, guided by myself and Captain Luferinus.” Again the voice had the quality of a rusty file grating across crumbling stone. After listening to only those few words, Zephros already had the beginning of a headache.

“Who are you?”

Both visitors were silent.

Zephros’s headache grew worse.

Emboldened and angered at once, he stepped forward and attempted to push the brown cowl back from the shadow face. Instead, he stopped with his hands in midair as the cowl fell back of its own will.

The face staring at Zephros had once been human. Now the skin was ridged and leathery, the eyes narrow with the slit pupils of some thoroughly unwholesome reptile, and the scalp quite hairless, with a faintly oily sheen to it. There were no external ears, only silver discs where they should have been, and the few teeth revealed in a ghastly parody of a smile were also silver.

Zephros had little knowledge of magical matters and what he had was acquired more by accident than by design. However, in the circles in which he moved, it was impossible not to have heard of the renegade mage once named Wilthur. He had worn, so it was said, all three robes at different times in a life prolonged unnaturally by forbidden magic. In the end he had challenged one of the three primary gods, or perhaps all three at once, depending on the tale.

Zephros suspected it was either all three or Gilean the Neutral. Paladine would have slain him cleanly, and Takhisis would have dragged him to eternal torment in the Abyss. Gilean would have done this, transformed Wilthur to warn all who beheld him to avoid his follies, without forcing the beholder to choose any particular path.

The high captain also realized he had been staring in a manner likely to give offense, at a being-he could not call Wilthur a man-whom it might be death to offend.

Then Wilthur grew taller and paler. A moment later, a Silvanesti elven noble stood before Zephros, so exalted in manner and carriage that the Istarian felt an urge to kneel.

He did not. He even found the wits to speak.

“I had not heard you were a shapechanger as well-it is Lord Wilthur, is it not?”

“As you wish,” and even the voice had the elven musicality to it. Then the elven noble shimmered, and the robed, hideous Wilthur returned.

“I see,” Zephros said. “Or rather, I saw. An illusion spell, correct?”

“As you say,” Wilthur replied. “This, however, is not.”

A fireball materialized, a finger’s length from Wilthur’s suddenly outstretched left hand. It flashed down, scorched a dark path across the camp table, struck one of the stools, and consumed it entirely. A thin curl of green smoke rose into the air, from a patch of sand that seemed to have turned into glass.

“Nor is this,” Wilthur added. Invisible fingers of cold iron seemed to grip Zephros’s throat. He clawed at the air, felt his vision darkening, retained enough of it to see another invisible hand grip the other camp stool and crush it to powder-

– and gasped as the iron fingers vanished and he could breathe again. Zephros rested one hand on the camp table, nearly overturning it, and rubbed his throat with the other.

“I could kill you in an instant and give Luferinus the command,” Wilthur said. He might have been discussing the price of cider after a poor apple harvest. “But it would take time to make the men accept his authority, and some might fight for you, poor thing that you are. Then there would be deaths, disharmony, and delay, yet again.

“None of which we can afford in the presence of an able and numerous enemy,” Luferinus added. “We must be in order and united when the other companies of sell-swords arrive.”

“Other companies?” Zephros said. Doubting the evidence of his senses was not one of his vices, but he simply did not understand.

“Other companies,” Wilthur said quietly. “Better than the rat’s brood Pirvan took today, because you and they could not meet in time. Half of them would have turned their coats, anyway, so I suppose it is no great loss. But more and better are coming, and you may have the glory of leading them to victory. Merely do our bidding, and we shall ask for nothing to take the glory from you.”

And pigs will march into the smokehouse of their own will and come out hams without any human aid, Zephros thought. It was a more elegant thought than he could usually muster; he remembered at least three tutors who would have been proud. He also remembered that he had given up poetry in spite of the tutors, thinking it not fit art for a soldier.

It now seemed rather a pity. Poets would doubtless sing of whatever victories he won, or compose fine epitaphs if he lost. None of them would know the truth, and Branchala did not much care for verses that did not smell at least slightly of the truth.

However, the only important truth now was the two men standing before him, waiting for his answer.

“For our men, for the kingpriest, and for the cause we all serve, I agree to your terms.”

Zephros was relieved when the others merely nodded, instead of asking him to sign in blood or some such trick.

The two kender had been watching Zephros’s camp from a position far ahead of Pirvan’s most advanced scouts. However, by the time ruddy light flashed within one of the tents, Imsaffor Whistletrot was sound asleep.

His comrade Elderdrake wanted to kick him awake, if only to stop the snoring that surely must be waking half the camp, to say nothing of minotaurs in Ergoth and dragons in dragonsleep. He did no such thing. His friend and mentor had been marching and fighting for a long time, and deserved to sleep when both of them were not needed on watch.

Except that if that flash of light meant something, somebody should know about it back in Sir Pirvan’s camp. Whistletrot had told his traveling companion enough about the knight to convince Elderdrake that Sir Pirvan of Tirabot liked kender and was even willing to listen to them … almost as long as they were willing to talk.

But how should anybody know anything if Elderdrake didn’t go back and leave his friend alone and asleep, or else wake him up? It would take a while to go to the nearest sentry, and if the man did not care for kender, Elderdrake might have to go all the way back to Sir Pirvan, and that would take even longer.

Elderdrake decided he would do nothing and go nowhere until either the flash came again or Whistletrot woke up.

In fact, before either happened, Elderdrake himself had fallen asleep.