Knights of the Sword

Chapter 16

Pirvan finished smearing the oil on Haimya’s back and started working farther down her body. Briefly, he let his hands linger.

She laughed, turned, and kissed him, then spat. “Kah! That fish oil tastes worse than it smells.”

“No doubt we should have asked for fresh oil, or perhaps bear grease.”

Pirvan finished smearing his lady from head to toe, then turned while she returned the favor. As she picked up her fighting garb, two strips of leather, she frowned.

“Is this oil really going to do anything, save make our friends and foes alike fight to stand upwind of us?”

“Believe me, every thief I knew had done it three or four times in their night work. Mostly they did it to slip through small spaces, but it made them hard for any thief-taker to grasp as well.”

Pirvan donned his own fighting garb, a strip of leather over a padded loinguard, and walked to the corner where their quarterstaves stood. He picked them both up, twirled one in each hand, and grinned at Haimya. She might have seemed more desirable and more deadly at other times, but Pirvan could not remember them.

Haimya took one of the staffs, dropped into fighting position, then whirled and jumped at the same moment. But her smile as she turned back toward him was a bit uncertain.

“What if they do wear armor?”

“We’ll have a bigger edge in speed than we would otherwise. But I doubt that they’ll shame themselves that way. I made sure that everyone knew that you and I would be fighting without armor.”

The trial would certainly be not only without armor, but also with no overabundance of rules. They would fight in a square a hundred paces on a side, and anyone who stepped outside the line of stakes marking it would be out of the fight. Neither side would use edged weapons, spears, or bows. Anything found within the square could be used as a weapon, but nothing could be given to the fighters after the fight began.

Once it began, it would go on until one side or the other declared that they’d yielded, or became clearly unable to continue the fight. Death, if it came, was intended to come only by mischance-but both sides would have guards posted against anyone tempted to follow in the footsteps of Pedoon’s murderer.

“My lady?” Pirvan said, with a bow in the direction of the door.

She brushed his cheek with her lips and stepped through the door. As Pirvan followed her, the horses sent by Waydol whickered softly.

“Come along,” Fertig Temperer, leader of the escort, growled. “Some trader slipped into the cove last night with a load of wine. Give those loons an extra hour, and there’ll be no keeping the peace.”

Pirvan swung into the saddle. A breeze blew, chill on his bare skin. The oil would make him hard to grip, but gave little protection. At least the sky was a uniform gray, so that there should be no time wasted maneuvering to get the sun in the other man’s eyes.

“Forward!” Pirvan called, and his men’s newly acquired drummer started pounding out a slow march beat. As the column fell in behind the mounted escort, Pirvan admired their order and how they’d managed to clean their weapons and even try to clean their clothes.

The drumbeat went on, a small but determined voice calling out against the vastness of the gray sky and the scarred land.

* * * * *

The breeze had dropped by the time Pirvan and Haimya led their men up to the fighting square. It had been laid out the day before, at a safe distance from both camps to avoid disorder. Pirvan studied Waydol’s men, saw no signs of any drunkards, and looked for his opponents.

What he found was a large brown tent, erected at one end of the square. It had the look of an improvised affair, probably an old sail, but it meant that Waydol and Darin could step straight from hiding into the square. No chance for their opponents to study them in advance, while Pirvan and Haimya were fully exposed in more than one sense of the term.

Your pardon, knights, for not thinking of that myself.

“Ah,” came a familiar woman’s voice. “I thought you would be fair to the eye, Sir Pirvan. Now I am certain.”

Pirvan took a firm grip on his staff and turned to Rubina with a thin smile. “I thank you, my lady. But I also warn you. If you distract me so that I perish in this fight, I will come back to haunt you, if Haimya does not have your blood.”

Rubina put her hands on her hips and laughed. “Your pardon, Sir Knight. I gave oath to let this fight be fair, and I would not break it.”

“Good,” Pirvan said shortly and, turning his back, began exercising to loosen his muscles.

Haimya did the same; then they each picked up their staffs and worked with those, though they did not work against each other. The less known about how he and Haimya made a fighting pair, the better-though if Waydol was half as shrewd as Pirvan thought, he might well have guessed something.

Which is as the gods will have it. We can do no better than our best.

What was no doubt intended to be music broke the waiting silence. Waydol’s band had five drummers and even someone who thought he could play a trumpet. Pirvan thought that if anyone ever broke the sleep of the knights at a keep with such wretched braying, he would be swimming in the moat before the echoes died.

Pirvan’s one drummer started to reply, then cheers drowned out all the musicians as the tent opened and Waydol and Darin stepped out. Pirvan swept his staff onto his shoulder, took Haimya’s hand, and began walking toward the line of stakes, as their own men began cheering.

The cheering fought its own battle, as Pirvan studied his opponents. One gamble he’d won: neither of them wore armor. Darin had even forsworn his armored fighting gauntlets, which could turn those massive arms of his into deadly war clubs. Indeed, neither he nor Waydol wore anything at all except heavy loinguards.

Pirvan listened intently for any undercurrent of discontent with him and Haimya having weapons against opponents with none. He heard nothing, and breathed brief prayers of thanks.

Darin looked like a champion out of some tale of the days of Vinas Solamnus. Big he was, but there was nothing uncouth in his proportions or clumsy in his movements. As for Waydol, Pirvan had never seen any living creature so embody raw physical strength. He wished he could have seen Waydol in his youth.

The Minotaur might be showing his age, but his heir was in his prime fighting years. Both had a huge advantage in reach and striking power over any unarmed opponent. Without their staffs, Pirvan’s and Haimya’s efforts might prove more entertaining than useful.

Haimya now stepped away from Pirvan and began marking circles in the ground with her left foot. Pirvan could not see what need she had of rituals or testing the ground, as it was as level as a tabletop and neither hard nor soft in any pattern he could make out. But if it eased her, then so be it.

One herald from each side stepped forward and, with drums rolling again, read out the rules of this trial by combat. Mercifully, the trumpeter stayed silent until the reading was done, then he brayed forth all alone, like an ass being whipped.

“Waydol!” Pirvan shouted. “When you give me oath after this fight, I will demand one thing at least.”

The Minotaur tossed his horns. “What is that?”

“You find a new trumpeter, or teach the one you have how to play!”

Laughter joined cheering, and from both sides. Then the drums rolled again. The two heralds raised their staffs of office (they looked to have been carved from whale ribs), and held them aloft while the drums rolled.

Then the drums ceased, the heralds scampered for the sides of the square, and the four fighters advanced to battle.

* * * * *

The first few minutes passed in feints and maneuvers, as each side tried to learn about the other without revealing anything about themselves. This put a burden on Pirvan and Haimya, to not show their team-fighting too soon or weary themselves using their greater speed to stay clear.

There was only a single touch in this part of the fight, when Waydol launched a full-strength, straight punch at Pirvan’s staff. The blow was only glancing, but it jarred Pirvan’s arms all the way up to his shoulders. He rolled with the punch, turning a somersault that opened the distance, then rose, spat out dirt, and looked at Waydol with new respect.

The Minotaur laughed. It was not a cruel laugh of pleasure at another’s pain. It was instead the laugh of one caught up in the joy of combat.

I want to live through this fight, Pirvan thought. It will be one to remember. Even talk about with Waydol and Darin, if we all live to grow old in comradeship.

Future camaraderie did not seem to be much in Darin’s mind, however. He was faster than Pirvan had expected, not agile but able to gain speed swiftly with those long legs. Several times he ran at Haimya, and only her darting left or right faster than he could change direction saved her from a close and perhaps final grapple.

Twice she thrust at Darin’s knees with her staff, and once she got home hard enough to make him stop for a moment and test the knee. But it could still bear his weight at any pace he needed to use; Haimya could not even claim first blood.

Pirvan also had to move faster, in order to try a few strikes at Waydol. He would have been willing to strike from behind at first, but saw no way of doing any damage there. So he played at Waydol’s elbows and hands, and struck three times without doing more than make the Minotaur stop to suck a knuckle.

But the knuckle was bleeding; that tough minotaur hide could be broken. Also, it was first blood.

Pirvan went through the first blood ritual, as he had with the archer. Waydol’s reply was another boisterous laugh; Darin, less polite, spat on the ground near Haimya’s feet.

The fight began anew.

* * * * *

Before much longer, both sides were pouring with sweat and breathing heavily. Pirvan did not mind the sweat; over the fish oil it would make him and Haimya still harder to grasp firmly. But they would need to hold back some breath for the inevitable climax of the fight, which would come, barring a miracle, when Waydol and Darin thought their opponents were slowed enough.

Then would come a rush to close, a grapple of strength and size against speed and quarterstaves, and only the gods knowing how it would end.

All four fighters also showed more than sweat and heaving chests. Darin favored one arm, where Pirvan and Haimya had each caught him with a clean, hard strike. Pirvan had grazes and bruises from too-close escapes from both of his opponents.

Haimya had an ugly swelling on one hip, where Waydol had caught her with an unexpected kick. Had the hoof struck with its intended force, it would have shattered her bones like a dropped pot. But she rode with the blow, Pirvan knocked Waydol farther off balance with a blow to the stomach, and Haimya nearly put him down altogether with a thrust at his throat.

But Darin came in behind Haimya, and she had to dart aside again, without even a chance to strike at his weak arm. Waydol seemed slower on his feet after that, but his arms could still fling those massive fists about in a way to make any sane opponent wary.

Wariness, however, could take one only so far. Sooner rather than later, Pirvan and Haimya would also have to risk closing, to strike a vital spot that would slow one or both opponents.

If that minotaur has any vital spots, Pirvan added to himself. Any minotaur’s vitals were as well protected by his bulk as a human’s would have been by armor, and Waydol had more bulk than the common run of minotaurs, nor much of it fat, either!

Knight’s and lady’s eyes met, and they looked at Darin. Then they ran in, swinging wide to each side of Waydol to close on the heir. The Minotaur was less vulnerable, and had so far fought a coolheaded battle that would keep him that way. Pirvan and Haimya needed to heat Waydol’s temper, and taking down his heir seemed to be the best way.

They closed and struck, and for a moment it seemed they had succeeded. Shouts and cheers roared all around them. But Darin’s arms and legs flew out at impossible angles and with unbelievable speed.

Pirvan felt his staff brushed aside like a twig, and a hammerblow to his cheek. He rolled with the punch as much as he could, went down, and rolled without getting up while holding his staff over him as protection.

He lurched to his feet and nearly went down again, but stayed upright with the aid of his staff. Haimya was between Waydol and Darin, a position that spelled doom, and Pirvan could not force his feet into movement!

Instead, he saw Haimya wait until the last moment, as both the Minotaur and his heir lunged at her. They had not agreed on who should pursue and who should block, and both tried to pursue. They pursued straight toward each other, and when Haimya darted out from between them, it was too late for them to stop.

Six and a half feet of human and eight feet of minotaur collided with a slaughterhouse noise. The impact knocked Waydol backward off his feet, and staggered Darin. He still had the wits to lunge at the escaping Haimya, but he lunged with his weak arm. He missed a firm grip on her slippery shoulder, caught her upper strip of leather, tore it free, then went to his knees.

Cheers and shouts rose higher, from both sides. Pirvan wasn’t sure if the men were cheering the bold fighting, or the fact that Haimya now wore nothing above the waist.

This mattered little, compared to the fact that his own fighting strength was coming back. He’d felt for a moment that his brains were rolling about inside his skull and all his teeth would fall out of his jaws if he sneezed. But all he could swear to was a bloody lip and a monstrous ache in one cheek.

Haimya, meanwhile, could not have been less concerned at her sudden disrobing. She saw both opponents on the ground and closed, trying to finish at least one.

Instead Waydol rolled, coming up to grip Haimya’s down-thrusting quarterstaff with both hands. Haimya let go, threw herself backward into a somersault, and came up at a safe distance, as Waydol snapped the quarterstaff like a twig and threw the pieces away.

This left Darin still sitting, with his back to Pirvan. Pirvan couldn’t close fast enough, however, and Waydol shouted a warning. Darin leaped up and turned, giving Pirvan only an opening to thrust at the hand holding the leather strip. The blow went home, the leather fell, then both Waydol and Darin were backing away, for the first time in the fight.

Pirvan’s men were outnumbered four to one by Waydol’s, but they made up for it with their lusty cheering.

Pirvan darted in, picked up Haimya’s fallen garment on the end of his staff, and held it out to her as she came up.

She was filthy, glazed with sweat and oil, and bleeding where Darin’s nails had torn her shoulder. She looked like every vision of a warrior goddess ever given to mortal men, all combined in a single splendid body.

“Thank you for considering my modesty,” she said, tucking the upper strip inside the lower one. “But I think I see other uses for this now. Can we lead the fight back to where we began?”

“Eh?”

“Where I was making circles in the dirt with my foot and you thought it was some ritual?”

“Oh.” Light penetrated the darkness of Pirvan’s aching skull. He nodded cautiously. “We’ll have to pretend to be worse hurt than we are, to draw them after us.”

“Another grapple with either of those monsters, and I at least won’t be pretending,” she said, rubbing her rib and shoulder.

“Onward,” Pirvan said. It came out more of a grunt than an exhortation, and Haimya actually managed to laugh.

* * * * *

The cheering and shouting slowly faded into an awestruck silence as Pirvan and Haimya gave ground before the advance of Waydol and Darin. It was a slow retreat, matched to a slow advance, and both knight and lady were trying to judge the state of their opponents every step of the way.

Were the Minotaur and his heir hurt? Or were they merely being cautious, perhaps themselves feigning injury? On the right answer might hang life and death-but there was no assurance of any answer at all.

At last Haimya signaled that they were at the right spot. Pirvan nodded, and moved off to the left to draw Waydol. He still had two good arms and a longer reach than Darin, who was now definitely favoring one arm.

Darin lunged. Haimya went down, rolling and coming up with the upper strap in her hand-and something wrapped in it.

She ran, and Darin whirled to run after her. She ran like a deer, Waydol turned to join in the chase, and Pirvan dashed in to strike him at the base of the spine. Haimya had to have only one opponent for a few seconds.

Waydol whirled, arms flying, and Pirvan once again ducked and rolled clear. As he came up, Haimya whipped the leather strap in three quick circles around her head, then let go of one end.

A stone the size of a child’s fist flew out of the improvised sling. It flew as straight as a mason’s maul coming down on a wedge, at Darin. It struck like that mason’s maul, squarely on his forehead.

The big man stopped in midstride, swayed, but did not quite fall over. Instead he reached out in front of him, as if groping in a fog for something to guide his footsteps. Then he sank to his knees, looked at Haimya, and at last fell over on his left side.

Waydol’s men seemed too appalled to cheer, and Pirvan’s seemed too grateful.

The Minotaur was not so tongue-tied. He glared at Darin and spoke a few words in his own tongue. Pirvan did not know the minotaur language, but suspected that blood-feuds had begun over softer words.

Indeed, it seemed that they had finally made Waydol lose his temper.

For the next few moments, Pirvan and Haimya had a busy time keeping Waydol from tearing them limb from limb. If he had not been trying half the time to catch both of them, one in each hand, he might have succeeded with one of them.

As it was, Waydol was pouring with sweat and breathing like a blacksmith’s bellows when his burst of speed was done. Pirvan and Haimya looked at each other. Both bore new hurts, where Waydol’s fists and nails had connected. Pirvan could barely talk; Haimya was favoring one leg and new scratches had bathed the upper half of her body in mingled blood and sweat.

Victory would come soon or not at all.

They closed with Waydol, coming at him from opposite sides to divide his attention. He lowered his head, ready at last to strike with his horns-and Pirvan forced from his mind a picture of Haimya spitted on one of those horns like a roasted pigeon.

But lowering his head was Waydol’s fatal mistake. Pirvan and Haimya ran at him-and Pirvan tossed his quarterstaff to Haimya, while she tossed the leather thong to him.

Pirvan had never run so fast in his life as he did over the dozen paces it took to get behind Waydol. He leaped up on the Minotaur’s back, kicked him hard at the base of the spine, and looped the leather thong around the base of his great neck.

Waydol reared up, so that Pirvan was dangling by the thong. But the tough leather tightened under his weight, against the Minotaur’s windpipe. Waydol reached back, to grip Pirvan and tear him apart-and left himself wide open to Haimya and her staff.

She thrust furiously at his throat, his belly, his groin, both knees. Then she started all over again. Somewhere in the middle of the flurry of blows, Waydol sank to his knees, and a moment later Pirvan stepped out from behind the Minotaur and gripped Haimya’s arm.

“Hold, my lady and love. He’s done fighting.”

Waydol nodded painfully. He tried to speak, but the blows to the throat had taken his voice for the moment. Instead he lifted both hands and placed them in Pirvan’s. Pirvan took the Minotaur’s bloody hands in his own battered ones, and from far off came the thought that he and Waydol were, in some sense, blood brothers now.

Then the world dissolved in a tumult of shouting, in which each man seemed to have a brass throat and be trying to make more noise than all the rest together. All it did for Pirvan was to make his head ache worse.

Haimya was standing before him, and he held out the leather strip to her. Instead she leaned against him. He thought this was a touching gesture but the wrong time and place, until she went to her knees. He had just time to squat down and catch her before she fainted-and then when he wanted to get up, he found that his legs had finally mutinied.

Pirvan didn’t faint. He remembered what seemed like a small army of people running onto the field, with Birak Epron and Rubina in the lead. From somewhere else came Fertig Temperer, a kender, and a small man with silver hair and muddy blue robes.

He remembered being told that the man had a name, though not what it was, and that he was a priest of Mishakal. He remembered Rubina hugging both him and Haimya, and dropping her staff, which was nearly trampled before Birak Epron drew his sword and drove the crowd back to a safe distance.

Then Sir Pirvan of Tiradot did not precisely faint. But he took Haimya’s hand, and for a long time after that he did not remember what he did or what happened around him in any great detail.