Knights of the Sword

by Roland Green

  “Well and good,” Jemar said. A messenger ran forward, to the sailors at the signal halyards. Soon flags were soaring up to the yardarms and breaking into blazes of color against the sullen sky.

  Thunderlaugh signaled back, with the course and distance to the beacons. Jemar sent thanks and promise of reward to Kurulus, shouted the same to the lookout, and then unbent enough to hug Eskaia.

  “Almost done?” she said, returning the embrace.

  “Call it a good, long step forward,” Jemar said, freeing one hand reluctantly to make a gesture of aversion. The sea gave men victory only reluctantly, and it could strike back in many a natural way before the men ashore were safe.

  Jemar made another gesture of aversion, this one with both hands. He had just performed it when the lookout called down again, this time in a voice cracking with excitement.

  “Sail, ho! It’s a galley with a minotaur’s head on her foresail. Gullwing for sure, and she’s coming on fast, like someone was chasing her.”

  Jemar frowned. The galley would be out of signaling range for some while yet, and even then its crew might have no way to read sea barbarian signals. Should he deploy his ships for battle now, or wait until he knew more?

  One thing he knew: His ships were already beating hard to windward. Maneuvering them into battle formation would slow them still further.

  Something else he also knew: The time to take care was when danger was only a possibility. True enough on land, and ten times truer at sea.

  Jemar looked at his ships, then began inking three signals on a smooth-shaven wooden message board.

  “I see what you want the ships to do,” Eskaia said, looking at the board. “But why?”

  “This way, we’ll leave the heavier ships in open water, to meet Gullwing and her pursuers. They’ll stay between the enemy, if there is one, and the lighter ships will go in to Waydol.”

  “Will it come to a fight?”

  “You sound almost eager.”

  Eskaia flushed. “I beg your pardon. The fight aboard Golden Cup was quite enough for me. Besides, I am quite unfit to wrestle minotaurs now.”

  Jemar embraced her again. If it was the Istarians pursuing Gullwing, he wasn’t sure they wouldn’t be better off facing minotaurs!

  * * * * *

  Tarothin lay in his bunk, not because he was sick, reluctant, or entranced. He merely needed all his concentration to understand the message he was receiving.

  He also needed more than concentration to believe it in the first place.

  The first ticklings of the message were not in his mind, but in other parts of his body. Parts associated with certain ancient rites that he had performed with Rubina, more than once and with great joy. At least on his side, and he was gentleman enough to hope that she had taken as much as she gave.

  This was the first time he had ever begun magic in such a fashion, as he was not skilled in the kind of spells normally associated with that particular rite. Although a man could become accustomed to this kind of magic, he mused.

  It was about this point in the message that he began to put a name to the person sending it.

  “Rubina?”

  The reply came not in words, but in an image. It was an image that did nothing for Tarothin’s ability to concentrate.

  Then words came:

  I wanted to be sure you would recognize me.

  Rubina, I am quite sure that there are many other men who would also recognize that image of you.

  I do not kiss and brag. Besides, you are the only wizard.

  So? That does not explain why you are seeking me out. This is a potent spell you seem to be using for idle chatter.

  Rubina’s image returned. Now she stamped her foot, her eyes turned red, and her hair transformed itself into green snakes with purple eyes and fangs that Tarothin did not care to observe too closely.

  Was that Takhisis or temper, Lady?

  I should leave you to the Dark Queen and her daughter’s servants, if you go on like this!

  Nothing could have restored Tarothin’s concentration more quickly than the hint about Zeboim.

  Rubina apparently plucked Tarothin’s surprise and fear from his mind, turned it over in her own mind to look at it from all sides, and then replied.

  The servants of Zeboim are at work. Or will be soon, to shape the storm. Can we—work together, that they may not succeed as they wish?

  Many possible answers poured through Tarothin’s thoughts, regardless of his knowledge that Rubina might be aware of every one of them.

  He decided that what she had to know could be said briefly and plainly:

  You are a Black Robe, servant of Zeboim’s mother, yet you propose to fight the Sea Queen. How can I trust your word?

  The first image danced along the fringes of Tarothin’s mind. He replied brusquely.

  That is not enough to bind me to you in treachery against our friends.

  The reply came with surprising speed and clarity.

  You speak truly. They are our friends. Also, there is Karthay, my city. Finally, it is not clear that those against us serve Zeboim, true daughter to Takhisis, or only those aspects of Zeboim that the kingpriest allows them to see.

  That was wandering off into scholars’ territory, besides imputing an alarming amount of power to the kingpriest. However, the thought of a magical storm sending Jemar’s ships to the bottom and marooning Pirvan and Waydol’s band at the mercy of the Istarians was still more terrifying.

  What do you propose?

  You have weather spells at your command that you can work on the water. Mine avail only on land, unless I join them to those of another wizard who is already on the water.

  Tarothin was again briefly skeptical. Indeed, it would have been within reason to say that he was appalled. Such links were neither impossible, unknown, nor even particularly dangerous—except for such as Rubina proposed, which would link a Black and a Red Robe, who had never linked before, at least magically, over a considerable distance, using exceedingly potent spells, against equally potent and unrestrained enemies.

  At that moment, the only virtue to Rubina’s proposal seemed to be that, linked to her, he could at least neutralize any attempted treachery before it had fatal effects—at least to his friends. His own fate—

  Will you put our friends in danger, while you fret like a child with a toothache about what I have no intention whatever of doing?

  Her tone reminded him of more than one of their bedtime quarrels.

  Yes, I am in the same mood. But I remember how those quarrels often ended.

  Tarothin sighed, both with his body and with his mind. He thought longingly of oaths of celibacy. Then he replied to Rubina.

  Shall we begin now?

  Yes, if it is not already too late.

  * * * * *

  Darin repeated his request for Tarothin to come on deck, growing less polite in his choice of words each time. Then he began to make the request an order.

  In due course, it was discovered that the Red Robe had locked his cabin door. He was the only man aboard besides Darin with a cabin to himself.

  “Break it down,” Darin said.

  Those who heard the order, from the Mate of the Deck on down, looked dubious. They did, however, obey—or at least attempt to obey.

  Minutes later, they streamed up on deck, babbling and shouting so that Darin had to roar for silence before he could hear what had happened.

  The cabin door had resisted all efforts to open it. It was as if it had turned to stone. When they brought up logs of firewood from the galley and began trying to smash their way through, the logs flew out of men’s hands.

  Then they tried to remove the hinges, and the hinges glowed red-hot, without setting the door or anything else afire.

  Finally, they tried to pry out the latch—and it turned into the head of a serpent, with fangs dripping venom that painfully burned several men who did not back away in time.

  Darin looked at the swollen red marks on several
of his crewmen, and noted that Tarothin owed these men a healing and an apology when the wizard had dealt with other, more urgent matters. It also seemed to Darin that perhaps he owed the wizard an apology, for not remembering the folly of disturbing a magic-worker when he is casting potent spells.

  The only question left unanswered was this: If Tarothin was casting potent spells, what were they doing? The closest of the pursuers was now hull-up from the deck. The sharp-eyed on deck could make out the topsails of other Istarians to the east.

  Darin decided to take a turn at the pumps, which were emptying the water from the casks out of the bilges. Exercise might settle his mind; it would at least keep him from standing around, plainly wondering what Tarothin might be about.

  He had just set foot on the ladder to the hold when the lookout shrieked.

  “Sail, ho, dead ahead! A whole squadron! We’re trapped!”

  Darin saw panic born on the faces of the men on deck and bellowed, “Nonsense! That’s either a merchant fleet or Jemar!”

  That halted the panic for the moment, though the Mate of the Deck whispered in Darin’s ear, “What if it’s minotaurs coming to help Waydol?”

  “Then they’ll have to fight the Istarians for the privilege,” Darin replied. “Every ship and man the Istarians send to fight somebody else is one less to fight us.”

  The Mate of the Deck looked like a man who would believe in the virtue of one minotaur at a time, but he nodded.

  Then the lookout screamed again, no words in his cry. He needed no words, and in fact need not have spoken at all. No one aboard Gullwing or any other ship in sight needed lookouts to see the storms rise.

  * * * * *

  No two men saw the storms in quite the same form. Indeed, few men agreed on how many storms there were. The lowest guess was two, the highest ran into the scores.

  By and large, what men saw was a gray-green wall rising from the sea, as hard-edged as if it were made of stone, as translucent as if it were made of glass, swirling within those hard edges as if it were mist. It grew just ahead of the closest Istarian pursuer, and the water at the base of the wall turned into foam as a fierce wind blew from it.

  Then a wave rose opposite the wall, as tall as the mast of a ship. Incredibly enough, it remained that tall for longer than any natural wave could—until it broke on the wind and the wall. Where there had been foam before, now there was a caldron of white, leaping so high that the wall sometimes disappeared.

  Wind and water fought each other. Gusts and waves spread out in all directions from the battlefield, like ripples on a pond.

  But these were not ripples. Gullwing heeled under the combined force of wind and wave, until water slapped at its leeward railing. The aftersail blew off its yard like a kerchief snatched from a child’s head. Most of it flew away on the blast, flapping like a dragon’s wings; a few forlorn rags remained standing out from the yard.

  Darin did not need to order the foreyard down; men were already cutting its ropes with axes and knives. The broken rope ends lashed about, knocking men into the scuppers, and the yard itself came down with a crash that drowned out the storm.

  But Gullwing now rode under bare poles, and men were already dashing below to close the oarports. Lightened both below and aloft, the ship had at least more than a prayer of staying afloat. If the wave storm and the wind-wall storm balanced each other long enough, it might even make enough headway to learn if the newcomers were Jemar or someone else, friend or foe.

  * * * * *

  Pirvan and Haimya had risen early and ridden out with a small escort, to scout possible landing places outside the cove, for friend or enemy. The cove’s entrance was narrow, for all that this made for a sheltered, deep anchorage inside and easy defense.

  Enemies would need to land somewhere else; friends might wish to. Hence the scouting.

  Pirvan did much of the actual climbing, though Haimya scrambled up and down many of the steeper slopes along with him. She was less agile, and certainly kept her eyes fixed firmly on the sky, but in a few more years she would be able to climb wherever she needed to.

  Sirbones had offered a spell to remove the fear of heights from her mind; Haimya had refused it so fiercely that it took a while to soothe the priest of Mishakal back into an equable temper.

  It was Haimya, with her eyes on the sky, who first saw the motion in the clouds. “Pirvan!” she called. “We’d best ride for home. That storm’s breaking!”

  Pirvan looked up. It seemed that an immense whirlpool had opened in the sky, with the clouds swirling into concentric circles. If they were moving, it was too slowly for the eye to catch; it was as if the whole sky had been conjured into this shape in a moment.

  A storm was indeed breaking, but Pirvan’s instincts told him that it was no natural storm.

  “Hulloooo!” one of the horse-holders up the slope shouted. “Someone says there’s a waterspout out to sea, the biggest he’s ever seen! Can’t see it from down there, but up on the cliffs you can see everything. They say there’s ships out to sea, two or three squadrons of them right to each side of the waterspout, too.”

  To Pirvan, that settled the question of the storm’s causes. He could only wait and pray, to see its consequences.

  A wave higher than usual broke over the rocks only a man’s height below Pirvan. A second wave followed it, at an impossibly short interval. This one was solid green water.

  It rose like the river’s flood, and if Pirvan had not leaped for the next higher rock, it would have risen as high as his knees, perhaps pulling him off in the backwash. But Pirvan leaped, then leaped again, then Haimya was pulling him up past the last bad ground, squeezing his hand, and kissing his cheek where he’d grazed it bloody on one leap.

  “Send messengers!” he shouted to the horse-holders. “Everybody is to stay a good height above the water.”

  “How good?”

  “If you’re washed away, you know it’s not good enough.”

  The horse-holders laughed as if Pirvan had made a fine jest. He did not feel in the least amused; magic unleashed did not always stop where the magic-workers intended it to—and in this battle, one side might not intend to stop at all.

  * * * * *

  Windsword took several large waves as gracefully as it usually did. Jemar had just begun to let pride in his favorite ship overcome his doubts about the unleashed magic when two waves struck together.

  They were the vanguard of two chains of waves, which chose to collide exactly at Windsword. Jemar had heard of such wave chains and how they could produce monster waves by their collision. He had never seen one. Still less had he expected to ever be in the middle of the collision.

  Windsword did not heel. There was too much water pouring onto the ship’s deck from both sides. It merely sank lower, then lower still, until the entire main deck was awash. The railings dipped under, boats and deck gear began breaking loose, stays flew free, and the foremast swayed and crashed over the side.

  Jemar was too busy clinging to anything that offered a handhold and thanking the gods that Eskaia was below, to think about his ship for a moment. Then he knew that he’d have to get men forward to cut away the foremast, take in sail on the other masts, do what he could for the injured—

  The waves rolled on away toward the horizon, the water drained from Windsword’s deck, and like a pig rising from its wallow, it lifted.

  As it did so, the last ropes holding the broken foremast snapped. Instead of remaining to batter at Windsword’s bow, the foremast went sailing off on a voyage of its own.

  Jemar fought a ludicrous urge to wave farewell to it.

  Instead he looked down. The decks looked as if they had been ravaged by drunken minotaurs with axes, with wreckage everywhere and more than a few men sprawled flat. But most of them were moving, some cursing lustily, and the two who did not move had shipmates helping them.

  His own ship was afloat, for now, and its crew needed no help from him in rigging it for foul weather, magical or other
wise. Jemar turned his own eyes outward, to look first for Gullwing, then the rest of his ships.

  He had to count twice before he could begin to believe that every ship—his ten and Gullwing—was afloat. Some of them looked as if they’d met gale-force gusts or deck-swamping waves, too, but so far he had no lost ships to mourn.

  Also, he had lost none of the strength he would need to remove Waydol and his band from that stronghold behind the beacons.

  Just to be sure that his wishes were not deceiving his eyes, Jemar started a third count. He was halfway through it when a sailor popped up the ladder.

  “Captain! You’re needed below! Your lady’s hurt!”

  * * * * *

  Waydol was trying to meditate when Birak Epron ran in so suddenly that the Minotaur had snatched a katar from a side table before he recognized his visitor.

  “If you wish to tell me of the magic storm at sea, that is stale news,” Waydol said, mustering as much patience as he could.

  “This is more. We have sighted the main body of the town levies. Two thousand at least, with half that many soldiers of Istar with them.”

  “How close?”

  “Their vanguard is already past the place of your trial.”

  “Honor lingers there. May they hear its voice,” Waydol said, in a voice that made Epron flinch. “Is there other word from the sea?”

  “Istarian ships in two squadrons. One close to shore, likely carrying a landing party for when the sea goes down. The other is on the far side of the storm from Jemar’s squadron.”

  “That is certain? Jemar has come?”

  “He has come as far as he can while the wizards conjure up this ravening sea!” Epron snapped.

  Meditation at this time would not only be dishonorable, it was becoming impossible as well. Waydol rose and began opening his weapons chests.

  At least he would not have to wait on wizards to finish their games before he found enemies within striking distance.

  * * * * *

  No storms troubled the land where Sir Niebar and his six companions rode swiftly toward the Inn of the Chained Ogre. Yet they rode in shadow, for they were taking byroads and trails through the forest wherever it lay thick enough to hide them from unfriendly eyes.