Knights of the Sword

Chapter 2

“All seems in order,” Sir Niebar said. “I regret that it took so long to be sure.”

Sir Pirvan of Tiradot frowned. “Do you imply a fault in our accounting?” He hoped his tone could convey a sense of injury rather than his taking refuge in the Measure’s dictum that no knight will ever wittingly insult another.

Although if all knights had always lived up to every part of the Measure, the Solamnic chivalry would long since have either brought perfection to themselves and the world or gone mad trying to obey too many different rules at once.

The thieves of Istar had prided themselves on a complex and comprehensive set of customs to regulate the conduct of “night workers.” They had, however, never committed the ultimate folly of the Knights of Solamnia, which was to write everything down in a multitude of stout volumes.

“It does not,” Niebar replied. “Indeed, it reflects your success and prudent management. Your manor is doing well.”

“That is Haimya’s doing more than mine,” Pirvan said. “Fate had it that she leave off journeying for some years, when Gerik and Eskaia were young. In that time she discovered a gift, even a taste, for running a manor.”

And if you even think too loudly that we should be able to spend more of our own money to support the knights’ work, so that they have to spend less, I will knock you down and Haimya will geld you with a dull pruning hook.

Niebar rose to his full height, then bit back an oath. He had not been at Tiradot Manor long enough to remember which rooms were too low for his considerable height. He rubbed his scalp with one hand and thrust out the other to Pirvan.

The former thief turned Solamnic Knight took the proffered hand. He even managed a sincere smile, though the sincerity came more from the imminence of Niebar’s departure than from a genuine regard for the man.

Well, somewhat. There is no pleasure in his company, but he is honest, brave, and courteous without making a show of any of these virtues. Worse men have taken the Knights’ Oath.

The two knights walked down the spiral stair from the solar room atop the tower at the west end of the great hall. The outer door led to the courtyard of the fortified manor, where Pirvan’s groom and stableboy had already led out Niebar’s horse, and where Niebar’s squire and serving boy had already mounted.

“Farewell, Pirvan,” Niebar said. “I will not wish you a quiet year, because neither you nor your lady wife have much taste for that. But I will pray that what you wish for most will come to you, and soon.”

Niebar had to be past forty, older than Pirvan, but he leaped into the saddle with the agility of a youth, without disturbing his horse, except for what might have been a sour look and a faint whicker. Then the gate swung open, three pairs of boot heels pressed into three sets of equine flanks, and the year’s visitation party trotted off.

* * * * *

Pirvan waited until the last scrawl of yellow dust vanished from across the green horizon, then went in search of Haimya. Learning that she and the women were down by the millstream doing their best to wash winter out of the woolens, he went the other way, toward the ruined keep that was the oldest surviving human habitation on the Tiradot lands.

Built in the Age of Might, it had housed local lords of varying degrees of honor or rapacity until the Third Dragon War, in which it fell variously to both human and draconic foes. By the end of the war, it was uninhabitable.

When prosperity returned to the land, the then lords of Tiradot decided that the times of living in a fortress were past. They built a stout-walled, peak-roofed house with three floors and two wings, and all the appurtenances of a large farm as well, then surrounded the whole affair with a wall designed to keep out cattle thieves and cutpurses rather than armies.

Some generations later, another lord of Tiradot died without heirs, leaving the manor to the Knights of Solamnia. As the terms of the Swordsheath Scroll further generations afterward left the knights all property they had previously possessed, the Great Meld had made no difference in the status of Tiradot.

What eventually did make a difference was the need of the knights for the services of one Pirvan the Spell-Thief of Istar. When he prevented a renegade mage from unleashing Frostreaver axes on the world and helped bring down a black dragon revived untimely from dragonsleep, these feats were held to make him worthy of acceptance as a Knight of the Crown.

The price of his admission was to be as one of the eyes and ears set about the world, and particularly about Istar (in whose territory the manor lay), charged to him by Sir Marod. To do this properly he needed lands and other property suited to his station, and thus Tiradot Manor fell to his lot.

Pirvan was not sure to this day, some ten years later, who had fallen to whom. He had once heard a crown called “a splendid misery”; owning a manor often seemed much the same, on a more modest level.

At least one could say that the name “Pirvan of Tiradot” sounded better on the ear and in the heart than the name that he might otherwise have borne, one whispered behind his back but well known for all that:

“Pirvan the Wayward.”

* * * * *

As always, when bleak thoughts paraded through his mind like a band of drunken ogres, Pirvan found relief in vigorous exercise. A swift side journey to the armory gave him climbing irons, leather trousers and sleeveless tunic, rope, tool belt and pouches, and spike-soled boots. All the metal hanging about him clinked and jingled like tinkers hard at work as he walked out of the gate, toward the old keep.

The walls still rose some ten times Pirvan’s height on three sides, though they seemed even more cracked and crumbling than before. In places, the rubble core now dripped stones where before solid blocks had kept all tight and orderly.

Time to sell the rights to the villagers to quarry this old pile, Pirvan thought. There’s a good plenty of new houses and new rooms to old houses, not to mention stones for walks and walls, living up here. When I feel sour in mind or body, there will always be trees to climb.

The keep was a quarter of an hour’s walk, and the road to it was also the main road from the village that went with the manor. Pirvan passed a goatherd with her flock, a carter with a load of barrels (new, empty ones from the local coopers, judging from their polish, rattling staves and the speed the cart was making), several small boys doing nothing in particular, and an older lad carrying home two scythes freshly sharpened at the smith’s.

One and all, they greeted Pirvan with courteous respect rather than servility. This was very much to his taste, and would have been more so if he’d been sure why they did it. Was it their natural custom, their knowledge of what an exceedingly odd sort of lord and knight he was, or the growing suspicion of the Knights of Solamnia spreading across Istar?

To be sure, even the last and worst reason hardly meant danger. Istar’s claim to be the seat of all virtue in the world was more uttered than honored, and even many Istarians could not say the word “kingpriest” without smiling. It would be generations before the Knights of Solamnia had to contend with the hostility already shown toward nonhumans and human “barbarians”-unless the knights had to step forth as defenders of those folk.

Which, in truth, they ought to do. Indeed, ought to have done before now. But the knights had gained too much at the time of the Great Meld by fighting Istar’s battles. Too much that they would be reluctant to lose over a minotaur thrown from a tavern without even being allowed to get drunk first, or a kender maid molested when nothing belonging to anyone else could be found on her person …

More dark thoughts, Pirvan realized. At this rate he would need to be going up and down the keep until noon to clear his head.

* * * * *

The keep walls were in even worse condition than Pirvan had remembered. His men-at-arms had the right to use them for climbing practice and other training, but there were only eight of them. A dozen knights climbing in full armor could hardly have left these gouges and cracks, and Pirvan wondered if the local boys were using the keep for wagers and dares.

Another reason for pulling the lot down, before one of those bold ones breaks his neck and his parents’ hearts.

Pirvan had to find a new route to the top before he could climb, then just for the challenge found another new route for his second climb. That one proved longer and harder than it had seemed, and when Pirvan reached the top, he was drenched with sweat, bleeding on several knuckles and one cheek, and quite prepared to catch his breath, then turn homeward.

“Good day,” said a cheerful voice from out of sight beyond the battlements. “May I offer you some water?”

Pirvan moved up another finger’s breadth, slapped both hands down on a flat stone, and vaulted onto the roof of the keep. He drew his dagger as he landed, rolled, and came up with it held by the point, ready to throw.

But his wife, Haimya, had already drawn her own knife, as well as the buckler, hardly larger than a pot lid, with which she was so deft. They stood on guard against one another for a moment, then, as one, sheathed their knives and embraced.

“As well we didn’t decide to practice,” Haimya said, bending down. “We might have punctured the water bag, and Kiri-Jolith knows you look like a man who needs a drink.”

Pirvan was too busy uncorking the bag to do more than nod. He spoke only after the water, laced with extract of tarberry and a hint of lemon, had washed the dust and sweat from his mouth and throat.

“Bless you, Haimya,” he said. “It was a pleasure to see you. How did you come up?”

“By the stairs,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes. No one could fault her courage or her skill with arms, but she had little head for heights and had never quite gotten over being ashamed of this.

“And how can it be a pleasure to see me when all you’ve looked at is the water bag?” she added, hands on her hips. The pose brought out the full splendor of her muscular figure, as tall as her husband’s and, if anything, broader across the shoulder, without being any the less desirable.

She wore a loose tunic over men’s breeches and low boots on her long-toed feet, and it did not hurt that the tunic was damp enough to cling closely in interesting places. The breeches, too-and Pirvan gently put a hand on each of his wife’s hips, then kissed her on each cheek before his lips found hers.

They stood that way for some while, the pleasures of lovers, old married couples, and tried battle-comrades all mingling in the kisses and the embraces. It was impossible afterward to tell who first took a step backward, but both laughed.

“A good thing, too,” Haimya said. “My knees were beginning to tremble from all this standing close.” She brushed a hand across his cheek. “If they’d started shaking the keep-”

Pirvan made a rude gesture and trapped Haimya’s hand with his. “Standing close” was the oldest of their pet phrases, going back to the time after their first quest when they had known that they must part for a while. Haimya had said that a time might come for them to “stand close,” and so it had, which Pirvan considered the greatest good fortune ever to come his way.

At last he forced the pleasure of Haimya’s touch from his mind. “Does anything call you down from here?”

“No duty that I can think of,” she replied. “But if we stay up here much longer, surely something will happen. Besides, I promised the maids to help bring the laundry back from the stream.”

“So be it.”

Pirvan took another drink before he left, then Haimya drank, then he emptied the rest of the bag over her head and licked the drops off her cheek and neck, which had both sets of knees trembling before the last drop was gone.

* * * * *

Haimya drew a few stares on the way back to the house, as her tunic was damper and closer-clinging than before. However, none of the stares held anything that Pirvan could fault. It was well known in the land that the Lady of Tiradot was very fine to look at, but if you did more than look, she would not even waste time complaining of you to her lord, but settle the matter at once and in a way that might leave you inapt for any woman for years to come.

“I trust Sir Niebar the Nuisance found us trustworthy for another year,” Haimya said as they passed the roadside shrine to Mishakal.

Pirvan nodded, stepping aside briefly to sprinkle the last few drops from the bag as a libation on the dusty stone.

“He does his best, and surely neither he nor his people ate the larders bare in four days.”

“A wizard with a good scrying spell could have done the same work in a day or less, and eaten little or nothing.”

“He would still have needed escorts,” Pirvan said. “There is the odd bandit, and there is always the dignity of the order. Also, a wizard working truly potent magic can eat like a tree-feller in the winter woods.”

Haimya’s gesture was fierce, also eloquent of what she thought of upholding the dignity of the Knights of Solamnia out of her private purse or her children’s inheritance.

“Besides,” Pirvan continued, lowering his voice, “we are a trifle too close to Istar to play host to a wizard not from an Istarian temple without setting tongues wagging. Tongues whose wagging might reach the ears of those about the kingpriest.”

“One day, the folk of Istar will have to choose between their worship of their own virtue and the worship of the True Gods,” Haimya said with a grimace. “I suppose there’s nothing we can do in the meantime, except pray that they make the right choice?”

“That, and serve the knights. They are not yet under Istar’s yolk.” And one of Marod’s purposes and mine is to see that they never are.

They were almost to the gate now, and ran the last fifty paces. As they burst into the courtyard, laughing like children, they met their own children running toward them.

“Papa, Mama,” Gerik and Eskaia shouted. “You have a visitor. He waits in the great hall.”

Pirvan and Haimya stared at each other, a nearly audible prayer on both their faces that Sir Niebar had not returned.

“It is not that skinny knight,” Eskaia added, reading her parents’ mood as she did so often and easily. “This man is not skinny at all.”

“Jemar the Fair?” Haimya asked, falling into the spirit of the game. Their old sea barbarian comrade-in-arms had put on a fair amount of weight since he had married Eskaia’s namesake, a merchant princess of Istar, and taken to family life.

“No. He is not fat, either, but tall. Very tall,” Gerik put in.

“How many eyes does he have?” Pirvan asked.

The children grinned. “We can’t tell, because he has a patch over the left eye.”

“Yes, and the other one we see looks red, as if he has been weeping or without sleep.”

Pirvan and Haimya exchanged quick glances. Grimsoar One-Eye had been Pirvan’s friend and sometime comrade during his thieving days, and was not much given to weeping. Nor did he often go without sleep, or sleep without snoring like an earthquake.

Except when he was in haste, and if he had come to Tiradot in haste, it would be well to learn why-also in haste.

“Gerik, go to the kitchen and have chilled wine and cakes brought to the small solar,” Pirvan said. “Eskaia, you run down to the millstream and say that your mother has private business and asks the maids to forgive her for not helping them bring the washing up.”

“Why do the maids need an apology from Mother?” Gerik said.

“Because she is breaking a promise she made to them,” Pirvan said sharply. “Anytime you break a promise, you apologize to those to whom you made it. Your mother and I do it, the grand master of the knights does it, the kingpriest does it.” If he still fears the True Gods, that is.

“Therefore, you will also do it.”

“Yes, Father,” Gerik said. He sounded subdued, if not precisely repentant, and scurried off toward the kitchen with the air of not wishing to be under his parents’ eyes any longer than necessary.

“He has been spending too much time with those three pestilential lordlings of Fren Gisor’s,” Haimya whispered. “We shall have to-”

“We can and will,” Pirvan said, tucking her arm under his. “But after we hear Grimsoar out. If we are going to appear dressed like this even before an old friend, we owe him haste at least!”