The Wayward Knights

Chapter 12

The night after the battle on Suivinari Island, Wilthur the Brown contemplated the future with distaste, although not yet with foreboding.

Certainly he had untapped powers for physical resistance to the invasion, Just as certainly, physical resistance would not be sufficient. The will of the gods was manifest in that matter. His aspirations came too close to upsetting the balance the deities cherished for them to tolerate his extending his attacks offshore-into the depths of either earth or sea, or into the sky. Wilthur privately thought that the gods feared his aspirations to enter among their ranks rather as a hall of nobles fears the petition of a wealthy commoner.

He would not petition. He would preserve his stronghold and, in due course, prevail.

But if physical means could not provide that defense, he knew he had to attack the enemy on a field that had not been forbidden him: their own minds. He had methods requiring spells so demanding that he could only set them upon one being at a time, that would yield poor or even dangerous decisions, without anyone knowing from whence those ideas came.

He had knowledge of the various leaders. After contemplating that knowledge, he decided that the most vulnerable target was the minotaur chief, Zeskuk.

Gerik was warm in bed and in a dream of riding through a field of wheat so ripe that it almost glowed in the sun, when he heard the knocking.

It took a moment for him to separate the noise from the dream. It took him much longer to reach full wakefulness, but he did not wait for that before reaching for his clothes. His hands instead encountered warm skin, and a giggle sounded, almost as loud, and far more pleasant than the knocking.

He had a brief, almost overwhelming impulse to forget the door in favor of the owner of the skin and the source of the giggle. Then he felt a bare foot in the small of his back and suddenly he was rolling out of bed, jerking awake as if he had been plunged into cold water. His clothes followed him, and he fought down a brief impulse to curse.

"Duty calls, my lord," came the voice from the bed. As if he needed further reminder, the knocking grew louder. Gerik allowed himself one rude word about duty, then clad himself and opened the door.

Bertsa Wylum greeted him. From one look at her face, he knew this was no jest. What else it might be-

"You have come, Captain Wylum. Speak," he said.

Wylum wrinkled her nose and gave a mocking parody of the sell-swords' salute. "We have a sighting," she said. "Forty riders in Botsenril Woods."

That was to the south, in a direction from which neither robbers in past years nor ghost-riders this year had usually come. It was also within a half hour's ride of a number of the manor's tenant farms. And forty riders. Far too many for anybody's jest, if the tale held truth….

"One of my most trusted people," Wylum said. She did not describe the watcher further, which suggested to Gerik that he or she would be one of Wylum's secret allies. He knew that she had such, she knew that he and his father had their own, and each trusted the other's judgment in secret matters. Names one did not know, one could not reveal, either through too much wine or less pleasant influences.

"I came myself with the message," Wylum went on. "Less noise before you give permission."

"Permission for what?" Gerik had thought he was too awake to ask that sort of question. Wylum frowned but held her peace until Gerik could command both wits and his tongue. "Yes," he said at last. "By all means take the six riders of the ready guard. Take one or two more for messengers, if that will not delay you."

"Thank you, good sir," Wylum said. "The Botsenril's a tangle, and the roads more like trails. You can creep up close unwatched, but it's not much help if you can't send back what you learn."

"No, and remember that two can play at the game of creeping through the woods," Gerik said. "If these visitors have anyone who knows Botsenril, they could surround you. We need your arm and your wits, and I don't want to hear what my father or Floria Desbarres would say if I allowed you to be killed."

"If it's my time, fathers and Florias have no say," Wylum replied. "But I'll be careful just so you can sleep easy."

"Who said anything about sleep?" Gerik said. "When you go out, sound the alarm. I'm mounting up the rest of the riders, and sending a patrol out to the Alsenor Crossroads. Most of the ways out of the woods go by there, sooner or later."

"Manors left undefended fall to attackers the lord didn't see-sooner or later," Wylum said.

Gerik flushed. "All right, half the remaining riders," he acquiesced. "But you alert the village as you leave. This is not a night for anyone to spend abed."

Wylum's look spoke eloquently of her agreement. She turned, drew her silver whistle, and blew hard.

Those not awakened by the whistle must have been awakened by messengers standing ready to pass the alarm. The whole manor was in an uproar before Wylum could walk from the door to the head of the stairs and disappear down them. Drums and trumpets had joined the neighing, clattering, and shouts before Gerik had even decently begun donning his armor.

It was only when he had finished that he noticed Ellysta was sitting on the bed, rather than lying in it, and was fully clad, rather than as she had been when his hands found her skin. She wore a man's garb, with several pouches on her belt that Gerik had not seen before. Beside her was a stout pack, oiled leather that looked like kender work. It bulged, and across the top was strapped a dagger Gerik had not seen since the day Ellysta came to Tirabot Manor.

To keep himself from having to speak and possibly say the wrong thing, Gerik started knotting his helmet cords.

"Let me play squire," Ellysta said. Her nimble fingers did up the knots in half the time Gerik would have taken. All of Ellysta's outward injuries seemed healed now, except few that would need potent magic to avoid leaving scars.

As for the inward hurts…

"I have to take my place on the walls," Ellysta said. "For what good I can do, if only by being there and in danger along with the rest."

"In danger ahead of the rest, I should say," Gerik said.

"Sell-swords and household guards will not climb walls to carry me off," she said.

"Some might, promised enough gold, and have you never heard of archery?"

"That reminds me. Is there a bow to spare?"

Gerik held his tongue. If he didn't, he would insult her, and she seemed ready to tell the truth regardless of whether he spoke or not. Or even whether he wanted to hear it or not, but he had to want it. He was captain and lord, and being told other than the truth put everyone at Tirabot or under its protection in danger.

"Gerik, do not take this amiss, but if you do not return-if our enemies are ready to take knights' blood-I must take to the road," Ellysta told him quietly.

Gerik thought his face asked "Why?" loudly enough, and perhaps he was right. Ellysta ran her fingers across his lips, then continued, "With you dead and me gone, there is no way to prove that my being here was other than your fancy. Without that proof, the laws against private warfare will weigh heavily against any attack on the manor. Against any harm to your folk."

She laughed. "Also, the kender and I and certain friends can lead anyone who does want my blood on a merry chase. They may still be turning over fallen logs and rotten mushrooms when the snow flies, too busy to think of Tirabot Manor-even if it is not guarded by the Solamnics."

Gerik looked at the ceiling. "Why do I have the feeling that the hens of this flock are wiser in war than the rooster?" he sighed.

"Because we are, for now," Ellysta said, with an unrepentant laugh. "But that will change, if the young cockerel lives long enough. So don't get killed, Gerik."

She kissed him decisively. "I came where some women might have seen or even expected a boy. But I looked with open eyes and mind." She kissed him again. "And I found a man."

Gerik walked steadily as they left the chamber, for all that his head was spinning.

The horsemen awoke Horimpsot Elderdrake from a sound sleep in Botsenril Woods, one that he had intended to continue until dawn. So he was in a worse mood than usual for a kender when he started counting them. Before he had finished his count at forty, he had heard a human watcher slipping away along another path. A warning was on the way to Tirabot, so he could do as he pleased.

It pleased him to make these fumble-witted humans pay for their silliness in making trouble for Tirabot Manor. It was going beyond what he or any other kender might owe to Sir Pirvan and all of his people. It was reaching the point where the humans needed to be taught a lesson about making nuisances of themselves.

Really, they were killing each other over things that no kender would have considered worth a quarrel, let alone a fight. Oh, there had been the time when his aunt put a lock on her biscuit cupboard, and half the village vowed not to dine with her or even speak to her for a year. The vow hadn't bound anybody that long, because somebody (Elderdrake suspected who, but would never tell) had picked the lock within a month.

But killing for the freedom to break one's own laws, even if some of those laws were so stupid that no kender would have lived under them for five minutes-this was "virtue"?

Elderdrake used a kenderspeak word that was usually translated as "idiots," in Common.

The kender unslung his pack and pulled out a glazed pottery jar wrapped in straw. He undid the wrapping and held the pot up to his ear. Good. They sounded all right.

One of the Spillgather guests was someone Shumeen hadn't told him about at first. Like many kender priests of Branchala, this one had chosen a practical joke for his masterpiece. It had gone a little far, and his friends had told him to hide out until they had forgotten it, then come back and try again. That was ten years ago and the priest had been with the Spillgathers ever since.

They hadn't asked him to stay away ten years, but like Imsaffor Whistletrot (and how was the old fellow doing, Elderdrake wondered) or Sirbones (who was really too old to be climbing aboard ships and sailing off to fight wizards at the rim of the world) this priest liked the road. He could also make more of his masterpiece, anytime anyone asked, without being paid-although people didn't ask very often, for obvious reasons.

Now it was time to turn the joke loose on Tirabot's uninvited guests. That should keep them from spoiling Gerik's party.

And afterward? Elderdrake studied the riders. They had fine horses and much better weapons and armor than such starved-looking, unkempt sell-swords deserved, or were likely to be able to pay for. Somebody was giving them all this, but there wasn't anybody to the south for quite a distance. So these men had to be like the ghost riders. They had to have their supplies piled somewhere that wasn't on anybody's land.

That meant it wouldn't be protected by anybody's house guards. It might be protected by that fat little wizard who'd been with the ghost-riders, but Elderdrake would worry about him when he turned up.

The riders were talking now, as if nobody could be within a mile. In the intervals between loud boasts, Elderdrake thought he heard gurgles. He hoped it was wine or ale they were drinking, not water.

Dwarf spirits did even more than ale or wine to increase the power of the priest's masterpiece, but it was too much to hope for that this band of starvelings would be given dwarf spirits-or stay in their saddles at all, if they drank any.

Gerik led twelve fighters down the road to the Alsenor Crossroads under a cloudy sky that made him glad for the five villagers who had volunteered to play scout or messenger. He had accepted them on the condition that they would ride for their lives if it came to a serious fight, and look to their families and homes first.

He hoped they would keep their oaths. The fight might be no more than his twelve, Bertsa Wylum's six, and the odd roving spy against forty or more. It might be fewer, if Wylum's luck was out and she and her people were down before the fighting started.

If it started. Gerik vowed to keep his hand off his sword and use his tongue first, remembering many admonitions about how the best way to win a fight was not to have it at all.

One came to memory, in his mother's voice. "Only leeches, mosquitoes, and vampires must shed blood. The rest of us prefer to see what a little sweat or wine will do first."

However, he suspected that the forty riders would be in a mood to talk only if they were here on some completely legal task, with no connection to Ellysta's being a guest at Tirabot Manor. Gerik would not bet a worn-out sandal thong that this was so.

Choosing speed and sure footing over secrecy, Gerik used the High Road. He reached the crossroads before too many of the curious routed from their homes by all these nocturnal comings and goings could come out and ask silly questions. This let him array his men for battle, with himself and three others mounted on the road, four more on the road behind, and four dismounted ahead in ambush. The villagers were farthest to the rear, and Kiri-Jolith grant that they would stay there!

Fighting for Ellysta was something in which he was honor-bound, both in his own right and as the son of his father. Getting unarmed loyal villagers killed was not. Indeed, honor demanded that he protect them from their own enthusiasm if he could, so that they would not be enslaved or imprisoned, their children sent to labor as "children of virtue" in certain secret temples, and the like.

He had not believed the stories of kidnapped children, until Rubina told him that two of her friends had lost kin that way, one of them a half-brother. He had then written down what she told him, and left the tale in a safe place, where his father might find it if he returned.

The night wind piped faintly in Gerik's ears. Off to the right and up the hill, a stand of templebeams twisted and dwarfed by something in the soil were mere shadows. It was easy to imagine them as the clawing hands of buried giants, bursting through the ground, reaching for the light and air.

It was also easy to frighten oneself into a fit with such imaginings, like a child in a dark room.

Gerik had just reined in his fancies when a sudden uproar broke out to the south, toward the woods. He heard horses neighing and screaming, men shouting and cursing, then a great many fast-moving hooves and even the clatter of steel on armor. It sounded as if someone there had frightened himself into a fit.

Gerik's men had made ready without his command; they had ears too. The young man's were now turned wholly toward listening for Bertsa Wylum's voice. A battle cry, even an oath, would help tell friend from foe.

Gerik realized that he should have had all the Tirabot fighters mark themselves somehow, with bands on their arms or patches on their backs. Something visible in the darkness, that would distinguish them from the enemy-

The enemy was upon Gerik before he could think further. His sword leaped into his hand. He had cut two men out of their saddles and was engaging a third when he realized that the man's comrades were not fighting. They were fleeing, as fast and as far as their horses could carry them.

Not all of the horses were willing. Gerik saw one rider, with a hairy chin and a balding head, somersault over the head of his mount as it stopped suddenly. The horse then fell as another, running loose, crashed into it. Both went down on top of the man. Frantic neighing and hideous human screams made a din that might have daunted the Dark Queen.

Before Gerik could see another such horror, the last of the riders had thundered past. A few riderless horses cantered off in various directions, trampling fallen horses and fallen men. Gerik was now more frightened than he would have been in a battle at odds of ten to one. In the darkness, amid the fading cries of maimed men and panicky horses, the Abyss seemed about to gape at his feet.

To spare his own steed, he dismounted. The horse was tossing its head nervously and whickering. Gerik stepped up to the gelding's head and whispered in its ear. Nothing that would have made sense, in Common, but in some horse-speech it seemed to say what the horse needed to hear. Gerik had just decided to mount again, when for a second time the darkness spewed movement.

This time no one died. A torch flared behind the movement, showing them to be eight or ten armored but unarmed men, all on foot and most looking as if they had been used as kickballs by giant trolls.

Behind them rode Bertsa Wylum. She held a torch in one hand and her sword in the other, guiding her mount with her knees at the head of her band.

"Take and bind them," Gerik called to his people, pointing at the men on foot. His men looked relieved at having something to do. The new prisoners looked almost relieved at being taken, as if their captors could protect them from what was abroad tonight. What that was, Gerik hoped Bertsa Wylum would know.

But when he rode up to her, all she said was, "Their horses went mad on them. I think a certain kender we chased off had something to do with it."

"I thought the kender had turned on you," one of the men whined.

Wylum grinned. Only Gerik saw the mockery in her bared teeth. "Of course they did," she said. "But you know kender. They can't tell friend from enemy when they're up to a joke. How much do you want to wager that he aimed at us and hit you?"

The man's curses said that was no wager, but certain knowledge.

"I suggest, good sir, that we leave some of our people here to bring these along after us, while we ride for the village," Wylum added.

"How so?" Gerik said, not minding at all sounding as if he did not know what was happening. He was one of many.

"Well, the rest of these witlings are heading straight for Tirabot," Wylum said. "I'd not wager they'll all fall off their horses before they reach it."

Gerik nodded and turned his mount.

Grimsoar One-Eye found himself second among the captains in the manor itself, after Gerik rode out of sight. So after a decent interval he asked the senior's permission to go down to the village and ask Serafina to come up.

She was spending the night in their house, and probably would not come up to the manor even for its greater safety. Her duties to the village would come first, but he had to try. Also, if he could help her pack along more healing material, perhaps that would persuade her that she could do useful work in the manor. After all, no one could tell where the attack would come.

Grimsoar presented his case to the senior, a retired sell-sword who called himself Orgillius, which could hardly be his proper name. He seemed even more seasoned a fighter than Bertsa Wylum, but his manners went far to explain why he had less rank.

"I thought you were too old to need a woman every night," Orgillius said.

Grimsoar shrugged. He wanted to do something rather more eloquent, such as knocking Orgillius down. He only said, "If the woman thinks I'm young enough, what odds? Wait until you're my age, then complain if a woman wants you!"

"We can't open the gates or give you a horse."

"I'm also young enough to climb down a rope," Grimsoar warned. "One never forgets that. And don't you forget that I can walk to the village faster than any horse here could carry me."

"On your head be it," Orgillius said. His tone suggested that he hoped Grimsoar's head would next be seen flung over the walls by an enemy siege engine.

Grimsoar turned away, vowing to make sure that Orgillius never got behind him in battle.

Pirvan's old companion had not in truth felt so young and vigorous in years as he felt tonight. Perhaps he would stay in the village a bit longer than he had planned, even if Serafina was willing to come. The manor was a trifle crowded, unless you were Gerik and Ellysta, and the gods knew they deserved their good luck.

It was easy going over and down the walls, and Grimsoar was halfway to the village before he realized that he had company. He thought at first he was being stalked by one of the kender, to keep up the game of their being enemies, then realized that the figure was only kender-sized.

When he knew who it was, the journey to the village began to seem less like a good idea.

"Rubina?"

"Sssssh. If you shout like that, they'll hear you in the castle."

"They won't open the gate or send out riders."

"Not for you," Rubina hissed. "But maybe for me. And there's the village. They do have horses, and people who won't let me come with you."

"What makes you think I will let you come with me?" Grimsoar hissed back.

"What makes you think you can stop me?"

Grimsoar recognized the total deafness to the word "No" that he had encountered often enough in his own life. No doubt Rubina had it from her mother.

They came up to the village from the south, and the first thing they saw was Pel Orvot's wagon, still at the wheelwright's even though it had been repaired two days ago. Or so Rubina said, but she admitted that she might not be wholly fair where the farmer was concerned. Grimsoar was about to praise her for that sense of justice when he heard the sound of riders coming up from the south, so fast that they threatened to overtake their own din.

Somebody on the road challenged. The reply was nothing any Tirabot fighter would have given. Grimsoar pushed Rubina hard. "Run out of the road, now," he ordered. "Get behind a house! Enemies coming!"

"I am the daughter of two warriors and do not obey orders to run from danger!" Rubina shot back.

But she was addressing Grimsoar's broad back, as he bent to grab the wagon's yoke pole. One heave and it moved. Another heave and sweat broke out on his brow, and the wagon rolled. A third heave and it rolled out of the wheelwright's yard and into the road.

Grimsoar had just time to use a fourth heave to center the wagon on the road when the riders came storming up. They were no Tirabot folk, looking more like cheap sell-swords, and not one of them had any command over his horse. All fifteen or more of them crashed straight into the wagon. Fast-moving flesh and bone met solid, immobile wood. The wagon tipped up on edge, then one wheel cracked beyond any wheelwright's craft to repair it, and the wagon fell over on its side.

Most of the riders and horses fell on top of it or around it. They piled up in a hillock of writhing, screaming human and animal flesh. Grimsoar came near to losing his supper at the expressions on some of the faces, both men and horses.

Then a man was before him, with an expression on his face that Grimsoar knew too well. It was the tight, angry look of a seasoned killer, one common among the old Servants of Silence. That unwholesome order, it was said, no longer existed. The same could not be said of the men who comprised it.

Grimsoar reached for his dagger, but the man struck first. Fire blossomed in Grimsoar's right arm, and the man snatched another dagger from his boot and drove in, ready to gut the old sailor like a flatfish for broiling-

– when a smaller figure leaped onto the man's back. The man was off-balance for his thrust, and, under the sudden weight, fell facedown on the road.

Grimsoar stamped on the man's wrists in turn. He wanted a prisoner, but it would help if no one had to worry about the man's daggers for a while.

Nobody would. Not only had Grimsoar broken both the man's wrists, but Rubina had reversed her dagger and knocked the man senseless with the butt.

"I told you I would not run," she said, panting. "And a good thing for you I did not. They would not come out of the houses-and you're bleeding!"

After that Rubina chattered so busily while she bound Grimsoar's wound that he could not have put a word in if he'd driven it with a shipyard maul. She only broke off when more riders loomed up. The pile of men were being bound by the villagers, and horses who were injured were being put out of their pain.

"Kiri-Jolith defend us!" came Bertsa Wylum's voice.

Then, another and more familiar, even if less welcome voice called: "Grimsoar, what in the name of the hundred ghouls are you doing taking my sister into battle?"

"Fifty brass bits that he says Rubina came herself," Bertsa Wylum whispered in Gerik's ear.

"I don't have that much to spare, and anyway, I know my sister," he replied.

He did not find this much of an occasion for jesting. The Tirabot folk had lost no men and only two horses tonight, but their enemies had a dozen dead, as many hurt, and all their horses and war gear gone. Somebody would ask a price for that-House Dirivan, out of sheer pride, if no one else-and that price might yet end being paid with friends' blood.

But Rubina stepped forward. "Brother, apologize to Grimsoar," she demanded. "He pulled the wagon into the road and brought down all the riders. He is hurt, and I did not ask to come with him."

"No, you just came," Gerik said.

Rubina nodded solemnly, then spoiled the occasion by thumbing her nose at him. Laughter rose into the night, and even Gerik had to smile. He looked up. The clouds were breaking apart, although since Nuitari was the only moon high enough to benefit, they had little light from above.

"Very well," Gerik said. "Grimsoar One-Eye, we thank you."

"We, O exalted chief?" Grimsoar said, bowing deeply, then wincing at the pain in his arm.

"My lady and I-"

"She's your lady?" Rubina exclaimed. "I didn't know you had asked her about that. And don't Father and Mother have to know?"

Gerik knew he must have turned scarlet. Bertsa Wylum was ready to fall out of the saddle in her efforts not to laugh. Some of the other onlookers were not being so polite.

Gerik finally arrayed thoughts and tongue. "I will," he said evenly, "as soon as I return to the manor, ask her to grant me the great honor of her becoming my lady. I am of age, and can ask her this without permission. If she says yes, I will write to Sir Pirvan and Lady Haimya, and hope they will be here to bless Ellysta and myself. I hope that you will all be here, too, when we take our oaths and vows, sing our songs-"

"Dance!" Grimsoar roared.

Serafina pushed her way through the mob. "If you try to dance, my old dear, you will fall down and break something important," she said. "Tonight, you lie down… and sleep, so take that look off your face."

More softly, she added, "You're full-blooded enough for five men, so this little nick won't keep you down long."

Now the laughter was bawdy. Gerik wondered if Rubina understood all this, then decided that she probably did, nor would it do her any harm.

Tonight a little war had begun in deadly earnest. How deadly, he would know when they spoke to the prisoners.

But other things besides a war had begun tonight.