Knights of the Sword

Chapter 4

It was only the remnants of a storm from far to the north, beating on the rocks at the foot of the cliff. But even those remnants turned into breakers two men high when they reached shoal water.

When the breakers reached the rocks, the spray leaped to the top of the cliff, silver as it leaped, leaving rainbows as it fell back. By long-nurtured and finely honed instincts, the homecoming raiders of Darin, Heir to the Minotaur, opened the distance between them and the cliff, as much as the narrow path would allow.

All except Imsaffor Whistletrot. He perched on a jutting rock, just above the highest reach of the spray, and stared down into the water.

“No shellfish for dinner tonight,” he said with a grimace.

“I thought you hated oysters,” one of the men said.

“Oh, I do. But most of you big folk love them, which is one reason I’m not sure the same gods created you and kender, and you’ll be in a bad mood, which-”

Darin reached out one long arm, gripped Whistletrot by the collar, and drew him back to safer or even somewhat dry ground. This stretch of the coast seldom went long enough without rain for the ground to dry completely, which meant slippery footing for those unaccustomed to walking it.

Darin and his comrades did not complain of the weather. Their food came from root crops (which could well-nigh flourish in a swamp), from the trees and the animals of the forest, and from the sea. That this land was no friend to farmers was all the better for them, as they had no love for neighbors.

The big man looked up at the sky, alternately veiled and exposed by the dance of the clouds. “Best we make haste,” he said. “I can endure a cold victory feast, but the cooks will mutiny if they must serve it, and Waydol will have something to say as well.”

The pace quickened. Among the men, only Darin could have truly said that he loved Waydol. But every man here respected Waydol, valued his wisdom in war and council, and feared his tongue as much as, or more than, they did his fist.

Within minutes the path turned away from the sea and began to climb. No one who had not walked this path many times could have easily told where he was climbing to; the trees grew that quickly. Ferns and livid fungi that did not need sunlight also grew thickly where the trees left them space, and even a few ground-hugging vines flaunted dew-wet leaves among the decaying branches and needles.

Darin inhaled deeply. This forest was the true smell of home for him, for all that he had raided deep inland and far out to sea. He would ask nothing better of any god than to live out his life here, taking Waydol’s place when the Minotaur at last lay on the pyre, and continuing Waydol’s battle until the time came for him to pass the burden to his own heir.

Bird whistles sounded from ahead. Sirbones quickened his own pace, to draw level with Darin, curiosity plain on his face.

“Best not hurry,” Darin said. “This path is treacherous.”

“I think those bird whistles mean more than treacherous paths,” the priest of Mishakal said. For all that he seemed old enough to be father to most of the raiders, he had kept up with them all the way from Dinsas without much effort.

“Oh?” Darin said. He was hardly surprised, though some of his men were a little uneasy at Sirbones’s deftness in winkling out the band’s secrets. None of them had been foolish enough to attack a man under Darin’s protection, not to mention a priest of Mishakal, whom it would be impious and perhaps impossible to harm.

“Yes. Were I in your shoes-”

“I am barefoot, as you have doubtless noticed.”

“So I have. But one need not say everything in the simplest fashion. Words, I have discovered, sometimes need to be caressed to bring them to a proper state.”

Darin refused to contemplate how a priest would learn of caresses-though, to be sure, he had heard that celibacy among the followers of Mishakal was a common choice rather than a rigid law.

Pray that Sirbones has no eye for woman that will break the peace of the band.

“I am not worried about your words. I worry about your ears. Are they open to listen? Waydol says, truthfully, that our having only one mouth but two ears means that we should listen more than we talk.”

Sirbones grinned and nodded in total silence.

“Very well. The paths and the land are a good defense against anyone less surefooted than a ranger or hunter. But if anyone should send a host of rangers or hunters against our stronghold, we have added to nature’s defenses. Some intruders would be slain or crippled; we would have warning of the rest.”

“You do not say that I should ask no more questions, but I hear it in your voice,” Sirbones said.

“You hear truly,” Darin said. “I also ask of you one further bit of wisdom: stay in single file with me and my men. Some of our gifts to strangers reach close to the edge of the path.”

“Pits of poisoned spikes and the like?”

“You promised to ask no more questions.”

“I made no such promise. I merely understood your command.”

“Then why do you defy it?” Darin snapped. He was just weary enough and eager enough to be home and at rest to have small patience for the priest’s jests.

“Your pardon, Heir to the Minotaur. I presume greatly on your hospitality.”

Not so greatly, when you know as well as we that having a healer-priest among us will be a blessing worth enduring much worse than your tongue.

But Darin did not put his thoughts into words, not only from courtesy but also to save the breath he would need for the rest of the climb.

* * * * *

Pirvan and Haimya met Grimsoar One-Eye in the same solar where Pirvan had earlier that day dealt with Sir Niebar.

The great hall was the most honorable place for feasting an old friend, a guest who had traveled far, and a mate in the service of Jemar the Fair. It was also the most open to the curious and the indiscreet.

So when they were done with the wine and cakes (two platters, as Grimsoar was a light drinker but ate in proportion to his size), they gathered certain articles-maps, for one-from their hiding places and began to talk seriously.

“What brings you here, with the air of one who had rancid butter on his breakfast porridge?” Haimya said.

“I wish it was something as simple and harmless to others as my stomach,” Grimsoar said. “But it concerns more. Karthay and Istar are on a course that may make them collide hard enough to sink the both of them.”

Pirvan nodded. “We’ve heard that Istar’s fleet is to sail north and scour the coast of outlaws and pirates. We’ve also heard that Karthay may have the notion of rebuilding its own fleet if Istar does this.”

“I know naught of Karthay,” Grimsoar said. “Or at least no more than one can hear in the streets. Building new ships there is a matter for the higher councils, and even Jemar’s got few ears there.”

The hint that the Knights of Solamnia might have such ears was too plain to ignore. Pirvan sighed. Best clear the air among us at once, he thought.

“The Knights of Solamnia are sworn to aid Istar against its foes,” Pirvan said. “If Karthay means to become one, then my oath demands that I end this discussion.” Ignoring Haimya’s looking not merely daggers but arrows and broadswords at him, for she was of Karthayan birth herself, Pirvan continued. “However, if our purpose here is to prevent Karthay and Istar from becoming enemies, then all that I know is at your service, as is all the strength of my arm.”

“And mine,” Haimya said, with a look at her husband so different from the previous one that he flushed, and for a moment his head spun from more than the heat of the ill-ventilated chamber.

Grimsoar’s smile was a bit wry. “I didn’t hear either of you promise anybody else’s arms or anything else.”

“We didn’t hear you promise any aid at all from Jemar,” Haimya said. “Or is it that you are placed as we are-you cannot make promises that you know your masters will keep?”

“I wouldn’t call Jemar a master,” Grimsoar said. “He doesn’t have any mucking huge stack of books to tell him what to do and how to tell everyone else what to do. The sea doesn’t allow that, so if you knights ever want to launch a fleet, you may need something a bit-”

“Grimsoar, old companion,” Haimya said, in a voice as soft as silk and as chilly as the blade of a Frostreaver, “leave it be. Or tell us what you can honorably say, and we will ask for no more. But if we spend more time in rude jests, Gerik and Eskaia will be old enough to join us on this quest before we have decided to launch it.”

The two men looked at each other, then burst out laughing. “Very well,” Pirvan said. “I will sit silent and let Grimsoar talk. He has never needed encouragement to do that before, so I-”

“Good husband,” Haimya said in a tone of gentle menace.

Grimsoar’s rumbling voice broke the silence. “We began to smell trouble, those of us who had our noses to the wind, when they appointed Aurhinius to command in the north.”

“Gildas Aurhinius?” Pirvan asked.

“The very same,” Grimsoar said, then added, for Haimya’s benefit, “and no friend to even retired thieves. The army sent him over to the watch about ten years ago, to put some discipline and order into them. I suppose they thought he was too rich to be bribed.”

“Did he succeed?” Haimya asked.

Grimsoar nodded. “At the price of a few good men and women Pirvan and I knew, dead, rotting in dungeons, or slaving their lives out in quarries. Aurhinius loves fine armor, but he fights like a smith’s masterpiece of a sword.”

“Not one sent out lightly, in other words,” Haimya said. The two men nodded.

“Aurhinius has gone north already himself,” Grimsoar went on. “He took ten ships and about two thousand men, mostly to put some muscle in the garrisons up yonder. But there’s recruiting going on, veterans being recalled, workers being hired on in the shipyards to speed refits and new construction-oh, Zeboim’s own lot of trouble for honest sailors.”

Pirvan managed not to laugh at Grimsoar’s description of Jemar and his ilk as “honest sailors.” Outright piracy was a smaller part of their work than before, but other ways of separating people from their gold still flourished among the sea barbarians.

Pirvan rose. “Old friend, my lady and I will have to think about this. But I promise you, we’ll think toward the goal of doing something, or having it done if our own hands are bound.”

Grimsoar’s grunt made it plain that he would have preferred more, but knew he could not ask for it. Beyond that, friendship bound him to silence, at least as long as he was under his friends’ roof.

* * * * *

The two paths converged before a vertical slit in a cliff face not much lower than the towering pines behind them. Darin saw Sirbones staring at the slit, wondering whether men could pass through it even if it led anywhere.

“Don’t worry, friend priest,” Whistletrot said. “The finest kender minds have worked on a solution to this problem.”

“Aye,” someone said, “and if we’d waited for a solution from them, we’d have been better off going to the gnomes.”

Sirbones actually looked uneasy. “This isn’t gnome-work, is it?”

Laughter echoed from the rocks and back into the trees. “No,” Darin said. “Human, with a little help from a minotaur, and quite trustworthy.” He looked up at the top of the cliff and raised both hands over his head, palms outward.

A rumble started from deep in the rock, swelling until the ground underfoot seemed to be shaking. Sirbones was plainly uneasy, still more plainly trying to hide it.

Then the rumble faded. Darin walked over to a large boulder to the left side of the slit in the rock and pushed hard. With a squeal like a flattened piglet, the rock slid to the left. Behind it lay a dark, dusty tunnel-or rather, a semicircular passage carved out of the living rock to one side of the slit.

At the far end, sunlight glinted on water.

“Be our guest, Sirbones,” Darin said. “And be silent about all you see here and afterward. We will not harm you to keep you with us, but if any of our secrets depart with you, your priesthood will not guard you.”

“I am guarded by Mishakal, whatever threats you make,” Sirbones replied with dignity. “But you are guarded from my tongue’s wagging by my own oaths and honor. It is the mark of a barbarian, Darin, to think that only he among all men has honor.”

Before Darin could think of a reply to that, the priest unslung his staff, so that it would not catch on the rocks, and, holding it out ahead of him like a spear, vanished into the passageway.

* * * * *

Pirvan and Haimya made a point of doing their weapons practice with the men-at-arms or visiting fighters as often as possible. Too much practice with the same opponent could make a fighter used to that one opponent, no longer alert for the unpredictability of a new and unknown one.

This, they both agreed, was an excellent way to meet a swift death in battle.

Still, it lightened both their spirits to work against each other with wooden swords and padding. And today of all days, their moods needed lightening.

They had been at it now for a good part of the afternoon, and Pirvan’s bruises were beginning to hurt, not to mention his eyes, where sweat ran into them. But Haimya was coming at him again, as light on her feet as a doe in the spring, and the bout was not over yet.

He risked closing, beat her sword aside, and thrust inside her shield with his dagger. She brought her blade around just in time for him to lock it with his, hilt jammed to hilt. Also nose practically touching nose, and her eyes-blue today, though he had seen them shine gray or green-staring into his.

Then she laughed, no dainty girlish trill, but a hearty guffaw. “A draw, this one?”

“Fair enough.” He stepped back, not lowering his guard until Haimya shrugged her shield off her shoulder and dropped the sword on top of it. Then she sat down cross-legged and reached for the water jug.

“Are we going to help Grimsoar and all the rest?” she asked when she finished drinking.

“You mean, do we seek out the cause of this trouble between Istar and Karthay and seek to maintain peace between them?”

“You are talking to me, not writing a letter to Sir Marod.”

“I had best practice for writing that letter, however.”

“Not on me, I pray.”

“Who else can I trust, for tolerance, discretion, and-”

She kissed him. He kissed her back, then broke away, smiling.

“-and interesting ways of interrupting me.”

“I can make them more interesting still.”

“The armory is a trifle open.”

As if to underline Pirvan’s remarks, Gerik and Eskaia came running in.

“Papa, Mama,” Gerik cried. “Your friend Grimsoar says he will tell us stories about pirates if you let him stay for dinner.”

“Grimsoar is staying for dinner, and even for the night,” Pirvan said. “But you, lad and lass, still have to finish your lessons. The last time you showed me your tablet of sums, you had, between you, eleven wrong out of twenty.”

“Oh, but-” Gerik began.

“Do not say that your clerks will do that sort of work,” Haimya interrupted. “Remember that it takes time before you can pay a clerk’s salary. Also, if he thinks you cannot find his mistakes, he will either work badly or cheat you, or both.”

“Now run along. We will hold Grimsoar to his promise if you keep a promise to finish your lessons before we call you to dinner!”

The children scurried off, allowing Pirvan and Haimya to stand briefly with their arms about each other’s waists before they started hanging up their equipment.

* * * * *

The ceremonial part of the welcoming-home feast was done. Now, at last, Darin could allow Waydol to lead him aside, into the Minotaur’s stone hut, and speak where no one else could hear.

The first thing Waydol did was embrace his heir, for the fifth time since they had met at the end of the entryway. It was the fiercest embrace of all, and Darin knew that he had to give back, if not as good as he got, then the best he could do with merely human muscles.

This done, Waydol motioned his breathless heir to one of the stone stools on the rush-strewn floor. Waydol himself sat down cross-legged on the floor, and stared at Darin with that look that seemed to say the Minotaur could look into a man’s soul and judge his honor and everything else in it.

Waydol did not have to look up very far to meet his heir’s eyes. The shortest of adult minotaurs was Darin’s size, and Waydol was taller than the common run of his folk. In his youth he had fought with a minotaur broadsword in each hand and, while that youth was past, he had not yet reached the age when even a minotaur begins to stoop.

“So, Heir Darin,” Waydol rumbled. His Istarian vocabulary was excellent, but his accent remained strong, and no minotaur could ever sound less than guttural to a human ear. “Is there aught of this raid that I alone should know?”

“Nothing that comes to mind at once,” Darin said.

“Do not ask to sleep and then speak,” Waydol said, but the smile took the sting from his words.

“When did I last do that?”

“Oh, when you were sixteen or so.”

“Ah, one of my first raids. I think I remember it, even though it was so long ago.”

“It was, as you remember perfectly well, no more than six years ago. Or if you do not remember it, then I fear I must look elsewhere for an heir. My memory has not crumbled to rubble, at five times your years.”

“Ah, but for a minotaur, your years are but those of a green youth.”

“Indeed?” Waydol said, pretending to make a twisting pass with his horns at Darin’s stomach. The young man rolled off the stool and came up holding it like a shield.

“Bring me the mirror and a polishing cloth,” Waydol said, chuckling. A minotaur’s chuckle sounded to most folk like millstones grinding together, but to Darin it was a sound of home.

Darin brought the bronze mirror and a sack of cloths impregnated with various scented resins, then held the mirror while Waydol carefully polished his horns. They were a fine pair, and the more precious to Waydol because he had narrowly escaped losing them.

This had been many years ago, when he suggested that one should learn the weak spots of the humans before one charged headlong at them. After all, honor did not require being foolish.

Some fairly powerful minotaurs thought this insulted their honor, and gave Waydol a choice: exile or dehorning-or death in the arena, of course, a battle Darin thought the other minotaurs should have been grateful never took place.

He chose exile. Shortly after that, he chose to make himself chief of a band of human outlaws, or at least those who survived their first encounter with him. And shortly after making himself chief, he adopted as his heir a stout-thewed child who had washed up on his shore, clinging to a timber from his family’s lost ship.

That was nineteen years ago. The horns that Waydol had not lost in his homeland had continued to grow in exile, and were formidable weapons in their own right. Neither were the Minotaur’s wits any less sharp.

Indeed, Darin thought that if the minotaurs had met in solemn conclave for months, they could hardly have picked one of their number better suited to learning the weak points of the humans. If those who remembered Waydol’s insults were dead in the arena and those who lived had sharper wits, he still might carry out his task.

Which, to be sure, would mean a fearful burden on the honor and conscience of the Minotaur’s heir. When it came about-and even without Waydol, Darin’s life would have taught him that worrying about what may never happen deserves perhaps one minute out of the day, when one is using the privies or shaving or doing something else that makes small demands on one’s wits.

“I think you should go out again soon, and with the greater part of the men,” Waydol said.

“That will mean underchiefs,” Darin replied.

“Kindro and Fertig Temperer are both seasoned enough to lead.”

“And young enough to be spared if they fail?” Darin said.

“You may be such a cynic when you have a beard as long as my horns.”

“If I have to ride with Fertig Temperer often, the beard will be white before it is long.”

“He is no worse than most dwarves, and better than some.”

“Then I pray I never meet the some.’ ”

“Not one likely to be granted. The realm of Thorbardin is at our backs. We will need to withdraw into their lands if we are driven from the coasts.”

Darin no longer marveled at a minotaur thinking of retreating in the face of superior force, rather than dying on the spot. What bemused him was where the superior force might come from.

By the time Waydol had finished explaining the significance of the coming of Gildas Aurhinius to the northern territories of Istar, not far from their own range, Darin understood more on the matter of superior force. He also wondered what he was supposed to do with, at most, two hundred men against ten times their number.

“If you find them gathered together, I expect little, apart from driving in their patrols, taking prisoners-the higher-ranking the better-and generally testing their fighting qualities. But you are not likely to find them all together.

“Aurhinius is, by all I have learned of him, a man with ambitions to rise high in the councils of Istar once he hangs up his helmet for the last time. Such a man will surely heed the cries of the northern towns for a hundred men here and fifty there to guard their walls, fields, and caravans.

“You and your men could eat any such handful for breakfast and save the odd survivor for a midmorning snack, lightly salted or sprinkled with vinegar. Do that once or twice, and Aurhinius will take the field against you. Then I leave it to your judgment-but do something to make the man angry.

“An angry opponent will charge straight ahead. He will not make the best use of his strength or weapons. He will not guard against surprise attacks.

“He will, in short, become the sort of man who can be beaten even with long odds in his favor.”

Darin knew that well enough from personal combat-but this was the first time he’d be applying the principle in battle-indeed, on a full campaign against a civilized soldier at the head of a small army. He knew the uneasiness was lack of confidence in himself rather than lack of confidence in Waydol, and he also knew that the uneasiness would disappear once he had fought the first battle or two.

Meanwhile, he was Heir to the Minotaur. He slipped off the stool, took the mirror from Waydol’s hands, and held it up in front of the Minotaur so that he could work more swiftly at polishing his horns.

* * * * *

“Good night, Papa.”

“Good night, Mama.”

The children’s duet came from either side of the corridor. The years when they shared a single nursery and a single nursemaid were gone; now Gerik had a tutor as well as instruction from the men-at-arms, and the younger sister of Haimya’s maid attended Eskaia.

Not that Haimya really needed a maid, but had she done everything for herself as she had during her years as a mercenary, tongues would have wagged in gaping mouths from streamside to hillcrest. Her one consolation for being waited on was that she had a chance to teach both her maid and her daughter the rudiments of fighting, and with bare hands as well as steel.

Pirvan heard the doors shut and slipped a hand around Haimya’s waist. “I think we should be ready to say good night before long, too.”

“You are not, I trust, in too much haste in that matter?”

“Not such haste as to displease a lady.”

“I commend your honor.”

“It’s more good sense than honor, considering what displeased ladies can do.”

Haimya drew closer. “Perhaps you should contemplate the possibilities of a pleased lady.”

They did more than contemplate possibilities; they explored them thoroughly. They were lying close together when Haimya stirred and propped herself up on one elbow.

“Have we forgotten anything we need for going north?”

“We haven’t packed the supplies yet.”

“I was thinking of making sure that the knights do not accuse us of disobedience.”

Pirvan drew Haimya down onto his chest and savored that pleasure for a moment before replying. “We do have to spend some time in Karthay. Sir Marod was quite firm in his letters about the duty of all who served him, to learn what Karthay intends with its fleet. If we spend even a few days there, that and what we learn from Jemar will satisfy Sir Marod and anyone else who may ask questions.”

Haimya sighed and relaxed against her husband. Then he felt her shoulders quivering, and also warmth and dampness on his chest.

“Haimya?”

“Forgive me,” she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her free hand. “It’s foolish, but-this is the first time we’re going off and leaving the children since they were old enough to understand danger.”

Pirvan tightened his grip. “My lady and love, if you cry over that, you’ll have me joining you, and the bed will be drenched. You think I do not slip into their bedchambers at night sometimes, to stand looking down at them and all of our hopes that they carry?”

“I thought that was my secret.” She bit him gently on the shoulder, then started kissing him. The kisses made their way up his neck and cheek to his ear.

“My lady, in some ways you have no more secrets from me at all,” Pirvan said as he tightened his embrace still further.