Knights of the Sword

Chapter 10

“Hulloooo!” came from the rear of the column. “Sir Pirvan! Is this the last hill?”

Pirvan cupped his hands and shouted back, “Yes. The next one’s a mountain!”

Good-natured curses and weary laughter echoed from the rocks as the column approached the peak of the trail. Pirvan forced strength into his legs, knowing that he was taking it from some other part of his body that would probably need it before he had a chance to rest.

He was in the lead when they reached the crest, and nearly went limp with relief when he saw that the downward slope was easy, and the trail broad, without sharp drops. When one loses two men in a single day from their straying too close to a drop edged with mud or slippery rocks, a war leader comes to value slopes so gentle that a baby could roll down them without being hurt.

He also comes to value able junior leaders. Haimya was one he would have valued even without love, likewise Birak Epron, and, more than somewhat to his surprise, Rubina. The Black Robe now wore male attire, though no soldier ever campaigned in such a hat, and this definitely altered her charms so that they were less distracting to the men.

It also did not hurt that when they stopped for the night, she would go along the column, laying on hands and staff for blisters, pulled muscles, thorn stabs, and the like. Like any Black Robe, her healing powers were modest, but so far the overland column had taken no serious injuries. Everyone was either dead or marching on.

Pirvan found the flattest and driest rock by the side of the trail and sat down. Then he drew from a pouch on his belt a tightly folded, leather-backed map of this land.

This area had never been part of Solamnia, so the knights had not been mapping it as they had some lands, ever since maps were first invented. Instead, they had trusted the Swordsheath Scroll and the Great Meld to induce Istar to provide maps out of courtesy.

In this, as in much else, the knights received less than their due. The most Pirvan could tell from this map was that their march had taken them almost out of the hills, and beyond lay more level country. This level country stretched from here to the seacoast, and somewhere on that coast was Waydol’s stronghold.

So they were now entering lands where the Minotaur’s band might be roving. The inhabitants might be friendly or hostile, largely depending on what they thought of Waydol. Their thoughts on Istar’s rule might also make a difference, and Pirvan took a crumb of comfort in most of the men with him being Karthayan.

Pirvan squinted against the westering sun and looked downhill. The trees grew tall enough to hide much, even on this slope, so it took him a while to spy the trails of chimney smoke from well beyond the last visible bend.

“Village ahead,” he said to Haimya and Epron. “It’s downhill, so we can surely reach it with time to spare before dark. But can we trust it to be friendly?”

Epron nodded. “The oldest question I know, for the captain of a marching column. How far to push the men? For if the village is friendly to Waydol, we might be safe only if we go farther than might be well for the men.”

Pirvan had not and would not defer to Epron’s opinion so much so that the men questioned who led the column. But he could not deny that he had never before led two hundred men in battle, and Epron had led that many more times than he had fingers (of which he lacked two, thanks to a sword wound to his left hand).

“Very well. We’ll march as close to level ground as we can, make camp, post guards, then scout out the village. Once we’re out of the forest, we should think of striking out across country, well away from settlements.”

“We’re supposed to learn how the people are disposed toward Istar, Waydol, Karthay, and, for all I know, the Irda and the ice barbarians,” Haimya said. “Of course, if that was so important, they might have sent two men marching and the rest could have gone by sea.”

“There’s truth in that,” Epron said. “I do not call your friend Jemar-”

“Let us not discuss Jemar while the men are passing by,” Haimya put in. “Moreover, let us remember that he is on the sea with Istar’s fleet, which cannot touch us the moment the water is too shallow for their keels.”

Pirvan wanted to point out that Jemar was, in turn, safe from Aurhinius, the moment the water reached the depth of a horse’s belly. But he knew that weary bickering could too easily turn into sharp quarrels.

* * * * *

In the end, there was no need to pass the village too closely. A narrower trail forked off from the main one well before the village, and scouts sent down it reported that it reached open country well clear of other villages.

The trail led, however, through what was almost another village of charcoal burners, who had their furnaces set up in a score of different clearings along the next day’s march. By now, Pirvan looked like anything but a knight, and indeed the column could be recognized as soldiers only by their being armed and keeping in some sort of order.

“Hunh,” one of the burners said, wiping her (at least Pirvan thought it was a woman) hands on a leather apron as black as tar and cracked like ice in the spring thaw. “You fellows will never do Waydol’s business for him, even if you don’t fall down afore you gets to his gate.”

Pirvan shrugged. “Who says we’re going to do anything at his gate besides knock? What we do then-it’s up to him and how he replies.”

“You’re not one to call him enemy, then?”

“Not unless he misnames us that first, and even then we’ll try not to fight him harder than needed to force a parley.”

The charcoal burner-definitely a woman, for all that she was not much shorter than Grimsoar One-Eye-seized Pirvan in a dusty, malodorous embrace. “Gods be with you, then. But be wary. There’s plenty of folk out for the bounty on Waydol, and you may be fighting your way through them before you’re done marching.”

So it went much of the day, with Pirvan and Haimya feigning every sort of opinion about Waydol, to draw out the charcoal burners and their kin. By the end of the day, it was plain that, at least among the charcoal burners, Waydol was considered no great enemy, sometimes a friend, and very surely one who made Istar the Mighty angry, so could not possibly be all bad, even if he was a minotaur!

It was harder to tell what the village on the main road thought, for the charcoal burners and the villagers were not the best of friends. The woods-dwellers suspected the villagers of kissing Istar’s hand (or other parts) simply because they were the sort of folk who would do that sort of thing. But as to details, they could give none, and after a while Pirvan gave up asking.

“It’s not marvelous that we don’t get along with nonhumans when two human settlements so close can’t make peace,” Epron said as the last soldier filed past the last clearing.

“It may not be a surprise, but something doesn’t have to be an ambush to be deadly,” Haimya said. She looked long and hard at Epron, and Pirvan remembered that Epron not only had solely humans in his band but also had not urged recruiting any other races. Not that there were that many such in Karthay, but one could wonder.

Except that in this matter, wondering led nowhere but to sleepless nights that Pirvan could not afford, if he was to keep putting one foot in front of another until they knocked on Waydol’s door.

* * * * *

Haimya thought for some time afterward that perhaps she had spoken an ill-luck word, in mentioning ambushes. For they encountered one not two hours past the forest of the charcoal burners. Blessed with greater strength or skill, the attack might have cost the marching column heavily.

As it was, the villagers who laid the ambush on the trail could not make up their minds which side of the trail they ought to take. So they were still darting back and forth across the road and sometimes standing to argue in the middle of it, when Pirvan’s scouts came within sight of them.

The scouts saw without being seen, slipping into the woods at once and creeping forward until they could count the enemy’s strength and positions. Then their messengers scurried back to Pirvan, who promptly halted the column while he listened to the reports.

Birak Epron thought that on the left at least the woods were thin enough that a small party might slip secretly behind the villagers and turn the tables on them. He even volunteered to lead it himself, but Pirvan thought he had more of an eye on a feat to impress Rubina than on sound tactics.

The Black Robe had been faithful to Epron, as far as Pirvan knew, but he also knew that Epron would always doubt, always be seeking some new way of making himself stand taller in the lady’s eyes. His remarks about not letting her turn him from his duty were much more than wind, but something less than the whole truth. Fortunately, his men seemed tolerant-as yet.

“Send your best sergeant, with ten or a dozen picked men,” Pirvan told the mercenary. “None among us doubt your courage. None among us could do your work, if you were to be slain in a skirmish against foes not worthy of your steel.”

Epron looked dubious. “Good sergeants do not grow on tarberry bushes either,” he said. “Nor have I kept faith with my men all these years by sending others to do what I would not.”

“All these years, you have not been so badly needed.” Weariness brought to Pirvan’s mind the notion that perhaps Birak Epron wanted a war between Istar and Karthay, which would surely fatten the purses of sell-swords from every land.

And leave a trail of burned towns, weeping widows and orphans, young men dead or crippled in their prime, and much else not beloved of the gods.

He kept the insult off his lips. “Epron, choose. I do not think the folk ahead are finished warriors, but they are not asleep or drunk, that we can wait forever to strike.”

Epron shrugged. “Have it as you will, Sir Knight.”

Epron’s sergeant and ten men swiftly vanished. Other men vanished into the woods on the other side of the road. Their task was to cover the retreat of the main body, if by some ill chance the ambush forced one.

The rest of the column was to simply march down the trail, like a worm dangled in a fishpond, to bait the ambushers into striking. Pirvan prayed briefly to Kiri-Jolith that the fish would not be unexpectedly large and hungry, then took his place at the head of the column.

Pirvan’s guesses as to the strength and skills of the enemy were not far off the mark. They were hardly more than fifty, and of all places to strike, they chose one where broad, deep ditches ran along both sides of the trail.

So when the first arrows flew from the trees, a soldier or two dropped. Most, even the less well trained, dove into the ditches on one side or the other. Both ditches held water, one up to a man’s knees, so the diving soldiers were neither dry, clean, nor comfortable in their refuge. Nor did all the archers keep their bowstrings dry.

But enough did so that they were able to beat down the enemy’s archery, picking off bowmen almost as fast as they showed themselves. A few minutes of this, and the enemy grew desperate enough to charge, even against more than thrice their number.

As they charged, so did Epron’s sergeant and his band. The enemy to the left of the road found themselves caught between two fires, driven onto wet ground where they could barely fight and not even hope to fleet, and they were subdued in moments. They could have been cut down to the last man where they stood, but Pirvan had given strict orders against needless killing. For the most part, he was obeyed. On the right, where Pirvan himself led, the fighting was more than a trifle sharper. Here were the village’s stouter hearts and more skilled sword arms, and Pirvan actually had to draw his sword to beat back one of two men who’d picked Haimya as an opponent.

The knight finally ended the affair by a feigned retreat, which drew the attackers out of the forest, across the ditch, and onto the trail. As they reached it, the rear guard came storming up at a run, drawing a band of steel around the villagers. They began to wave their bows, reversed and unstrung, and soon there was nothing left to do but bind the prisoners.

No, not altogether. It was in Pirvan’s mind to learn why the villagers had committed this particular folly. In spite of his orders against needless killing, of the fifty attackers some six were dead past healing, and Rubina found herself with burdensome work to do with many of the rest.

Pirvan sat on a stump before the oldest of the hale men and contemplated them. Then he motioned to the ground.

“Sit.”

“You have us in your power, Captain,” the man grumbled. “No need to be gracious.”

“On the contrary,” Pirvan said. “Great need, unless you are evil as well as foolish. Sit or stand as you wish, but tell me why you attacked us.”

It seemed that the village had heard, no doubt from a spy among the charcoal burners, that the mercenaries were marching to join Waydol. This meant they might ravage the country on the way. Also, if they were allowed to pass without resistance, the vengeance of Istar, in the form of one of Aurhinius’s captains and his riders, would sooner or later descend on the village.

“Then we’d lose as much as we lost today in blood, and more in treasure, women, and children, besides our honor. At least our blood today bought freedom from all that.”

Pirvan sighed. His own men had too little to spare of anything, save Rubina’s healing spells, to make up any of the village’s losses.

But there was parchment and an inkhorn in one of Pirvan’s pouches, and he could do something for the village with them. He drew them out, wrote swiftly, then called Haimya for wax. Into a blob of green sealing wax he pressed his ring with the sign of the crown on it, then folded the parchment and gave it to the villager.

“Take this to a keep of the Knights of Solamnia, as proof that a knight wishes you to be heard. They will listen, and I think you will have some justice, perhaps even more than you expect.”

The man looked dubiously at Pirvan. “It’s known about the country that the knights are not what they used to be.”

“The knights never were what the legends say, most of them. The gods know, I’m not. Do you know that I was once a thief in Istar, before the knights found more honest work for me?”

The villager now looked completely bemused. Pirvan stood and lifted the man to his feet. “So don’t kneel before me. Just lay that letter before the knights, and then judge how much we’re worth. You may find yourself surprised.”

“I’m already surprised, Sir-ah-?”

“Sir Pirvan.”

“Like I said, I don’t know what to make of all this. But maybe folk like you make the knights worth asking.”

By now, most of the wounded villagers had been healed enough to walk or to be carried on improvised litters of branches and cloaks. Pirvan stood by Haimya and watched the villagers move out of sight, then turned to Birak Epron.

“Rally the men, put the crippled and dead on litters, and let us be out of here. I want to be well out of the forest before nightfall.”

* * * * *

Being out of the forest before nightfall proved impossible. Strips and patches of woodlands wandered all over what, from the ridge, had seemed open country. Pirvan would have sworn that some of the trees were following them about.

They finally made camp in an easily defended field with woodlands on one side and a clear stream on the other. The light tents went up, the wounded were laid in them under Rubina’s charge, and a party went off to bury the two dead.

Pirvan leaned back against a stout maple and took off his boots. He had neither removed nor dried them since the battle, and raw red strips around his calves told him that he had been less than wise. He was pulling off his socks and luxuriating in the feeling of grass against bare feet when a shadow moved in the darkness.

He was reaching for his sword when the shadow moved again and turned into a silhouette outlined by the campfires.

“Good evening, my lady Rubina.”

“Good evening, Sir Pirvan. I sense a need in you for healing.”

“Nothing that fresh air won’t cure without you needing to exert yourself.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not. At least let me look at it, lest it grow so serious that I must weary myself further in healing it.”

“True. You have done honorably and well, and it would be ill-done to ask of you more than you can give.”

“I am known for my generosity, but thank you anyway,” Rubina said. Pirvan caught the double meaning, but knew that the best way to keep Rubina from going on in such a manner was to be silent.

It was hard for him to remain silent for long, however, once Rubina’s long, supple fingers began playing around his chafed calves. Little sighs of contentment escaped him, though at least she did not insist that he remove his breeches.

Unfortunately, it did not seem to matter much to Rubina’s subtle love spells what a man was wearing. By the time Pirvan felt a burning desire to pull Rubina down into his lap and kiss her, he knew he had to get away.

He lurched to his feet, conscious that anyone looking at him could tell that desire was in him, and Rubina stood also. She pressed against him so that it was plain that she wore little under her soldier’s clothes, then raised a hand to brush his cheek and lips.

Then she laughed-for once not a mocking laugh, but one in which real tenderness glowed-and kissed Pirvan on the chin. “I-well, you know what I wanted, and I know your thoughts. But because I know your thoughts, I also know that-I do not need that power over you, Sir Pirvan. Nor would I gain it by coming between you and your lady.

“You have something very rare, the two of you. I think it has a power to protect you both. If ever I could work a spell for you, it would be to bring out that power.”

Rubina kissed Pirvan again and strode off, with a hip-swaying motion that spoke plainly of her own desire and a firm intent to satisfy it. Pirvan stood against the tree for a moment, rubbing the places where the Black Robe had kissed him. Not to cleanse himself of some impurity, but simply to help himself believe what had happened.

Eventually Pirvan decided that the traditional remedy of cold water might serve. He walked upstream from the camp, beyond the sentry line, and in a secluded clump of bushes by a quiet pool stripped off his clothes and plunged into the water.

It was invigorating, soothing, cleansing, and much else, all at once. Pirvan was luxuriating in the water’s embrace as he never could have done in Rubina’s, when a splash too large for any fish sounded close by him.

He turned as a human head broke the water, a head with straight, fair hair hanging down all about it and eyes without color in the darkness, but with a familiar shape.

“Well met, my lady.”

“It seems a bath was in both our thoughts,” Haimya said.

“Indeed,” Pirvan replied. Although that was no longer his only thought; even cold water had its limits when he shared it with Haimya.

She took him by the hand and led him toward shore. As the water reached their waists, he put his arms around her from behind and kissed the back of her neck, wet hair and all. She turned to face him-and very little was said thereafter, for so long that what finally awoke them was the sound of searching parties from the camp.

They slept again soon after reaching their own tent, and Pirvan’s last thought before slipping down into oblivion was: All warriors should have mates like Haimya. But then, if they did, they would never want to leave them to go to war.

Is that a way of making peace everywhere, one that even the gods have overlooked?