by Roland Green
“That means penetrating the mage’s stronghold, I would say.”
“Of course. Remember, we have the second task, of learning what powers Synsaga’s mage may command.”
This left unspoken the matter of living to pass on what they learned to others. However, it seemed that one had to quest as one lived-one day at a time, giving tomorrow enough thought for prudence but not forgetting the present while contemplating the future.
They were helping each other to their feet when a harsh scream rent the twilight. It seemed to come from far above, and as Pirvan listened he could hear that the screamer was moving swiftly. They listened, clasped in each other’s arms, until the scream died and only the common sounds of the jungle twilight were audible.
Pirvan’s feet itched with the urge to put as much distance as possible between himself and what had screamed out from the sky. He admonished himself for his lack of courage and honor and forced himself into movement. Behind him, Haimya tested the draw of her sword, lifted her staff, and followed.
* * * * *
The minotaurs took so long in rallying for their second attack that some aboard Golden Cup began to hope the enemy had given up the struggle. Grimsoar ruthlessly trod on those hopes, knowing that defenders unmanned by dashed hopes would not hold against minotaurs or indeed less formidable foes.
“The only way they’ll not be back is if the two chiefs or captains or whatever they’re calling themselves have a quarrel. Then they’ll have to go off and settle it by a duel to the death, before one leader’s warriors will follow the others. But even then, they’ll be back. They might even be back before other minotaurs or Synsaga’s pirates find us.”
That was a long speech for Grimsoar, particularly when he expected to need all his breath for fighting before he was more than hours older. At least the breath he’d put into it wasn’t wasted; the “Maybe it’s over” mutterings fell, and the scrape of whetstones sharpening blades rose.
Kurulus was none too hopeful, either, about the minotaurs’ fleeing or Golden Cup’s chances of meeting the next assault. “We’re more than half out of arrows,” he whispered, “and a good half our blades need more of an edge than we can give them aboard ship. You’d think any sailor who ever ate ship’s biscuit would keep himself a blade tough enough for minotaur hide. But, no, they pay half a month’s wages to some chandler who wouldn’t know a good blade when it sliced off his nose!”
The mate of the top went off, muttering into his beard. A bellow from the aftercastle reminded Grimsoar of another problem-the healing potions were nearly gone, and Tarothin’s strength seemed likely to be the next thing to vanish. The ship’s own healer had no skills to equal Tarothin’s, but was doing his best on the minotaurs and the less gravely hurt humans. Grimsoar could only hope that the man’s best would be good enough, if not to save the minotaurs, then at least to meet their comrades’ standards of honor.
Off to port, the minotaur ship that had rammed Golden Cup was now well down by the bow. At its stern, a steady stream of minotaurs was crossing a gangway to the undamaged ship. One ship going down was likely to mean bad blood between the two leaders, with the leader of the sunken ship fighting to keep his position.
It was too much to hope for that the quarrel would break out in time to save Golden Cup. So the big man kept his sword handy when he stretched out on the least bloody piece of deck he could find.
Some time later, Grimsoar awoke with a headache from the sun, nausea from the uncleaned-barn smell of minotaur bodies, and a thirst fit to empty a small lake. It did empty a whole jug of water-they weren’t going to die of thirst today, whatever else might kill them-and after that he felt nearly recovered.
He felt still better when he saw that his sword was still fighting-fit, and best of all when Lady Eskaia came down amidships to thank him. She even kissed him, though she had to stand on tiptoe to do it, and he was greatly tempted to pick her up again and let her do the job properly-until he saw that his hands were caked halfway up his arms with dried blood.
Before he could wash them, the lookouts shouted what every man on deck could see with his own eyes, that the minotaurs were coming in again. Grimsoar pointed at the aftercastle, and to his surprise and relief a white-faced Lady Eskaia actually ran for shelter!
The only problem was, she ran toward the forecastle.
“If I’m no use on deck, I can still help the wounded,” she shouted. “Most of them are still forward, aren’t they?”
“Yes, but-”
“Thank you, Grimsoar. I am more grateful to you than ever!”
She vanished, leaving Grimsoar wondering if the simplest solution to his problems wouldn’t be flinging himself overboard straight away. Then he decided that even if he was going to do such a thing, he should do it after the minotaurs had laid alongside again.
After all, he was heavy enough, falling from a height, to crush even the largest minotaur.
* * * * *
Night had come to the jungle and sleep to Haimya when Pirvan heard the warbling above. It seemed just above the treetops, as if whoever made it wanted to stay low. It also seemed stationary, as if the warbler had found a rock outcropping or a treetop and perched there while calling.
Pirvan looked at Haimya, whose breath rasped in a way he did not like. For all the hardiness she’d learned as a soldier, she had been out of the field for a good long while, living on the bounty of House Encuintras. She was bearing up well, but lung fever could strike down anyone after such an ordeal.
Lung fever, and the nearest healer in Synsaga’s pay, and evil in his own right as well.
Pirvan had given some thought to wounds, but none to this. He was reproaching himself when branches crackled above and a lighter patch of darkness descended before him.
“Welcome, Hipparan,” he said.
“I trust so,” the dragon said. He looked up. “Good. No opening remains in the branches.”
“I didn’t know there was one at all.”
“There was not, until I made it. You wish to know how, of course? I contrived to vary my spell of softening, and made the branches so flexible that I could push through them silently. This left no broken branches to mark my trail or my hide. I do not wish scars so young, when I may yet mate.”
“I’m sure that you are the finest of all copper dragons, and keeping your scales unscarred will indeed win you a mate worthy of you. But what have you-?”
The sound of a dragon clearing his throat interrupts both thought and speech. Pirvan was silent, conscious of vast eyes and an equally vast intelligence behind them both regarding him with something less than favor.
“Forgive me,” Hipparan said at last. “I sense that your mate sickens. Healing is not in me, or I would offer it.”
“Haimya is not my mate,” Pirvan said. This was not the time he would have chosen to discuss human customs, but he remembered that clearing of the dragon’s throat. “She is sworn to the one we seek to ransom. If she is released from her oath and he from his, then each will be free to seek other mates. Only then.”
“Well, then, you should certainly offer for her if she becomes free,” Hipparan said, with a tone of having settled the matter.
An unlikely sound interrupted both thief and dragon-Haimya giggling. Or rather, trying unsuccessfully to stifle giggles.
“Under such circumstances,” she said at last, “I might even give him permission. But we can only know my betrothed’s true mind if we speak to him. Or have you found where he is and brought a message from him?”
“The best place to seek him is definitely in the mage’s tower. He is more guest there than prisoner, but the mage does not seem to trust him entirely. But then, he is the sort who trusts no one. Also, he drinks.” A snow-haired priestess of Mishakal could not have spoken with a tone of such complete distaste.
“As far as I can see, the better for us if he falls headfirst into a wine barrel and drowns,” Haimya said. There was a brittle lightness in her voice that told Pirvan she was not done with her pain, and
hinted that fever had come to join it.
“Indeed. The fewer spells he casts, the better. But potent mages hurling spells while drunk …” Hipparan trailed off, as if the image frightened even him.
Pirvan would have gladly put an arm around Haimya, or felt hers around him. Instead, they stood carefully apart as Hipparan continued. “Without the mage-his name comes to me as Fustiar-we have less to fear from the black dragon.” He was silent for a moment, and Pirvan thought he was shaking his head in weariness or sorrow.
Sorrow was in his voice. “The black-I have no name for him-he was old when he entered dragonsleep. Fustiar woke him into a world where he thought he would die alone, the last of all dragons.
“He has served Fustiar against humans and other lesser races. He will continue to serve Fustiar. But he does not want to fight another dragon, even to serve Fustiar.”
Haimya’s voice was very steady when she spoke.
“Are you saying you do not wish to fight him either?”
The silence was so long that, save for Hipparan’s breathing, Pirvan would have thought the dragon had flown away. Finally he heard a sigh.
“That would be my wish, but Fustiar will make the final decision. Fustiar and his minions. If dragon or man comes at me-for what I owe you, I must fight.”
“Can you at least carry us closer to Fustiar’s tower without being seen?” Pirvan asked. He doubted Haimya would admit her sickness by making that request herself.
“As close as I can without invading the other’s lair, yes. That will still leave you some distance to walk, but should keep surprise on your side. Oh, and it will be best done at night, from a larger clearing than any I have seen about here.”
“Thank you,” Pirvan said. The two words in Common did not do justice to what he felt; a whole scroll might have fallen short. He swayed on his feet and gripped the riding harness for support.
“You can examine the harness if you wish, but I assure you it is in good order,” Hipparan said. Meanwhile, if I may offer advice, perhaps I can help you both to better sleep.”
Sleeping folded in a dragon’s wing was a new experienee for Pirvan, but its newness did not keep him awake long. Neither did it bother Haimya, judging from the snores he heard.
* * * * *
Even Eskaia could see that the minotaurs’ second attack was driven by desperation. They simply laid their ship alongside Golden Cup, flung grappling hooks everywhere there was a chance of them holding, then started climbing. The one strategy they used was to station slingers and shatang throwers fore and aft, to pick off archers and sailors trying to cut the lines of the grappling hooks.
Enough defenders went down to weaken the archery and leave some of the hooks in place. Some of them stayed down, skulls shattered so that the brains were pulp or shatangs driven completely through them from chest to spine, beyond healing by twelve of the most potent priests known or imagined on Krynn.
There were still plenty of defenders on their feet with weapons in hand when the minotaurs again swarmed into the waist of Golden Cup. This time the bull-men had come to conquer or die, and about all that kept them from swiftly doing the first was that too many had already done the second.
It was not a battle that anyone could understand even if they had leisure and a safe place to watch it. Eskaia had neither. There was no safe place aboard Golden Cup, and even less leisure for anyone tending the wounded.
Not that she spent all her time under cover. Within a few minutes every able-bodied man was needed for the fight. The wounded and dying, human and minotaur alike, ended in the hands of the boys, the wounded who could sit up and use both hands to aid someone less fortunate, and a staggering, gray-faced Tarothin.
Also Eskaia. She poured out drops of healing potion, applied dressings, changed dressings, held limbs straight so their bones would not heal in unnatural positions under Tarothin’s spells, and wished there were three more of her.
The only respite came when the cry arose for bearers to haul some wounded sailor or prisoner from the bloody deck into shelter. Then Eskaia was among the strongest of those who went out, a pleasant change from being among the weakest.
She only wished her dagger had a weighted pommel like Pirvan’s, or that she was expert with the weighted cord as Haimya was. Both were weapons suited to her stature and strength, and would have allowed her a part in the actual fighting-at least until the sailors in a body forced her back to shelter.
Men, she had long since concluded, wanted the hog’s share of the fun.
Except that this was not fun. It was closer to madness, and she felt that madness plucking with bony fingers at her mind when one of the boys went down with a gaping wound in his thigh. She tore the bottom of her gown to shreds making cloths to pack and bind the wound, but too much blood was already gone.
All she could do was hold him and try to hear what he said above the screams and bellows, the shouts and curses, the thud of stones, the whine of arrows, and the mad-blacksmith din of clashing steel.
The boy stared at her for a long while in silence, then he gripped her hand. His lips writhed, and Eskaia thought she heard the word “Mother.” Then lips were still, eyes empty, and the hand gripping hers relaxed and slipped to the deck.
I sometimes think I have missed so much, yet I am five, perhaps six years older than he, she thought.
She stumbled to the side of the ship, her stomach too empty to spew, but her lungs burning for fresh air. If the price was a spear in the back or a smashed skull …
A roar went up, both sides cheering so loudly that for a moment they lacked the breath to fight. Off to starboard, two ships were approaching, one minotaur, the other a large, swift sea barbarian craft. For moments the second vessel was bow-on, impossible to identify.
Then it swung hard about, and another roar went up, as the humans recognized Jemar’s Windsword. The decks were bare; every fit man must be at the oars. The ship flung itself back on its own tracks, at the minotaur ship. The minotaur ship backed its oars, trying to present its own ram-armed bow to this attack.
Instead, Jemar’s ship pulled in its own near side oars down the side of its enemy. Rather than sundering timbers, her ram and bow shattered every oar on the minotaurs’ port side. Eskaia closed her eyes to shut out the picture of weighted oars flailing about belowdecks, dealing blows fit to crack even a minotaur’s skull.
Windsword spun about in a tight circle, only one side’s oars beating until it was completely turned around. Then both flailed blue ocean to white foam, as Windsword flung itself like a giant shatang at the minotaur vessel’s crippled side.
Eskaia did not need imagination to hear the bellows of pain and terror as Windsword’s ram drove into the enemy’s side. She did not need imagination to see the blood spreading in the water as Jemar’s ship backed away from the gaping wound it had made. Eskaia turned away as the minotaur vessel began to list to port.
The battle roar was dying now as the minotaurs began their retreat. Few of Golden Cup’s crew were disposed to risk their own lives to interfere with that retreat. Heavy splashes came, as un wounded minotaurs leaped over the side and thrashed to their ship. Wounded minotaurs crawled or staggered, then struggled down the ropes, sometimes losing their grips and also ending with splashes. Most of the wounded who fell into the water did not come up again.
Eskaia turned from the spectacle of the minotaurs’ retreat as another splash sounded behind her. She first saw Jemar’s victim listing even more sharply, its deck black with minotaurs as unwounded rowers struggled up for a slim chance of safety. Axes gleamed; some wise heads were chopping up boats and ship’s gear, to make planks that swimmers could cling to.
The splash sounded again, louder and closer. A vast minotaur head loomed in the gangway, one eye closed, blood streaming from the left cheek and the right ear, hands clutching with blind, desperate strength at the bulwarks.
A timber cracked like a twig. Eskaia realized that the minotaur was at the end of his strength, but might be sw
orn to use that last strength to take one more enemy with him. All she had to do to prevent that was lay her dagger across his knuckles, or jab him in the nose.…
She stepped forward, bare-handed, and gripped the minotaur by one hand and a horn. He had been delicately balanced; a slight push would have sent him over the side to drown. An equally slight pull was enough to bring him lurching aboard. He knocked another section of bulwark to splinters, then fell.
His good eye was upward as he fell, and Eskaia thought it was regarding her with bemusement. “It’s all right,” she said soothingly. “You have all the honor any six minotaurs can use. Just feel your wounds.” She’d counted seven or eight more besides the ones to his head, and he had to feel as if he’d been wrestling dragons.
“Urrrmmm,” the minotaur said. At least she thought he’d intended to speak, but then his eye drifted closed. She pressed a hand against his chest, and was obscurely relieved to feel it still rising and falling.
She could not have found enough dressings for so many wounds if she’d stripped herself to the skin. However, her gown served for the worst, then somebody brought more dressings that covered the others, and finally somebody she thought was Tarothin stood beside her and laid the end of a staff (or it might have been a boarding pike) on the minotaur’s chest and chanted (or possibly muttered) something.
Whoever had done what, it seemed to ease the minotaur’s breathing. It certainly eased hers. She managed to stand, with only a little help from some sailor and then from a splintered section of railing. She saw that she was only a pace from falling over the side, but right now that hardly mattered.
Then footsteps were behind her and hands on her shoulders. She let herself be turned around, then stared into the eyes of Jemar the Fair.
She gaped until she knew that he was really here, and that she was not imagining him as she might have imagined Tarothin healing the minotaur. For a moment, she felt as if she too were being healed, simply by Jemar’s touch and presence-yes, and those huge, dark eyes, which seemed to caress not just her eyes and face, but all the rest of her body, even intimate places.
