Knights of the Sword

by Roland Green

  “Waydol is—” Pirvan began, then cursed under his breath as Rubina appeared, seemingly out of thin air.

  “I thought I deserved better than that, Sir Pirvan,” Rubina said. She was almost as pale as Delia had been, and Pirvan had the notion that her staff was now doing duty as a walking stick. But her beauty was undiminished, and she had donned her black robes for the first time since landing—what seemed months ago.

  “It was not meant for you,” Pirvan said. “This seems to be a day when one cannot finish saying anything without friend or foe interrupting.”

  Rubina walked up to Pirvan, shifted her staff to the crook of her arm, then threw her arms around him and kissed him soundly on the lips.

  “There!” she said. “No one interrupted that, which is just as well, as I have wanted to do that for as long as I’ve known you.”

  She turned to the priest of Mishakal. “Sirbones, by your leave—”

  The priest stood his ground. “You do not command here, Black Robe.”

  Rubina nearly stamped her foot, then shrugged. “Well, you deserve a farewell, too. I am going out through the tunnel and collapse the rocks behind me. Please do not let anyone tamper with the devices until I am through. I can do the work better.”

  She turned and started uphill. Birak Epron took two hasty steps after her.

  “Rubina?” From hardened mercenary captain, he had suddenly turned into a youth whose first love has just slapped his face.

  “Oh, forgive me, Birak,” she said, turning. “You deserve a farewell, too.”

  The farewell took the form of an even longer kiss than she’d given Pirvan. The moment it was done, and before anyone could speak or move, she vanished among the huts.

  Pirvan was the first to find his voice, and he used it to ask of Sirbones, “What does she—she is going out there to die! Why? She’s done so much for us—”

  “So much for you, yes,” Sirbones replied. “And so much against the Dark Queen, and the Dark Queen’s daughter, Zeboim.

  “The Dark Queen will have vengeance on a Black Robe who so betrays her. That vengeance will be horrible, and it will not spare anyone near Rubina when it comes. She goes her way alone, so that no one else will suffer at Takhisis’s hands.”

  Sirbones’s words produced an even longer silence than Rubina’s sudden departure. This time it was the cleric who broke the silence.

  “Let us find bearers for Delia and those who cannot walk, and make our way to the boats.”

  * * * * *

  Tarothin’s last awareness of Rubina came in the moment when she hurled a fireball into the tunnel to the stronghold. Half collapsed, half melted, the tunnel was now barred against anything much short of a god.

  He called out to her, wanting to reach her with a final message, but he felt the message bounce back from the wall of magic he had erected around himself.

  Very well. What was outside already was all that was needed, and nothing that those who fought for Zeboim could send would be able to penetrate the wall and reach him.

  At least nothing they could send while they were fighting for their lives.

  Tarothin shifted the position of his body and felt an easing of his mind. His time sense was a bit awry while he was this deep in spells, but it should not be long before the Sea Queen direly needed her mother’s help.

  Chapter 22

  What Tarothin did to the servants of Zeboim was one of those things that are simple to describe but hard to accomplish. Wizardry is full of such, but this was one that the Red Robe had not before encountered.

  Very simply, he walled himself off from the Evil spells. Then he surrounded the wall with another spell that turned all the power of Zeboim’s servants back against them.

  He knew several such turnabout spells and would have used one long since, except that such spells risk destroying all wizards involved. It was walling himself off and repelling Evil at the same time that had needed the help of both Rubina’s power and of her knowledge of Black Robe powers.

  The result was, as he learned afterward, all that could be expected.

  There were, it was believed, seven priests of Zeboim aboard the Istarian fleet. There was one aboard each of three ships, and four together aboard another.

  Two of the single priests died without their ships being destroyed. Of one priest they found nothing that could be recognized as having once been a human being. Of a second, they found such remains that hardened sailors turned aside and spewed—into the water rising rapidly from leaking seams.

  The third lone priest vanished, no one knew where. All the crew of his ship learned was that suddenly there was a hole large enough for an oxcart in their ship, below the waterline. A well-disciplined crew, they took to their boats swiftly, and also threw overboard enough floatable deck gear so that most of them were saved in due course.

  The ship with the four priests suffered a harsher fate.

  * * * * *

  Darin’s first warning of anything amiss was a sudden sharp shock that made the deck quiver under his feet.

  Then he saw that where the contending storms had been was only a howling wind blowing toward the Istarians. A howling wind that died as swiftly as it had begun, leaving only patches of foam on rapidly shrinking waves.

  Most of the Istarians were already under reefed canvas; Darin saw only one mast fall. But in the center of the fleet, a large ship seemed to rise from the water, as though some monster were lifting it.

  Its keel was almost clear of the water when the ship disintegrated. It was not a slow crumbling, like a ship battered on the rocks. It was a shattering, like a ripe fruit thrown hard against a stone wall.

  Masts and spars, deck and hull planking, ribs and portions of keel, deck gear, boats, cordage, sails, stores—all arched outward, pieces heavier than any man could lift flying like arrows. Flying, then splashing down among them, were flailing shapes that could only be the bodies of the crew.

  Darin prayed briefly that they had not suffered. The Mate of the Deck had already given the order to the oarsmen, and Gullwing’s prow was swinging about, toward the Istarians. If any wave followed the other ship’s destruction, it would be ready to meet it.

  There was a wave, but it was more of a brief swelling of the water. The deck rose under Darin, then fell. Hardly a drop of water came aboard the battered galley. As the wave passed, a sailor came up to report that Tarothin’s cabin was now unlocked.

  “Did you go in?”

  “Unh—no, Lord.”

  “Shall we go and see if we still have a wizard?”

  The man blanched, but knew that Darin was not so mild as to tolerate cowards.

  Gullwing still had a wizard, and the wizard, wearing sweat-soaked robes, was fast asleep. In fact, he was snoring fit to open the ship’s strained seams.

  “Put water by him, and have the galley ready to offer any food he can eat when he wakes,” Darin told the sailor. “I will be on deck. We shape our course for the cove.”

  * * * * *

  At sea, the wave from the death of Zeboim’s servants was only the hump in the water that briefly lifted Gullwing. Closer to shore, when it reached shallow water, it became less benign.

  From the boat, Aurhinius could hear more than he could see of the devastation among his ships. That was enough to chill him more than the breeze, but he put the best face on matters that he could. All around him he saw fear that might easily turn to panic; he’d be thrice-cursed if he intended to drown simply because some oarsmen lost their nerve and their wits!

  “The battle of magic is over, and I do not think those we had aboard prevailed,” he called out. “But I have for long doubted that they were Good or Lawful. There can be a dreadful price to pay for allying oneself with such.”

  And if these words get back to the kingpriest, so be it!

  “I think the Red Robe Tarothin escaped from Pride of the Mountains to fight those who called themselves our friends. He is Neutral, which is to say that he will not pursue us, as long as he has
prevailed over Evil.”

  The men looked relieved, even if they didn’t seem to understand the half of what Aurhinius said. He was not sure himself that more than half of it was true or made sense. But this was one of the many times in his years of command when he had to say something, to fill with words a silence that would otherwise fill with terror!

  Then all his efforts seemed in vain, as a wall of water rose behind the boat.

  It was gray-blue at the bottom and green near the top, and it rose above the boat as high as the aftercastle of a great ship. It swept forward, it swooped down—and Aurhinius felt the boat rising.

  “Steer small and hold on to your oars!” he roared over the rush of the water. They might just slide over the crest and onto the seaward side, which would do them no good if there was another wave coming, but—

  A foamy crest leaped about them, then they were sliding down the other side of the wave. It swept on, to break in a smother of foam where the shore was level and in columns of spray where it was rocky.

  It was the backwash from the wave that overthrew the boat, as all the water flung ashore by the wave sought its way back to the sea. Small, vicious waves hurled themselves at the boat from all directions, the oarsmen sweated and swore, and at last the boat rose, then dropped on a rock normally well below the surface.

  The first man overboard was Aurhinius’s secretary, and not through cowardice. The rock simply splintered the part of the boat where he’d been sitting, or rather, clinging like a barnacle, and plunged him into the water.

  The second man overboard was Aurhinius himself. He might have let a sailor go if the boat hadn’t been so obviously sinking. As it was, he was going to be swimming anyway, so why not be useful?

  He was more than useful. His secretary had gone under by the time Aurhinius reached him, then came floundering to the surface.

  “Help! I can’t swim!”

  Aurhinius threw one arm around the secretary’s chest and began swimming with the other arm and both legs.

  “I can. Be easy. In fifty paces, you’ll be able to walk ashore.”

  It was farther than that, because the backwash came and went several times. One sailor had to be revived when they finally lurched ashore, but no one had drowned.

  “I said the Red Robe had nothing much against us after defeating his real foes,” Aurhinius reminded the men.

  The boat’s stores had not been so fortunate. Much of Aurhinius’s campaign wardrobe and armor, as well as his secretary’s crate of parchments, pens, and account books, were now down among the shellfish and the seaweed.

  Aurhinius hoped there would not be a great deal of commanding to do, at least until he could find some dry clothes. Beliosaran would no doubt enjoy another day of being the lord of all he surveyed, and would probably be more insistent than ever about claiming the ogre’s share of whatever victory had been won.

  Two horsemen were making their way down the hillside toward the shore. Then suddenly they spurred their mounts so violently that one slipped and fell.

  The other came down so fast that he barely stopped short of riding into the sea. He jerked his mount’s head about, dismounted, and knelt.

  “Lord Aurhinius. Beliosaran is slain, and the Minotaur’s folk are fleeing by sea. Your orders?”

  The messenger was Zephros, one of those younger sons of a family much in the favor of the kingpriest. He was the last person Aurhinius really wanted to hear what must be said, but that was fate, not fault.

  “We have no fleet in a condition to pursue the Minotaur’s folk. What of the men ashore? Beliosaran is a grievous loss, I know, but are his men gone? Is the landing party safe?”

  “Our men are mostly safe, though the city levies have no heart for fighting. But there is magical fire all about the Minotaur’s stronghold. It burns without destroying, yet bars all from entering.”

  And we have no more magic to use against it, thought Aurhinius.

  “Very well. I will take command and send the men out to search the countryside. Waydol may well have left stragglers from whom we can learn something.

  “Also, it would be well to see that no other outlaws repair to this stronghold and make trouble in the north country. The people here have endured enough.”

  “No more than they deserved, for favoring a minotaur!”

  Aurhinius heard honesty in that exclamation—honest hatred. But then, one could hardly expect moderation from people like this young man. How different from the Minotaur’s Heir.

  The Istarian general wondered if the Minotaur’s Heir was still alive. He rather hoped so. Istar would need worthy foes to provide employment for its generals—and to keep men like this sprig of nobility somewhat honest!

  * * * * *

  The smoke from Rubina’s destruction of the tunnel was still rising from the hillside. Pirvan paced the deck of Windsword until Jemar the Fair told him rather sharply to leave off, as that was the captain’s privilege aboard ship.

  Pirvan, knowing how much weighed on the sea barbarian’s mind, went below.

  The main cabin had been turned into a sickroom for Waydol and Eskaia. Delia also shared it, lying under a blanket in one corner, which was not quite proper according to Sirbones.

  Jemar and Eskaia had both told him in plain words what to do with propriety. Had he not yielded, Pirvan and Haimya would have spoken next.

  Birak Epron and most of his men were aboard Thunderlaugh, so Windsword was not quite as crowded as some of the fleet. But there were few places aboard a human-built ship that could accommodate a minotaur at the best of times, and when the minotaur direly needed healing, there were fewer still.

  Haimya was sitting beside Waydol’s pallet, holding one hand while Sirbones listened to the movement of blood in the other wrist. Waydol was tossing his head back and forth, and every so often he gave a deep groan. Each time he did, Pirvan also saw Haimya wince, as the massive hand closed on hers.

  But he would not ask her to leave. He only wished he could take her place.

  “Does my heir live?” Waydol gasped. “Have you heard?”

  “We know Gullwing’s afloat,” Haimya said. “That signal came from the pilot boat. But she’s dismasted and coming in under oars. The sea is calming, but it may be a while before Darin comes aboard.”

  Quite a while more for Waydol to suffer, unless Sirbones can use nearly the last spell in him to heal a minotaur.

  They had offered Waydol common potions, but he himself had reminded them that if he was bleeding within, they might kill him. Also, the dosage for minotaurs was uncertain. Finally, he would be in his right senses when Darin came aboard, and there was an end to the matter.

  Pirvan and Haimya had the impression that Waydol could still rise from his pallet and hammer them against the deck beams overhead if they went too much against his wishes. So they waited—for signals from Darin, for the wind to turn favorable, for Sirbones to regain his strength, for they knew not what.

  For Waydol’s pain to end, was what Pirvan did not dare put into words; that was a wish the gods could grant by ending his life. If they do, before he speaks again with Darin, I—I do not know what I can do as a Knight of Solamnia. As a man, I wish—

  The cabin door burst open, and the only man aboard who could enter without knocking dashed in, nearly knocking Haimya down.

  “Waydol! Signal from Gullwing. Darin is unhurt and rejoices in your victory. Also, the wind is fair and we are leaving as fast as the anchors can come up!”

  Waydol’s bellow was a ghost of its former self, but it still raised echoes in the cabin and made Eskaia clap her hands over her ears. It ended in a coughing spell that brought up bloody foam, and Haimya took a cloth soaked in herb water to wipe the Minotaur’s lips and chin.

  “Send somebody else down to nurse me,” Waydol said. “You ought to be on deck.”

  Reluctantly, Haimya rose.

  Pirvan and Jemar were already on deck when she joined them. Pirvan put an arm around her, but she turned her head away. He knew w
hat that meant—tears he was not supposed to see—and said nothing.

  Smoke and flame spewed from one of the huts atop the slope. As the smoke drifted away and the stones rattled down on the roofs below, Pirvan recognized which hut it had been.

  “Rubina again,” he said. “Making sure that no one will ferret out Waydol’s secrets from his hut.”

  “Out oars!” Jemar shouted. “Deck crew, stand by to make sail.” He scurried aft toward the deckhouse.

  Haimya’s head slipped down onto Pirvan’s shoulder, and he felt her trembling.

  * * * * *

  Only one circle of fire now burned in the distance. Rubina sat on a log outside the stronghold entrance, with a patch of melted rock slowly cooling only a few paces away.

  Wearily, she rose to her feet and began to climb the slope to where she could find a view of the sea. She could have levitated there, but not without breaking the spell that maintained the last fire circle.

  That she would maintain until the last ship was out to sea.

  It was a long climb for a wizard who had spent her strength freely for a whole day. If she had been in the Tower of High Sorcery after such a day’s work, it would have been sleep and hearty meals for several days.

  She had her doubts about the prospect of hearty meals in this land. She was more certain about the sleep.

  Several times she was tempted to throw away her staff and robes. They were mere weight now, and she could end the fire circle with only a few simple words. Simple, at least, compared to what it had taken to raise the three fire circles with which she had begun the day’s work.

  Yet she had worn the robe and carried the staff for so many years, it would seem unnatural to be without them. She did not care to feel thus, in her last hours of life.

  Also, if those hours took her into night, it would be cold without the robes. When she was younger, she had taken much delight in outdoor trysts—she remembered one sturdy soldier, whose name she had never known, and a rose-laden breeze blowing over them both—

  The sea spread out before her, so abruptly that she had to dig in her staff and grip a branch to keep from sliding over the edge.