Knights of the Sword

by Roland Green

  For the moment, Sir Niebar assumed all eyes were unfriendly. They might not be able to do harm out of that lack of friendship, for the seven riders were none of them recognizable as Knights of Solamnia or men-at-arms in the service of any respectable house. They looked more like tavern brawlers in search of a tavern to empty with their fists; the rest of their weapons were carefully hidden inside tunics, under cloaks, and in saddlebags.

  The only eyes that might not be unfriendly were those of the nonhumans who inhabited these woods. Niebar was certain of kender and suspected gnomes; gully dwarves were everywhere, but made poor spies when a man wanted accurate news quickly. Centaurs also lived hereabouts, at least one small herd, but they so seldom cared much about what humans did (as long as it wasn’t trapping, shooting, or poisoning them) that they were no more a menace than the gully dwarves.

  The kender had eyes to see, wits to understand, and tongues to tell. There could have been no warning to the local kender that did not risk warning the innkeeper and his friends. So Niebar could only pray to Paladine, Kiri-Jolith, and Majere that the kender would realize he and his men were coming to end their kinsman’s torments, not add to them.

  * * * * *

  Jemar tried to compose his face before he entered his cabin. Coming to Eskaia with a look of stark terror ruling every feature would not help matters.

  From the look Delia gave him as he came in, Jemar had not been entirely successful. Then he abandoned self-restraint, rushed to the bed, and knelt beside it.

  Eskaia smiled. It reminded Jemar of the smile he had once seen on the face of a criminal being impaled, but it made Eskaia seem real once more.

  How long would she remain that way?

  “What happened?” he asked. Now he thought he had command of his voice, if not his face. Eskaia actually raised both hands in salute—then dropped them again as pain twisted her face.

  Delia favored the captain with a grim smile. “She fell. Hard. Forward.”

  “Of course it was forward,” Eskaia murmured. “You’ve always said I was well padded—ah—astern …” She bit her lip, and Jemar noticed that blood had dried on both lip and chin.

  “Can’t you at least put her out of the pain?” Jemar asked. He wanted to snarl, scream, roar, or otherwise sound like bull thanoi in the mating season. He kept his voice low, for Eskaia’s sake.

  “Not without making things worse,” Delia said. “I don’t know if I should tell you this—”

  “Jemar knows that I had some potential to be a cleric,” Eskaia said wearily. “Delia, talk quickly, or let me tell my lord the story.”

  Delia swallowed, and Jemar had to do her the justice to admit that she then told the story quickly and even well.

  Eskaia had fallen during the great wave-collision. She had so shaken her womb that she was in grave danger of miscarrying. Also, she might be bleeding from within.

  There were spells Delia knew to heal each condition separately, but both had to be healed together if they were not to lose babe or mother. The only spell that could do that had to be performed on dry land. Attempted out at sea, and in the presence of so much magic already unleashed, the spell would surely fail, probably killing both babe and mother together.

  “We must put in to land at once,” Delia concluded. “In hours, it will be too late. I have heard there is a safe harbor we can reach in that time. Steer for it, Captain, in the name of all good gods!”

  “Delia, Jemar can’t take his bannership off and leave the rest of the fleet to—oh—to face the—the enemy,” Eskaia got out, between gasps.

  “He can if he wants you to see another sunrise,” Delia snapped.

  “I could go to another—” Eskaia began.

  Delia squeezed her eyes shut and her hands into fists. Jemar wanted to shake her, then saw that she was weeping. Over that, he had no right to quarrel with anyone.

  “If she stays aboard Windsword,” Delia said, hoarsely, “what I can do, and the help she gives me—this may keep her alive long enough. Putting her in a boat—you may as well fling her over the side!”

  She glared at Jemar, as if daring him to raise hand or voice to her.

  “It won’t help me to have you quarreling,” Eskaia said, with a ghost of her old fierceness in argument. “Jemar, do what you judge best. I will have no quarrel with anything you do.”

  “Well, I cannot turn into a dragon and fly you to shore,” Jemar said. He bowed his head briefly, in remembrance of a bronze dragon who had died a hero at Crater Gulf, for all that he had been waked from dragonsleep for no other purpose than to balance a black dragon waked by a renegade mage.

  “But we can steer for Waydol’s cove, I think. Delia, is speed all we seek, or will easing the motion of the ship help?”

  “It will help if you can do it,” Delia said. “I am no sailor, but I think those wind-conjuring wizards out there will make it less easy than it could be.”

  For once, Jemar found himself agreeing with the midwife-healer.

  Chapter 20

  Darin no longer had to fight an urge to climb to Gullwing’s tops. The ship had no mast left standing.

  Even from the deck, the view was less clear than it had been. The magic storms were filling the air with clouds, rain, mist, spray, and everything else to block the eye. Also, the ship was a trifle lower in the water.

  The Minotaur’s Heir wondered if Tarothin’s cabin was still watertight. If Gullwing sank much lower, the crew was going to have to rescue the wizard whether he wished it or not, unless he could conjure up a fish’s gills and go on working magic underwater.

  The magic storms were still visible, however. Both now reared as high as hills above all the mist and spray. The green mist wall was fighting back with lightning bolts; great clouds of steam erupted as the onrushing waves quenched them.

  At least no actual magic seemed to be spilling out of the storm area to endanger the ships at sea, either Jemar’s or Istar’s. Even wind and waves seemed less of a menace. Darin had six oars out on each side, and Gullwing was slowly opening the distance.

  Meanwhile, a keen-sighted crewman said that he had seen Istarian ships sailing close to shore. Darin himself had seen Jemar’s ships heading about, straight for the mouth of the cove.

  He hoped that they were doing this to carry out their task, and not because they were in distress. No one ever sailed to safety aboard a ship grounded to avoid sinking or holed on rocks.

  At least there were other sailors besides Darin who could pilot Jemar’s ships through the passage. Darin could give his full attention to keeping his own ship afloat—and with it, the wizard on whose efforts all still might stand or fall.

  * * * * *

  Waydol’s armor was an old-fashioned leather shirt sewn with iron rings, a helmet large enough to cook dinner for a dozen men, and bronze greaves. His weapons included a clabbard, the saw-edged minotaur broadsword, two katars on his belt, plus a third strapped to his left wrist, and an arena-fighter’s rack of four shatangs on his back.

  Pirvan suspected that before the day was over there would be men dropping dead from the sheer sight of Waydol fitted for war. He would hardly need to touch them with any of his steel.

  He himself was profoundly grateful that this time he was fighting at Waydol’s side, and not against the Minotaur.

  “Any word of Darin?” he asked.

  Waydol shook his head. Pirvan noticed that he’d put sharp steel tips on his horns, to keep them from splitting if they struck armor. It reminded him of the efforts some Knights of Solamnia devoted to protecting their mustaches, a problem that had never concerned Pirvan. His chin was well arrayed when he chose, but his upper lip had failed to produce anything that didn’t look like an undernourished caterpillar.

  Birak Epron came up and greeted both Pirvan and Waydol. Behind him his men were drawn up, reinforced to more than three hundred by some of Waydol’s men and deserters from the levies. There was even a rumor of an Istarian cavalry sergeant.

  The sea breeze had now r
isen to a brisk wind, and the company banner rippled and snapped. The breeze was also blowing every form of murk in from the sea, though not letting it pool into vast, impenetrable banks. Jemar’s ships ought to be able to make their way into the cove safely, and ashore the fighting men would not have to fight half-blind.

  “I’ve sent out boats to pilot Jemar’s ships into the cove,” Waydol said. “They should also bring word of Darin, if Jemar has sighted him.”

  No one cared to put any of the other possibilities into words. Pirvan had wondered if there was anything in the Measure against praying for the survival of outlaws, then decided that he did not care. He would leave nothing undone to turn aside from his friend and comrade Waydol the fate of losing heir, band, and stronghold all in one day.

  A mounted messenger came up, trotting as he’d been told to. Pirvan had knocked one galloper out of the saddle with his own fists, and after that, orders about sparing the horses were taken more seriously. Everyone probably feared that Waydol would punch the next galloper.

  “Lord Waydol! The Istarians are coming ashore about an hour’s march to the east. Those who saw reckon not less than a thousand.”

  The Minotaur nodded. “Then those who face us will be two-thirds levies, if the battle begins now.”

  “It might. Beliosaran has a reputation even beyond Istar. He is quite capable of throwing the levies at us, to use us up and spare his own Istarians until the reinforcements arrive.”

  “That is the tactics of a butcher, not a captain in war.”

  “Do I seem ready to argue?”

  Waydol grunted amicably. “No. Just be ready to fight, though. You may dislike fighting the innocent, but half the men will lose heart if you and your lady aren’t in the front.”

  As if Waydol’s words had summoned her, Haimya rode up, leading Pirvan’s horse. Thanks to more captures, the knight had now awarded himself a proper cavalry captain’s war-horse, not trained for knightly fighting, but fit for everything else.

  “Have we searched the outer camp for women and children?” Pirvan asked. “Deserters can work out their own fate now, but I won’t leave refugees behind.”

  “I would rather have held the outer camp with a rear guard,” Waydol said.

  Pirvan looked at Birak. They’d argued this point before, and both knew that it was sentiment overruling sound judgment. The Minotaur could not readily bear to give up easily even a trifle of what had been his for so long.

  “They’d just surround it with a handful of men, then move on to the stronghold,” Pirvan said. “Then the men in the outer camp would be cut off. We’ve agreed long since that everyone who’s sworn to you should have a chance to make it back through the gap and aboard ship.”

  Waydol nodded. He seemed too downcast to speak. Then they all heard trumpets—some as discordant as Waydol’s, others the silver-throated tones of Istarian battle signals.

  Drums followed.

  And Waydol threw back his head and gave a bellow of challenge and defiance that made all the martial music of the attackers seem like children with toy instruments.

  * * * * *

  Jemar forced himself not to stand looking over the shoulder of the leadsman as Windsword crept through the gap in the cliffs and into Waydol’s cove. The leadsman had enough work to do, and that work meant life or death for everyone aboard the ship, without his captain dripping sweat on him!

  Life or death for more than Windsword, too. If she got out of the channel and struck, it would likely as not block the way for the ships behind. Some might even join her aground. All were following as closely as a file of sheep passing through a gap in a fence, with the pilot boat Waydol had sent out ahead of them all.

  At least the channel was wide enough for every ship to use its oars or sweeps. Some of them could only make bare steerageway without wind, but all could navigate in—and Habbakuk grant that they could make it out again.

  The last rocks slid past, the channel began to open out into the cove, and Jemar looked up at the cliffs. They surrounded the cove on three sides; the fourth was a more gentle slope, covered with huts, gardens storehouses, and everything else needed for a band of outlaws the size of a fair village. Atop the slope were stables, forges, and a few stone huts that looked older than the rest of the place, or perhaps were just built minotaur-style, which hadn’t changed much since elves had ruled Ansalon.

  Jemar looked around the cove, measuring it with a seaman’s eye. If there was enough deep water and the holding ground was good, it had room for twice the ships he’d brought. There also seemed to be a fair number of boats drawn up on the shore, and the ships would be putting theirs over the side even before they anchored.

  Another step forward, not to be taken again. They could still fall, though, and from a fatal height.

  The anchoring gang could do its work with even less watching by its captain than the leadsman. Now he could remain on deck until the last of his ships was safely through the passage.

  Jemar wanted to howl like a maimed wolf. Instead he called for a messenger.

  “Go below and see how Lady Eskaia fares.”

  “Aye, Captain. We—we’re all praying for her.”

  “Well begun is half-done, lad. Now, run!”

  * * * * *

  The levies came straight out of the mist, and Pirvan and Waydol met them head-on.

  At least they did for all of five minutes, long enough to force the levies to deploy from what might be called a column of march into what was no doubt intended to be a battle line.

  It took them nearly half an hour and language that made even Haimya blush to make that battle line fit to advance.

  By then Pirvan and Waydol had their three hundred men well in hand, and ready to give ground at whatever pace might prove necessary.

  Most of the levies carried pikes, spears, or swords. Few had much armor, and the archers were still few and badly scattered.

  “Probably no one captain commanding all of them,” Birak Epron said. “Certainly no Istarian, or they’d be better arrayed.”

  “Then where are the Istarians?” Waydol asked.

  “Probably off to the seaward flank,” Epron said. “Ready to join up with their comrades, then work around our flank and run right up our arse while the levies hold us in front.”

  Then the thud of fast-moving horses on damp ground reached their ears—from the right, or landward flank.

  Epron spat. “Remind me never to take up prophecy when I’m too old for soldiering.”

  Pirvan nodded, and Epron bawled, “Form square to receive cavalry!”

  The men managed the feat of not only forming the square, but also moving off at an angle while they were forming, opening the distance between them and the levies. They had just finished when the flank patrols rode into sight, hotly pursued by several score horsemen.

  None of them looked like the dreaded Istarian cavalry. This time Pirvan gave the order directly.

  “Square—kneel, archers—shoot!”

  Unlike their opponents, Waydol’s picked rear guard was well supplied with archers. Indeed, the captains had eagerly sought men who were proficient with more than one weapon, and as a result a good many of the spearholders had bows slung across their backs.

  The spears wavered and dropped, the square wriggled and writhed as the archers opened clear lines of sight, then suddenly an arrow-hail soared overhead. It was only a momentary blur against the clouds, and the wind sent some of the arrows badly astray.

  Enough flew straight, however, considering the size of the target. The horsemen all looked like wealthy merchants for whom playing at knight was a hobby. Like their brethren on foot, they lacked the discipline to deploy quickly into their battle formation.

  So they rode into range, a target a hundred paces wide and nearly that deep, just as the arrows came down.

  Horses and men screamed. Men toppled to the ground, to writhe until other horses trampled them into stillness. A few horses fell; more went mad with pain, hurling otherwise soun
d riders to the ground.

  The cavalry attack dissolved before the archers could shoot for the third time.

  But the sight of their townsfolk dying under the arrows touched the courage of the infantry levies. Some of them darted out in front, screaming and shouting. Then a whole mob several hundred strong thrust out from the line and charged in a ragged mass toward the square.

  At the same time, another score of horsemen rode out to join the survivors of the first attack. They slowed to pick their way over the bodies, but came on steadily toward Waydol’s square.

  Waydol stepped to the side of the square facing the horsemen, drawing two shatangs from his rack as he went. The men in front of him crouched low. He raised his right arm, swung it back, then snapped it forward so that it was a blur.

  The shatang flew even faster. One moment it was in Waydol’s hand. The next moment it was buried halfway to its butt in the chest of a horse. The horse, dead in midstride, crashed down on top of its rider.

  Before the horsemen could even notice their comrade’s fall, the second shatang was in the air. This time Waydol took a man.

  He took the man in the chest, and the man flew backward off his horse. He was in midair long enough for Pirvan to see that the shatang had pierced completely through breastplate and body, to stick out a good arm’s length behind the man’s back.

  The second cavalry attack was more prudent than the first. They fled, for the most part without having to be killed. A few archers sent farewell arrows after them, before turning their attention to the onrushing infantry levies.

  Pirvan knew this was a crucial moment for Waydol’s men. If one town’s infantry hurt them seriously, others would be encouraged to swarm in. If they stood off the first assault, it might dishearten the rest.

  Then Pirvan could lead the square back to the stronghold and the sea, with no fear of anything except Istarians, magic, storms, treason, and falling off his horse. He could do something about the last danger by walking, but as for the rest—