Knights of the Sword

Chapter 9

The little expedition had to retrace its course somewhat to be sure of landing Pirvan and his men securely. Directly across from Karthay would be too close to Istariku and its swelling garrison and fleet. Going north to near the mouth of the bay would mean a long march across territory already garrisoned, where it was not rank tropical forest.

Sailing south meant a long march, but one free of large towns, hostile garrisons, or the more formidable sort of natural obstacles. It was also well-watered country, with plenty of game; there was no hope of the marchers carrying enough food for the whole journey.

What they could not hunt or pick, they intended to buy, and the gold and silver gathered by Jemar and the knights together would go a long way toward opening storehouses. Pirvan hoped that the money would go even farther toward closing mouths.

At least they knew more than before about how the folk of the north looked askance at the rule of Istar. With some, this was ancestral memories of being ruled by Karthay, or more recent experiences of being put off their land by the “barbarians” suppressed, with the aid of the Knights of Solamnia, at the time of the Great Meld.

With most, however, it was the simple fact that the farther from Istar, the less benign the mighty city’s rule. Pirvan was not a great student of history, but he had read enough in the libraries of the knights’ keeps, as well as in his own, to have learned somewhat of the lessons of the past.

One of those lessons was that any empire needed to be exceedingly careful that its outlying provinces were well governed. Farthest from the center of power, they were the easiest prey for corrupt governors and captains-and also found it easier to shift their allegiance to other rulers, a fertile source of every kind of war.

Not that there was anywhere the folk in this land could shift their allegiance, even if they wished. The dwarves of Thorbardin would laugh at the idea of human subjects, and Solamnia could hardly rend the Swordsheath Scroll. But a land perpetually steaming with discontent like an untended pot of soup was not a land at peace.

All of this weighed heavily on Pirvan’s mind as he watched the last of the overland column climb out of the boats and wade ashore. The sky was sullen from both cloud and the early hour, but the breeze had vanished. The water was black and so calm that it almost seemed oily.

Farther offshore, mist and rain were already swallowing even Sea Leopard, the nearest of the four ships. Several boats that had already unloaded were laboriously crawling back to the sea barbarian vessel. Pirvan wanted to believe that he could see Grimsoar standing in the prow, but knew that had to be mostly his imagination.

A very real splashing close by made him turn. Rubina was wading ashore from the boat, holding her skirts well above her knees to keep them dry. She had not been entirely successful in this, and she was being entirely too successful in attracting a great deal of notice.

Birak Epron cleared his throat. “My lady Rubina. I think you should have changed into more practical garb before entering the boat. I am sure that once your baggage is landed, the Lady Haimya will be glad to keep watch while you clothe yourself anew.”

Rubina stepped out of the water and let her skirts fall. Pirvan saw faces fall as well, as those shapely limbs vanished from sight.

Now the Black Robe stepped up to the mercenary captain and gave him one of her dazzling smiles. “I would far rather have your company in that endeavor-” she began.

Epron cut her off. “Lady. Never think me ungrateful. But I have duties to my men. For that matter, so do you. One we both have is to keep discipline among them.”

Rubina frowned. It was the frown of an exceedingly shrewd woman pretending to be a silly one. “My dear friend, you seem to wish to make my first war very harsh for me. Not only have I lost Tarothin, now it seems that I am to lose-”

“Lady Rubina,” Haimya said, in a tone that excluded all possibility of argument. “Let us go aside, and I will tell you, while you change your clothes, just how harsh war is.”

She then took a firm grip of Rubina’s arm. For a moment it seemed that the Black Robe would resist, physically or even magically, and Pirvan met Epron’s eyes in total agreement.

Unaware of her narrow escape, Rubina allowed herself to be marched off to a discreet clump of dragonstooth bush, which here on this coast grew to the size of young trees. When the women had disappeared, Pirvan turned to the mercenary captain.

“I thank you.”

“I guard my men from all dangers, and they me, Sir Pirvan. I keep that bargain even against all the Towers of High Sorcery. Has anything ever made you think that sell-swords have no honor?”

“Nothing whatever, and much to the contrary. But I have also learned not to overlook the power of-of-”

“A woman like Rubina making a man think with other parts of his body than his head?”

“That’s one way to say it, I suppose.”

The last boat’s keel grated on the gravel of the beach as it pushed off. Pirvan contemplated the mountain of equipment and supplies left behind, and the men already moving it to hiding places.

It was as well that Birak Epron was the senior mercenary captain and therefore next only to Pirvan in command ashore. His men were not only the best of the lot, but they were also doing a fair job of hammering their own skills and discipline into their motley comrades.

As for Rubina, Pirvan vowed to do his best to leave her to Haimya and Epron. If between them they could not make her more useful than useless to the expedition, then he would have to step in himself.

* * * * *

“I ask your pardon for this hospitality, but we lost our fields last year,” the man kneeling before Darin said. He placed a wooden tray of dried fruit and nuts surrounding a piece of salt meat harder and darker than the tray in front of the Heir to the Minotaur, then rose and stepped back.

By the flickering torchlight, Darin saw that his men were as alert as they needed to be in a strange camp. He could give his attention to the leader without worrying about surprises from the other band’s men.

Men-and others. Somewhere in this land, over the last few generations, ogres had made free with human women more than a few times. Of the thirty men Darin had counted (without seeming to do so; doing that openly could bring on a fight at once), at least ten showed signs of ogre blood.

Among them was the leader, who had just placed the gift of food before Darin. He was as tall as Darin, and would have been nearly as broad and strong had hard labor and scant food not fought against ogre blood. Nor was he even truly ugly, let alone misshapen. Brow ridges, the shape of his skull, the jawline, and the matted hair that grew everywhere except where old scars seamed the leader’s skin were all he showed of the ogre look.

But they had been enough to make him an outlaw. Not a successful one, though, from the state of his men, their weapons, and their camp-not one, in short, who could afford to refuse an alliance if one were offered him.

Darin wished for the tenth time in as many days that he was holding the stronghold and Waydol was moving about the country, offering alliances to outlaw bands, lone robbers, and the merely discontented or wild-spirited all across the land. However, this could not be. No horse could carry Waydol, and the work needed to be done quickly.

Nor, in truth, were all the outlaws of this land well disposed toward minotaurs merely because they were ill disposed toward Istar, or whoever happened to claim lawful authority over the land. The Heir to the Minotaur did not arouse suspicion or anger, as the Minotaur himself might have done.

Darin motioned his men forward on each side of him. When they formed a half-circle, opened toward the half-ogre and his fire, Darin began to eat.

He felt no hunger to lend savor to the coarse food, but as he ate he saw his men looking across the fire to see when their food would be ready. He frowned. It did not seem likely that the half-ogre had a meal for another twelve men in his storehouses. He himself was eating entirely as a gesture of peace, but he was eating when his men were not, much against his custom, honor, and sense.

“Brother of the greenwood, may I ask of you two things?” he said to the half-ogre.

“All may be asked here, but as to what may be granted …”

“I understand. First, is Pedoon the name by which you are known, or the one by which you wish to be known?”

The leader ran a thumb across his brow ridges. “I’ve answered to Pedoon and nothing else for years. I don’t think I’d know you were talking to me if you used any other.”

“Very well, Pedoon. Then is there aught to eat in your camp for my men? If there is not, are we at liberty to hunt on your land, so that we need not choose between tightening our belts and eating them?”

The laugher from Pedoon’s men was harsh barks. Looking at them, Darin could well believe that they found little humor in jests about hunger.

“Will you be content with bread and salt and hunting rights thereafter?” Pedoon said.

Darin nodded. Whether bread and salt bound Pedoon against all treachery as they would have many humans, he did not know. Much depended on where Pedoon had been raised, whether among ogres or among humans, but there was a question to be asked when the chiefs were alone.

The bread was barely half-baked, of flour made from some plant surely never intended for that purpose, and the salt was the coarsest of rock salt. But with the eyes of both chiefs on them, Darin’s men dared not refuse, particularly when they saw Darin himself eating the bread and salt.

They had just finished their ritual, and some were reaching for their water bottles, when a man three paces to Darin’s left rose to his knees. Then his mouth opened, and he began to claw at his throat. Mucus ran from his eyes and his nose, and it seemed that he wished to spew.

A small figure at the right of the line leaped up and ran into the darkness, where the horses and their guards stood. Pedoon shouted, and half a dozen of his men leaped up and followed Darin’s runner.

“Hold!” Darin shouted. One man was well out ahead of the rest, and as Darin turned, he raised a spear.

Darin was not wearing his gauntlets, but the strength of his arms was the same, gauntlets or not. He gripped the shaft of the spear as it thrust at him, jerked it from the man’s hands, and slammed the butt end up under the man’s jaw. He crashed backward into the midst of his comrades-and all the men on both sides rose to their feet as if pulled by a single cord.

In the next moment everyone had a weapon in hand.

In the moment after that, a bloody slaughter would have begun, except that out of the darkness, the small figure returned. Now he was carrying a staff, from whose head an unearthly blue light shone, faintly but visible to all even in the glare of the campfire.

“Hold!” Pedoon shouted, and Darin echoed him. Sirbones hurried over to the choking man, who had now fallen on his side in convulsions. He laid the staff on the man’s throat, then on his belly, then on his chest, and finally stepped back, singing in a voice that sounded like a giant earteaser in full cry.

It seemed that the man emptied his stomach of everything he’d eaten since he left the stronghold. Sirbones and two of his comrades helped drag him to clean grass and wipe him clean with leaves and water. Then they laid two cloaks over him, and Sirbones stepped up to Darin.

“Most of the poison is out of him, and my healing will fight off what may remain.”

“What kind of poison was it?”

“In that kind of bread, you could hide a dozen at once without tasting any of them,” Sirbones said. “Ask the poisoner. Or I can-”

“No!” That was Pedoon, now standing beside the man who had tried to spear Darin. “He has violated the laws of the gods and of this band, and was a fool and a traitor as well. But you shall not enter his mind.”

“Will he be the better if you thrust hot coals into his body until he loses his voice from screaming and dies without speaking?” Sirbones snapped.

Darin stepped between the priest and the half-ogre chief. “Will you answer Sirbones? There will be no war between us over this, but you will not be called our friends without some fit answer.”

Pedoon shrugged massive shoulders. Even his shoulder blades sprouted hair, though much of it was gray. “Ansik always walked a little apart. I don’t know where he obtained the poison. I trust that any of his comrades who do will see that nobody else is as stupid.”

Pedoon’s hooded gaze swept the ranks of his men like a fire spell. “As for why he did what he did-there is a price on your head, Heir to the Minotaur. All men know it. Some are less honorable about how they try to collect it than others.

“Does that content you?”

Darin looked at Sirbones. The little priest shrugged. His face said that the answer might not content him, but they had small chance of getting a better one.

Darin nodded.

“Then may I have Ansik’s spear?”

Darin handed Pedoon the captured spear, butt first, while keeping a hand on his own sword hilt. But he had no need to fear. Pedoon stood over Ansik, who had barely recovered his senses, and drove the spear down into the fallen traitor’s chest with all his strength.

Ansik hardly even twitched before life left him.

Silence enveloped the camp, as complete as if every man there had followed Ansik into death. Pedoon broke it, with a long, harsh, wailing cry.

The rest of the band took it up; plainly it was a lament for the dead, neither ogre nor human but partaking of the ways of both. Darin signaled to his men to listen in silence, until the lament was ended.

When the night birds and insects stunned into silence found their voices, Pedoon stepped close to Darin.

“Will you walk apart with me, Heir to the Minotaur?”

“Gladly.”

Darin was not happy with the dark trail where Pedoon chose to lead him, but followed in silence. If death by Pedoon’s treachery was his fate, he could not turn it aside by seeming a coward or refusing to give ear to the chief.

“It would be as well, I think, if our bands did not unite,” Pedoon said. “Hunger and hard beds are easier than worrying every day about treachery, from one side or the other. Tempers grow short that way, steel flies, blood flows, and in the end we all have less than we did.”

“I was thinking the same,” Darin said, and those words would have passed the test of a high-level truth spell. “I had not thought your-you-”

“You hadn’t expected such good sense in an ogre?” Pedoon said, laughing. In the dark woods, an ogrish laugh was an uncanny sound. “Shame on you, who follow a minotaur.”

Darin could think of no reply. Pedoon laughed more softly.

“I owe you, though, for not treating Ansik’s foolish treachery as cause for blood. And I can pay this debt, at least. There was a man who spared me and my band over by the bay, some ten years ago, whom I’ve never seen again. I’ll probably die with that debt weighing on my spirit. But you I can pay.”

Pedoon explained how he and several other chiefs of small bands had agreed to warn each other of hostile visitors to the land. He would swear, and ask the others to swear, that anyone who came against Waydol and his heir would also be cause for warning.

“Not fighting, unless they are few or we can band together faster than we ever have before. But warning-on this you can trust us.”

Darin gripped Pedoon’s knob-knuckled hand. “And you can trust my huntsmen to share whatever they bring down before we leave your land.”

They walked back to the camp with silence about them save for the night sounds of the forest.

* * * * *

“Any room at this table?” came the voice from behind Tarothin.

The Red Robe remembered to look owlishly about him before focusing slowly on the bland-looking man standing behind his chair.

“Suppose so,” he said. The slur in his words was just a hint. He was supposed to have emptied only three cups of good wine, which would barely fuddle a hardheaded drinker. No one would take him on if they thought he’d turned sot over his broken heart.

The man sat down without further invitation and signaled the serving maid for another jug of wine and a plate of sausages. Tarothin had to let his cup be refilled when the order arrived, but it was no hardship not to drink the wine.

He was able to pretend to drink, and to let the drink work on him, until the man leaned over and whispered, “Do you want back at those people who left you?”

“What people?” Tarothin said.

The man started to say something loud and out of character, then took a deep breath. “You know which ones. The tale’s all over Karthay by now.”

If it was, somebody had been giving it boots, wings, or even a ride on a dragon. However, if this fellow had heard it and was from where Tarothin hoped he was, the tale had traveled far enough.

“Oh, Rubina and her friends?”

“That’s the name I’ve heard for the woman. What about the others?”

“If you’ve heard the tale, you know who they are. Damned Istarians. Triple-damned knights.”

Tarothin spent the next five minutes expressing what he’d like to do to Rubina, certain Istarians, and any Solamnic Knight who fell into his power. Occasionally he raised his voice enough to draw dubious looks from nearby tables.

Some of the details were Tarothin’s imagination. Some of them came from one of the most unpleasant experiences of his life, the trial of a renegade mage who’d used healing spells to torture his victim. Most of that, Tarothin sincerely wished, was his imagination.

His visitor kept a straight face until Tarothin was done, then ordered more wine. The wizard hoped the man would get to the point, if any, before he had to drink enough wine to really fuddle his wits.

The True Gods were with Tarothin. Halfway through the next cup, the man leaned over and said, “Look, you. I don’t know what would come of you going back to Istar. But we have a band of good Karthayans who are tired of this fight against Istar. The gods have plainly shown their favor to the city, and we’re not folk to right against the gods.

“So we’re chartering a ship, a big one, to carry plenty of stout Karthayans ready to take up arms for Istar. We’ll need wizards aplenty, but the tales say you’re worth three of the common kind. Can we trust you?”

The wine had fuddled the man more than it had Tarothin, and it took him quite a while to get this out. By then, however, he was past noticing that Tarothin had stopped drinking.

That was no bad thing for Tarothin. He didn’t dare use even the smallest self-healing spell to sober himself up, or further befuddle the other man. The other might say he was a Karthayan loyal to Istar’s rule, but if he was a Karthayan, then Tarothin was a kender!

“Is there a place I can come, to go aboard?” Tarothin asked.

“Eg-Egalobos’s place. It’s on-on Shieldmakers’ Wharf.”

“Egalobos’s place on Shieldmaker’s Wharf.” Tarothin made a great show of looking in his purse, ready to pay for the next round.

“Friends-friendssh left you-w’out g-gold?” the man got out.

Tarothin nodded, but the man was nodding, too; then he fell forward onto the table, knocking over the wine cup. Tarothin felt he deserved to lie there with his beard in the wine, but instead called a serving boy.

He was careful to stagger as he left the room. The man probably hadn’t come alone. No conspirators worth spying on would send as their only agent a man who passed out after three cups of such villainous wine! It would embarrass Tarothin to even pretend to be associated with them.

But sots and witlings had brought down thrones before. When war and peace were in the balance, one Red Robe’s embarrassment weighed very lightly.

* * * * *

The letter Pirvan wrote from Karthay had eased Sir Marod’s mind.

The letter just received from Istar did the opposite.

Sir Marod looked at the letter as if wishing hard enough would change the words on the parchment into something innocent, such as a love poem or a laundry list.

Wishing had no effect. Putting the letter in the candle would have some effect, but not a good one. Regardless, much of the letter was already carved on Sir Marod’s mind.

The kingpriest was sending certain powerful and ruthless servants of Zeboim the Sea Queen aboard the fleet about to depart from Istar. They went by his command, with his blessing, aided by the resources of the great temples, and specifically freed from most of the normal bounds to their use of magic.

That was the worst part. Black, red, and white wizards and the priests of Good, Neutral, and Evil gods kept the balance on Krynn as it was kept among the stars by honoring certain rules. Not as complex or binding as the Measure of the Knights, but serving well enough.

Sending priests of Zeboim to sea with orders to do whatever they needed to gain victory could be pulling the keystone out of the delicate arch of the balance on Krynn. Then chaos would be unleashed and all beings alike buried under the ruins.

Sir Marod decided that he was developing a taste for dramatic figures of speech that could as well be left to poets and pageant-makers. The priests of Zeboim would not go unopposed, by either magical or human powers.

But their presence would increase the peril into which Pirvan and his friends were sailing or marching before they could learn of it and be on their guard. And this was quite apart from their having magical aid only from Rubina, since Tarothin had left the company in a jealous rage.

Sir Marod had ordered men and women to their deaths before-not too many to count, but enough to sometimes deny him easy sleep at night. But he had always done his best to be sure that those who went forth knew what they faced, before they departed.

This time, it gnawed at him that he had sent knights forth with broken lances and blunted swords, against foes who might rise from the ground or fall from the sky without warning.