Knights of the Sword

Chapter 18

“Halt! Who goes there?” a sentry called.

Pirvan had been about to dismount, but stopped with one leg still over the saddle. Then he swung back onto his horse. It was still no proper charger, but at least it wasn’t the ravens’ fodder he’d ridden the first day at Waydol’s camp.

Waydol had ordered the patrols increased, mixing cavalry and infantry now that they had nearly forty horses. Pirvan, as a Knight of Solamnia, was assumed to be the best leader of mounted troops, as well as expected to be the most skilled in the difficult art of patrolling.

Along with Birak Epron and Haimya, Pirvan had a good laugh over that.

Less amusing was the danger that he might have to fight Istarian soldiers or their allies. Honor bound him to lead and defend Waydol’s men until Jemar arrived to carry them to safety. However, if his honor ended by forcing him to kill Istarian soldiers, the rulers of the city might have something to say to the Knights of Solamnia about one Sir Pirvan of Tiradot.

So far, however, there had been no such awkward encounters. Pirvan had provided biscuit and salt fish for starving bands of fleeing farmers, sighted Istarian cavalry patrols at great distances, and given would-be recruits for Waydol directions to the camp. He had yet to draw, let alone bloody, a weapon since he began riding the patrol rounds.

Tonight’s patrol was five mounted men, including Pirvan, and ten more on foot. Half of the foot soldiers were Birak Epron’s veterans, who were teaching the other half, from Waydol’s recruits.

From the edge in his voice, the sentry sounded like one of the new men.

Pirvan urged his horse forward, while signaling the others to spread out to each side of him. He doubted that they faced an ambush or serious opposition, but it was always well to have a few men clear of any trap, to ride or run and bring warning.

It was a night of patchy clouds, but otherwise clear, and Solinari was waxing as Lunitari waned. There was enough light to tell friend from foe, with a little luck, which was the best a warrior could hope for, in night fighting.

“Halt!” came again. “Who goes-ahhh!”

The sentry’s scream was that of a man caught in the jaws of a monster. Pirvan shuddered in spite of himself, and of the certainty that only human foes roamed tonight. Now he dug in his heels, and the horse moved up to a canter, the fastest he dared take it in darkness on uncertain ground.

Pirvan and his riders overran the sentry post almost before they knew it was at hand. The knight had a brief glimpse of a body lying gape-throated on the ground, with two figures in dark clothing standing over him. Then a third and fourth enemy loomed out of the darkness, both mounted, both also dark-clad. Pirvan realized that all four of the attackers were far too neatly dressed to be outlaws, but were not Istarians unless the dark clothing was a disguise.

That was his last untroubled thought for some time. In the next moment both mounted figures charged Pirvan, swords in hand. Pirvan was between them, and he and they swept past one another so fast that all he had to do was duck his head for their swords to clang together over his head, showering sparks but no blood.

Not so harmless was their charge into the middle of the infantry. The new recruits scattered, screaming. The veterans ran too, but silently and in a formed body, spears thrusting out like the quills of a porcupine. Pirvan drew his own sword, wheeled his horse, and rode back to help his men.

By the time he reached them, or where he thought they had been, the moonlight had faded, to leave Pirvan in that dreaded situation of not knowing where either friend or foe might be. So when a man on foot ran at him, thrusting with a spear, he did not cut the man’s head from his shoulders. Instead he slashed at the man’s arm, controlling his horse with his knees while he gripped the spear shaft with the other hand.

The man howled and let go of the spear as the sword tore his flesh. Pirvan lifted it, tested its balance, and realized that he had just acquired a serviceable lance.

This realization came not a moment too soon. The man was running at him again, a short sword in his good hand. Pirvan shifted his grip on the lance, wheeled his horse, and thrust downward.

The lancehead took the man in the throat, ripping it open, then tearing free. The dying man toppled to the ground; Pirvan’s horse nearly unseated him trying not to step on the writhing body.

“Behind you!”

Pirvan crouched low, wheeled his horse, and couched his lance in a single flow of motion. The enemy rider was too surprised to see a lance coming at him to do anything before the lance took him in the chest. He flew backward off his horse with a thump and a clang of armor, screamed once, screamed a second time as the man behind him rode over him, then lay still.

“We’ve taken the other two, Sir Pirvan!” a voice called from the darkness.

“Which two?”

“The ones who killed the sentry.”

“Keep them alive if they’re not dead. Or I’ll ram this lance up somebody’s arse!”

Both men turned out to be alive, which made two prisoners and three dead among the attackers, against three dead and one wounded among Pirvan’s men. It was not an exchange to be proud of, even if for the first time in his life he had fought in an actual battle like a knight of tradition, wielding a lance from horseback.

The best thing he could hope to salvage from tonight’s wreckage was learning who had sent these men into the jaws of his patrol. Somebody very bold, very careless of the lives of his men, or very eager to learn Waydol’s secrets-and none of these made for pleasant thoughts.

Darkness again lay within Pirvan, as well as around him, as the patrol turned about and marched for camp.

* * * * *

Aurhinius was perusing the last of a pile of letters, most of them concerned with one matter.

Several towns on the north coast were sending their levies west against Waydol. Their total strength might be as much as three thousand men. Add this to the two thousand Istarian regular troops already ashore, and if they concerted their attacks, they might overwhelm Waydol by sheer weight of numbers.

It would be a bloody victory even if a certain one, but blood would not daunt the commander ashore. Next in seniority to Aurhinius, High Captain Beliosaran had been the inevitable choice, in spite of his reputation for cruelty as well as courage.

However, it would take time for Beliosaran to gather all his men, more time for the town levies to assemble and march. Some of the towns might insist that Beliosaran detach some of his men, to take the place of their absent levies.

This, of course, risked making the whole bounty-hunt even more futile than it would be otherwise. Aurhinius wondered idly if even Beliosaran would dare attack Waydol with the number of men likely to survive hunger, fluxes, fevers, shoddy boots, swamps, snakes, ambushes, and simple loss of enthusiasm for war.

His secretary entered, as was his right, without knocking.

“Signal from Pride of the Mountains,” the man said.

He uttered the name with more than a touch of disdain, which was nearly universal toward the Karthayan ship in the fleet. It had proved neither well found nor well manned. The only reason Aurhinius had not prayed for a storm to dismast it was that it would then need an escort home, else the Karthayans who thought they were winning favor with the kingpriest would howl like starving wolves-probably for Aurhinius’s head.

“Anything important?”

“Possibly. They think their wizard, that Red Robe Tarothin, fell overboard.”

Aurhinius did not groan or utter other unmanly sounds. He did briefly wish Pride of the Mountains afflicted with shipworms and its crew with blue scab and the choking fever.

“Tarothin?” Aurhinius said. “Is he the same-?”

“Yes. The one who went to Crater Gulf, with Sir Pirvan, before the knights took him in. They say he was going with Pirvan to Waydol, but quarreled over a woman. A Black Robe, they say.”

“First wizard I’ve heard of with that much sap in him,” Aurhinius said. “Well, put some boats over and have a search made. It’s all but a flat calm, so there’s no danger to the boats and perhaps even some chance of finding Tarothin, if he’s not already drowned. It would be best if we could tell Sir Pirvan that we tried to find one of his old comrades.”

“Aye-aye, my lord.”

Alone, Aurhinius looked at the messages again, and then at the map on the bulkhead. Perhaps there was something he could do about matters on land, besides leaving them to fate, town levies, or Beliosaran.

The fleet carried close to a thousand seasoned soldiers, though many of them the worse for seasickness. They could be landed closer to Waydol’s stronghold than any Istarian or town soldiers now stood. Marched inland, they could enforce a truce between Waydol and his enemies, until Jemar the Fair removed the Minotaur’s men or it became plain that the Minotaur and the sea barbarian were plotting treachery.

Then there would be ample strength both ashore and afloat to deal with open enemies as they deserved.

* * * * *

Pirvan and Waydol walked side by side up the path to the Minotaur’s hut. It was narrow for two when one was a minotaur, but Pirvan had come to know it well in the last few days.

They said nothing for much of the way. Indeed, it sometimes seemed to Pirvan that he and Waydol said the most when they were silent. It was as if they had been friends for years-and it was a grief to Pirvan that the future could not hold such a friendship.

Waydol was adamant about returning to his homeland, resigned to whatever fate might await him there as long as he could first tell his people what he had learned about the humans. He was equally adamant about seeing his people and Darin provided for before he set sail.

Far off in darkness and fog, a pinkish glow pulsed and flickered.

“They have lit the beacons,” Waydol said. “It may help guide any friends who are joining us by sea. I doubt that it will help Jemar much. Any ship of good size close enough to see the beacons will be too close to the rocks. If she takes the ground now and the surf gets up before morning, we will be rescuing her people instead of they us.”

“Jemar’s a cautious man-for a sea barbarian, that is,” Pirvan added, as he heard Waydol trying not to laugh.

Another twenty steps brought them to the top of the path. The hut was a dim bulk in the fog, with a lantern burning golden above the door. Haimya wanted to learn the secret of Waydol’s lamp oil, which gave that particularly pleasing color as well as an agreeable scent.

“We have questioned the prisoners,” Waydol said, unbarring the door.

Pirvan was silent. His honor was involved in their not being tortured. He also could not stand alone against Waydol’s whole band if they thought such necessary.

“They talked freely enough,” Waydol added. “They’re levies from Biyerones, trying for the glory of the first kill against us among the townsfolk. I suppose they can claim it if they wish, but also the first dead.”

Not the last, though. Aloud, Pirvan said, “Are the towns all going bounty-hunting?”

“I doubt it is the bounty that lures them,” Waydol said. “They are most likely doing it to purge doubts of their loyalty. High Captain Beliosaran commands ashore now, and he has a reputation for being harsh with enemies, and for seeing them everywhere.”

Just the sort of man needed to change an honorable campaign into butchery, if given time, thought Pirvan. “Let us pray that the winds bring Jemar faster than Beliosaran or the town levies.”

“In my way, I shall do so,” Waydol said. He turned and now his voice was softer, as close to a whisper as nature allowed in a minotaur.

“There is something else I have wished to ask of you. No oath binds you, but if you had a son of an age to be looking upon women …”

Pirvan would have given much to be able to relieve the Minotaur’s evident embarrassment. Unfortunately he had not the remotest notion of what was on Waydol’s mind.

“Darin will remain behind when I sail,” Waydol continued. “His life is not bound to me forever. But in time, our band will also cease. Then he will be a man alone among men, needing to make his way in the world by what is in him.”

“I can give oath to guard him as if he were my own blood kin,” Pirvan said.

“You will do that without any oath, I know,” Waydol said. One immense hand rested on Pirvan’s shoulder-lightly, but after a sleepless night and a brisk fight, it made the knight’s knees sag.

“What I ask is that you-that you keep him from Lady Rubina. He-she does not seem the kind of woman that a young man should find first.”

This is asking me to light a fire in a barn full of hay and keep the barn from burning down. But Waydol had the right to ask anything of him, even the impossible.

“Lady Rubina hardly listens to me, though somewhat more to Birak Epron.”

“He is not oath-bound to me.”

“He is to me, and therefore to you. Also, he is a man of sense.” Pirvan grinned. “One of vigor, too, or so I have heard. He may well entertain the lady so that she has no time to cast eyes elsewhere.”

And gully dwarves are really dragons in disguise.

“Do not give me false hopes, Sir Pirvan.”

“Very well. Then I will give you a real one. My good lady calls your heir so splendid a young man that he will not be long in finding a woman worthy of him. What Lady Rubina may do will neither make nor mar him.”

“May it be so,” Waydol said. “Sir Pirvan, I must bid you good night. Can you find your way back alone?”

“He will not be alone,” came Haimya’s voice from the darkness.

“No,” Waydol said. “With you, Lady Haimya, he cannot be alone. May Darin be so fortunate.”

And as we end the night’s work with a prayer for a miracle …

The door thumped shut, and Haimya put an arm around her husband.

* * * * *

Tarothin managed at first to keep from his mind any thought of the vast depth of the water under him, and what it might hold.

Then he could not forget that the bottom was as far below him as the foot of a hill from the top. All of the distance was dark water, with the-gods-knew-what swimming about in it in search of food.

Natural creatures only, of course. He would have sensed it if the priests of Zeboim had been calling up anything else to their aid or the aid of their patroness.

Tarothin swallowed water, nearly choked, and for a moment floundered desperately. He calmed both breath and limbs, then resumed a steady stroke. It upheld both his body and his courage that he’d found the water warmer than he’d expected, and his swimming surer.

Yet even the warmest water will leech away a man’s strength if he is in it long enough. Slowly Tarothin felt his limbs grow heavier, his breath come harder, his thoughts come slower until they hardly came at all.

He was swimming almost by instinct when he struck something hard and slimy. He looked up, and redness glared down at him. Stared at him, for it was a single enormous red eye, and the hard, slimy surface he’d touched was the shell of a gigantic turtle-

Tarothin screamed-which was the best thing he could have done. The sound did not carry far in the fog, but it roused everyone aboard Gullwing.

The wizard had just time to realize that he’d touched the weed-grown rudder of a ship, and that the “eye” was its stern lantern, when a line splashed into the water beside him. He gripped it, determined to hold on with not only hands but also teeth and toes if need be.

He went on gripping it as the sailors hauled him in like a dead fish, over the railing, to land with a thump and a splash on a well-scrubbed deck. He made it to his knees before all the water he’d swallowed came back up, and stayed on his knees until his stomach was empty.

By then he had a circle of sailors around him. None of them were minotaurs, and none of them were the young giant who had to be the Minotaur’s Heir. Neither were their faces particularly friendly.

I suppose a half-naked, half-drowned wizard is not something that a respectable ship hauls aboard every night, he thought.

That thought reminded him of his staff, and stark terror at the thought of having lost it heaved him to his feet. He rose so suddenly that he found his staff by its cracking him across the back of the head. He unslung it, held it in both hands, using it partly as a crutch, and would have kissed it if he hadn’t been surrounded by those staring sailors.

Then the ring parted, and from what seemed to be near the masthead a strong man’s voice spoke.

“What has Habbakuk brought us now?”

* * * * *

Darin had invoked Habbakuk more to please his sailors than out of his own beliefs. But after he’d heard Tarothin out, and been satisfied that the Red Robe told the truth, he thought that the Fisher God had indeed done him and all his friends a favor.

“We must leave the fleet,” he told the Mate of the Deck. “There is danger, and we must warn Waydol and Sir Pirvan.”

“Eh, what about our oaths?” the mate asked.

“We cannot be bound by them now,” Darin said. “Not to Aurhinius. Our oaths to Waydol and Sir Pirvan come before those, though I doubt that Aurhinius personally has a hand in this.”

The mate looked bewildered. Darin groped for words that would sound true without revealing truths too horrifying to be spread abroad.

“The fleet sailed from Istar divided within its ranks. A faction opposed to Aurhinius plots mutiny, with the aid of certain mages. If they prevail, or even if they attempt to seize power, Aurhinius’s pledge to protect us will be worthless. If they prevail, the fleet may make war without mercy, against both us and Jemar.”

The mate whistled. “Well, then we’d best be about taking our leave. I’ll have one of the boats put over the side, with a mast and sail, and hang a lantern at the masthead. That’s close enough to the same height as our stern light, so anybody looking at it will think it’s us, until it’s too late.”

Darin wished he could do more than thank the mate for a cool seaman’s head in this crisis. He wished even more that he could be certain of being alive in a few days, to give that reward.

“Oh, and we’ll pad the oars a trifle, and douse the sails to make our shape smaller,” the mate went on. “And if any of the lads makes a noise, I’ll have his guts for a hatband!”

No one made a noise, the sails came down and the oars slid out in silence, and the lantern-bearing boat drifted off until it was lost in the fog. Then, at a soft whisper from the mate, the oarsmen began backing water, and Gullwing slipped astern out of the fleet and off into the night.