Knights of the Rose

Chapter 13

The road of honor was anything but clearly marked. Anything other than caution would be a folly that would make the name Sir Lewin reek down through the ages in the chronicles of the Knights of Solamnia.

Upon joining what seemed to be the main body of the march to Belkuthas, Sir Lewin immediately regretted his remarks to Sir Esthazas.

He was unnerved not only by the rumored presence of Sir Pirvan and his companions at Belkuthas, nor the equally rumored presence of elves of some exalted rank (some rumors claimed even King Maradoc himself). The first would be a problem, the second perhaps a problem or an opportunity, but Sir Lewin could live with both.

What he could not live with-perhaps literally-was the “host” in whose ranks he now found himself. He could not deny that he was endangering those he led by keeping company with Zephros’s army, now swollen to nearly a thousand. At least he was endangering them as long as he did not assume command and try to delay the assault on Belkuthas until those thousand men knew more of war.

There were in truth many valiant, skilled, and well-armed men among the thousand. But they obeyed twenty different captains, with Zephros their commander only in name. It took half a day to agree on what was needed for some companies, abundant in others, and stolen and bartered almost everywhere.

Lewin finally worked his way around the camps to Luferinus, who seemed to know the most. The knight had to be cautious in dealing with Luferinus, who was the recognized leader among those sell-swords who would do anything for the glory of the kingpriest and the injury of the lesser races. He was not universally loved; the rumors of his having a pet mage did not help. Nor had Lewin come all this way to cut his own throat by so openly aiding the kingpriest’s cause that the knights would have to bring him before a tribunal.

Still, the meeting with Luferinus was not without value. It became plain that Zephros could be a weapon in the hands of anyone who left him the glory of command. For now, Luferinus was wielding him.

But the chance of battle could alter that. Lewin was not quite sure if he should give chance a helping hand; there was that mage to think about. But he resolved to meet privately and secretly with Zephros as soon as he could arrange it.

Of course, the whole question might be settled on the morrow by a victory at Belkuthas-although the last march to the citadel did not make Lewin hopeful.

The plan was to finish the march by daylight, camp just out of sight of Belkuthas at nightfall, then march at first light and attack once the sun was up. A night attack or even a night march were assumed, quite correctly, to be well beyond the power of this motley host.

The march actually began around noon. By the time the shadows lengthened, the army was barely halfway to Belkuthas, and scouts from the citadel had long since sighted them. Attempts by mounted sell-swords to drive off the scouts had led to skirmishing, in which the only casualties were a round dozen of horses and a centaur accidentally shot by one of Zephros’s archers.

By nightfall, they were hardly farther along. They made camp wherever they could, a cold, thirsty, and hungry camp. Lewin offered the service of his men to at least keep Belkuthan scouts from slitting the throats of sleeping men, and even Esthazas agreed that honor demanded it.

The offer was accepted. Lewin and his men spent a sleepless night guarding men who were not their comrades, who would hardly be fit to fight at all on the morrow, and who would have a wearying march on what promised to be a hot morning, even to reach the battlefield.

The only consolation was a rumor (ah, those rumors!) that someone had poisoned, or filled in, or boiled away, the only well within the walls of Belkuthas.

From below came a continuous scrape, thump, and clatter. New refugees hauled loads into the huddled encampment. Dwarves piled more stones onto the walls of the crowded pen. (The kitchen gardens of the citadel would be well fertilized for the rest of the year.)

With buckets and basins, barrels and bottles, and everything else that would hold water, every able-bodied person among the citadel’s defenders not otherwise occupied was hauling water from the two wells beyond the inner citadel. That had been Pirvan’s first order when he reached the courtyard. He had hauled the first bucket himself.

Now the last scout had ridden in, reporting that the attack would come in the morning.

Lauthin and his archers had barricaded themselves in the base of one of the towers. No one cared to try to get them out. What they would do when the fighting began, no one knew.

All those who would listen to orders had received them. Pirvan had even found time to console Eskaia, who was drawn and blinking back tears at the thought of being a widow before she was a wife. The knight had the sense not to console her with the notion that Hawkbrother’s wounds would keep him out of the fighting.

At last, Pirvan climbed the walls, where he found Grimsoar One-Eye.

“Hello, old thief,” Grimsoar said. “Pull up a piece of stone and sit down.”

Pirvan did so gladly. They stared off at the dark bulk of forest beyond the moonlit open ground. Pirvan thought he saw a spark of fire, but doubted any attackers were that far advanced, or any refugees that far behind.

“A long road from the sewers of Istar, eh?” Grimsoar said.

“Not so long, considering what we’ve found along it. I would walk it again, even if I had other choices.”

“Aye. You found her early on. A pity I came so late to Serafina.”

“Old friend, when you and I were thieves in Istar, Serafina was a baby.”

“I know. It’s not that I’m complaining, but-well, I’d rather we’d started our own babe before this all began.”

“Serafina might have broken your head, thinking it was a trick to leave her behind. I know Haimya came close to breaking mine when she learned she was carrying Gerik just before we were to leave on a certain matter.”

“I don’t doubt it. Well, we could both have done worse. Still, a man does like to leave behind him something that won’t die with his last friend.”

From below, a shrill altercation burst suddenly into the rest of the noise. After a moment Pirvan recognized the kender, speaking their own tongue.

It might be well to learn it. The kender went everywhere, saw or heard everything, and would not discuss most of it if they had to use the common language.

Too late for that tonight. Too late for anything except a few hours’ sleep. Don’t call it the last sleep, he thought, even in your mind, you fool! In Haimya’s arms, and then a battle for justice and against-what?-in the morning.

Pirvan hoped Zephros’s men would lose their way and not come until after lunch tomorrow. He wanted to sleep late.

The first warning, birds flying up and deer running out of the forest, had long since come. From the walls, Rynthala saw nothing else moving. The enemy must be arraying their men under cover of the trees, or else, they had fulfilled Sir Pirvan’s wish, and gotten thoroughly lost.

A pity this is all rocky ground, Rynthala thought, with no bogs for them to fall into.

She watched Eskaia leave Pirvan’s side and descend the stairs, toward the healer’s station. She was plainly going to spend some of the waiting time with Hawkbrother.

Eskaia was a lucky girl, with no men to command today-although Hawkbrother’s own followers clearly saw her as their chief’s lady and were careful to stand between her and strangers. Also, she was lucky in knowing that her man knew he was her man.

If Rynthala or Sir Darin fell today, neither would ever be certain what there had been between them. Certainly warriors’ mutual respect, and that from the beginning, but this was not entirely what Rynthala had in mind.

At least they would be fighting side by side. If it came to counterattacking outside the walls, Darin and Rynthala’s men-at-arms would mount up and ride out. That would be her third battle in six days, all three fought under the eyes of Knights of Solamnia.

She was learning war at a frantic pace.

Now all I have to do is live long enough to use the knowledge, she thought dryly.

The sound of axes and saws drifted from the forest on the hot wind. Siege engines? Too late, and the ground too rough on that side. Probably scaling ladders-and it said much about the enemy that they were only now making this vital provision for the final assault.

Granted, scaling ladders were clumsy things to haul through woodland. But five hundred men with shields and ladders, advancing at a run and covered by five hundred archers-they could have had Belkuthas in the time it took a posset cup to cool, knights or no knights.

She wanted to take that thought to heart, to let it warm her and make her believe the battle would be no harder than chasing gully dwarves out of the midden heap. She could not. She had heard too much, seen enough-and besides, this was her home.

Any battle here was accursed by the True Gods.

From the forest, the woodworking din continued, but now a horn blared above it, and drums answered.

Well over a thousand men advanced in three columns through the woods. The largest column was Zephros’s, with his own men, the recruits from the march, and assorted men who had come in numbers too small to have their own captains. Zephros was not such a fool to be ignorant of what that meant about the men. He merely hoped they would be the first to fall.

Zephros led on the right, with Luferinus in the center. He was a captain that many lesser captains would follow, either out of respect or out of hope of gaining favor in the eyes of the kingpriest.

To the left rode assorted men, watched over, rather than led, by the two knights and their men-at-arms. That position had been negotiated between Zephros, Luferinus, and Sir Lewin. This left-hand column was to march around the citadel, keeping out of bow shot, and bar escape for refugees and counterattacks by dwarves. These orders would preserve the lives of the men and the honor of the knights without much risk of bloodshed. Neither refugees nor dwarves were witlings enough to roam around a battlefield.

The army was now just outside bow shot of the outermost wall, or at least the pile of rubble where it had once stood. Zephros studied the successive barriers lying between his men and the inner citadel, looking for hidden archers.

He signaled to Luferinus, and the two captains put their horses to a trot. The laws of war demanded that a fortified place be summoned to yield; Zephros was not ignorant of what it would mean to break that law before the eyes of Knights of Solamnia.

Legal niceties never helped once battle was joined, and this particular law made difficult Zephros’s best chance of victory-swarming the citadel so quickly that no one need be spared to tell tales. Then anyone who objected to its change of ownership would face an accomplished fact, needing a host of his own to unaccomplish it.

“Unaccomplish.” Zephros savored the word like wine as he rode forward at the head of his men. It was a place he once expected never to find himself in again, after Aurhinius’s wrath at the end of Waydol’s War.

As Zephros reached the outermost wall, someone hailed him from the inner citadel.

“Who comes here in arms, where no enemy exists and peace is the wish of all?”

That sounded like a herald rather than a knight. A pity Sir Lewin was off to the other flank. He might recognize Sir Pirvan’s voice.

“I am High Captain Zephros of the host of Istar, lawfully come to make of this citadel a bastion of virtue. We wish it to serve our host, while it brings the Silvanesti to their proper relationship to Istar.”

The reply to that was a good deal of laughter, and several voices speaking a tongue Zephros did not know. It sounded like Silvanesti; it also sounded rude.

“How do you answer?” he called.

“I answer that you have no lawful business in this citadel. It is already host to an embassy of the king of the Silvanesti. If you are empowered to meet with the High Judge Lauthinaradalas to discuss all the outstanding matters between Istar and the realm of the Silvanesti elves, you may enter, with such persons as you wish, and with the same rank as the high judge.

“Otherwise, we must ask you to camp without, and if you seek entry by violence, be warned you shall be treated as enemies.”

“Confident, aren’t they?” Luferinus said. “No water, a mob of peasants on their hands, an elven noble to keep from getting pricked in his bony arse, and they still wish us to the Abyss.”

Zephros tried to find a suitably eloquent way of phrasing his own reply. The silence dragged on, until Zephros realized he would look a fool if it continued longer.

Zeboim drown the knights, he thought. The law is upheld and waiting gives time to our enemies.

Zephros rose in his stirrups. “The citadel of Belkuthas refuses to yield to the hosts of Istar, fighting in the name of virtue. Let all who stand in their path beware!

“Storming parties, forward at a run!”

Pirvan had gone two walls outward from the inner citadel to hold the parley. When Zephros-easily recognizable from the kender description-ordered the attack, Pirvan and his men-at-arms had to retreat with as much haste as was consistent with dignity.

They could have crawled on their hands and knees. The attackers’ idea of a run could hardly have overtaken a child of four. Pirvan rather regretted he had not posted a few bands of archers among the outer ruins. They could have given the attackers a bloody nose some two hundred yards sooner, perhaps stopping them beyond bow shot of the courtyard where the refugees huddled.

“Ought to have” are words that every captain has thought, but the victory goes to those who do not let it unman them. Pirvan had forgotten where he read that, but remembered the good sense it made then-and now.

Honor demanded that the men-at-arms with him climb the ladder first. As he, last, was scrambling up it, an unexpected face appeared on the wall. It was the sell-sword Rugal Nis.

“Me and the lads have been talking,” he said without preamble. “The magic with the well’s unlawful. We’re not bound to stay out of this fight. Most of us want in, on your side. Can we arm up and come out with no trouble?”

Pirvan looked about him. There was no one in hearing range who was worth consulting, save Haimya and Eskaia. Both of them were looking at him, as if expecting him to be a fount of wisdom.

The responsibility of command was a constant joy.

“Very well. But I warn you: stay close to me. I can’t speak for the trust of everyone here until you’ve proven yourself good comrades.”

Rugal Nis grinned and slapped Pirvan on the back. He did the same to Haimya; he tried to kiss Eskaia, but she danced nimbly out of the way, laughing nonetheless.

Pirvan hoped there would be cause for laughter at the end of the day.

Zephros’s men were now marching, or rather swarming, over what had clearly been Sir Pirvan’s camp. When the knight led his men inside the walls, he had also seen to it that they stripped the camp of anything of value. A few tents that had seen their last campaign, firewood, rusty cook pots, the ashes of campfires, and the turned earth of carefully covered midden pits-a gully dwarf would have despaired of finding anything here.

That didn’t keep some of the men from breaking such ranks as they had kept, searching for loot. Zephros rode out to rally the stragglers. He would gladly have gone to Nuitari to find a dozen good sergeants to do the job for him.

Luferinus saw Zephros riding toward him and seemed to think his fellow captain wished another meeting. He turned his own horse toward the camp, with a backward glance toward the far flank. There, Sir Lewin was at least keeping the men from falling into ditches, tripping over their own feet, or maiming themselves with their own weapons.

As the two captains rode toward each other, a small figure rose, seemingly from the ground. Zephros’s first thought was gully dwarf. Then he recognized the slight build of a kender-coming toward him at a run, hoopak raised to stab with its sharp end.

At that moment, Luferinus saw the kender also, drew his sword, and dug in his spurs. His horses reared in surprise. Others had also seen the kender-archers among Zephros’s men, both in the column and among the would-be looters. They nocked, drew, and shot with admirable speed, but less admirable aim.

The kender went to the ground and, being covered with ashes and filth, was all but invisible when he did. The arrows flew harmlessly above him, and not so harmlessly pierced Luferinus’s horse in several places.

The horse screamed and reared again, twisting in a frenzy of agony. Luferinus also twisted, struggling to keep his seat. He lost the struggle, lost his seat, and crashed to the ground, one foot still caught in the stirrup. Before he could rise, more arrows struck the horse, and it bolted.

Before the appalled eyes of both advancing columns, Luferinus’s horse thundered away in a cloud of dust, dragging the captain with it. Zephros dug in his spurs and gave chase.

In moments the dust swallowed both captains-and also all the men from both columns, mounted and afoot, who followed the captains.

Where there had been an attack formidable at least in numbers, there was suddenly no attack, and as to the numbers, no two men seemed to be doing the same thing.

Pirvan’s first thought as he watched the attack disintegrate was that Tarothin must have found a spell to fog their wits. The Red Robe was atop the keep, where he could see everything, and had all the spellcasting materials and apparatuses his saddlebags and the citadel could provide. No asking him, though, until the battle was over-this was not something where one could use a messenger.

The knight was still watching the confusion in front when he heard a familiar tread behind. Sir Darin walked with amazing lightness for one of his size, but even on solid stone that size made his tread distinctive.

Then Pirvan realized Darin was not alone, and turned to stare not only at the knight but at two elves standing beside him. One looked as if he would rather be hiding behind Sir Darin. The other stepped forward.

“Sir Pirvan. I will not give my name, for I wish no witnesses to my speaking until I have proved myself with words and deeds alike.” His speech, in the common tongue, was fluent, even graceful.

Elven eloquence could sometimes be as ill-timed as kender chatter. Pirvan made an impatient gesture.

“You have offered the words. What deeds do you offer?”

“Some of us wish to stand upon the walls, and let ourselves be seen by those who would doubt we are with you. Perhaps this will make certain foolish men outside the walls think again about coming within them.”

“Will you stand armed?” Pirvan said. “This is a battle, in case you hadn’t noticed. It is no place for gestures by unarmed elves. I would not have your blood on my conscience.”

He was tempted to add that only a fool would give Lord Lauthin cause to complain more than he already did. The elves’ expression halted the knight’s tongue. They looked resolved to face death rather than again stand aside from a battle. In carrying out that resolve, they were committing what in human hosts was commonly named mutiny.

Soldiers died for that offense, more often than not. Pirvan wondered what the Silvanesti punishment was-and prayed he would not learn today.

“Very well. You and those of your mind-take your bows and quivers. Go around to the hillward side of the citadel. I doubt we have much to fear from these folk, but there’s another column working its way around to our rear. They may need a little more discouraging.”

As he had sent off two of his men-at-arms to escort the sell-swords, Pirvan now did the same for the elves. This left him with one man-at-arms, Haimya, and Eskaia. Not much dignity for the commander of a great citadel under siege. Should he ask Krythis for a plume for his helmet, or perhaps a canopy to ward off the sun, which looked as if it would make the rocks hot enough to fry eggs before the day was done?

Perhaps the day would not end without more laughter, either. Then Pirvan licked dusty lips, and remembered the matter of the citadel’s water supply.

Sir Lewin had gradually worked his way toward the head of the column, which he was busily protecting from its own follies. He had ten men with him and the rest distributed along the length of the marchers, with Sir Esthazas riding in the rear guard.

All the Solamnics were keeping well clear of their comrades, if only to avoid riding any of them down. Also, Sir Lewin wanted his men to be free to form up and charge if they found a foe worthy of such a maneuver.

His hope of that, however, was rapidly shrinking. The ground was riddled with animals’ burrows and little ditches cut by rainwater, almost too rough to allow any sort of charge. The walls on this side were also more crumbled, and one could easily find oneself riding through fields of rubble without warning.

It was as he drew rein to find a path through one of those rubble fields, that Sir Lewin happened to look at the wall. His eyes were undimmed by his nearly fifty years, and it was not hard to recognize those standing atop the wall, even at a good bow shot’s distance.

Elves. Their stance, their build, their coloring-all nearly shrieked in Sir Lewin’s ear.

He did not shriek. But his shout was pitched like a battle cry. “The elves have joined the fight for Belkuthas. The embassy is foresworn. Follow me, for the honor of Istar and the name of soldiers of virtue!”

The wolf-pack howl that replied told Sir Lewin the men had very little interest in virtue and much in vice, particularly the kinds practiced with the wine and women they might find within the citadel. He told himself that the citadel’s fall would be a victory worth winning, nonetheless, a victory over elven treachery.

Then he waved to his trumpeter. The great battle horn roared, and all over the battlefield heads turned toward the sound.

Among those who recognized the blast of a battle horn of the Knights of Solamnia were Sir Pirvan and Sir Darin. Pirvan could not see across the citadel as easily as Darin, with his extra height, so it was the younger knight who saw the truth first.

He uttered a word Pirvan had never before heard from his lips. Then he added, “There is a knight leading the rear column. I must ride out and learn what he is doing in such dubious company.”

“You must-?” Pirvan began.

Darin shook his head. “If he is there by design of the orders, well and good. He will not allow me to be harmed. If he is there for other reasons-he must learn what a fool he is, to ride with them against fellow knights.”

Only Sir Darin did not use the word “fool.” He used a much stronger word in the minotaur tongue. Pirvan had heard him use it before, but never applied to another knight, or indeed any person Darin respected.

The older knight was still recovering from his surprise when Darin leapt off the wall, to land halfway down the stairs. He descended the rest of the way three steps at a time, then dashed across the courtyard toward his mount. A moment later, Pirvan heard him roaring.

“Open the gate! Paladine demands that I ride to save a knight’s honor.”

As softly spoken as he commonly was, Darin possessed a voice to match his stature. Pirvan feared he could be heard all the way to the trees, and that he would have a dozen arrows in him before he was twenty paces from the gate.

But Darin was right. The Knights of Solamnia had to look to one another’s honor, when ignorance or folly might strike at it.

Briefly, Pirvan cursed the moment he had accepted command of Belkuthas. His honor demanded that he remain at his post, and leave riding out to save others’ honor to Darin.