The Wayward Knights

Prologue

Torvik Jemarsson raised the dwarven-work telescope to his eye and peered northward, trying to pierce the haze. If they were not in sight of Suivinari Island-the Drowned Mountain, as some called it-then their navigation from Vuinlod had been fearfully inaccurate.

The young mate of the top would have wished for a spell in the telescope, to make it a mist- and fog-piercer. But it was only sound bronze and the best lens glass, worked with skills Torvik trusted, even though he had never met the dwarves who possessed them. Any dwarves who had won the confidence of both his father's old comrade, Sir Pirvan the Wayward, and his mother's present companion, Gildas Aurhinius, a retired Istaran general, had to be very singular dwarves indeed. Torvik would not have gone to sea in a vessel of dwarf making, for dwarves did not know the ways of water, but he would trust them for anything short of that.

He also did not wish for a wind to disperse the mist. This far north, it was summer or spring all the year round, with heat-spawned storms rising between one watch and the next, and reaching fearful intensity with hardly more warning. Torvik remembered an old desert barbarian saying:

"Be careful what you beg of the gods. They may send it."

So he would not risk the gods sending more wind than Kingfisher’s Claw could endure. In these waters the reefs, the mists, and the minotaurs were enough danger.

"Ahoy, the foretop!" came the hail from the deck. "What do you make out?"

Being mate of the top, it had been only plain sense for Torvik to station himself atop the first of the ship's three masts. It had also put a safe distance between him and Yavanna, mate of the deck. She was half again his size and twice his age, and thought that his rank owed more to his lineage than to his skill. Most of the time she stayed within the bounds of manners, but sometimes she brooded until there was an edge in her voice, as there was now.

"Something too solid for a fogbank and too high for a reef," Torvik called down. "I will tell you more when there is more to see."

"How does it bear?"

"The highest mark is three points off the port bow," Torvik replied.

He could read Yavanna's unspoken thoughts after she growled acknowledgment.

From that measurement, they might well be coming straight into the tangle of reefs off Suivinari's southeastern end.

If so, then straight on lay only destruction. Bearing farther to starboard put them on a long beat to windward before they reached the human beaches. Farther still to port, and they risked sailing blithely up to the part of the island that the minotaurs regarded as their territory-and defended with all the usual minotaur ferocity.

Yavanna must have already given orders, because as Torvik finished examining choices, he felt the ship heel as the helm went over. He had just decided to put the telescope away for a few moments when a rift appeared in the mist.

A cone of pale brown rock leaped skyward from the sea, as perfect as if it had been sculpted. Grayish smoke curled from the summit, and white steam from vents on the flanks.

"The Smoker, dead ahead!" Torvik shouted. His voice embarrassed him by nearly breaking.

The message still reached the deck. Yavanna called all hands on deck to prepare for landfall, and only then ordered the helm put over again. She knew her work; no need to weary the helmsmen or set the masts to swaying as if they were riding out a gale.

They had made a good landfall. Within hours-rather than days-Kingfisher’s Claw would be anchored off a beach of white sand, with fruit-bearing bushes all around it, and a stream of the purest water known to sailors flowing within easy reach of watering parties.

She would also be days, rather than hours, from the minotaurs.

Kingfisher’s Claw had only a short beat to the southeast before she was clear of the last reefs that trailed out to sea like the stinging tentacles of a jellyfish. She came about, and with a leadsman taking soundings, crept in toward Mikkledan's Cove.

The water was murkier than usual off Suivinari, and Torvik saw no dolphins, either dived or broaching. The other lookout saw the same, and did not care for it.

"They could have fled some ramblings of the Smoker," Torvik reminded the man. "Or they could all be Dargonesti who have changed back to their elven form and are somewhere off at a feast in the depths where we could never see them."

The man looked as if he craved further reassurance, but before Torvik could refuse it, the captain came on deck.

"Ahoy, the foretop!" the captain called. "See anything unusual?"

Torvik had studied the water until he had lost hope of finding anything there. Now he pulled out his telescope and studied the white sand. Parts of it seemed less white and far less smooth than usual, but that could be merely a recent ship with a lubberly crew. Mikkledan Cove had been known to host watering parties from three ships between one sunrise and the next.

Something long and dark lay at the water's edge, however. Long, dark, and with the sea washing over it so that Torvik could make out little. His curiosity began to itch. He licked his lips and called down: "Somebody abandoned a ship's boat on the beach. I can see that much."

A silence long enough to stretch men's nerves followed. Then Captain Sorraz shouted: "All hands prepare to take in sail and anchor. Landing party! I want volunteers, and every one of them armed!"

Torvik winced. The orders were what he would have given, but he would not have ordered the landing party armed where all could hear. Naturally superstitious sailors could easily become fearful of some unknown menace lurking in the cove.

The men scrambled out of the first boat to touch the beach almost before the boat had stopped. Torvik led. It seemed to him that they were less eager to be on dry land than they were to solve the mystery of the overturned boat.

It stayed overturned for some while after they reached it, for it was a massively-built craft, each plank as thick as a man's arm and each rib nearly as thick as a man's body. Only the youngest sailors failed to recognize minotaur work.

It did not ease anyone's mind to see that some of those thick planks and one of those stout ribs had been shattered like clay pots struck by a hammer. At last, enough men had mustered the nerve to find handholds, and at Torvik's signal they heaved the boat upright.

Those around the boat were not the only ones who gasped in horror. Yavanna's party guarding the way inland, and Sorraz's men resting on their oars just outside the surf line, also lost countenance at what the righting of the boat displayed.

It was a minotaur, well grown even for that massive breed. He had plainly died fighting, with courage that would guard his honor, but had not saved his life. His foe had all but torn one arm out of its socket, crushed his chest, and bitten clear through one thigh and nearly through the waist. The minotaur's tough hide also bore gashes and round marks, a hand's breadth across. It was those round marks that finally loosened someone's tongue.

"I've seen those circles," he said. It was barely above a whisper.

"Louder," Torvik called. "What one knows about this, all must know. Would you steal a shipmate's knife? Leaving him ignorant is as bad."

The man swallowed. "I saw them on the hide of a whale," he said. "A whale one of my mates said had met a kraken."

That ill-omened name made everyone look toward the sea. Sorraz and Yavanna left their parties, hurrying to Torvik's side. Before looks toward the sea could turn into a rush toward the boats, Torvik whistled for everyone's attention.

"I've never heard of krakens in these waters," he said, "or this far inshore."

"Krakens go where they will," Sorraz the Harpooner muttered. The captain was a fine fighter and a better shark-chaser, but hardly a master morale-builder.

"So do we," Torvik snapped. "Or is Kingfisher’s Claw a fat merchanter, thinking only of a safe profit, crewed by those who expect the sea to make itself safe for them?"

Those were much more florid words than his father would have thought wise for rallying frightened men, but at least they seemed to take men's thoughts off krakens.

"What I want to know is what is any triply-cursed bullhead doing on our beach?" someone asked.

"Could have been heading for the nearest land," Sorraz replied. "Habbakuk only knows I'd do the same with a kraken after me."

That seemed to ease the men, about minotaurs if not about krakens. Torvik was about to suggest that they draw the minotaur's body up above the high-tide mark, for an honorable burial, when one of Yavanna's men came running down from the tree line as if the flames of the Abyss were licking at his heels.

"There's another one up there!" he shouted. "Dead, and not mark on him!"

"Another what?" Yavanna and Torvik snapped almost together. Torvik realized it was the first Yavanna had spoken.

"Another minotaur," the man said.

Both Torvik and Yavanna had the same idea at the same moment, and in the next, shouted the same name: "Beeyona!"

The ship's healer scrambled out of the boat and ran lightly across the sand to the mates.

"Your wish?" she asked.

Her manner was as gruff as one might expect from a woman of gray hair and large stature, instead of one short of thirty and barely able to look Torvik in the eye. But she had once studied to be a priest of Mishakal, and although she had taken no true vows, she still walked somewhat apart. All aboard Kingfisher’s Claw agreed that her healing arts made it worth tolerating that minor vice.

Torvik wasted no more words than Beeyona.

"Learn how the minotaur died. The one inland," he added, as she turned toward the mangled corpse.

Beeyona had seldom enjoyed such a strong guard-or such a large audience-as the sailors who surrounded her all the way to the trees and afterward, when she knelt beside the dead minotaur. They did not much care to remain, for the trees might hide anything. The dead brown eyes of the minotaur stared blindly upward in a way that was the stuff of nightmares. Also, some of Beeyona's spells were rumored to be of her own devising, or even borrowed from non-humans-and there were folk aboard Kingfisher’s Claw who did not much care for that last.

Whatever their origins, Beeyona's spells served as well as ever. When she rose from beside the minotaur, her face held what to Torvik seemed both dire knowledge and grim purpose.

"She died of fright," Beeyona said.

"She-?" Yavanna asked.

The healer pointed at the corpse and said, "She and her mate came ashore from a boat. She saw him taken by what pursued them, and saw him the way we saw. Her heart stopped."

"That's reading a good deal from a minotaur body, for human magic," someone said.

Before Torvik or Yavanna could identify the insubordinate sailor Beeyona shrugged and said, "Nor could I have done as much, had she been dead a few hours longer."

Torvik added what that implied-the killer from the sea could not be far away-to what he had already reasoned from the first minotaur not being devoured. The killer had not fed. The sun made the hot forest suddenly seem as cold as the face of a glacier, and nearly gave his legs the power to send him fleeing back to the boats.

Honor and good sense restored his wits to command of his body. "We have as much need of water as ever before," he said plainly. "I say let us fill our barrels and be off. I want an answer to this mystery as much as you do, but I doubt we'll find it on land."

"And if it comes back-?" the same voice that had questioned Beeyona's honor muttered.

"It is a thing of the sea," Yavanna said sharply. "On land we can choose where to fight, and none of us have weak hearts. If it comes by sea-well, Kingfisher’s Claw is not a ship's boat, and our captain is not called the Harpooner without good reason. And that is the last word for laggards and cowards until we have watered. Any more backchat, and I won't be talking."

"Nor I," Torvik said. Several of the leaders among the sailors nodded assent, and Sorraz smiled enigmatically.

But even they kept looking from the forest to the sea and back again, as they rolled the empty barrels out of the boats and up the beach toward the spring.

The hours came and went, the pile of empty barrels shrank, and several boatloads of filled ones had already returned to the ship. The watering would have gone faster had the heat of the day not made the sailors as thirsty as if the springs ran ale instead of water, so that they drank as much as they loaded.

Torvik took his turn at the hard labor, but both he and Yavanna spent more time watching the sentries, who in their turn were watching the tree line. Nothing had happened since they found the second dead minotaur, but Torvik knew that didn't preclude the possibility that something could happen and might mean the sentries were growing less alert.

Torvik was leaning against a tree when he felt a quivering-in the tree, not in the ground. He had just time for the thought that this was a most peculiar earthquake, when the sandy soil burst apart and a root as thick as his arm rose into the air, twisting and writhing like the tentacle of a kraken.

Torvik's sword rasped free. He had just time to take one slash before the free end of the root wrapped itself around his left leg. He slashed again, the root writhed more fiercely, and the tree shuddered again. Suddenly he was dangling upside down.

He slashed a third time, but only struck a glancing blow with the tip of his sword that barely chipped bark. Then the root was drawing back, still holding the young mate of the top, like a tossball player limbering up his arm for a throw-with Torvik as the ball.

Yavanna struck before the root could finish its work. Wielding a snatched-up axe in both hands she flung herself on the root. It jerked from one blow, spasmed from a second, tightened its grip on Torvik's leg so that he cried out after the third blow, and on the fourth blow fell severed into two pieces.

The portion still attached to the tree promptly vanished, like a snake diving into a burrow at the sight of a fisher hawk. Torvik thumped down on the sand hard enough to knock the breath out of himself, which was just as well, or he would have cried out again from the pain as Yavanna jerked the severed piece of root from around his leg.

"Don't touch it!" he finally managed to gasp.

"It's dead," Yavanna said.

"It shouldn't have been alive in the first place," Torvik said, and Yavanna had to nod.

"Far be it from me to expect gratitude for saving your life…." she growled, turning away, axe still in hand. She looked at the trees as if daring one of them to so much as shake a leaf at her.

"I am grateful," Torvik said. "And don't you all stand around staring at me! Watch the trees or fill the barrels!" he shouted at a circle of wide-eyed sailors who had seemingly sprung from nowhere.

The sailors obeyed, and the withdrawal from the island was a retreat rather than a rout, in as much as they left no barrels or other gear ashore. No one turned his back on anything larger than a pebble or a strand of seaweed until they were all on the beach and ready to board the boats.

Nor did any of the watering party stop telling their shipmates about the magic loose on Suivinari Island, once they were aboard, until Sorraz gave the order to raise anchor and make sail.

At sunset, Torvik left the top to a lookout, because his bruised leg was more than a trifle painful and for another reason that he would barely admit to himself. The sooner the darkness swallowed Suivinari Island, the sooner he would feel safe from whatever lurked in the waters around it and the sand and rock inland.

He felt halfway between a coward and a fool for even thinking this, but he doubted that he was the only one aboard Kingfisher's Claw whose wits were a trifle blunter after today. It would be as well if they spoke to another ship soon, to carry the warning and perhaps learn if others had seen any strangeness in these waters. At the moment, most of the crew would willingly see even a minotaur ship lift above the horizon, rather than an empty sea.

The thought made Torvik lift his telescope, not that he expected to see anything that the lookout had not already spotted, but sometimes on a hazy night there was clear air on deck and fog around the tops, instead of the reverse.

Flickering, sinuous movement close to a barely-visible reef drew his attention. He swung the telescope to see why the porpoises were that close inshore, then saw that the sleek backs were too small to be porpoises. Seals or sea otters, most likely.

Then Torvik could have sworn he saw a faint ruddy glow in the water, where one of the seals had swum. The glow made a circle in the water, lasting only as long as a single deep breath-but out of it swam a human form. It reached the rocks with swift flashing strokes of long arms, then rose on long legs.

It was a woman, with hair the same color as the glow-a rich dark wine hue, and flowing all the way down to her knees, so that it alone cloaked her graceful form from Torvik's eyes.

Then she vanished so suddenly that Torvik suspected magic before he saw a rock pinnacle that effectively shielded anyone behind it from the ship. If there was anyone to shield. Torvik wrestled for a moment with the thought that he had in truth seen nothing. But if that were so, then his eyes and wits were both failing him. Better to accept that he had seen a seal-no, it would be a sea otter-change to a woman, and know that the Dimernesti also swam in these waters.

Which might mean they knew of the minotaur-killer? Yes, but it was far from certain that anything would come that.

The Dimernesti were rarer by far in these waters than the Dargonesti. Few humans could find them, and the Dargonesti were not always willing to help. Even when found, the Dimernesti were slow to speak to humans, who had hunted seals and sea otters in a way that they had never hunted porpoises and dolphins.

Hidden by the darkness and his beard, Torvik's mouth twisted in a wry smile as a thought struck him. The captain would certainly know more of the Dimernesti than most, as he knew more than most of any creature that could fall to his harpoon. But in gaining that knowledge, Sorraz had most likely shed enough Dimernesti blood that the shallows-dwellers would see Kingfisher's Claw at the bottom of the sea before they gave anyone aboard her so much as a dead clam.