by Roland Green
There lay the sea, and on it ships. Two fleets, one to the east and so far off she could barely count it. One to the west, much closer, but just too far off to recognize any particular ships. And a single ship making its way toward the eastern fleet, low-built like a galley, and apparently moving under oars.
She sat down, in sight of the water but a safe distance from the drop. She raised her staff, and cast what she knew would be her last spell, one to briefly improve her vision so that she could make out which fleet was which.
The eastern fleet first. Closer needs less strength.
Her eyes watered, her vision blurred, then cleared—and Windsword seemed to be almost near enough to touch.
She even thought she could recognize Pirvan and Haimya standing forward, close together.
She had not wept all day. She did not weep now, until she finished counting Jemar’s ships. All ten were there, besides Gullwing.
Her work was finished. Why not just take a few steps forward?
Because your friends are now safe from Takhisis’s vengeance. The only people left on this coast are enemies. Do you want them safe, too?
That thought ended Rubina’s brief tears. It was pleasant to realize that one could go on fighting even after death, if one enlisted the Dark Queen on one’s side.
Perhaps the Black Robe was not such a bad decision after all.
* * * * *
Darin would gladly have swum to Windsword the moment Gullwing was close enough, but Jemar already had a boat over the side.
There was no more news of Waydol to read in the men’s faces. He knew there would have been some if the Minotaur was either healed or dead, even if no one had put it into words.
Indeed, the silence seemed to hang over the sea and Jemar’s fleet like a mist. The water rolled gently, the air was still, and it was as if there had never been death, terror, or magic here today.
Jemar was first to welcome him aboard the bannership, but then he stepped back and let Pirvan speak.
“Waydol spent himself long after he should have given up fighting,” Pirvan said.
“Is that your judgment or the priest’s?”
“I trust the priest.”
“He is not a warrior. He is—he is not without honor, but it is not a minotaur’s honor. Or a warrior’s. You are a warrior. What do you say?”
“In Waydol’s position, I would have done the same.”
Darin gripped Pirvan by both shoulders. “Thank you is only small words. If I find something better to do or say—”
“No haste,” the knight said. “Now go below, before Sirbones has to put Waydol to sleep for the healing.”
Darin cracked his head on overhead beams several times before finding the main cabin. Sirbones opened the door, and Darin’s first thought was that the priest of Mishakal needed a healer himself.
“I must go to work soon,” Sirbones said. “I have regained enough strength—I think. I cannot wait longer, regardless.”
“Do not be afraid,” Darin said. “If my father’s time has come—”
Sirbones darted away, with more speed than Darin would have thought he had in his legs.
From the cabin, a hoarse voice said, “What did you just call me?”
Darin bit his lip and wished that he would bite out his unruly tongue. He also wanted to stop blushing, but knew that if he waited for that, Waydol might be gone before he entered the cabin.
So he stepped in and knelt beside the pallet.
Presently he felt a large hand ruffling his hair. There was not much of it to ruffle, as he had close-shorn it before going to sea. Not much for a funeral offering, either.
“Now, what did you call me?”
“Father.”
“Hmmm. I am not—not the father of your body. But in all else—I will not—not refuse the title.”
“The one who teaches a child honor is the father of his soul.”
“Did you just make that—ah—did you make that up?”
“I have never read it.”
“No, there were not many books in the stronghold, or many lovers of books. Ask Sir Pirvan properly, and I think he will give you the run of his library.”
Darin wanted to do many things besides talk of his future education. One of them was to weep. He would prefer to be flung into the Abyss.
“Well, you or whoever said it are all right. So go and fetch Sirbones, my son. If I am not to exhaust him to no purpose—”
A gasp of pain interrupted the speech, and Darin felt the Minotaur shudder. Then a small hand touched his shoulder.
“You stay with your father, Darin. I will go for Sirbones.”
It was Lady Eskaia. She wore only a nightdress that concealed so much less than her normal clothing that Darin felt himself flushing all over again. He also remembered that she had been near to death herself.
“Now, don’t argue, Darin,” she said firmly in a voice that recalled Waydol’s in the days of Darin’s childish pranks. “I can certainly walk ten paces to find where Sirbones is biting his nails in a dark corner.”
She went out, followed by a faint rumbling noise that Darin finally recognized as Waydol—as his father—laughing.
* * * * *
Sir Niebar had changed his plans several times on the way from Tiradot Manor to the Chained Ogre. Each time, it was because of something new that he learned about Pirvan’s men-at-arms.
Most of what he learned was how much they had learned from Sir Pirvan, about the skills of what they delicately called “their knight’s former occupations.” Since this included such arts as entering a house from the top instead of the bottom, making watchdogs useless without killing them, and moving in a silence normally associated with incorporeal beings. Sir Niebar was not ungrateful to the Knight of the Crown for those teachings.
He could not, however, help wondering what else Tiradot Manor’s men had been taught that they were not confessing. Also, whether Sir Pirvan’s friends and enemies would learn of these only at the last moment.
The men-at-arms had also brought a fair amount of specially made devices and potions from the manor’s armory. These included spiked boots and gloves for climbing, grappling hooks on ropes, rope ladders, ointments for darkening the skin or concealing one’s scent, and potions to sprinkle on meat or biscuit and leave out for unwanted dogs.
Each carrying a pack with their share of the equipment, the seven men slipped in toward the Chained Ogre as clouds shut out the last light from the moons. Only a few lights showed in the houses, and not many more at the inn. The nearest festival was some days off; everyone had work tomorrow and was likely abed for the night.
Sir Niebar’s portion of the load was, apart from his weapons and some extra arrows for the archers, a large carrying sack. This was to let Gesussum Trapspringer down to the ground, in case he was in no fit state to climb himself.
As this would be put into use only near the end of the raid, and only in dire emergency, Sir Niebar found himself with the job of sentry. One man-at-arms shot a hook attached to an arrow high into the eaves of the inn. A second climbed up the rope, pulling another rope with him. A third bent onto the second rope a rope ladder, climbed the second rope trailing the ladder behind him, and hooked the ladder over the frame of a dormer window.
The window was open, and the fourth man-at-arms spat on the ground when he learned this. “Sir Pirvan wouldn’t have called this a sporting job when he was doing his former work,” the man whispered irritably. “No guarding worth the name.”
That seemed to be true, but then the innkeeper had no reason to suppose that anyone knew of valuables in the attic. He had indeed probably locked all the attic stairs just in case the kender loosed himself from his shackles and didn’t want to jump from a third-story window.
The fourth man-at-arms disappeared up the ladder, along with one of the knights. Sir Niebar and the second knight remained below, as sentries and also in case there was a trap laid in the attic. If they couldn’t make their escape with the kender,
somebody had to make their way back to a keep and warn the knights.
Sir Niebar kept seeing moving shapes out of the corner of his eye, but they vanished when he looked directly toward the spots. He knew that darkness and an uneasy mind could deceive the eyes; he also heard nothing.
Which did not prove that trained adepts like the Servants of Silence could not be stalking him this very moment—
Light blazed from the attic dormer. For a moment Sir Niebar was dazzled, for another moment he thought the inn was afire. Then a small figure appeared in the window, silhouetted against the light. Without hesitating, it leaped, aiming for the branch of a tree that stood close to the inn.
A human would have snapped the branch like a twig. A kender, even a full-grown one, merely bent it down so far that he could safely drop the rest of the way to the ground. He landed awry, however, and the rough landing plus his privations had him groaning and unable to rise when Sir Niebar ran to him.
“The tattooed ones—” the kender gasped.
The warning was just in time. Sir Niebar and his companion sprang up and stood back-to-back, swords drawn, as four dark-clad figures burst from the trees. At the same time, a man-at-arms appeared in the window.
“Run!” he shouted.
Apart from waking the whole inn, Sir Niebar saw no purpose in that cry. The knights on the ground were not going to abandon their companions, and there was an end on it. There also would be no chance of taking a prisoner, if they incontinently fled.
So the two knights went briskly to work, and discovered to their mingled chagrin and relief that the four they faced were not finished swordsmen. Chagrin because there was no honor in fighting men who should not have been sent into battle at all; relief because it improved their chances of victory.
They still had to kill two of the Servants of Silence, and a third they wounded badly before he escaped into the night. A fourth might have escaped unhurt if Trapspringer hadn’t suddenly rolled over and thrust a dagger taken from one of the bodies into the man’s leg.
The man howled, missed a step, and went down like a felled tree as Sir Niebar shifted his grip and hammered the flat of his sword blade across the man’s temple. The other knight knelt immediately, to be sure the man was helpless and to bind his wound as necessary.
The kender did a little dance around the prostrate man. Sir Niebar had never seen a kender in a mood to take a blood vengeance before; he did not care to see one now.
However, the kender’s condition spoke for itself. He was now missing fingernails and teeth, as well as sporting the injuries Sir Pirvan had described. It was a minor wonder that he was as fit as he was. It was no wonder at all that he would have shed the blood of one of his tormenters if the knights had not been there.
By now the four men-at-arms were back down from the attic. One of them was thrown; when he landed in the gravel Niebar saw why. A sword or dagger thrust had pierced his heart; he must have died with neither delay nor pain.
Sir Niebar made it his business to make sure that the captive had one of the tattoos, which proved to be the case. Two of the other men-at-arms ran around to the main door of the inn and pushed a large wagon in front of it to discourage opening it. The third knight did similar work in the back, setting fire to a pile of kindling near the door.
Sir Niebar prayed earnestly to Sirrion, god of creative fire, that the kindling would burn long enough to be useful and even beautiful, but not long enough to burn down the inn and reduce innocent people to ashes.
The carrying sack proved useful in the end, for Trapspringer had spent his last strength in the dance. Sir Niebar, as the tallest of the seven companions, carried the kender. Two others carried the dead man-at-arms.
Occupants of the houses on the path back to where they’d left the horses had come awake by the time the companions passed them. But the watchdogs were mostly sleeping off potion-laden biscuit. Most of the people looking out of the houses or running out of them were going out the front as the companions passed the back, and the companions were all dark of face and clothing.
It occurred to Sir Niebar that anyone who did get a good look at them might well mistake them for the very band of the Servants of Silence they had met and defeated, the ones coming for the kender. If so, there would be all the more reason for the farmers to look the other way.
The horses were where they’d been tethered, though each one now had a kender at its head, ready to “handle” the tethers free in an instant or even cut them with daggers.
“We didn’t want the tattooed ones to have your horses and proof of who you were,” Rambledin said.
Gesussum Trapspringer’s head popped out of the sack. “Miron Rambledin! What are you doing here, if you’re doing anything useful, which it would be the first time for you if you—”
“If captivity won’t improve your manners, Gesi, the knight can always take you back to the inn,” Miron Rambledin said. “Now come along. These good folk have enough to carry without you, and Shemra will be happy to see you—no, on second thought, she won’t until you’ve taken a bath. When did they last let you within ten paces of hot water, if I may ask?”
“You may not,” Trapspringer said, but he scrambled out of the bag, swayed on his feet, then collapsed into Miron Rambledin’s arms. The other kender gathered around and lifted him, and before Sir Niebar could open his mouth to say a word in gratitude, the humans were alone with their horses.
“Well, it looks as if we have our prisoner,” Sir Niebar said. “And Rambledin nieces and nephews will soon be able to tell stories about a real Uncle Trapspringer. Although I hope they do not noise this affair about outside the family.”
“Maybe they will, maybe they won’t,” the man-at-arms who’d spoken up for helping kender said. “But you know how it is with those little folk. What one knows, all do before long. That didn’t do us any hurt tonight, Sir Niebar, and mayhap it won’t do us harm in the future.”
“Let the future look to itself. What we need now is less talk, sound horses, and the night staying dark.”
“Aye, Sir Niebar.”
In five minutes, the men and horses had departed as completely as the kender, if not as silently, and were riding through the night.
* * * * *
On a stretch of coast that was more naked rock than forest, Rubina was also alone with the night.
She was not alone in this land, she knew. From where she sat, she could see the torches of four Istarian searching parties, going over the battlefield. They seemed to be looking under every brush or even pebble for dead and wounded comrades and strays from Waydol’s men.
Twice she heard the clash of steel and the screams of the dying, as they found people who were either enemies or could not prove that they were friends. So far they had not found her, or even come far in her direction.
Takhisis, on the other hand, had not come at all. Rubina had long since expected to be in the Abyss, tormented to the edge of death and then brought back to life for further torment. Perhaps the Dark Queen was healing or consoling her daughter Zeboim?
Perhaps. More likely, Takhisis would come when she chose. Forcing Rubina to walk alone for days, months, even years, for fear of involving others in her fate, would be a subtle torment. The Dark Queen was a goddess, after all, with more time as well as more cruelty than any mortal.
Now one of the clusters of torches was finally crawling up the hill toward Rubina’s perch above the sea. Soon she could hear the thump of boots above the boom of the surf. Then she could make out torchlight reflected from armor, and finally she could make out faces.
One of them, in the middle of a ring of soldiers, was none other than Gildas Aurhinius himself. Proving that his night sight was that of a younger man, he was also the first to see Rubina.
“Ho, Lady! What do you here?”
Rubina stood up on legs that seemed ready to turn to water. She left her staff lying wedged in the rocks, not wishing to alarm the soldiers. Aurhinius might be on foot, but he was on foot w
ith some twenty armed guards.
“I wait.”
“For what?”
“For my fate.”
“Stop talking riddles, woman,” another, younger voice snapped. “Men, forward and bind her. This must be the Black Robe of Waydol’s stronghold. There is much to learn from her.”
Aurhinius turned to the younger man, who wore ornate armor and seemed to be captain of the guards. “Permit me, Zephros.”
Aurhinius stepped forward. “Lady—Rubina, is it not?”
Rubina swallowed. She had not expected any Istarian to know her name.
“We try to learn where wizards are, and whether alive or dead,” he said mildly. “Sometimes we even succeed. Now, I do not promise that the Towers of High Sorcery will accept you back after this escapade, but I do promise that if you come peacefully, you will in time be free to return to them if you and they wish.”
Rubina turned the words over and over in her mind. This was the promise of a full pardon from Istar’s masters, if she helped them solve the mysteries of Waydol and the day’s fighting.
It was, alas, not a bargain she could accept. Involved were too many secrets that were not hers to reveal.
But in making such a bargain, Aurhinius proved what kind of man he was. The kind of man who should not be close to her when Takhisis struck back. The kind of man whom Istar, Karthay, the Knights of Solamnia, and everyone else needed alive rather than dead.
So the choice was simple. She only hoped that she could find among the ranks of the guards someone to help her over the last step.
She bent, and picked up her staff, at the same time thrusting a hand inside the front of her robe.
* * * * *
Aurhinius thought that Rubina was merely picking up her staff and perhaps offering him her pouches of herbs for safekeeping.
Zephros howled in rage and fear. “She’s trying to enspell Aurhinius!”
Some of the guards were light infantry, armed with short swords and javelins instead of long sword and shield. Zephros snatched a javelin from the nearest man, raised it, and threw.
In sporting contests, at least, he had become a deft hand with the javelin. Now he proved that he could throw well in battle—if hitting a standing woman at thirty paces’ distance could be called battle.
