Knights of the Sword

Chapter 20

Darin no longer had to fight an urge to climb to Gullwing’s tops. The ship had no mast left standing.

Even from the deck, the view was less clear than it had been. The magic storms were filling the air with clouds, rain, mist, spray, and everything else to block the eye. Also, the ship was a trifle lower in the water.

The Minotaur’s Heir wondered if Tarothin’s cabin was still watertight. If Gullwing sank much lower, the crew was going to have to rescue the wizard whether he wished it or not, unless he could conjure up a fish’s gills and go on working magic underwater.

The magic storms were still visible, however. Both now reared as high as hills above all the mist and spray. The green mist wall was fighting back with lightning bolts; great clouds of steam erupted as the onrushing waves quenched them.

At least no actual magic seemed to be spilling out of the storm area to endanger the ships at sea, either Jemar’s or Istar’s. Even wind and waves seemed less of a menace. Darin had six oars out on each side, and Gullwing was slowly opening the distance.

Meanwhile, a keen-sighted crewman said that he had seen Istarian ships sailing close to shore. Darin himself had seen Jemar’s ships heading about, straight for the mouth of the cove.

He hoped that they were doing this to carry out their task, and not because they were in distress. No one ever sailed to safety aboard a ship grounded to avoid sinking or holed on rocks.

At least there were other sailors besides Darin who could pilot Jemar’s ships through the passage. Darin could give his full attention to keeping his own ship afloat-and with it, the wizard on whose efforts all still might stand or fall.

* * * * *

Waydol’s armor was an old-fashioned leather shirt sewn with iron rings, a helmet large enough to cook dinner for a dozen men, and bronze greaves. His weapons included a clabbard, the saw-edged minotaur broadsword, two katars on his belt, plus a third strapped to his left wrist, and an arena-fighter’s rack of four shatangs on his back.

Pirvan suspected that before the day was over there would be men dropping dead from the sheer sight of Waydol fitted for war. He would hardly need to touch them with any of his steel.

He himself was profoundly grateful that this time he was fighting at Waydol’s side, and not against the Minotaur.

“Any word of Darin?” he asked.

Waydol shook his head. Pirvan noticed that he’d put sharp steel tips on his horns, to keep them from splitting if they struck armor. It reminded him of the efforts some Knights of Solamnia devoted to protecting their mustaches, a problem that had never concerned Pirvan. His chin was well arrayed when he chose, but his upper lip had failed to produce anything that didn’t look like an undernourished caterpillar.

Birak Epron came up and greeted both Pirvan and Waydol. Behind him his men were drawn up, reinforced to more than three hundred by some of Waydol’s men and deserters from the levies. There was even a rumor of an Istarian cavalry sergeant.

The sea breeze had now risen to a brisk wind, and the company banner rippled and snapped. The breeze was also blowing every form of murk in from the sea, though not letting it pool into vast, impenetrable banks. Jemar’s ships ought to be able to make their way into the cove safely, and ashore the fighting men would not have to fight half-blind.

“I’ve sent out boats to pilot Jemar’s ships into the cove,” Waydol said. “They should also bring word of Darin, if Jemar has sighted him.”

No one cared to put any of the other possibilities into words. Pirvan had wondered if there was anything in the Measure against praying for the survival of outlaws, then decided that he did not care. He would leave nothing undone to turn aside from his friend and comrade Waydol the fate of losing heir, band, and stronghold all in one day.

A mounted messenger came up, trotting as he’d been told to. Pirvan had knocked one galloper out of the saddle with his own fists, and after that, orders about sparing the horses were taken more seriously. Everyone probably feared that Waydol would punch the next galloper.

“Lord Waydol! The Istarians are coming ashore about an hour’s march to the east. Those who saw reckon not less than a thousand.”

The Minotaur nodded. “Then those who face us will be two-thirds levies, if the battle begins now.”

“It might. Beliosaran has a reputation even beyond Istar. He is quite capable of throwing the levies at us, to use us up and spare his own Istarians until the reinforcements arrive.”

“That is the tactics of a butcher, not a captain in war.”

“Do I seem ready to argue?”

Waydol grunted amicably. “No. Just be ready to fight, though. You may dislike fighting the innocent, but half the men will lose heart if you and your lady aren’t in the front.”

As if Waydol’s words had summoned her, Haimya rode up, leading Pirvan’s horse. Thanks to more captures, the knight had now awarded himself a proper cavalry captain’s war-horse, not trained for knightly fighting, but fit for everything else.

“Have we searched the outer camp for women and children?” Pirvan asked. “Deserters can work out their own fate now, but I won’t leave refugees behind.”

“I would rather have held the outer camp with a rear guard,” Waydol said.

Pirvan looked at Birak. They’d argued this point before, and both knew that it was sentiment overruling sound judgment. The Minotaur could not readily bear to give up easily even a trifle of what had been his for so long.

“They’d just surround it with a handful of men, then move on to the stronghold,” Pirvan said. “Then the men in the outer camp would be cut off. We’ve agreed long since that everyone who’s sworn to you should have a chance to make it back through the gap and aboard ship.”

Waydol nodded. He seemed too downcast to speak. Then they all heard trumpets-some as discordant as Waydol’s, others the silver-throated tones of Istarian battle signals.

Drums followed.

And Waydol threw back his head and gave a bellow of challenge and defiance that made all the martial music of the attackers seem like children with toy instruments.

* * * * *

Jemar forced himself not to stand looking over the shoulder of the leadsman as Windsword crept through the gap in the cliffs and into Waydol’s cove. The leadsman had enough work to do, and that work meant life or death for everyone aboard the ship, without his captain dripping sweat on him!

Life or death for more than Windsword, too. If she got out of the channel and struck, it would likely as not block the way for the ships behind. Some might even join her aground. All were following as closely as a file of sheep passing through a gap in a fence, with the pilot boat Waydol had sent out ahead of them all.

At least the channel was wide enough for every ship to use its oars or sweeps. Some of them could only make bare steerageway without wind, but all could navigate in-and Habbakuk grant that they could make it out again.

The last rocks slid past, the channel began to open out into the cove, and Jemar looked up at the cliffs. They surrounded the cove on three sides; the fourth was a more gentle slope, covered with huts, gardens storehouses, and everything else needed for a band of outlaws the size of a fair village. Atop the slope were stables, forges, and a few stone huts that looked older than the rest of the place, or perhaps were just built minotaur-style, which hadn’t changed much since elves had ruled Ansalon.

Jemar looked around the cove, measuring it with a seaman’s eye. If there was enough deep water and the holding ground was good, it had room for twice the ships he’d brought. There also seemed to be a fair number of boats drawn up on the shore, and the ships would be putting theirs over the side even before they anchored.

Another step forward, not to be taken again. They could still fall, though, and from a fatal height.

The anchoring gang could do its work with even less watching by its captain than the leadsman. Now he could remain on deck until the last of his ships was safely through the passage.

Jemar wanted to howl like a maimed wolf. Instead he called for a messenger.

“Go below and see how Lady Eskaia fares.”

“Aye, Captain. We-we’re all praying for her.”

“Well begun is half-done, lad. Now, run!”

* * * * *

The levies came straight out of the mist, and Pirvan and Waydol met them head-on.

At least they did for all of five minutes, long enough to force the levies to deploy from what might be called a column of march into what was no doubt intended to be a battle line.

It took them nearly half an hour and language that made even Haimya blush to make that battle line fit to advance.

By then Pirvan and Waydol had their three hundred men well in hand, and ready to give ground at whatever pace might prove necessary.

Most of the levies carried pikes, spears, or swords. Few had much armor, and the archers were still few and badly scattered.

“Probably no one captain commanding all of them,” Birak Epron said. “Certainly no Istarian, or they’d be better arrayed.”

“Then where are the Istarians?” Waydol asked.

“Probably off to the seaward flank,” Epron said. “Ready to join up with their comrades, then work around our flank and run right up our arse while the levies hold us in front.”

Then the thud of fast-moving horses on damp ground reached their ears-from the right, or landward flank.

Epron spat. “Remind me never to take up prophecy when I’m too old for soldiering.”

Pirvan nodded, and Epron bawled, “Form square to receive cavalry!”

The men managed the feat of not only forming the square, but also moving off at an angle while they were forming, opening the distance between them and the levies. They had just finished when the flank patrols rode into sight, hotly pursued by several score horsemen.

None of them looked like the dreaded Istarian cavalry. This time Pirvan gave the order directly.

“Square-kneel, archers-shoot!”

Unlike their opponents, Waydol’s picked rear guard was well supplied with archers. Indeed, the captains had eagerly sought men who were proficient with more than one weapon, and as a result a good many of the spearholders had bows slung across their backs.

The spears wavered and dropped, the square wriggled and writhed as the archers opened clear lines of sight, then suddenly an arrow-hail soared overhead. It was only a momentary blur against the clouds, and the wind sent some of the arrows badly astray.

Enough flew straight, however, considering the size of the target. The horsemen all looked like wealthy merchants for whom playing at knight was a hobby. Like their brethren on foot, they lacked the discipline to deploy quickly into their battle formation.

So they rode into range, a target a hundred paces wide and nearly that deep, just as the arrows came down.

Horses and men screamed. Men toppled to the ground, to writhe until other horses trampled them into stillness. A few horses fell; more went mad with pain, hurling otherwise sound riders to the ground.

The cavalry attack dissolved before the archers could shoot for the third time.

But the sight of their townsfolk dying under the arrows touched the courage of the infantry levies. Some of them darted out in front, screaming and shouting. Then a whole mob several hundred strong thrust out from the line and charged in a ragged mass toward the square.

At the same time, another score of horsemen rode out to join the survivors of the first attack. They slowed to pick their way over the bodies, but came on steadily toward Waydol’s square.

Waydol stepped to the side of the square facing the horsemen, drawing two shatangs from his rack as he went. The men in front of him crouched low. He raised his right arm, swung it back, then snapped it forward so that it was a blur.

The shatang flew even faster. One moment it was in Waydol’s hand. The next moment it was buried halfway to its butt in the chest of a horse. The horse, dead in midstride, crashed down on top of its rider.

Before the horsemen could even notice their comrade’s fall, the second shatang was in the air. This time Waydol took a man.

He took the man in the chest, and the man flew backward off his horse. He was in midair long enough for Pirvan to see that the shatang had pierced completely through breastplate and body, to stick out a good arm’s length behind the man’s back.

The second cavalry attack was more prudent than the first. They fled, for the most part without having to be killed. A few archers sent farewell arrows after them, before turning their attention to the onrushing infantry levies.

Pirvan knew this was a crucial moment for Waydol’s men. If one town’s infantry hurt them seriously, others would be encouraged to swarm in. If they stood off the first assault, it might dishearten the rest.

Then Pirvan could lead the square back to the stronghold and the sea, with no fear of anything except Istarians, magic, storms, treason, and falling off his horse. He could do something about the last danger by walking, but as for the rest-

Then the infantry was on the square.

Waydol seemed about to draw his clabbard, then to realize that he couldn’t wield it without lopping heads and limbs of friends. Instead he drew the third shatang for thrusting, while the other hand sprouted a katar.

For all his preparations and might, Waydol was not at the place where the square gave way. That honor fell to Pirvan and Haimya.

It began when one shrewd levy swordsman ducked under a spear thrust and stabbed the spearman. This opened a gap, and the swordsman had comrades with equal courage, skill, or luck. Suddenly three spearmen were down, four levies were pushing back the second rank, and some archer from the far side of the square loosed a wild shot and hit a friend in the second rank.

Pirvan vowed to kick the wild shooter in a vital spot at his first free moment, which he suspected would not come quickly. What came instead was what seemed half the population of a village, shouldering its way into the square.

They met Pirvan and Haimya, Pirvan with sword and dagger and Haimya with broadsword and shield. An attacker tried pulling her shield aside with a billhook; Pirvan stabbed him. His comrade swung an axe down at Pirvan’s unprotected head; Haimya sidestepped and caught the axe on her shield, then cut the axeman’s legs out from under him.

Meanwhile, Pirvan had shifted to Haimya’s temporarily unprotected side, wielding sword and dagger in a blur of motion. It was intended less to kill than to alarm. It succeeded. Several advancing levies became retreating levies.

Not all, however. A man ran at Pirvan with a spear, to be lifted off his feet on the point of Waydol’s shatang. The man was still screaming as Waydol shook the heavy spear, flinging the man into the middle of his comrades.

Trying to avoid the flying body, some of those comrades moved the wrong way. Some came within reach of Waydol. One of these screamed as a hoof crushed his foot, another died gurgling as the katar sliced his throat.

On the other flank, Pirvan and Haimya faced four men, all with swords and apparently either brave enough or witless enough to stand and fight. It did them little good.

Haimya hooked one sword aside with her shield and slashed the next man to the right with her sword. Pirvan ducked under Haimya’s shield and stabbed the man with the immobilized sword. This put him behind the two other men, with Haimya in front. The two men between them drew about three more breaths before they were both stretched on the ground.

Pirvan whirled to see to his back, but discovered that it was safe. Seeing their point slaughtered, the rest of the attacking column was retreating. In fact, they were running as if they expected Pirvan, Haimya, and Waydol to sprout wings and fly after them.

Pirvan wished he could. It would do no one any harm, least of all the levies, if they kept running until they were back in their local taverns, telling lies about their prowess over the wine.

As it was, the whole line of the levies drew back out of bowshot. From the way their ranks heaved like boiling porridge, Pirvan suspected that they would be slow to attack again.

“I think we have outstayed our welcome here,” he said. “Send the messengers to bring in the mounted patrols, and let us be off.”

Waydol nodded. “I did not have half the fighting I had anticipated, you know. However, there was a reward. I saw you and your lady fighting as a team, when I could appreciate it.”

Then Waydol roared with laughter, as loud as his challenge before. The levies, Pirvan noticed, didn’t seem to be able to tell the difference. Some of them broke and ran for the woods even before the echoes of the Minotaur’s laughter died.

* * * * *

Jemar’s boat grated on the gravel of the cove’s beach. The captain leaped out and ran uphill, toward the hut that showed the blue-staff banner of Mishakal.

Eskaia had been there for the best part of an hour, ever since the pilot boat offered to take her and Delia ashore. How the pilot had learned of Eskaia’s danger, Jemar did not know.

Waydol had a priest of Mishakal called Sirbones; maybe he had something to do with it. Likely enough, he was farther forward, though, closer to the fighting that was spreading along the landward side of the cove and creeping closer to the stronghold’s entrance. Rubina seemed to have disappeared-or at least no one knew where she was, though Jemar suspected that this was for fear of asking.

The only consolation for Jemar was if the Black Robe had wholly thrown her magic to the side of the Istarians, they would together have swept the sea clean of all foes and be starting their deadly work on the land.

And now he could put all of this out of his mind and go see Eskaia. The pilot had also told the boatmasters to start loading the women and children, and some of Jemar’s ships already had crowded decks.

The slope steepened quickly, so that a run became a walk, and the walk on a path became a walk up a flight of stone steps. He wanted to keep walking, right through the door and into the hut, to take Eskaia in his arms.

But the door was solid oak behind the blue paint, and locked as well. Jemar knocked, then stood, trying to smell out death or health within. The village was none too clean, so he was still straining nose and ears when the door opened.

It was not Delia, but one of the outlaw women-girl, rather. She could hardly be more than fourteen.

Jemar started to raise a hand to cuff her out of the way, for her impudence in being here at all, then stopped. The girl was smiling.

“Is she-?”

The girl nodded, then nearly went flat on her back as Jemar rushed in, to trip over a stool and nearly stun himself against the far wall of the hut.

“Jemar,” came a familiar voice from the shadows at the end of the hut, “is this how you enter a sickroom, and a house of Mishakal as well?”

Eskaia’s voice was weak, but under that weakness the old bite had returned. And the pain, the labored breathing, the sense of a desperate struggle for the strength to speak at all-they were gone.

“She is well,” a voice Jemar hardly recognized as Delia’s came from the other end of the hut. “So is the babe. It will go to full term, though the midwife should be wary of its breathing when it is born, and it may be sickly at first. Also, I forbid your lady to take any more sea voyages until the babe is born.”

“Delia, I can hardly walk or ride in a litter all the way home,” Eskaia said briskly. “Shall we agree that I stay ashore once we are home?”

“Oh-of course.”

That easy agreement sounded so unlike Delia that Jemar turned toward her. Then he stepped forward to catch her in his arms to keep her from falling off her stool.

Delia seemed to have gone from nearly plump to nearly half-starved in hours. Her face was so pale that it seemed to repel color, except for the dark circles under her eyes. Jemar could feel her trembling and the foul sweat on her.

“A pallet!” he snapped at the girl.

“Aye, Lord.”

He held Delia. “You did not spare yourself, and-the gods tell me how to thank you. I don’t know. Just-whatever I can-we can do to ease you-”

“The pallet will be enough for now,” Delia said.

“But Sirbones-”

“He has more important work, as the wounded come in. And Rubina-she does good, not harm, now. But-her touching me now-would not be wise.”

“I should think not!” Jemar and Eskaia exclaimed together.

“No, really. Rubina made-chose the wrong color. Her heart-Neutral, at worst. Now-now she betrays Takhisis. The Dark Queen will make her pay. Oh, she will pay.”

The girl appeared at that moment with the pallet, and Delia lay back in Jemar’s arms with a grateful sigh. In a moment she was stretched out on the pallet, apparently asleep.

Jemar bent and kissed her, then turned to his wife. “I will have you know, my lady, that I have kissed no other woman but you since we were wed. My oath upon it.”

“Well, I hope you do not soon have another such occasion for kissing,” Eskaia said. Then she actually laughed.

* * * * *

The afternoon shadows had stretched nearly across the clearing when Niebar reached the edge of it. On the far side began a path that led to the rear of the Chained Ogre. It passed a few farms that would surely have watchdogs and the like, but no villages, let alone towns, where seven armed strangers would stand out like a minotaur in a kender village.

Niebar looked behind him to be sure that the horses were invisible from the clearing. He saw no horses, but he did see a kender standing in a shaft of sunlight.

Niebar’s first thought was of betrayal.

The second was of the horses! If the raiders came back, with or without Gesussum Trapspringer, and found that their mounts had been “handled” until they wandered off-

“Oh, don’t worry about your horses,” the kender said. This had the opposite of a reassuring effect on Niebar.

“Are you a wizard?”

“No, and we’re standing too close to the clearing to chat, unless there’s somebody you want to listen to us.”

Niebar flushed at being reminded by a kender of the discipline of silence. He let his new companion lead him to a stand of pine saplings, in what must have been a clearing not too many years before.

“You are here for Gesussum, aren’t you?” the kender asked. “Because if you aren’t, then we’d take it kindly if you explained-”

The kender went on for a while, but Niebar was able to extract from the monologue that he was a Rambledin, that they were a little sorry for their abandoning Gesussum Trapspringer, and that they wanted to help anyone trying to rescue him.

“We can guard your horses,” the kender finished. “We can …” He went off again on a long list of possible services, half of which would cause more danger than they gave help.

“We can warn you of the tattooed men,” the kender said finally. “We can’t fight them-they belong to the temples and we’d have to flee if we did, but-”

“The tattooed men?” Niebar said. Involuntarily, his right hand came up and scratched under his left armpit.

“Yes, yes. That’s where they have the tattoo. Silly custom, but I suppose the kingpriest asks it. At least they seem to work for him, and I suppose he needs help. He wouldn’t be able to spend all day preparing or whatever he does if he didn’t. He-”

The knight had stopped listening. The blood was pounding in his ears, and his whole body seemed a little more alive.

Tonight they might do more than rescue the kender and learn what he’d seen during his captivity. They might encounter the Servants of Silence-and Niebar vowed that if it cost him his own life, one of them would leave the inn a prisoner.

It was time that honest folk learned why the kingpriest was, in the name of virtue, turning criminals loose on Istar.

It was also time for him to start listening to the kender Rambledin again. Kender could talk your arm off, then start on your toes, then be insulted when they discovered that you weren’t listening to them!

* * * * *

Aurhinius stamped his boots firmly into place and looked over his shoulder at his secretary.

The young man was busy strapping on a helmet in a way that showed he’d seldom worn one. A breastplate leaned against the chair beside him.

“Are you going to wear armor?”

“I won’t have many chances, my lord.”

“Are you expecting universal peace tomorrow, or my imminent death?”

The secretary flushed. “Well, neither. But-well, it’s the biggest fight I’ve ever been close to.”

“Also the first one you’ve had to reach by boat,” Aurhinius said. “Have you ever tried to swim in armor?”

“No.”

“I have. I don’t recommend the experience. Nine men out of ten who try it end up feeding the fishes. It’s a small boat we’re taking to shore. While our magic and theirs seems to be holding a balance, that could change. There’s also the odd wave escaping from the balance.”

“Take the armor if you will, but put it on after we’re ashore.”

“Yes, my lord.”

The crew of Winged Lady cheered Aurhinius when he appeared on deck. He wished he had given them something to cheer about. Indeed, he felt more like a rat deserting a sinking ship in going ashore than a general putting himself at the head of his men.

It didn’t make it easier when he realized that, ashore, he would be beyond reach of this duel of storm magic. The fleet could perish with all hands, but he would be safe to lead his men into Waydol’s stronghold.

Or it might be Waydol who perished with his whole band. Aurhinius had asked every god he thought might have an answer, but none of them had told him if he should wish for the success of Zeboim’s minions or not!

* * * * *

Tarothin?

The Red Robe’s concentration on his spells left him enough physical awareness to know that water was seeping into his cabin. At least it seemed to be from below, so doubtless Gullwing was still afloat.

Idiot!

The tone was almost affectionate, and unmistakable.

Rubina. What do you want?

For you to take on yourself the whole burden of the battle.

You jest.

Hardly. What I have put into the storm magic will remain there. The priests of Zeboim lack the power to drive it out. Remember, I am a Black Robe, and I know more of their secrets than you.

But, why-?

Work ashore. The Istarians threaten to advance and cut off our folk. They have no wizard with them, and the minions of Zeboim cannot work ashore. Also, you can now do better at sea alone than with me.

But, Rubina-

Tarothin, I will not miss you long. But I will put into you a memory that you can call up whenever you wish.

If it’s the kind I suspect, wait until we have the victory.

Just like a man. Mind always on work, never allowing himself any time for pleasure.

Then there was gentle laughter, without a trace of mockery, and Rubina was gone from his mind.

But her strength was not gone from the magical barriers he was holding against the priests of Zeboim. Indeed, he could begin to see flaws in their spells, and if he worked swiftly, he might twist them about …