Knights of the Sword

by Roland Green

  Eskaia stepped back and punched her husband lightly in the ribs. “If you have forgotten Amalya, my first maid, then I wonder that you propose to command the fleet. It is as well that I am here to take your place, if your wits—”

  Jemar could not hold in his laughter. It was not quite a joking matter; had Eskaia been born to a family like her husband’s, she might indeed be striding the deck of her own ship (although, one hoped, not so far along with child) and aspire to fly her own banner someday. She had taken to the life of a sea barbarian’s lady as if she had been born to it, instead of heiress to one of the great merchant houses of Istar.

  Jemar stopped laughing when he realized that Eskaia was still speaking. “—is Delia, a Red Robe with special command of healing spells and midwifery. To be sure, I do not expect us to be at sea long enough for the babe to be born, but Delia also has it in her to prevent mishaps.”

  Miscarriages is what you will not say, Jemar thought.

  They had been lucky with their brood: three healthy babes in succession, and remaining healthy through all the years since the midwives held them up for the proud parents to contemplate. But sailing on this voyage seemed to Jemar to be tempting fate.

  By now, all hands on deck had dropped their work in favor of scrambling to pick up Lady Eskaia’s baggage. They would have picked up her as well had they not been leaving that honor to their captain.

  Perhaps it will be for the best. Habbakuk knows they love her, and if they see her as a good-luck charm …

  Everyone on the deck of Windsword cheered as Jemar the Fair lifted his wife and carried her into the aftercastle.

  * * * * *

  Tarothin found Pride of the Mountain’s galley as ill-stocked as he had expected. However, there were herbs and spices enough for one of the potions, not the best but likely to be good enough with a little help from magic and a great deal more from the gods.

  The Red Robe wizard worked swiftly, following the principle that if it didn’t taste bad, nobody would believe it was any good. The smell of the potion as it boiled nearly drove the cooks and their mates out of their own galley, and the boys who carried the pots on deck did so with their kerchiefs wrapped over their noses and mouths.

  But it worked. By the time Pride of the Mountains was ready to sail, the still-pale recruits were on their feet—and promptly set to work by the boatswains’s mates, at the capstan, hauling on the sheets, or lashing loose gear in place.

  Once offshore, of course, the weather and the ship together did their best to put the recruits back on the sick list. But that best was not good enough; all were still on their feet and working, or else off watch and sleeping off honest fatigue, when Pride met the Istarian fleet.

  The weather was still nothing for a pleasure cruise, and Tarothin would have sworn that he saw fog, rain, spray, and clouds in the air all at once. He clung to the railing and tried to count the Istarian fleet, and made a guess of some fifteen ships, of a size to hold some thousand or more soldiers beyond their own crew.

  Some of them were making heavy weather of it; the galleys were all under sail and had their oar ports lashed firmly shut. Even the heavier sailing ships were rolling with a lazy motion that could have made Tarothin queasy if he’d looked at them too long.

  He did no such thing. Instead, he went below and locked himself in his cabin, his services having earned him quarters to himself. Then he lay down and bound himself with a light spell that would put him into a trance and a stronger one that would make him acutely aware of any magic or magic-workers in the fleet.

  It would not allow him to interfere with any spells; that was another and more serious matter, not to mention far more perilous. Neither would he be as able as he wished to defend himself from magical attack, let alone physical, while he lay in the trance.

  But the combination of spells did have one great virtue. He was like a fly on the wall of a room, undetectable by those going about their business below, who would remain unaware of his scrutiny.

  When he awoke, the fleet of Istar would have fewer magical secrets from him.

  * * * * *

  Lady Eskaia lowered herself into her husband’s second-most-formal cabin chair, the vallenwood one, with inlays of polished, wine-hued coral and hornwhale ivory. Her husband noted that she moved with both caution and grace.

  Indeed, she would not lose that grace until the last months of her pregnancy, when no woman could avoid taking on the shape of a melon with legs or moving like one. Otherwise she might have been an elf, perhaps one with the wild blood of the Kagonesti behind her dark coloring, with an instinctive grace of movement ashore or afloat, walking or dancing, clothed or—

  Jemar did not force that thought from his mind. He did force his tongue to draw inspiration from it, to shape words that he hoped might send his wife back ashore.

  “You are too beautiful to be real, even when I see you sitting here before me.”

  “Even when I am bearing?”

  “Even so.”

  She blew him a kiss. “I will never cease to marvel at how a rough sea warrior became so honey-tongued.”

  “I had inspiration, my lady.”

  “Then if you were so inspired, my lord, why do you seem so ill at ease over my presence here? Am I bad luck?”

  “No.” That was mostly the truth; those who believed women aboard ship were bad luck were a diminishing handful, and Jemar did not care to have any of them serving him.

  “You have been my good luck for as long as I have known you,” he went on. “I owe—”

  “Something to my dowry and to the connection I brought to you, with House Encuintras and its allies, I would say.”

  “You would say that, when here I am speaking words of gentle passion—”

  “Better than words of not-so-gentle passion to see me back in the boat and headed ashore.”

  Jemar leaped from his chair. He wanted to go down on his knees, put his head in Eskaia’s lap, and beg her to consider what folly she was about to commit. Instead he stood, hands clenched into fists and pressed against his side.

  Eskaia’s gaze seemed to pierce him like an arrow. Was she suspecting he might be about to raise a hand to her? He had done this twice; he was quite sure that his life would be forfeit if he did it a third time. It had made him guard his tongue, temper, and wine-bibbing, none of which in moderation, he supposed, would do him any harm.

  Indeed, moderation would give him more years to spend with Eskaia, who was some seventeen years his junior and would probably be a silver-haired beauty when he was a mumbling wreck of a sailor or a corpse long since reduced to bones by the fish of some distant sea. He wanted those years. He wanted them so badly, he could taste them on his lips—

  Eskaia rose and embraced him, so that he tasted his dreams on her lips instead. “I do not think lightly of the dangers that might come on this voyage, Beloved. But remember that I survived a winter storm while carrying Milandor, and he is now up to my shoulder and hearty as a minotaur.”

  “A storm is not a battle. If the ship stays afloat, all aboard are apt to live out the storm. A battle is another matter. A battle that might pit us against the fleet of Istar, with the odds on their side—”

  “You need not draw me a detailed chart of the perils of this course,” Eskaia said. “But consider how many perils I may avert.

  “First, I may well know some of the Istarian captains, or at least those under them. If we come to negotiating rather than fighting, that will be useful.

  “Second, Istar’s fleet might well be prepared to send Josclyn Encuintras’s son by marriage down among the Dargonesti and the sharks. They will be less willing to sink Josclyn’s daughter. My father is not too old to be a bad enemy.”

  “You ask me to sail into battle with all knowing that I am ready to shield myself behind my wife? My wife who is with child?” Jemar’s fingers twitched, and his voice climbed to the pitch of wind shrieking in the rigging.

  Eskaia did not move. Instead she smiled. “Choose. Be
thought a coward by little minds for so shielding yourself. Or be thought a fool, by me and likely others, for refusing to avail yourself of every weapon that the gods can possibly allow you.”

  Jemar’s shoulders sagged. Eskaia would not slash him with her tongue like a storm slashing sails to ribbons if she thought his pride had made him a fool. But something would depart from between them, something that made life sweeter than he had ever dreamed it could be.

  “If I know you as I ought to, there is another reason,” he said. His smile was forced, but she answered it with one of her own. “You want to see our old friends again, our friends of the quest to Crater Gulf.”

  “You are not as witless as you sometimes pretend to be, Jemar,” Eskaia said, raising herself to kiss him. “I would be very happy indeed to see them.”

  “Just as long as we are not too busy dodging galleys’ rams and showers of arrows to give anyone even a simple ‘Good day,’ ” Jemar put in. He gently embraced his wife.

  “Now, send in that magic-working midwife or that midwifely wizard or whatever she is, and let her satisfy me as to her skills. For if she is not what she says she is, you still may find yourself going ashore.”

  “That is only just,” Eskaia said as demurely as a girl of nineteen instead of a matron of past thirty.

  Jemar wanted to grind his teeth at the futility of his bluster. But had he not forsworn that habit some years ago, being wed to Eskaia would have reduced his teeth to stubs and his diet to gruel and ale.

  * * * * *

  Tarothin would have seemed asleep to eyes ignorant of magic. Indeed, it would have taken magic of the fourth order or more to penetrate the disguise of sleep—and such penetration would turn the trance to true sleep and leave much less for a curious wizard, friendly or not, to learn.

  This was as well, for Tarothin was listening to the minds of magic-workers so close by that they had to be aboard ships of the fleet. He could not tell which ships; he had a vague notion that they were in a chamber so damp and dark that it must be well below the waterline of a large ship.

  That was all he saw of the physical surroundings of the others. He had the impression that they were clerics rather than wizards, but could not have sworn to it had he possessed a waking tongue to swear.

  Far more vivid was the next image—a stormy sea, with ships plowing across it, reefed sails taut-bellied, green water pouring over waists and sometimes forecastles. Ahead of the ships flew a misty shape that sometimes solidified enough to be recognizable as the Blue Phoenix, a common form of Habbakuk.

  Suddenly the sea in the path of the ships erupted into a mountain of water, crowned with foam. Darkness swelled within that mountain of water, which held its shape in defiance of the power of the wind and its own weight.

  The darkness surged free of the water—the monstrous turtle shape of Zeboim, who brought Evil to the waters as Habbakuk brought Good. She leaped completely clear of the mighty wave, and her beak closed on a wing of the Blue Phoenix.

  Now wind blew outward from the mountain of water. Ships already heeling over as they fought to clear the wave heeled farther. Some went right over and lay keel up before foundering; others lay on their beam ends as men clung to the last few handholds until their strength vanished, and so did they, into the boiling sea.

  Thunder and fire burst from the battling gods. The wind stripped the sails from every ship still afloat, dismasted several, and threw another on its side. It went down almost at once, as if a giant hand—or beak?—had snatched it down into the depths.

  The fire held all colors and none, and most of the colors were not ones to which a wise man would care to give a name, for that would mean studying them too closely for too long. It also held heat, and steam exploded from the top of the wave as enough water to fill a small lake flashed into white vapor.

  Tarothin saw the wall of vapor expanding toward him, knew that his flesh was about to be seared from his bones, struggled to either awake or cast a protective spell, or both if he could contrive it—

  —and awoke bathed in sweat, with the bedding of his bunk almost as sodden as if his cabin had been flooded. He looked up at the port; it was sealed beyond allowing even a trickle. He looked at the deck; it was dry, with not even a dark spot on the cheap woolen rug that his last few towers had bought for cabin gear.

  What had become of Habbakuk in this joust of the gods, Tarothin did not know. He suspected it would not be prudent to dwell too long on this—vision, dream, nightmare? He had known the magic-hearing spell for only a few years, and it was not common among the Black Robes, rare among the Reds, and virtually outlawed among the Whites.

  But priests of Zeboim so openly plotting to seek their mistress’s victory over Habbakuk might be confident because they commanded some unusual spells. Tarothin might find before the voyage was over that his mind was as open to them as theirs to his.

  Then victory would be a matter of who struck first.

  Tarothin drank half his jug of water, then stripped and washed the sweat from his body with a cloth dipped in the other half. He felt cleansed not only in body but somewhat in mind when he was done.

  He also felt clearheaded enough to know where his duty lay. Neutrality suggested that he should not strike first if the danger was only to him. But his neutrality also suggested even more strongly that he should have no such scruples if his friends were in danger.

  Chapter 12

  To the northeast, the canyon slashed deep into the side of the mountain. The mountain’s upper slopes lay hidden in sullen, dark clouds, and more clouds were piling up to the east and north. A sharp-eyed observer could make out lightning flashes within the clouds.

  “That looks like no natural storm,” Birak Epron said. He had looked about him carefully to see that no one but Haimya and Pirvan were within hearing. Now he looked down at the river, winding along the bottom of the valley below. Pirvan looked at Rubina, but Epron shook his head. That did not mean the Black Robe was innocent, only that the mercenary captain would not willingly hear an accusation against her.

  Not that there was a great deal one could expect from such an accusation, besides a furious quarrel and certainly not the truth. But Pirvan was beginning to wish that circumstances had dictated he travel either with Rubina or with the column of sell-swords. He could deal with either alone; both together made him feel out of his depth.

  However, the plain fact was that the day was drawing to a close. Beyond the river, in places shallow enough to wade, were several concealed campsites. On this side it was all bare rock and grass, without even a visible spring for fresh water. A ridge also overlooked the south bank of the river, studded with perches for archers to play on anyone below.

  Crossing the river this late in the day was not much to Pirvan’s taste. All the alternatives were even less so.

  “I will take Rubina up with the leaders,” Pirvan said. “You keep well back, in the middle of the column.”

  “Very well. As fond of her as I am, I could wish she had not quarreled with Tarothin. Two wizards are better than one, and Tarothin was apt to speak his mind. Rubina unveils her body but keeps her mind invisible to mortal eye.”

  Pirvan refrained from congratulating the mercenary captain on his belated achievement of wisdom.

  * * * * *

  The river was one of those ill-natured streams too shallow to float a boat, too wide to jump across, and too deep to wade easily. It was also full of dead animals, so neither drinking from it nor swimming across it was an agreeable thought.

  The column cast up and down along the near bank, seeking a ford. In time they found a sandbar that cut most of the way across the river, and made a path shallow enough to cross if not quite dryshod, then without ruining clothes and weapons.

  “Let us not forget the food,” Haimya added. “If we ruin the trail biscuit and then run into a land hunted bare, we may be leaner than elves before we reach Waydol.”

  Two of the tallest soldiers crossed the river with stout ropes, tying them
to trees on the far bank. Further tall, strong soldiers entered the water, stationing themselves at intervals along the ropes in case anyone lost his grip. Pirvan did not expect much of this; the current appeared sluggish, except for an occasional eddy.

  Pirvan and Haimya led the way across. Rubina followed. In spite of her height, she somehow contrived to be soaked from head to foot, so that when she emerged from the water her black garments clung to her like a second skin. She stood in the open like that, wringing the water out of her hair, until several men stumbled into potholes because they could not keep their eyes off her.

  Pirvan was about to drag her forcibly out of sight when he heard a distant rumbling sound, like thunder but nearer the earth. He ran to the bank and looked upstream and down. Downstream showed nothing as far as the last visible bend.

  Upstream, a faint haze seemed to rise from the river. Pirvan strained his eyes and saw the base of a prominent tree upstream seem to vanish. Then the lower branches also vanished. The same thing happened to other trees, and Pirvan cupped his hands and shouted, “Flood! The river’s rising! Everybody out of the water to high ground!”

  Not everyone could obey this prudent command. The river was a hundred paces wide at the crossing point, and even those men who remained calm did not all survive. Pirvan saw Haimya run down to the water’s edge, stripping off her armor and clothing as she went, clearly intending to use her swimming prowess to save whomever she could.

  The knight wanted to shout, or run and grapple her away from the water. Instead he pointed to two soldiers already crossed over.

  “Take the Lady Rubina to high ground, or climb a tree if you find nothing better.”

  Then Pirvan himself ran down to the bank, where the water was rising toward him almost as swiftly as he descended toward it. There could be no stopping Haimya; his choices were letting her risk her life or shaming her before all in a way that she would not forgive.

  The knight hoped that his wisdom would console him somewhat if it was his fate today to see his lady drown before his eyes.