Knights of the Sword

by Roland Green

  * * * * *

  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.

  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 ov
er 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.