Knights of the Sword

by Roland Green

  In the next moment everyone had a weapon in hand.

  In the moment after that, a bloody slaughter would have begun, except that out of the darkness, the small figure returned. Now he was carrying a staff, from whose head an unearthly blue light shone, faintly but visible to all even in the glare of the campfire.

  “Hold!” Pedoon shouted, and Darin echoed him. Sirbones hurried over to the choking man, who had now fallen on his side in convulsions. He laid the staff on the man’s throat, then on his belly, then on his chest, and finally stepped back, singing in a voice that sounded like a giant earteaser in full cry.

  It seemed that the man emptied his stomach of everything he’d eaten since he left the stronghold. Sirbones and two of his comrades helped drag him to clean grass and wipe him clean with leaves and water. Then they laid two cloaks over him, and Sirbones stepped up to Darin.

  “Most of the poison is out of him, and my healing will fight off what may remain.”

  “What kind of poison was it?”

  “In that kind of bread, you could hide a dozen at once without tasting any of them,” Sirbones said. “Ask the poisoner. Or I can—”

  “No!” That was Pedoon, now standing beside the man who had tried to spear Darin. “He has violated the laws of the gods and of this band, and was a fool and a traitor as well. But you shall not enter his mind.”

  “Will he be the better if you thrust hot coals into his body until he loses his voice from screaming and dies without speaking?” Sirbones snapped.

  Darin stepped between the priest and the half-ogre chief. “Will you answer Sirbones? There will be no war between us over this, but you will not be called our friends without some fit answer.”

  Pedoon shrugged massive shoulders. Even his shoulder blades sprouted hair, though much of it was gray. “Ansik always walked a little apart. I don’t know where he obtained the poison. I trust that any of his comrades who do will see that nobody else is as stupid.”

  Pedoon’s hooded gaze swept the ranks of his men like a fire spell. “As for why he did what he did—there is a price on your head, Heir to the Minotaur. All men know it. Some are less honorable about how they try to collect it than others.

  “Does that content you?”

  Darin looked at Sirbones. The little priest shrugged. His face said that the answer might not content him, but they had small chance of getting a better one.

  Darin nodded.

  “Then may I have Ansik’s spear?”

  Darin handed Pedoon the captured spear, butt first, while keeping a hand on his own sword hilt. But he had no need to fear. Pedoon stood over Ansik, who had barely recovered his senses, and drove the spear down into the fallen traitor’s chest with all his strength.

  Ansik hardly even twitched before life left him.

  Silence enveloped the camp, as complete as if every man there had followed Ansik into death. Pedoon broke it, with a long, harsh, wailing cry.

  The rest of the band took it up; plainly it was a lament for the dead, neither ogre nor human but partaking of the ways of both. Darin signaled to his men to listen in silence, until the lament was ended.

  When the night birds and insects stunned into silence found their voices, Pedoon stepped close to Darin.

  “Will you walk apart with me, Heir to the Minotaur?”

  “Gladly.”

  Darin was not happy with the dark trail where Pedoon chose to lead him, but followed in silence. If death by Pedoon’s treachery was his fate, he could not turn it aside by seeming a coward or refusing to give ear to the chief.

  “It would be as well, I think, if our bands did not unite,” Pedoon said. “Hunger and hard beds are easier than worrying every day about treachery, from one side or the other. Tempers grow short that way, steel flies, blood flows, and in the end we all have less than we did.”

  “I was thinking the same,” Darin said, and those words would have passed the test of a high-level truth spell. “I had not thought your—you—”

  “You hadn’t expected such good sense in an ogre?” Pedoon said, laughing. In the dark woods, an ogrish laugh was an uncanny sound. “Shame on you, who follow a minotaur.”

  Darin could think of no reply. Pedoon laughed more softly.

  “I owe you, though, for not treating Ansik’s foolish treachery as cause for blood. And I can pay this debt, at least. There was a man who spared me and my band over by the bay, some ten years ago, whom I’ve never seen again. I’ll probably die with that debt weighing on my spirit. But you I can pay.”

  Pedoon explained how he and several other chiefs of small bands had agreed to warn each other of hostile visitors to the land. He would swear, and ask the others to swear, that anyone who came against Waydol and his heir would also be cause for warning.

  “Not fighting, unless they are few or we can band together faster than we ever have before. But warning—on this you can trust us.”

  Darin gripped Pedoon’s knob-knuckled hand. “And you can trust my huntsmen to share whatever they bring down before we leave your land.”

  They walked back to the camp with silence about them save for the night sounds of the forest.

  * * * * *

  “Any room at this table?” came the voice from behind Tarothin.

  The Red Robe remembered to look owlishly about him before focusing slowly on the bland-looking man standing behind his chair.

  “Suppose so,” he said. The slur in his words was just a hint. He was supposed to have emptied only three cups of good wine, which would barely fuddle a hardheaded drinker. No one would take him on if they thought he’d turned sot over his broken heart.

  The man sat down without further invitation and signaled the serving maid for another jug of wine and a plate of sausages. Tarothin had to let his cup be refilled when the order arrived, but it was no hardship not to drink the wine.

  He was able to pretend to drink, and to let the drink work on him, until the man leaned over and whispered, “Do you want back at those people who left you?”

  “What people?” Tarothin said.

  The man started to say something loud and out of character, then took a deep breath. “You know which ones. The tale’s all over Karthay by now.”

  If it was, somebody had been giving it boots, wings, or even a ride on a dragon. However, if this fellow had heard it and was from where Tarothin hoped he was, the tale had traveled far enough.

  “Oh, Rubina and her friends?”

  “That’s the name I’ve heard for the woman. What about the others?”

  “If you’ve heard the tale, you know who they are. Damned Istarians. Triple-damned knights.”

  Tarothin spent the next five minutes expressing what he’d like to do to Rubina, certain Istarians, and any Solamnic Knight who fell into his power. Occasionally he raised his voice enough to draw dubious looks from nearby tables.

  Some of the details were Tarothin’s imagination. Some of them came from one of the most unpleasant experiences of his life, the trial of a renegade mage who’d used healing spells to torture his victim. Most of that, Tarothin sincerely wished, was his imagination.

  His visitor kept a straight face until Tarothin was done, then ordered more wine. The wizard hoped the man would get to the point, if any, before he had to drink enough wine to really fuddle his wits.

  The True Gods were with Tarothin. Halfway through the next cup, the man leaned over and said, “Look, you. I don’t know what would come of you going back to Istar. But we have a band of good Karthayans who are tired of this fight against Istar. The gods have plainly shown their favor to the city, and we’re not folk to right against the gods.

  “So we’re chartering a ship, a big one, to carry plenty of stout Karthayans ready to take up arms for Istar. We’ll need wizards aplenty, but the tales say you’re worth three of the common kind. Can we trust you?”

  The wine had fuddled the man more than it had Tarothin, and it took him quite a while to get this out. By then, however, he was past noticing that Tarothi
n had stopped drinking.

  That was no bad thing for Tarothin. He didn’t dare use even the smallest self-healing spell to sober himself up, or further befuddle the other man. The other might say he was a Karthayan loyal to Istar’s rule, but if he was a Karthayan, then Tarothin was a kender!

  “Is there a place I can come, to go aboard?” Tarothin asked.

  “Eg—Egalobos’s place. It’s on—on Shieldmakers’ Wharf.”

  “Egalobos’s place on Shieldmaker’s Wharf.” Tarothin made a great show of looking in his purse, ready to pay for the next round.

  “Friends—friendssh left you—w’out g-gold?” the man got out.

  Tarothin nodded, but the man was nodding, too; then he fell forward onto the table, knocking over the wine cup. Tarothin felt he deserved to lie there with his beard in the wine, but instead called a serving boy.

  He was careful to stagger as he left the room. The man probably hadn’t come alone. No conspirators worth spying on would send as their only agent a man who passed out after three cups of such villainous wine! It would embarrass Tarothin to even pretend to be associated with them.

  But sots and witlings had brought down thrones before. When war and peace were in the balance, one Red Robe’s embarrassment weighed very lightly.

  * * * * *

  The letter Pirvan wrote from Karthay had eased Sir Marod’s mind.

  The letter just received from Istar did the opposite.

  Sir Marod looked at the letter as if wishing hard enough would change the words on the parchment into something innocent, such as a love poem or a laundry list.

  Wishing had no effect. Putting the letter in the candle would have some effect, but not a good one. Regardless, much of the letter was already carved on Sir Marod’s mind.

  The kingpriest was sending certain powerful and ruthless servants of Zeboim the Sea Queen aboard the fleet about to depart from Istar. They went by his command, with his blessing, aided by the resources of the great temples, and specifically freed from most of the normal bounds to their use of magic.

  That was the worst part. Black, red, and white wizards and the priests of Good, Neutral, and Evil gods kept the balance on Krynn as it was kept among the stars by honoring certain rules. Not as complex or binding as the Measure of the Knights, but serving well enough.

  Sending priests of Zeboim to sea with orders to do whatever they needed to gain victory could be pulling the keystone out of the delicate arch of the balance on Krynn. Then chaos would be unleashed and all beings alike buried under the ruins.

  Sir Marod decided that he was developing a taste for dramatic figures of speech that could as well be left to poets and pageant-makers. The priests of Zeboim would not go unopposed, by either magical or human powers.

  But their presence would increase the peril into which Pirvan and his friends were sailing or marching before they could learn of it and be on their guard. And this was quite apart from their having magical aid only from Rubina, since Tarothin had left the company in a jealous rage.

  Sir Marod had ordered men and women to their deaths before—not too many to count, but enough to sometimes deny him easy sleep at night. But he had always done his best to be sure that those who went forth knew what they faced, before they departed.

  This time, it gnawed at him that he had sent knights forth with broken lances and blunted swords, against foes who might rise from the ground or fall from the sky without warning.

  Chapter 10

  “Hulloooo!” came from the rear of the column. “Sir Pirvan! Is this the last hill?”

  Pirvan cupped his hands and shouted back, “Yes. The next one’s a mountain!”

  Good-natured curses and weary laughter echoed from the rocks as the column approached the peak of the trail. Pirvan forced strength into his legs, knowing that he was taking it from some other part of his body that would probably need it before he had a chance to rest.

  He was in the lead when they reached the crest, and nearly went limp with relief when he saw that the downward slope was easy, and the trail broad, without sharp drops. When one loses two men in a single day from their straying too close to a drop edged with mud or slippery rocks, a war leader comes to value slopes so gentle that a baby could roll down them without being hurt.

  He also comes to value able junior leaders. Haimya was one he would have valued even without love, likewise Birak Epron, and, more than somewhat to his surprise, Rubina. The Black Robe now wore male attire, though no soldier ever campaigned in such a hat, and this definitely altered her charms so that they were less distracting to the men.

  It also did not hurt that when they stopped for the night, she would go along the column, laying on hands and staff for blisters, pulled muscles, thorn stabs, and the like. Like any Black Robe, her healing powers were modest, but so far the overland column had taken no serious injuries. Everyone was either dead or marching on.

  Pirvan found the flattest and driest rock by the side of the trail and sat down. Then he drew from a pouch on his belt a tightly folded, leather-backed map of this land.

  This area had never been part of Solamnia, so the knights had not been mapping it as they had some lands, ever since maps were first invented. Instead, they had trusted the Swordsheath Scroll and the Great Meld to induce Istar to provide maps out of courtesy.

  In this, as in much else, the knights received less than their due. The most Pirvan could tell from this map was that their march had taken them almost out of the hills, and beyond lay more level country. This level country stretched from here to the seacoast, and somewhere on that coast was Waydol’s stronghold.

  So they were now entering lands where the Minotaur’s band might be roving. The inhabitants might be friendly or hostile, largely depending on what they thought of Waydol. Their thoughts on Istar’s rule might also make a difference, and Pirvan took a crumb of comfort in most of the men with him being Karthayan.

  Pirvan squinted against the westering sun and looked downhill. The trees grew tall enough to hide much, even on this slope, so it took him a while to spy the trails of chimney smoke from well beyond the last visible bend.

  “Village ahead,” he said to Haimya and Epron. “It’s downhill, so we can surely reach it with time to spare before dark. But can we trust it to be friendly?”

  Epron nodded. “The oldest question I know, for the captain of a marching column. How far to push the men? For if the village is friendly to Waydol, we might be safe only if we go farther than might be well for the men.”

  Pirvan had not and would not defer to Epron’s opinion so much so that the men questioned who led the column. But he could not deny that he had never before led two hundred men in battle, and Epron had led that many more times than he had fingers (of which he lacked two, thanks to a sword wound to his left hand).

  “Very well. We’ll march as close to level ground as we can, make camp, post guards, then scout out the village. Once we’re out of the forest, we should think of striking out across country, well away from settlements.”

  “We’re supposed to learn how the people are disposed toward Istar, Waydol, Karthay, and, for all I know, the Irda and the ice barbarians,” Haimya said. “Of course, if that was so important, they might have sent two men marching and the rest could have gone by sea.”

  “There’s truth in that,” Epron said. “I do not call your friend Jemar—”

  “Let us not discuss Jemar while the men are passing by,” Haimya put in. “Moreover, let us remember that he is on the sea with Istar’s fleet, which cannot touch us the moment the water is too shallow for their keels.”

  Pirvan wanted to point out that Jemar was, in turn, safe from Aurhinius, the moment the water reached the depth of a horse’s belly. But he knew that weary bickering could too easily turn into sharp quarrels.

  * * * * *

  In the end, there was no need to pass the village too closely. A narrower trail forked off from the main one well before the village, and scouts sent down it reported that it reached o
pen country well clear of other villages.

  The trail led, however, through what was almost another village of charcoal burners, who had their furnaces set up in a score of different clearings along the next day’s march. By now, Pirvan looked like anything but a knight, and indeed the column could be recognized as soldiers only by their being armed and keeping in some sort of order.

  “Hunh,” one of the burners said, wiping her (at least Pirvan thought it was a woman) hands on a leather apron as black as tar and cracked like ice in the spring thaw. “You fellows will never do Waydol’s business for him, even if you don’t fall down afore you gets to his gate.”

  Pirvan shrugged. “Who says we’re going to do anything at his gate besides knock? What we do then—it’s up to him and how he replies.”

  “You’re not one to call him enemy, then?”

  “Not unless he misnames us that first, and even then we’ll try not to fight him harder than needed to force a parley.”

  The charcoal burner—definitely a woman, for all that she was not much shorter than Grimsoar One-Eye—seized Pirvan in a dusty, malodorous embrace. “Gods be with you, then. But be wary. There’s plenty of folk out for the bounty on Waydol, and you may be fighting your way through them before you’re done marching.”

  So it went much of the day, with Pirvan and Haimya feigning every sort of opinion about Waydol, to draw out the charcoal burners and their kin. By the end of the day, it was plain that, at least among the charcoal burners, Waydol was considered no great enemy, sometimes a friend, and very surely one who made Istar the Mighty angry, so could not possibly be all bad, even if he was a minotaur!

  It was harder to tell what the village on the main road thought, for the charcoal burners and the villagers were not the best of friends. The woods-dwellers suspected the villagers of kissing Istar’s hand (or other parts) simply because they were the sort of folk who would do that sort of thing. But as to details, they could give none, and after a while Pirvan gave up asking.