Knights of the Sword

by Roland Green

  Inside the man’s guard now, Pirvan locked dagger to dagger, immobilizing both weapons for a moment until the other’s greater strength would break the lock. He dropped the sword—and ignored the screams and howls all around him. Pirvan drew a dagger from its chest sheath, quickly, as the archer tried to get his sword around.

  Then Pirvan thrust up—and felt the knife go through the windpipe, past the mouth, up into the brain—as the man fell away and backward.

  Pirvan bent to retrieve his fallen sword—and a howl went up from inside the gate.

  “Kill the knight! Kill the other traitor!”

  Instantly Pedoon’s men turned from Pirvan’s possible enemies to his staunchest defenders. They had seen him avenge their fallen chief; they would fall beside him rather than let him down. They began striking wildly, though with not much vigor or skill, at the men in the gateway.

  The men there struck back, more of Pedoon’s fighters went down, and the men in the gateway pressed forward. In that moment they would be out in the open and the great battle begun.

  Pirvan had no breath left for curses. But he still saw clearly, and what he saw was that not all the men inside the camp were pushing forward. Some were drawing back, and dragging or trying to drag others with them.

  The men inside the camp seemed of two minds about Pirvan and his men.

  “Back from the gate!” he shouted. “Everyone back from the gate, out of bowshot, and form a square! Now, you triple-cursed fools!” He called the men quite a few other things as well, most of which he knew about only afterward, told by those who heard him in awe and admiration.

  At least Pedoon’s men obeyed, breaking all at once in a desperate rush to get clear of the gateway. Apparently they felt their obligation to the knight avenger had been fulfilled, because Pirvan suddenly found himself standing as Pedoon’s men streamed past.

  The next moment he was alone, facing a dozen men from the camp. The moment after that, Haimya was beside him, her face frozen in a battle mask that Pirvan feared was aimed as much at him as the enemy.

  But Haimya’s blade was as quick as ever, and took down two opponents. Then out of nowhere whirled a bola, wrapping itself around her blade and pulling it out of line. She gave ground as her guard went down, and a lean, dark man leaped out of the crowd, wielding a short club.

  Haimya drew her dagger as Pirvan closed to protect her, but something smashed him across the ankles and he staggered, knowing that his own guard was down and that the dark man could kill either him or Haimya or probably both—

  But the dark man and his partner—a kender, of all things!—were stepping back. They seemed to be herding the rest of the men from the camp backward as well, so that suddenly Pirvan and Haimya were alone.

  Alone, fifty paces from their nearest men—now all formed in a ragged but thick square, Pirvan noted with approval. Alone, with Haimya swordless and Pirvan barely able to walk, the fire in his legs adding to exhaustion until he knew he had about three more steps in him before he could be cut down like ripe wheat.

  Yet not alone, either. Pirvan wanted to ask Haimya’s forgiveness for his sharp tongue, but knew that if it did not come in words, it would come in a few moments, when they went down together.

  The few moments came and went, but no enemy advanced.

  Pirvan turned to Haimya. “Forgive me, my love.” At least that was what he tried to say, or rather, croak.

  Haimya turned toward him, blinked, and started to speak.

  The words never came. From the right a howling war cry tore at Pirvan’s ears. He wanted to drop his sword again and clap his hands over them.

  In another moment, from the left came the reply to the war cry. It was as wordless as the first, but it came from no human throat. Only one race on Krynn had that thundering bellow.

  The Minotaur had come—and Pirvan would wager that his heir was not far away.

  * * * * *

  The first to arrive was a man leading one of the mounted patrols, on what seemed to be a raw-boned pony. It was only when the man dismounted that Pirvan realized he’d been riding a full-sized horse. It was the size of the man that had deceived Pirvan.

  There was nothing awkward about the man’s movements, however, as he approached Pirvan and Haimya. “I am Darin, Heir to the Minotaur. It would be well if you explained how your coming to our camp brought such disorder.”

  “Lord Darin—” Haimya began.

  “Heir,” the man said firmly.

  “Oh, be easy for the moment, Darin,” rumbled a voice from the left. Pirvan and Haimya could not have kept from turning to look if they’d been transformed into statues.

  A form still more gigantic than the rider was walking steadily across the field toward them. He could not have been much less than eight feet tall and, like all minotaurs, was broad in proportion.

  His progress was as much a march as a walk. He seemed to refuse to allow the mud the dignity of thinking itself able to impede his progress, as feet rose and fell as steadily as the rotation of a millwheel. He wore short breeches, a sleeveless tunic, and a shatang, the heavy minotaur throwing spear, slung across his back.

  His hide showed patches of gray amid the red and the black, but his horns shone like the finest crystal. They were also the longest horns Pirvan had ever seen on a minotaur.

  It took long enough for Waydol to cross the field for Pirvan to tear his gaze away and look elsewhere. All of his own men were also gaping, but they were holding their weapons and maintaining their square well.

  The gateway of the camp was solid with men, and more had climbed atop the wall. Apparently for many of Waydol’s recruits, this was the first time they had laid eyes on their chief.

  None of the men in the camp seemed to have a weapon raised, which was good. Less good was a number of bodies that were not Pedoon’s men or the archer. There would be a blood-price to pay, which was not Pirvan’s notion of the best way to begin negotiations with Waydol.

  At last the Minotaur was close enough for a formal greeting. Though he had reproved his heir in public, there was nothing friendly about his demeanor as he approached Pirvan and Haimya.

  Neither knelt. With minotaurs even more than with men, that yielded superiority before it was even asked.

  They did not even bow their heads. Instead they stood, hands held out and fingers spread to show that they intended peace. As Waydol halted, Pirvan spoke.

  “We greet you, Waydol.”

  “Your first greeting was less than friendly,” Waydol said. Most minotaurs sounded as if they were angry or at least had a headache, even when they were speaking politely. Waydol did not sound angry. His voice sounded more like an avalanche—which is not angry with what it crushes, but does not admit to being stopped, either.

  “We came, if not in friendship, then without any ill wish toward you,” Pirvan said. “Yet your greeting also did not speak of friendship. My comrade in leading our band, Pedoon Half-Ogre, whom I once spared in battle, was shot down like a mad dog by one sworn to you.”

  “There is a blood-debt, indeed, on both sides,” Waydol said. Pirvan began to hope. Admitting that placed a considerable burden on an honorable minotaur, and it was never wise, safe, or even sane, to assume that a minotaur did not regard himself as honorable—even if he had chosen to dwell for twenty years as an outlaw chief among humans.

  “So shall we let the gods judge?” Waydol said. He seemed to be asking the question of Pirvan and Haimya, of his heir, even of the sky above and the mud underfoot.

  “Let the gods judge,” the heir said, but with a questioning note in his voice. He did not sound disobedient as much as bemused.

  “Then the trial shall be in two days’ time,” Waydol said. “I shall take my heir Darin as my companion. Who will be yours, Sir Pirvan?”

  Before Pirvan could realize that what he had heard was really what had been said, Haimya said, “I will, the gods be my witnesses.” Then she whispered to Pirvan, “The only alternative is Birak Epron, and I’m better in clos
e combat than he is.”

  Haimya might be as accomplished a warrior as Huma Dragonsbane, but she had still most likely signed her own death warrant. “Trial,” as the minotaurs used the term under these circumstances, meant personal combat, Pirvan and Haimya against Waydol and Darin.

  Regardless of what weapons and armor were allowed, the odds were definitely in favor of the Minotaur and his heir. But participating in such a trial was lawful, and indeed if one had sworn to let the gods judge, the Measure commanded it.

  “Regardless of the outcome, the blood-debt shall be considered settled,” Waydol went on. “Beyond that, the loser shall give oath of peace to the winner.”

  It was on the tip of Pirvan’s tongue to say that his Oath as a knight forbade him to offer such, but he bit his tongue into submission. What Waydol had just said implied that the combat would not be to the death.

  It might carry a whole cargo of other meanings as well, but Pirvan would think about those later. For the moment, he would accept that he had entered a game where he did not know all the rules and where his life might be forfeit, but where the prize could be so great that it was worth the danger.

  Even when the danger was to himself and Haimya both.

  Chapter 15

  “This goes beyond folly,” Rubina said. “It is madness.”

  Birak Epron said nothing, but rose and stepped out of the room, low and smoke-blackened, in the abandoned farmhouse that would shelter Pirvan and his companions until after the trial of combat two days hence. He looked as if he wished to slam the door, which had miraculously survived, behind him, but instead closed it gently. In another moment his footsteps on the gravel faded into the misty twilight.

  “What does he think of this, I wonder?” Rubina asked, speaking more to the stone walls and moldy straw of the floor than to Pirvan or Haimya.

  “He thinks that we have sworn to do it, therefore we must do it or be forsworn, and nothing he or you can say is worth the breath taken in uttering it,” Haimya said briskly. Pirvan sensed that the lightness in her voice was still largely feigned, but that she wished to avoid any more quarrels with anyone.

  “Also, I think he wishes to be sure that only trustworthy men are within hearing,” Pirvan added. “This whole quarrel has arisen from a lying tale borne by some double-tongued fool, and believed by one with more ambition than sense. The gods alone will stand between us and ruin if it happens again.”

  “Is that not already how matters stand?” Rubina asked.

  Pirvan’s mouth was dry from fatigue, fighting, and an uneasy mind. He tipped the water jug up over his wooden cup and drank. The men outside were not sleeping cold or hungry, thanks to firewood and salted fish sent out from Waydol’s camp, but they had nothing more than water to drink. At least it was clean; none on either side in the recent fighting had sunk so low as to poison wells.

  “No,” Pirvan said, when he had rinsed his mouth. “You heard Waydol speak of what the winner may ask of the loser. Does that sound like he means the combat to be to the death?”

  “Perhaps. But that great lout Darin looked doubtful. Deny that if you can,”

  “Doubt or surprise?” Haimya put in. “I think Waydol is setting afoot a plan secret even from his heir. I hope this does not mean a breach between them.”

  “I should think you would be praying and sacrificing for a breach between them,” Rubina said. “What scant chances of victory or life you have would be greater, if so.”

  “I doubt it,” Pirvan said. “Nor would it come without a price. A breach between Waydol and the heir would divide the camp into still more factions. Sooner or later they would come to blows, unleashing chaos.”

  “I do not speak as a Black Robe in this,” Rubina said, “but only as your friend. Would not chaos in this case serve our cause, both of escaping and of reducing Waydol’s power?”

  “Not in any honorable way,” Pirvan said, and he went on in spite of Rubina’s grimace, as though the word “honor” were a foul smell. “Besides, what of our men? Even if we escaped, they would be caught in the chaos, and in the end fighting one another, most likely. I will cut my own throat before I wittingly send men sworn to me to such a fate.”

  “If Waydol and Darin don’t spare you the trouble,” Rubina said.

  Pirvan could not help but admire the lady’s persistence, which was as evident as her beauty. However, he had doubts about the uses to which she put both.

  Light knocking made the door sway on its one remaining hinge. “It is I,” Epron’s voice came.

  He entered without waiting for a reply, stamping mud off his boots. Rubina gave him a reproachful look over his desertion.

  “Is there anything you can say to our friends to save them?” To do her justice, the pleading note in her voice seemed real.

  “I have spoken with the chief of the wagons who brought the food,” Epron said, in the manner of one making a formal report to a captain. “He says they have no wine or ale to spare for now. This is as well, as our men have been empty-bellied too long to endure either.

  “Tomorrow an armorer will come to repair those weapons needing it. He says that it is likely, though not certain, that, regardless of the outcome of the trial, all who join Waydol’s service will receive arms from his stocks.”

  That said a good deal about Waydol’s storehouses—and more than hinted at his being able to buy, not merely steal, weapons, from sympathetic towns and villages in the land about his stronghold. It also made Pirvan more certain than ever that Waydol was minotaur to the core; even if he had set up his own standard of honor, he would thereafter hold to it until death.

  “Keep the men at work, and allow no wandering to the camp,” Pirvan said. “Also, I will speak to them tomorrow, praising them for their discipline and courage today.”

  “I doubt many of them will be disposed to wander all the way to the coast out of mere curiosity as to whether they will be killed on sight or not,” Epron said, with the first smile Pirvan had seen on his face in days. “But you have the right ideas. Soon I will not be able to teach you anything about leading formed bodies of soldiers.”

  “Yes, and what good will all this learning do him in the trial?” Rubina snapped. She seemed on the edge of tears. “I propose no serious magic, but even the lightest touch to their joints—”

  “Is forbidden!” from Haimya.

  “Will cost me my honor!” shouted Pirvan.

  Into the echoing silence, Birak Epron inserted himself, speaking as calmly as a farmer discussing how many hogs he should slaughter before the onset of winter.

  “My lady. I am sure these good people have told you that they cannot do otherwise than fight Waydol and his heir. They speak the truth.

  “Now I will say more that they cannot. By what we have shared, by the honor in which I hold you, by—by whatever more we may say lies between us—I will not see you dishonor yourself as you propose. By all gods who judge honor and enforce oaths, I will kill you with my own hands unless you bind yourself to stand aside from the trial.”

  If Birak Epron had turned into a minotaur, the silence could not have been more complete. It lasted until Pirvan laughed.

  “What amuses you so?” Epron said in a stony voice. He moved to sit beside Rubina, who did not resist his putting his arm across her shoulder.

  “I was thinking that if you turned into a minotaur, you would probably crack one of the roof beams and bring this whole house down on our—”

  He broke off, because Rubina had begun to cry. It needed no command from Birak Epron’s hard eyes for Pirvan and Haimya to rise and walk together out into the night.

  * * * * *

  Gildas Aurhinius climbed the swaying ladder from the fishing boat to the deck of his bannership, Winged Lady, with as much dignity as anyone could. He was fit and agile under the layers of fine clothing and good living, and he had never been seasick in his life.

  The other captains accompanying him to sea were less fortunate. None of them fell into the sea, but two had
to be hauled up in a net. Another, who had survived thus far, promptly knelt in the scuppers and spewed.

  “There is a wizard aboard the Karthayan Pride of the Mountains who makes potions that work against seasickness,” the captain said. “Shall we signal him to come over?”

  “Where is the Karthayan?”

  The captain pointed. On the remotest horizon, silhouetted against the sunset, Aurhinius made out a three-masted ship with the yellow foresail that Karthayans commonly sported.

  “My thanks, but I think we can leave the wizard in peace.”

  It was an answer Aurhinius gave reluctantly, but with the knowledge that it was the right one. Bringing the wizard aboard might allow a private conversation, in which Aurhinius could inquire about priests of Zeboim and other such matters.

  It might also drown the wizard on the way, or make him as seasick as those he came to heal, or put him in such a temper that he would be slow to answer questions put to him by a god. Also, he might be in league with the servants of Zeboim.

  Aurhinius disliked situations in which he could not carry the fight to the enemy, pushing him off balance and forcing him to respond to Aurhinius’s moves. However, he had the patience to endure waiting if he must, and had won several battles and at least one campaign thus.

  Neither did one have much choice, patience or no, if one did not know how many enemies one faced or where half of them were!

  * * * * *

  Darin swept the crumbs of hard bread from his lap. The mice in the walls promptly scurried out and began feeding. Waydol smiled and emptied his plate for his furry little tenants.

  “Is there anything we have not settled to your satisfaction?” the Minotaur asked.

  Darin wished he could say, “No,” but this was not the time to begin telling Waydol even the smallest lies.

  “Yes. What if we win?”

  “If they yield—”

  “No. I mean, if they die.”

  “I think we can manage to avoid killing them without too great a risk of losing the fight. Certainly if one is crippled, the other will most likely yield to save him or her.”