Knights of the Sword

by Roland Green

  But Darin came in behind Haimya, and she had to dart aside again, without even a chance to strike at his weak arm. Waydol seemed slower on his feet after that, but his arms could still fling those massive fists about in a way to make any sane opponent wary.

  Wariness, however, could take one only so far. Sooner rather than later, Pirvan and Haimya would also have to risk closing, to strike a vital spot that would slow one or both opponents.

  If that minotaur has any vital spots, Pirvan added to himself. Any minotaur’s vitals were as well protected by his bulk as a human’s would have been by armor, and Waydol had more bulk than the common run of minotaurs, nor much of it fat, either!

  Knight’s and lady’s eyes met, and they looked at Darin. Then they ran in, swinging wide to each side of Waydol to close on the heir. The Minotaur was less vulnerable, and had so far fought a coolheaded battle that would keep him that way. Pirvan and Haimya needed to heat Waydol’s temper, and taking down his heir seemed to be the best way.

  They closed and struck, and for a moment it seemed they had succeeded. Shouts and cheers roared all around them. But Darin’s arms and legs flew out at impossible angles and with unbelievable speed.

  Pirvan felt his staff brushed aside like a twig, and a hammerblow to his cheek. He rolled with the punch as much as he could, went down, and rolled without getting up while holding his staff over him as protection.

  He lurched to his feet and nearly went down again, but stayed upright with the aid of his staff. Haimya was between Waydol and Darin, a position that spelled doom, and Pirvan could not force his feet into movement!

  Instead, he saw Haimya wait until the last moment, as both the Minotaur and his heir lunged at her. They had not agreed on who should pursue and who should block, and both tried to pursue. They pursued straight toward each other, and when Haimya darted out from between them, it was too late for them to stop.

  Six and a half feet of human and eight feet of minotaur collided with a slaughterhouse noise. The impact knocked Waydol backward off his feet, and staggered Darin. He still had the wits to lunge at the escaping Haimya, but he lunged with his weak arm. He missed a firm grip on her slippery shoulder, caught her upper strip of leather, tore it free, then went to his knees.

  Cheers and shouts rose higher, from both sides. Pirvan wasn’t sure if the men were cheering the bold fighting, or the fact that Haimya now wore nothing above the waist.

  This mattered little, compared to the fact that his own fighting strength was coming back. He’d felt for a moment that his brains were rolling about inside his skull and all his teeth would fall out of his jaws if he sneezed. But all he could swear to was a bloody lip and a monstrous ache in one cheek.

  Haimya, meanwhile, could not have been less concerned at her sudden disrobing. She saw both opponents on the ground and closed, trying to finish at least one.

  Instead Waydol rolled, coming up to grip Haimya’s down-thrusting quarterstaff with both hands. Haimya let go, threw herself backward into a somersault, and came up at a safe distance, as Waydol snapped the quarterstaff like a twig and threw the pieces away.

  This left Darin still sitting, with his back to Pirvan. Pirvan couldn’t close fast enough, however, and Waydol shouted a warning. Darin leaped up and turned, giving Pirvan only an opening to thrust at the hand holding the leather strip. The blow went home, the leather fell, then both Waydol and Darin were backing away, for the first time in the fight.

  Pirvan’s men were outnumbered four to one by Waydol’s, but they made up for it with their lusty cheering.

  Pirvan darted in, picked up Haimya’s fallen garment on the end of his staff, and held it out to her as she came up.

  She was filthy, glazed with sweat and oil, and bleeding where Darin’s nails had torn her shoulder. She looked like every vision of a warrior goddess ever given to mortal men, all combined in a single splendid body.

  “Thank you for considering my modesty,” she said, tucking the upper strip inside the lower one. “But I think I see other uses for this now. Can we lead the fight back to where we began?”

  “Eh?”

  “Where I was making circles in the dirt with my foot and you thought it was some ritual?”

  “Oh.” Light penetrated the darkness of Pirvan’s aching skull. He nodded cautiously. “We’ll have to pretend to be worse hurt than we are, to draw them after us.”

  “Another grapple with either of those monsters, and I at least won’t be pretending,” she said, rubbing her rib and shoulder.

  “Onward,” Pirvan said. It came out more of a grunt than an exhortation, and Haimya actually managed to laugh.

  * * * * *

  The cheering and shouting slowly faded into an awestruck silence as Pirvan and Haimya gave ground before the advance of Waydol and Darin. It was a slow retreat, matched to a slow advance, and both knight and lady were trying to judge the state of their opponents every step of the way.

  Were the Minotaur and his heir hurt? Or were they merely being cautious, perhaps themselves feigning injury? On the right answer might hang life and death—but there was no assurance of any answer at all.

  At last Haimya signaled that they were at the right spot. Pirvan nodded, and moved off to the left to draw Waydol. He still had two good arms and a longer reach than Darin, who was now definitely favoring one arm.

  Darin lunged. Haimya went down, rolling and coming up with the upper strap in her hand—and something wrapped in it.

  She ran, and Darin whirled to run after her. She ran like a deer, Waydol turned to join in the chase, and Pirvan dashed in to strike him at the base of the spine. Haimya had to have only one opponent for a few seconds.

  Waydol whirled, arms flying, and Pirvan once again ducked and rolled clear. As he came up, Haimya whipped the leather strap in three quick circles around her head, then let go of one end.

  A stone the size of a child’s fist flew out of the improvised sling. It flew as straight as a mason’s maul coming down on a wedge, at Darin. It struck like that mason’s maul, squarely on his forehead.

  The big man stopped in midstride, swayed, but did not quite fall over. Instead he reached out in front of him, as if groping in a fog for something to guide his footsteps. Then he sank to his knees, looked at Haimya, and at last fell over on his left side.

  Waydol’s men seemed too appalled to cheer, and Pirvan’s seemed too grateful.

  The Minotaur was not so tongue-tied. He glared at Darin and spoke a few words in his own tongue. Pirvan did not know the minotaur language, but suspected that blood-feuds had begun over softer words.

  Indeed, it seemed that they had finally made Waydol lose his temper.

  For the next few moments, Pirvan and Haimya had a busy time keeping Waydol from tearing them limb from limb. If he had not been trying half the time to catch both of them, one in each hand, he might have succeeded with one of them.

  As it was, Waydol was pouring with sweat and breathing like a blacksmith’s bellows when his burst of speed was done. Pirvan and Haimya looked at each other. Both bore new hurts, where Waydol’s fists and nails had connected. Pirvan could barely talk; Haimya was favoring one leg and new scratches had bathed the upper half of her body in mingled blood and sweat.

  Victory would come soon or not at all.

  They closed with Waydol, coming at him from opposite sides to divide his attention. He lowered his head, ready at last to strike with his horns—and Pirvan forced from his mind a picture of Haimya spitted on one of those horns like a roasted pigeon.

  But lowering his head was Waydol’s fatal mistake. Pirvan and Haimya ran at him—and Pirvan tossed his quarterstaff to Haimya, while she tossed the leather thong to him.

  Pirvan had never run so fast in his life as he did over the dozen paces it took to get behind Waydol. He leaped up on the Minotaur’s back, kicked him hard at the base of the spine, and looped the leather thong around the base of his great neck.

  Waydol reared up, so that Pirvan was dangling by the thong. But the tou
gh leather tightened under his weight, against the Minotaur’s windpipe. Waydol reached back, to grip Pirvan and tear him apart—and left himself wide open to Haimya and her staff.

  She thrust furiously at his throat, his belly, his groin, both knees. Then she started all over again. Somewhere in the middle of the flurry of blows, Waydol sank to his knees, and a moment later Pirvan stepped out from behind the Minotaur and gripped Haimya’s arm.

  “Hold, my lady and love. He’s done fighting.”

  Waydol nodded painfully. He tried to speak, but the blows to the throat had taken his voice for the moment. Instead he lifted both hands and placed them in Pirvan’s. Pirvan took the Minotaur’s bloody hands in his own battered ones, and from far off came the thought that he and Waydol were, in some sense, blood brothers now.

  Then the world dissolved in a tumult of shouting, in which each man seemed to have a brass throat and be trying to make more noise than all the rest together. All it did for Pirvan was to make his head ache worse.

  Haimya was standing before him, and he held out the leather strip to her. Instead she leaned against him. He thought this was a touching gesture but the wrong time and place, until she went to her knees. He had just time to squat down and catch her before she fainted—and then when he wanted to get up, he found that his legs had finally mutinied.

  Pirvan didn’t faint. He remembered what seemed like a small army of people running onto the field, with Birak Epron and Rubina in the lead. From somewhere else came Fertig Temperer, a kender, and a small man with silver hair and muddy blue robes.

  He remembered being told that the man had a name, though not what it was, and that he was a priest of Mishakal. He remembered Rubina hugging both him and Haimya, and dropping her staff, which was nearly trampled before Birak Epron drew his sword and drove the crowd back to a safe distance.

  Then Sir Pirvan of Tiradot did not precisely faint. But he took Haimya’s hand, and for a long time after that he did not remember what he did or what happened around him in any great detail.

  Chapter 17

  The logs in Waydol’s snug hut crackled pleasantly and gave off a soothing smell of pine.

  Those were just two of many pleasant sounds and smells—and sights and tastes—that Pirvan had savored in the days since the trial. He always savored them more after he’d put his life in the balance, and for a time he wondered if he would ever savor anything again.

  He sipped from a cup of Sirbones’s mulled wine. It had no effect against great hurts, the priest of Mishakal had said, but it did not slow their healing by proper spells. As to the minor hurts not worth serious magic, it at least makes one forget them for a while.

  This time Pirvan drank deeply. He wanted to forget many things besides minor hurts, then sleep beside Haimya, to wake and savor her warmth and the soft sound of her breathing.…

  A time would come for all of this, but that time was not yet.

  Waydol emptied his goblet, which was larger than Darin’s, and Darin’s was as large as Haimya’s and Pirvan’s put together. He set the goblet down, wiped his mouth with a clean cloth, and, with a delicacy of movement that showed his hands still pained him, he coughed.

  “I fear I cannot dismiss the trumpeter,” Waydol said. His voice was hoarse, like a man’s with congestion, but otherwise undiminished. Sirbones was a healer of high skill, and while all of the fighters would have aches and pains reminding them of the trial for some days, none would suffer lasting hurt.

  “It would shame him,” the Minotaur added. “He came to my band fleeing from apprenticeship to a harsh master. Playing the trumpet was his only pleasure.”

  “It is only pain to all who listen,” Pirvan said. “Let us strike a bargain over the trumpeter. If he goes into the world, I will find him a teacher who can tell him if he has any musical art. If he does, well and good. If not, then we can seek some other work for him.”

  “You are firm in your honor,” Darin said. He spoke softly, so that he did not need to move his head. Of the four fighters, he had come closest to death; without a skull thicker than most, he might have gone before Sirbones could heal him.

  “I am a Knight of Solamnia,” Pirvan said. “I know that only begins the explanation, but I do not have time to tell you every thought that I have had about honor. Leave it that I will no more abandon your men than I would have abandoned mine, and let us go on to the best way of saving them.”

  When he accepted Waydol’s oath of peace, Pirvan demanded only that Waydol agree to allow any of his band who so wished to go free. Jemar the Fair’s ships would bear them to Solamnia, where, if they chose peaceful lives, it was unlikely that Istar would seek them out.

  Waydol was not bound by anything save his loyalty to his men. Pirvan suspected that the Minotaur intended to seek his homeland again, with his precious burden of knowledge about human ways.

  No doubt the minions of the kingpriest would say that Pirvan ought to halt Waydol, even slay him if necessary. No doubt, also, Pirvan would not lift a finger to stop Waydol, and would offer bare steel to anyone else who attempted it.

  The knight’s major regret in letting Waydol sail north was not what he might tell his folk. It was losing the chance to know the Minotaur better. Waydol could teach the knights a thing or two about honor and oaths; Pirvan wanted to learn them.

  “What of those who do not wish to flee to Solamnia but wish to give up the outlaw life?” Darin added. “Can you do anything for them?”

  “The knights would doubtless honor any pledges I made for them, if they took the field,” Pirvan said. “But I think Aurhinius means to settle matters before that happens. So I would urge that all who wish to flee by land do so before we find ourselves besieged. If they quietly vanish from your band and reappear elsewhere as honest men, I doubt that anyone will trouble them.

  “The one thing to be avoided like dishonor is anyone trying to be chief of an outlaw band in your place. Then the Istarians will harry this land until it lies ruined, and their fleet and army will loom over Karthay until that city loses patience.”

  Those words were out of Pirvan’s mouth before he realized that, to a minotaur, Karthay and Istar spending each other’s strength in a witless war could be a welcome prospect. Yet he did not fear Waydol thinking along those lines.

  Waydol believes in the superiority of the minotaurs, as do all his folk. But he believes that they must show their superiority by winning honorably.

  “I will have words with any ambitious little men,” Waydol said. “Darin, are you fit to take Gullwing to sea and seek out Jemar the Fair?”

  “I feel well, Waydol.”

  “Has Sirbones said you are well?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Then you remain ashore until he speaks,” Waydol said. There could be no more arguing with him than with a battle-axe.

  “Jemar may well find us without Darin’s voyage,” Pirvan suggested. “Also, there are signals that he will recognize. If you can build beacon fires on the headland above the cove, they will be visible far out to sea.”

  “To the Istarians, as well as to Jemar,” Darin put in.

  “I think the place of our stronghold is no longer much of a secret,” Waydol said. “Now we must help our friends win the race to it, against our enemies.”

  * * * * *

  Aurhinius awoke to the sounds of a great deal of shouting and running about overhead. This seemed to be his normal manner of waking aboard Winged Lady, or indeed any other ship. Fortunately he was a sound sleeper; his good digestion gave him more than a certain roundness of belly.

  The running ceased, but the shouting continued. Aurhinius began to make out words. It seemed there was an unidentified ship in sight.

  He decided to dress and go on deck, to see how the captain dealt with this. It was the first such sighting since he had come aboard; all the others had been plainly merchant ships of one nation or another. All except one, a low-built sailing vessel that had darted off into a fogbank at a speed that suggested its crew did
not wish to be identified.

  Aurhinius made less of a business of dressing than usual. Fond as he was of fine attire, he was fonder still of his own dignity—and dressing aboard a warship as though one were at audience with the kingpriest was a sure way to be laughed at.

  In long woolen tunic and linen hose, Aurhinius came on deck, about the time the lookout called from the masthead.

  “Deck, there! It’s a light galley, under sail. No flag that I can see, but she’s coming toward us.”

  Aurhinius looked at the captain, who shrugged. “None of our scouts are missing. Could be a messenger ship, though if she’s coming from the west, she’s likely to be from Solamnia. Can’t be carrying too many men, though, so I won’t hope for knights joining us.”

  “Much as I think,” Aurhinius said.

  The next hail from the top surprised everyone. “She’s resting on her oars and raising a truce flag. No banners yet, but there’s something painted on her foresail.”

  “Nothing hostile, that’s for certain,” the captain said. “Otherwise she’d be running.” He raised his speaking trumpet and shouted aft.

  “Port your helm. I want to run down and speak to this galley. And send the men to quarters.”

  “Signal the same to the rest of the fleet,” Aurhinius said.

  “Begging your pardon, my lord,” the captain said, “but there’s no call for that. If Winged Lady can’t handle a light galley by herself, then you can take your banner elsewhere with my blessings.”

  “I can’t think of that,” Aurhinius said, smiling. “Your figurehead is too enticing.”

  The captain returned the smile. The bannership’s figurehead was a life-sized carving of a splendidly proportioned woman, wearing nothing but a pair of spreading wings, with every feather exquisitely carved and gilded. There were many different opinions as to which goddess or heroine the figurehead represented. The one that Aurhinius favored was that it was a likeness of the woodcarver’s mistress.