by Roland Green
Pard Lintelmaker coughed.
“It seems pretty plain that folk we fostered and therefore have a duty to are in serious trouble. Do you say that they’re innocent in the matter of Lord Lauthin’s death?”
“I have described what I saw and what I have been told by those I trust,” Belot said. “If you do not trust them—”
“Easy, lad, Nuor said. Belot wanted to bristle at being called “lad,” and suspected Nuor was paying him back for the pride-bruising flight on Amrisha. But Nuor also might be able to persuade Pard Lintelmaker that Belot could be trusted.
What Nuor said was virtually the same as what Belot had said, in slightly different words. In the end, silence came, then seemed to swell until it filled the chamber like steam filling an elven winter-bath.
“It’s as well that Lauthin’s blood is on nobody’s hands,” Pard said. “Frankly, Belot, your folk aren’t always the best of neighbors, and they might take on a trifle over our helping Lauthin’s killers. But if we’re not doing that, we’ll come.”
Belot was so relieved, he missed the dwarven lord’s next few words.
“—underground. Walking in the sun’s no faster, and we won’t do it unless there’s friendly fighters in the woods the last few days before Belkuthas. Are they?”
When Belot had translated those mutterings, he had to shake his head. “Scouts and some refugee guards, but our folk are still marching up from the south. If you were coming that way—”
“If we were taking a tooth out by way of the bellybutton,” Pard Lintelmaker growled. “No, the tunnels it will be, and Gran Axesharp will have the chief’s hammer if I can’t find anyone who’s a bigger fool.”
“You find that bigger fool, Pard, and I’ll use the hammer on him before we march,” Axesharp said.
Belot did not feel this was entirely a jest.
The dwarves did not seem particularly concerned about the renegade wizard Wilthur the Brown.
“Just because we aren’t much for the high towers or parading around in fancy robes so long we’d trip over them, doesn’t mean dwarves don’t know anything about magic. We know enough to get done what we think needs doing, and how much that is, is our affair.”
Also, Tarothin probably knew enough about dwarven magic as he knew about the other kinds. If he had not exhausted the last of his strength before the dwarves came. If, if, if—
The dwarven chief was speaking again. “We’ll need to give warning. I’ll reply to Krythis’s message, and Nuor, you can ride back with Belot to deliver it.”
The look on Nuor’s face amply repaid Belot for being called “lad.”
Nemyotes came up to Gildas Aurhinius, on foot, leading his horse, and looking so much like a soldier that for a moment the general did not recognize his secretary.
“Well?”
“The Pass of Riomis has completely collapsed. Shrines, springs, everything. It would take five thousand men or more magic than we command to clear it swiftly enough.”
Aurhinius cursed. “There goes our last chance of reaching Belkuthas before Migmar settles in around it.” He looked at the mountains ahead, dark ripples along the desert horizon.
“Maybe our tale about setting up outposts will turn out to be the truth after all.”
He half hoped Nemyotes would come up with another way of turning futility into hope. But the secretary was tending to his horse, like any good mounted fighter ought to do.
“The scouts have reported finding a centaur, ridden to death,” Haimya said.
Pirvan turned his head on the pillow to look at her. The rest of his body was too heavy to move. At least looking at her was pleasant enough. It was a hot night, and neither of them wore night robes.
“Ridden to death, or driven to run wildly?”
“They say they found marks of a rider on the centaur’s flanks. That elven healer with the scouts—”
“Elansa?”
“Yes, and by the way, I think she and Tharash are bed-mates.”
“Get to the point, woman!”
“Really?” Haimya drew out her pillow dagger and held it up.
“You were saying?”
Pirvan had given up jesting since Lewin’s death. Haimya, on the other hand, seemed to be making more jokes than ever. It helped lift others’ spirits, but it did not deceive her husband. She was whistling as she led the march past the graveyard.
“Elansa found traces of spells on the centaur. And the last prisoner the scouts took said that they—our friends outside—were looking for an escaped wizard.”
“Wilthur?”
“No doubt.”
“I doubt this means we’ve seen the last of him.” Pirvan rolled onto his back, his hands behind his head. “I could ask Tarothin, but Sirbones says he could barely counter one of Wilthur’s major spells, let alone find the man if he is trying to hide.”
“One day Tarothin will tell Sirbones to stop playing nursemaid. Then where will you be?”
Pirvan sighed. “Where I want to be is where I need not fear losing any more friends—or even people I am bound to.”
Haimya rolled on top of him. “Even more than you want to be here?”
“Well, this place has much to commend it—yes, indeed, very much.…”
Which was as far as Pirvan could go before words became, if not impossible, at least unnecessary.
Tharash awoke to the squeal of a night-flying insect in his ear. He swatted it into silence, and for a moment lay still, forgetting why he was here.
Then he felt Elansa’s sweet-scented warmth beside him under the furs, and remembered. Briefly he wanted to forget again and go back to sleep.
Instead, he crawled out from under the furs and dressed himself, careful all the while not to wake Elansa. She had moved by the time he was done, lying on her side with one bare arm reaching toward where he had lain.
She might awaken swiftly, if she sensed that he was gone. That would never do. Tharash snatched up bow and other gear, and went outside to put it on.
By the time he was done, his eyes had adjusted to the darkness, likewise his ears. There were more insects like the one he had swatted, whining about—something new in these forests, at least in this season. Probably too many unburied bodies.
He looked around. The only people awake were the sentries, and they would probably think he was going out in the trees to answer a call of nature.
Close by his feet, the two kender slept, each under a separate blanket (cut from one of Sir Darin’s cloaks, which made three or four kender-sized blankets). Horimpsot Elderdrake had an arm thrown protectively over Imsaffor Whistletrot.
I wish you a safe return home, thought Tharash formally. And for you, young one, your Hallie Pinesweet’s goodwill, if no more.
Then he went through his final wishes for all the folk he was leaving behind, ending with Krythis, Tulia, and Rynthala.
I wish that all of you learn why I did what I did, and that I did not die a traitor. But I could not live on, knowing Lauthin died unforgiven.
Besides, I may not die.
It occurred to him that he also might die, his honor sullied, without succeeding in his purpose. But that was a thought to take away the courage of a minotaur. He would not dwell on it, lest his feet refuse to take him out of the camp.
Tharash turned and walked into the night.
Rynthala was sitting in the same spot along the wall where Belot had bid her farewell. Tonight, though, it was Sir Darin’s splendid head that rose from the stairs. There was enough moonlight to show it plainly, and not for the first time Rynthala wished he had not followed the custom of the Knights of Solamnia in growing a mustache. It was a fine mustache, but she thought he would look better without it.
“May I join you, Rynthala?”
“Certainly.”
He sat at a polite distance, which to her seemed rather far away, and remained silent so long that it began to oppress her.
“What do you think of this tale about Tharash?” was all she could think of to b
reak the silence. “If it is a tale. It might be true.”
Small comfort you are to one whose oldest friend has run mad or turned traitor, she thought.
“It might be true that Tharash has vanished. On the other hand, reports that he has gone over to the enemy—those I cannot believe.”
“I can believe it. We have too much reason to believe that anyone can turn traitor. I do not want to believe it. But what I or you want makes but little difference to telling truth from falsehood.”
His words might lack comfort, but his voice was so soothing that Rynthala almost felt ready to sleep—if she could sleep in Darin’s arms, with that voice calming her as she drifted into slumber …
Abruptly, she realized she had fallen asleep, and was in Darin’s arms. He was holding her with a gentleness that belied his immense strength—but did not hide the steel under the gentleness.
“Please do not beg my pardon, Rynthala,” Darin said. “You might have fallen off the wall otherwise. Perhaps whatever preys on your mind—perhaps we could talk about it in your bedchamber.”
Rynthala swayed to her feet. She hoped he would realize the swaying was fatigue, not enticement.
“Will you carry me there?”
Darin did her the courtesy of staring before he smiled. He did not laugh at all. “I would be honored. Save that if I tried to carry you down these stairs, I might well fall. Then Belkuthas would be short two more captains, and your father and Sir Pirvan would be more at odds than they were over Sir Lewin.”
“The gods forbid! But—will you carry me on level ground?”
“If you wish.”
“I wish.”
Darin actually did carry her across the courtyard. Somebody—a dwarf, from the voice—shouted something at them. Rynthala suspected it was bawdy and did not care at all. The sensation of actually being carried as if she was as light as a child or a kender was new and not at all disagreeable.
The knight opened the door of her chamber with his foot and laid her on the bed as if he had been returning a kitten to its mother. Then he straightened.
“You have sacrificed enough dignity for one night. I will not undress you and tuck you in bed. But if you wish, I can brush out your hair.”
Rynthala looked in the mirror. Even in the guttering lamplight, her hair looked like an empty bird’s nest after a long winter. “I did not know you knew the ways of women so well,” she said, which nearly tangled her tongue.
“I am not so much a stranger to women as some might think,” Darin said. “Not even to women who endured what you suffer. I am neither a paladin nor unduly forward.”
“You are a wonder,” Rynthala said, but she tried to kiss him as she said that, missed, and fell forward on the bed, so that the words were muffled and (she hoped) lost in the bedclothes.
She was falling asleep by the time he finished her hair. Her last waking memory was of his immense hands gently smoothing it, and his long sword-callused fingers touching her temples and cheeks.
Chapter 19
To the delight of his allies and disquiet of his foes, Carolius Migmar reached Belkuthas two days early. Within ten days, the first siege engines were erected, though parts of them had been living trees on the first day. They began to play against the walls of Belkuthas, and its defenders began to die.
Not in great numbers, to be sure. Belkuthas was large and stout, its hiding places numerous, its defenders adept at dodging, and the siege engines none too accurate or swift-shooting, even under the best circumstances. The defenders made sure Migmar’s forces were not working under the best circumstances.
The scouts and rangers had lost Tharash’s leadership, but by now even the Silvanesti who had come north with Lauthin knew the land better than the besiegers. Also, for whatever reason, it seemed Tharash had told his new friends little or nothing of the hiding places and tactics of his old ones. The swift-moving, swift-shooting rovers remained unmolested in their secret camps, and could approach as close as ever to the enemy, despite the fact that Migmar’s troops were far more alert than Zephros’s raggle-taggle sell-swords.
Sappers, sentries, and servants all died from arrows that came out of nowhere. Tents full of supplies burned. Soldiers lay writhing with fluxes after drinking wine that had been wholesome the day before. Essential forgings that had been solid iron the night before greeted the daylight as smoking puddles of molten metal, which not even dwarven smiths could have turned back into usable form.
Messengers vanished with their messages, mounts, and gear. It became necessary to escort men going to the jakes, if it was dark and the jakes were more than a few-score paces outside the line of sentries.
The elves, humans, and kender had help in this. Tarothin gave modest assistance, though he was saving his strength to find and, if need be, ward off Wilthur the Brown. Even more, he rested up for the grand assault.
The centaur family dwelling near Belkuthas had lost two of its kin to the citadel’s enemies; that made its enemies theirs. Giving singleness of purpose to centaurs was normally as difficult as giving it to kender, but the besiegers had succeeded—and paid the price.
The price was not great, in lives or anything else material. It was different in the realm of the spirit. Somewhere in a scroll of the Measure that was not considered quite authentic, Pirvan had read the dictum: “In war, the spirit weighs three times as heavily as the body.”
Unauthentic, perhaps, but not unsound. Even as their engines struck flying shards of stone from the walls of Belkuthas or crushed men to death, the besiegers were more and more looking over their shoulders for enemies in unexpected places. They eyed each other suspiciously, hoarded supplies and weapons, drank too much though Migmar did his best to maintain discipline, and generally took several steps down the trail from formidable host to the well-armed mob.
Pirvan hoped they would finish that march before they laid Belkuthas in ruins about its defenders’ ears. Either that, or that the dwarves and elves would arrive in numbers sufficient to give pause to the united hosts of Istar.
Nuor said that the dwarves would do all they had promised, but would not say what that was. Pirvan understood the desire to keep prisoners from revealing dwarven plans to the enemy, but thought they could at least pay him the compliment of assuming he would not fall into enemy hands alive.
All that drew from Threehands the comment, “Dwarves will pay compliments when Dargonesti swim in the desert.”
Belot’s flights brought sightings of the approaching elves, and of the besiegers throwing outposts farther south, as if to watch for their coming. But the pegasus rider could not learn anything from speaking to the elves, even those willing to be polite.
“I’ve told them they owe it to Lauthin’s memory to at least say which side they’ll be fighting for,” Belot said, driven to exasperation after one wearying but futile excursion. “If they are foes, then we can at least arrange to surrender in good order to Migmar!”
“You do not think they come to fight us, do you?” Tulia asked. She seemed to Pirvan to have aged ten years since Lewin’s death—mostly from watching her husband age twenty.
“No,” Belot said. “But if this is my people’s notion of showing friendship, we hardly need enemies!”
Though he’d sworn to turn Amrisha loose to fly to safety, Belot kept scouting and carrying messages. He had just soared out of sight on the seventh day of the siege-engines’ work when they inflicted their first grave loss of Belkuthas.
Krythis was on the walls when the stone soared above the timber palisades protecting the siege engines. He watched it grow steadily larger without turning to either the left or right.
This, he knew, was the sign of a projectile that was going to hit him, if he did not move. However, he had ample time to move out of the path of anything save perhaps flying shards. Compared to arrows from elven bows, the siege-engines’ stones ambled across the sky.
It also seemed to Krythis he had good reason for not moving. He would be mourned, and not only by Tul
ia and Rynthala. But if a man will be mourned greatly, that is a sign he has lived well and can depart when he feels his work is done.
Krythis thought he had reached that moment. It seemed unlikely the Knights of Solamnia could ignore his part in Sir Lewin’s death, if he remained alive. Even if Pirvan labored to explain or even excuse, there would be knights who would not accept it. Such might become enemies to Pirvan, who needed no more, or seek to strike at Krythis outside the law, endangering Tulia and Rynthala.
It was likely that even the most wrathful knight would pursue the matter beyond the grave.
So Krythis took the opportunity fate had presented him. He stood calmly while the stone grew until he could see nothing else. Then there was a brief, brutal moment of pain, and he saw nothing at all.
Some people had seen the stone coming at Krythis and shouted, even screamed warnings. Then came the thud of the stone striking, and the lesser thud of Krythis’s broken body flung to the paving of the courtyard.
Then came a fearful silence.
Without a word, Rynthala walked across the courtyard, stepping as prettily as a doe in the spring over the shards of the stone and the splatters of blood. She knelt beside her father’s body and closed the one eye that the stone had left intact.
This done, she stood. “Lay him in an honorable place, but with the other dead,” she said in a voice that rang like the trumpet played beside a knight’s pyre. “He would not wish to be apart from them.”
Then she turned and walked away, toward Sir Darin.
If Rynthala wept for her father, she let no one know it—again, save perhaps Sir Darin. Others who witnessed Krythis’s death lacked his daughter’s self-command.
Pirvan remembered particularly seeing Eskaia with her face buried in Hawkbrother’s shoulder—and Hawkbrother’s own broad shoulders shaking as he held his intended. It took much to make a Gryphon warrior shed tears in the light of day, but Krythis’s death sufficed.
