Knights of the Sword

Chapter 5

Darin’s raiders were four days’ march from their stronghold before they reached the first town to the east. It had no garrison of picked Istarian troops, and indeed had not even heard of the soldiers’ coming.

“Which is about the way Istar always treats us,” one merchant said. “We wait a year to get the message with the permission to put new gates on the storehouse. Then the messenger comes, with two hundred mounted escorts who eat the storehouse empty so there’s no need to put so much as a ribbon across the door, because what’s left wouldn’t feed a mouse!”

This was not the first time Darin had heard complaints from folk in the north, that the rule of distant Istar was capricious and as often harsh as helpful. That was certainly a weak point, at least of Istar, to bring back to Waydol.

Meanwhile, Darin felt no inclination to loot the town, particularly as its walls were of well-laid stone and its people robust and determined, if not particularly skilled in arms. Instead of raiding, he paid some hundred and fifty Istarian towers for a dozen reasonably stout horses. This would give him a band of mounted scouts, to ride in the vanguard, on the flanks, or to the rear, wherever the need was greatest.

The raiders moved on, in two columns now, with the scouts carrying messages back and forth. Darin found Fertig Temperer no less harsh-tongued than ever, but under the harsh tongue was usually shrewd advice. The dwarves did not often come out of their mountains in great numbers to fight in human wars, but their own wars were the stuff of legends. A dwarf resolved on battle had everything a minotaur did except stature and strength, and frequently made up for those with keener wits.

The seventh day took them past two villages, whose farmers were all in the field when the raiders burst out of the woods. Panic sent the farmers fleeing, raising the alarm as they ran.

Instead of barring the gates, one village left them open. Out of those open gates thundered half a dozen horsemen, so well accoutred and sitting their saddles so well that for a moment Darin feared they had encountered Knights of Solamnia.

Instead of charging home, however, the mounted men circled wide around the fleeing villagers. They rode to Darin’s flank, then charged that flank in as wide a line as six men could make, keeping beyond the reach of most of the archers in Darin’s center.

The riders struck home with vigor and skill. They spitted two of Darin’s men on lances, and a third fell with his skull slashed open. They wounded two more raiders, and one rider was dismounting to take prisoners when the archers finally came running to within range.

Unsettled, their shooting was wild, and narrowly missed adding to the toll of hurt and wounded friends. But two horses fell; the first dismounted man went down bristling with arrows, and Darin rode up to deal with the others unhorsed.

At least that was his intent. The two remaining mounted men turned their mounts hard about and flung themselves at him. The archers could not shoot, friend and foe being utterly mingled, and while Darin tried to learn the art of swordfighting from horseback the two dismounted men scrambled onto their dead comrade’s horse.

Then all the survivors put in spurs and were out of sight in the woods before the archers realized that they had a clear target again. Darin dismounted, hoping that at least the fallen man was alive to talk, but two arrows in the face had pierced deep enough to silence him forever.

“This,” Darin said, “was not well done. We were to annoy the enemy, learn his strength, and take prisoners. It would seem that Aurhinius has given his captains the same orders-and that this day, his scouts obeyed his better than we obeyed Waydol’s.”

The raiders made a cold camp that night, with extra guards posted in case the surviving Istarian riders returned with either darkness and surprise or greater numbers on their side. The night passed without either excitement or comfort, however, and at dawn the raiders moved out once more.

* * * * *

For the next few days, the land might as well have been uninhabited, for all that Darin and his company saw of the god-created races. There were farms and villages, and even one town to which they gave a wide berth, fearing it might house a garrison or scouts. But all of these were either deserted, or, as Darin thought more probable, wishing to seem that way.

They took to moving by night, reckoning that the local folk might have chosen darkness to do their business on roads free of raiders. But this only succeeded in getting the company thoroughly lost twice in as many nights, and three men wandered all the way into a bog, from which only one emerged alive.

Darin stood a little apart with his underchiefs as Imsaffor Whistletrot used his hoopak to sound a dirge for the lost men, while doing a kender dance that made the human chief think of a chicken on hot coals. As a musical instrument, the hoopak made a low-pitched roaring that reminded Darin of surf on the shore of a distant and haunted sea.

Which fit rather too well with his mood at the moment, he had to admit. The raiders had gone out with the intention of lowering Istarian spirits, or at least reducing their numbers. So far, the spirits and numbers most seriously lowered were the raiders’.

Waydol would be even less pleased with his heir than the heir was, at this moment, pleased with himself.

“What next?” Fertig Temperer asked, putting everyone’s thoughts into two gruff words.

Darin used the excuse of the farewell to the dead men to not reply for a few moments. But that was all he had before Whistletrot stopped his dance, slung his hoopak, and scrambled up the nearest tall tree.

“I suppose he might see something without anyone seeing him,” the dwarf said. “The gods look after fools, children, and drunks, and a kender counts for two out of those three.”

“Here, now,” Kindro began indignantly. The other underchief was genuinely fond of kender, whom he said were made to remind other races not to take the world too seriously. It was rumored that he was fonder of kender maidens than of their menfolk, and that for this reason the male kender were less fond of him than he liked to believe.

“Enough,” Darin said. “We know where we stand, which is hip-deep in a midden pit. No need to talk over the fine points of the stink. The question is how to get out of it?”

Before anyone could speak further, a signal arrow thumped into the ground a sword’s length from Darin’s foot. Then Whistletrot thrust his head and torso precariously out from the branches of his tree, so far that he nearly fell out headfirst. He caught himself with ankles locked around a branch, and, hanging like that, frantically signaled the approach of a small party, men, on foot, not heavily armed, but otherwise unknown.

Darin and his underchiefs wasted no breath with orders. Every seasoned man who saw arrow or dangling kender passed on the warning to those out of sight, and the seasoned men everywhere rallied their greener comrades. In less time than it took Whistletrot to swing himself back onto the branch and start descending the tree, the raiders were prepared to receive their visitors.

The kender’s observations were accurate, as usual. Darin wondered at times how a race commonly so maddeningly feckless could produce such a reliable scout as Whistletrot. But, then, the few humans who had spent time in Kendermore had come away with the notion that kender could be quite sane and sober when their homes and kin were at stake.

Perhaps Imsaffor Whistletrot had decided that Waydol’s band was his home and kin. It made as much sense as any human notion about kender usually did.

Four men walked into the clearing, obviously aware that they were being watched, but showing no signs of fear. One of them carried a large earthenware pot, and another had a basket slung over his back. The rest carried packs, pouches, and daggers, and one unburdened man carried a boar spear nearly large enough for Waydol.

“Ah-where is the Minotaur?” the spear carrier asked, speaking in no particular direction, as if he expected the air, earth, or trees to answer.

“I am Heir to the Minotaur Waydol,” Darin said, stepping forward. He did not bother to gather his scattered weapons, as there was no man in the band he could not have dealt with barehanded. That was, of course, assuming that the concealed archers did not put all the visitors on the ground at the first sign of treachery.

“Then we offer you these gifts,” the same man said. He held the boar spear out butt-first and laid it on the ground at Darin’s feet. The young chief saw that the shaft was cunningly wrought to provide firm handgrips, and that the head and crosspieces were good dwarf-work.

The other gifts included the pot, which exhaled a tantalizing scent of honey, and the basket, filled with cakes made of flour mixed with some scented herb that Darin knew but could not name. He ceremoniously raised the spear, licked a finger dipped in the honey, and broke a cake in half, handing the half he did not eat to the leader.

The man devoured it with more appetite than ceremony, brushed crumbs from his beard, and frowned. “Then you accept our gifts of peace?”

“That depends on what kind of peace you offer us,” Darin said, and his underchiefs nodded. “If the price of peace with you is too great, you shall at least have these gifts back, to sustain you on your return journey, and we will not take you hostage or fall upon you on that journey.”

The men looked at one another. “It seems the honor of Waydol and Darin is no legend,” the leader said.

Another nodded. “Catch Aurhinius making that sort of bargain.”

Darin was as careful to keep his voice steady as he would have been careful to be silent when crouching barehanded by a trout pool. “Aurhinius? The Istarian general?”

“The same,” the leader said, then the other three men all seemed to find their voices at once. They had to lose their breath before Darin could make sense of their words.

“Aurhinius has a garrison in your town, or near it?”

They nodded.

“You wish us to drive it out?”

One man nodded, and the other three shook their heads.

“Best I make this short,” the leader finally said. “We can’t ask you to fight Aurhinius, or even the smaller band of soldiers he will leave behind when he moves on to the next town. His strength is too great for you to meet it, and even if you won, we would be dwelling amid ruins and ashes.

“No, what we want is for you to draw Aurhinius and his men away from all the villages, so that we may hide what the soldiers might otherwise take. Aurhinius keeps firm discipline among his men in the matter of women, but only a god could keep a soldier away from mead or a gold necklace.”

Darin nodded slowly as a smile spread across his face. If the villagers could deliver up Aurhinius to humiliation, the less bloody the better, the raiders would have their victory without any danger of having to wander the country for months, until their retreat was cut off or they returned to the stronghold to find it besieged.

Darin turned to his underchiefs.

“It could be a trap,” Fertig said.

Kindro shrugged. “For that, we have the mounted scouts-as long as we keep them out of those folks’ sight,” he added pointedly.

Darin let the tone pass unremarked. Kindro had been a sell-sword for nearly as long as Darin had lived, before he came to Waydol. He was not jealous of the younger man’s being heir to Waydol, but thought and sometimes said that he ought to make better use of the warcraft of his elders.

“That goes without saying,” Darin said. “Let us learn where Aurhinius lies, then the best way to it, then pick another and send three or four of our best scouts. Whistletrot, too,” he added, in a tone that left Fertig with his mouth open but unable to make a sound.

“So be it,” the two underchiefs said in unison. Darin turned to the villagers.

“Now, it would be well if we arranged all this so that Aurhinius has no inkling of your part in it. If he suspects nothing, he will be less ready to burn houses or take hostages, let alone worse punishments.”

“True enough,” the leader said. “He’s a warrior who follows Kiri-Jolith, not Hiddukel.”

Hiddukel was the god of corruption, fraud, and theft.

Darin clapped the leader on the back, hard enough to make the man stagger.

“Your pardon,” he said. The man choked out some sort of reply.

It had been some while since Darin so forgot his strength, but he had reason if not justice on his side. To enter a contest of wits as well as strength, against a foe as honorable as he was formidable, and with little risk of death or suffering to the innocent-that was the greatest pleasure man or minotaur could contemplate.

Darin vowed to make offerings to Kiri-Jolith if he won the forthcoming contest. He also prayed, briefly, that Aurhinius’s honor would lead him to do the same if the victory went to him.

* * * * *

The work of the scouts was less finding Aurhinius than keeping him from finding the raiders at a disadvantage. Had the riders not been out, the two companies of warriors might have met at a crossroads overshadowed by a half-grown vallenwood and set about with crumbling shrines so ancient that no one could tell which god they honored.

As it was, one scout rode back to halt Darin’s advance. Two others trailed Aurhinius and his company, until they reached country too rough for safe riding. Dismounted, the Istarians’ pace was such that a nimble kender, such as Imsaffor Whistletrot, could easily keep up with them-and report when and where they made camp.

“It’s as well we’re not trying to fight them to a finish,” Darin said after listening to the kender’s description. “Aurhinius has a good eye for ground.”

He cleared his throat. “Or does anyone care to dispute my plan for this fight?”

A couple of men seemed reluctant to meet his eyes, but Darin held their attention until he saw them nod. What stories those men could have told was no affair of his. He and Waydol had long known that among their band were humans and perhaps other folk with a blood-debt to settle against Istar the Mighty. Someday the time might come to give them free rein. This was not it.

“Very well. The duty of the main body is to cover the retreat of those who attack the camp. This means dividing to cover both paths, though I hope to ride in by one and out by the other.”

“And if all this moving around takes until after dark, or loses us surprise?” someone put in.

“After dark, a small band has an even better chance against a large one. If we lose surprise beforehand, however, we will seek another way of being fleas under Aurhinius’s fancy armor.”

“Never mind his armor,” Whistletrot said. “Just give me that golden helmet he fancies.”

“And how much else?” Fertig Temperer asked.

“Oh, Aurhinius seems to set the style for his men.”

“More than any six kender could handle,” Fertig interrupted. “Whistletrot, comrade of many brawls and a few real battles, take my advice. Get in and get out as fast as ever a kender moved.”

“What do I win by that?” Whistletrot replied. Kender did not grumble, at least in the presence of other races, but he came close to it.

“Life,” Fertig said briefly. “My friend, if we have to snatch you from a handling foray among the Istarians, I will throttle you.”

“If I go foraying in the camp, I’m not likely to be alive to throttle,” Whistletrot snapped.

“Very well,” Fertig said. “If I must, I will gather up your pieces in a sack and take them home. I will have Sirbones enspell them back into a living kender.

“Then I will throttle you.”

“Settle this after the fight, will you?” Darin said. “Right now, we have enough time for a bite and a trifle of sleep before we move. Best we have them, too, if we’re going to be spending the night running for our lives.”

Darin saw that his words put sober looks on most faces. This battle might be a jest, but it was against Istar the Mighty, favored with stout soldiers, whatever it might lack in virtue. One could never be sure in such a fight which way the jest would turn.

* * * * *

Getting out of the camp would be easier than getting in. The entrance was a level path barely two men wide, though firm and level for riding. Darin took care to have several men hidden on each side of the path where it reached open ground, so that alert Istarians could not readily block it against the riders.

One of the hidden men was Whistletrot. Fertig thought that was giving a drunkard the keys to the wine cellar; Kindro said that Fertig thought with his belly; Darin told them both to be silent, in somewhat less polite words.

The six mounted men all carried their choice of weapons for fighting on foot, as well as leather armor and brass helmets. They also carried, slung from their saddles, good, stout clubs, the only weapons any of them could use from horseback with more danger to the enemy than to their mounts or comrades.

This is not what the gods would choose to send against seasoned Istarian cavalry, Darin thought as he lowered himself cautiously into the saddle. The girths were tight enough that this time the saddle didn’t slip, but he felt the horse sag and thought he heard it groan as well.

Or at least not unless they had been drinking late and were in the mood for rude jests, he thought further. Then Darin commended himself to the mercy of the gods, prodded his boot heels into his mount’s ribs, and after an unnervingly long pause, felt the horse lumber into movement.

Aurhinius had no firm knowledge that enemies were close at hand, but he was a seasoned soldier who knew that he was in less-than-friendly country. Alert, vigilant, and well-armed sentries were posted, one on each side of the path.

They remained so until the moment when Darin led his riders into view. At the same moment the sentries’ mouths opened to give the alarm, clay balls hurtled from the woods to smash into the backs of their necks. Both men went limp even as they fell, landing without a sound except for a faint clatter as one man’s sword bounced into a clump of bushes.

One of the slingers, Imsaffor Whistletrot, leaped onto the back of Darin’s horse and hung on behind him. Darin thought curses, but had no time to utter them.

“Why walk when one can ride?” Whistletrot whispered.

Darin’s thoughts were louder. The horse must have heard them, because the overloaded beast blew hard, then picked up the pace from a slow trot to a fast one. It was trying for a canter when it reached open ground.

Across the open ground, not more than twenty paces away, a ruddy-faced, thick-set man stood while one attendant unbuckled silvered back-and-breast armor and another had already taken a golden helmet sprouting three scarlet plumes. The man wore a curly, dark beard and clothing of embroidered silk.

Chance had served up Aurhinius to Darin on a platter. No rummaging in tents, no need to wait for the man to mount up and charge-but there was still one flaw in the service.

Aurhinius stood on one side of a line of barrels and chests. Darin and his comrades sat their saddles on the other side. Unless their horses suddenly grew wings, there was no way over those barrels.

At least not for the humans. Kender were another matter. Darin felt small hands on his shoulders as Whistletrot vaulted onto them, then the kender jumped, turning a double somersault in midair. He flew over the barrels as lightly as a bird, landing next to the attendant with the helmet.

“Excuse me, but that’s a fine piece,” Darin heard the kender say as the human urged his horse forward, around the end of the barrels.

The attendant’s reply was better not repeated, though the echoes were still repeating it as Whistletrot darted between Aurhinius and the other attendant.

Darin came around the end of the barrels and reached down. Without missing a step, Whistletrot tucked the golden helmet under his left arm and reached up his right for Darin’s hand.

The kender flew into the air, and Darin dug in his heels again, keeping his horse moving at a ponderous trot. The attendants ran after him, just as the other mounted raiders came up in their leaders’ tracks. Both men leaped aside without looking where they leaped, and while they landed unhurt, they also landed on their general.

Aurhinius’s remarks to the world made those of the first attendant seem a model of politeness.

Good manners took a further hard blow as Darin led the riders on through the camp. Most of the men were dismounted, and as there were Istarians on both sides of the riders’ path, even the archers with ready bows had to hold fast.

Darin’s eyes were on a handful of men still attending their horses with feedbags or water buckets. But it was one mounted man who broke out of the shadows and rode straight at Darin who presented the first and greatest menace.

The man was riding loose-reined, guiding his horse with his knees, with a sword in one hand and a dagger in the other. Darin reached for his club and discovered that it had parted its thongs and fallen somewhere along the way.

This time the curses reached his lips.

Imsaffor Whistletrot wasted no time cursing. His slung hoopak was in any case a two-handed weapon, not at its best mounted, where kender seldom fought, anyway. His other weapons lacked reach.

So he tossed the helmet from left arm to right hand, catching it by the strap. Gripping Darin’s belt with his left hand, he swung the helmet out and around as far and as hard as he could.

Both distance and speed were more than the oncoming rider expected. But then, the man was not the first to underestimate the strength and weaponscraft of a kender.

The helmet crashed into his sword as the blade swung down. The blade went wild. So did the rider’s horse, for in going wild the blade nearly cut off the horse’s left ear. A few moments of this wildness were all it took to unseat the rider. He parted company with his mount in midair, descended gracefully, and landed with a mighty splash in a puddle of well-ripened mud.

He was still struggling to his feet when the other riders trotted past him.

By now Aurhinius had left off calling down curses on the raiders and was rallying his men to pursue them. The rally was short-lived, however, as the archers on the entry path began shooting-not aiming to hit, so much as to distract.

They succeeded admirably. Instead of haring off in pursuit of Darin, Aurhinius’s men went to cover, or snatched up their shields and formed a shield wall facing the archery.

This was the signal for Darin’s archers on the other side of the clearing to begin shooting, hitting the Istarians in the back-or at least in the legs. Istarians cursed, howled, and danced wildly as they tried to keep up their shields, wield weapons, and pull arrows out of their legs all at once.

Not having three arms, they understandably failed.

Most of the men on foot had begun to pull themselves into better order by the time Darin’s last rider disappeared down the outbound trail. Some had even mounted, and they spurred their horses after Darin.

At their head rode Aurhinius himself, without armor, with rents in his silk finery, as well as grass stains and mud smears all over it. He rode with sword in hand and on his face a look that would have curdled milk or turned the finest wine into vinegar.

He also rode without looking ahead of him. So it was another Istarian rider who saw the figures lurking in the trees and tried to give the alarm.

He might have succeeded, too, except that the extra weights Fertig had put on the net pulled it down before the riders could halt. They rode straight into the net, rising the height of a man above the path and securely bound to trees on each side.

Carefully sawed halfway through, so that when the mass of riders jerked hard on the net, both trees snapped off just below the net bindings and came down with a crash like a house falling. The net came down without killing any of the riders-though the horses were less fortunate-but blocking the path to mounted pursuit as if the earth had opened into a flaming pit.

Darin thought he recognized Aurhinius’s voice among the curses again as he pushed his staggering, foaming mount to a final effort.

“Hope you’re fit to survive on your own, my friend,” he told the horse, patting the sodden, heaving neck. “We’ve no time for horse doctoring.”

The horse at least was fit to stagger off out of sight as soon as Darin and Whistletrot dismounted. The other horses followed, none of them as close to dropping as Darin’s, but then none had been carrying such a load.

“I wonder if the Istarians will trail them,” someone said.

“For a while, perhaps,” Darin replied. “But those Istarians have to be able to tell a loaded horse from one running free. They’ll be seeking our trail soon enough-but not soon enough to find us, if we stop gabbing and turn homeward.”

“No more raids while we’ve got the Istarians buzzing like we’ve kicked the hive?” asked one of the men who wanted Istarian blood.

“No. We’re the bees, and we’ve stung Aurhinius enough for now. Fly around, and he’ll bring smudge pots and wizards with poison spells. And there’s the villagers to think about, for anyone who’s forgotten our debt to them.”

If anyone had, they dared not say it to Darin’s face. Instead the men fell in behind him as he led the way into the forest, taking his usual care to find ground that would not show footprints or broken branches.

They were well inside the forest when Darin realized that a familiar face was missing. The whisper went along the line swiftly:

“Where is that confounded kender?”

Darin did not add, “Where is the golden helmet?” because that could start a panic.

He was about to quietly order the column to spread out and begin searching when a slight figure swung down from the trees on a vine. He bounced up as if the ground were a feather mattress and ran to greet Darin.

“I don’t suppose I have the right to know where you’ve been?” the chief said.

“Oh, you certainly do, but it was nothing much. I tore the strap on the helmet when I swung it. Cheap work, that. Aurhinius ought to complain to the armorer and get a strap of good mail. I didn’t think you’d want me to lose the helmet because of that.

“So I went up a tree and cut some vines for carrying the helmet.” Whistletrot danced in a circle, showing Darin the golden helmet riding snug in a web of vines atop his pack. He danced in another circle while he unslung his hoopak.

Darin stopped him before he could start it roaring. Several other men swore to help him. One mentioned an old family recipe for kender stew.

“Really?” Whistletrot said. “Uncle Trapspringer said he had one, too, left over from a time when a lot of kender were besieged. I forget if it was ogres or minotaurs. No, wait, I think it was an island and there were sea trolls all around-”

“Later,” Darin said, stopping Whistletrot with a firm hand on his collar.

“Or did they find a way to eat the sea trolls-?” Darin heard, as Whistletrot danced off out of reach.

He sighed. Victories came and went, as luck and the gods would have it. Kender never changed.