Knights of the Crown w-1

by Roland Green

  “You do not look well, Haimya,” he said.

  “Nothing you have done lately has made my life easier,” she said. At the back of her mind, a small voice whispered that he probably had no more idea of what to do now than she did. A little kindness would not come amiss.

  She took a deep breath. “Gerik. It has come to my ears-I have heard-that you swore true oath to Synsaga.”

  She looked at him then, and although he was silent, his eyes spoke loudly enough. She wanted to turn away, or slap him, or do something to mark this moment and her disapproval. (She could not call it by any stronger word. He might have been threatened, and their betrothal would not stand or fall on that oath if he foreswore it and fled.)

  “Everyone on the Crater Gulf knows that,” Gerik said. “It is hardly a secret.”

  “Except to those who have come to Crater Gulf to-to discuss your future with you,” Pirvan put in.

  Haimya shook her head at her comrade. The less he drew Gerik’s attention to himself, the better. Gerik had never seemed like a man who would send an imagined rival to his doom, but then he had never seemed like a man who would join the ranks of Synsaga’s pirates.

  “We cannot talk of this at any length in this tower, without Fustiar’s consent,” Gerik said.

  “Then you do serve him, rather than Synsaga?” Haimya snapped.

  “Be easy, Haimya. There is no conflict, for Fustiar also serves Synsaga, and does not go beyond the bounds the pirate sets for him.” His voice and eyes held a plea, for her to believe him and not question him. Not here.

  She began to believe that there had been duress a year ago, or at least second thoughts now. He would go with them, and once he was safely free of the Crater Gulf they might speak freely, learn more of Fustiar, even-

  “Hup!” Pirvan shouted.

  Gerik whirled. Other pirates were pushing through the ruined door. One of them stared at Haimya. She recognized the sentry she’d stunned, after leaping out of Pirvan’s illusory tree.

  “The tree spirit!” the man screamed. Then he snatched his cutlass from his belt and hurled himself forward, straight at Haimya.

  * * * * *

  If Pirvan had enjoyed his normal swiftness, he might have halted Haimya’s attacker without killing him. Between the pain of his broken arm and the darkness of the chamber, he had no chance to do anything useful.

  This left only two possible outcomes. Gerik Ginfrayson could resist the man, or Haimya could die on the pirate’s sword.

  Gerik whirled, his sword in his hand. As the man passed him, he laid the flat of the blade across the man’s head. Instead of stunning him, it further enraged him. He turned on Gerik, and only a remarkably agile parry kept the man’s cutlass from splitting Gerik’s head.

  “Stop it, you fool!” Gerik shouted. “These are my prisoners. You can die for attacking another’s prisoners.”

  “Evil spirit!” the man screamed. There was no reason in his cry, nor any reasoning with him. Haimya stepped forward to help Gerik disarm the man and salvage some remote chance of peace.

  Instead, the man drew his dagger and struck at Haimya. She was a trifle slower than usual; the point entered her left shoulder. Pain flared, and she felt blood trickling. She thought of the last drops of healing potion and how much they would have to heal.

  Gerik did not think at all. His sword flashed three times, and the last time he drew it back dripping blood as the man crumpled to the floor. He stepped back, the pleading look on his face even stronger. Haimya didn’t know who was supposed to honor the plea now-her, or the pirates by the door, seeing a comrade struck down.

  She knew then that she had only one hope left. She poured most of the remaining healing potion on her wounded shoulder, then shook the last few drops onto her tongue. Without waiting for it to take effect, she strode over to the Frostreaver and picked it up.

  She didn’t know what she’d expected to happen. Would it strike her dead for stealing it, or would all the pirates discover that they had someplace else to go, and that urgently?

  Neither happened. What she held in her hand was a fine two-handed, single-bitted battleaxe. It was heavy, but well balanced; clearly the guard creature’s strength had not been needed. Fustiar must know more than a trifle about weapons; a pity he was entirely given to evil-

  “Kill the witch!” someone shouted. He was loud enough to raise not only echoes but dust. He raised more dust as he charged forward, cutlass raised.

  Haimya’s arms and shoulders fought the first encounter before her thoughts could catch up with them. She held the axe with her hands wide apart and the head to the left, then shifted her grip to swing hard from left to right. The axehead smashed into the down-swinging cutlass and sent it flying out of the man’s hands.

  The impact hardly slowed the axe’s deadly arc. It still had enough force to bite deeply into the man’s torso. He stared down at the gaping red ruin where his stomach had been, then clasped his arms futilely over the wound and went to his knees. He had time only to begin a scream before blood came out of his mouth and he fell, choking and writhing.

  Before he was still, Pirvan had rushed in and picked up the fallen cutlass. He brandished it in his good hand, though Haimya saw him wince as the movement shook his broken and still unbound arm.

  “They are my prisoners,” Gerik said, his voice tight. “Haimya, Haimya’s friend, you can disarm. I promise you-”

  “I promise death to traitors!” another man shouted. “The witch killed my brother. She’s no prisoner!”

  Gerik, Pirvan, and Haimya had just time to form a rough line before the general rush came. Then, for a minute or more, the fight became the lightning-quick clash of steel (and ice) that left Haimya no awareness of anything more than a foot beyond the reach of her Frostreaver.

  She took down two men with it, one of them dead, and remembered too late that a two-handed weapon is not ideal in a melee against enemies who can get inside its swing. But Gerik seemed to have learned more swordsmanship in the last year than in all his previous years combined, and Pirvan was as quick as an eel and as welcoming as a poisonous serpent. Each of them took a man, and Haimya began to hope.

  Hope ended when the door was suddenly filled with more men. The battle must have attracted them, and these newcomers were hideous beyond belief, earless, silent, scarred, and frenzied. Even if they’d had ears, Haimya could not conceive of their listening.

  She and Pirvan paired off and kept the newcomers at a distance. They were both fighting with strange weapons, she was sick, and he was wounded, but one mind seemed to move both their limbs and take knowledge from both their senses.

  The newcomers seemed reluctant to attack Gerik, and Haimya wondered if this was because of his service to Fustiar, who had to be their master. The pirates seemed to have no reluctance to attack anyone, but they divided their forces so that no one was overmatched.

  How long the fight might have gone on, only the gods could say. Its end came in one frightful moment, as Haimya relied on Pirvan’s protecting her front to launch a full overhead swing at a pirate wearing a helmet.

  The Frostreaver flashed down, it smote the helmet and pierced iron and bone to the man’s nose-then it shattered like a glass globe flung on a stone floor. Except that the shattering did not strew mere fragments of glass far and wide.

  Instead, pieces of mage-wrought ice flew in all directions, sharper than razors, as heavy as stones, and as deadly as the claws of a dragon. Haimya saw blood on her leg, saw two men go down, and saw the mutes drag one of their number out the door with his belly laid open as they fled from something that overmatched their mindless courage-

  And she saw Gerik Ginfrayson collapse, holding a hand already red over an ice-torn wound in his thigh, over his death wound, until his strength left him and his hand fell, leaving the wound to finish its work.

  Haimya knelt beside him until the light went out of his eyes. She remembered kissing his lips before they were cold, then again afterward. She remembered muttering
that she had been faithful to him, until this last betrayal, and other things that it was probably as well he could no longer hear. The gods’ hearing them would be enough.

  She did not remember if he said anything. Probably he was silent, and even the smile on his face was almost certainly her imagination. But she held the picture of that smile in her mind, even when she felt Pirvan’s hand on her shoulder and allowed him to pull her to her feet.

  “We have to move.”

  “Where?”

  “Up or down. It doesn’t matter. We have to be outside the tower where Hipparan can find us-before Fustiar awakes or the black dragon returns.”

  “I–I took the piece-Gerik should have had it, and I his.”

  He looked down at her leg. “You can’t climb?”

  “Perhaps. I-” She forced the words out, even as she uttered them knowing that he would ignore them, that if he had to find a way of carrying her out under one arm, he would do so.

  “Leave me here.”

  “Haimya, this is the first and probably the last time I will ever give you a command. Come, freely or against your will, but come.”

  A lingering remnant of dignity forced her to put one foot in front of another. Surprisingly, the wounded leg could take some weight, even as she felt the bleeding worsen.

  Kicking the useless handle of the Frostreaver out of the way, they stepped over the bodies and ice fragments to the door.

  Chapter 21

  Hipparan toas not one of those dragons with the inborn gift of sensing magic worked in a cave deep under a mountain halfway across the world. Nor had he, in his few decades in the world before entering dragonsleep, found time to learn that art-if it could be learned, as some elder dragons doubted.

  But the magic he sensed now blazed like fires in dry grass. Or at least one source did-neutral he thought, but with an aura about it of danger. Evil flickered, like a campfire in yesterday’s downpour, close to the neutral source.

  And far away but drawing closer was the black dragon, a familiar sensation and at any other time not an unwelcome one. He had never heard of a dragon turning from evil to good, or even neutral, but it seemed likely that the black would not do anything evil unless Fustiar compelled him.

  As he took wing, Hipparan hoped Fustiar had no spells to compel any dragon except the aged black. But a mage who could break dragonsleep, even with the aid of the Dark Queen, was too potent for the comfort of anyone except his sinister mistress.

  Hipparan was of one mind with Pirvan and Haimya. He would not sorrow if Fustiar fell into a wine barrel and drowned. For now, he could only hope that at least the mage’s ability to work spells was drowned in the wine he’d drunk, and would stay that way until Pirvan and Haimya were safely out of his reach.

  Hipparan slanted down to just about the treetops, gaining speed as he did so. The wind of his passage blew birds’ nests out of the trees, and nesting mothers squalled protest as their fledglings toppled into space.

  Hipparan felt the mothers’ sorrow but could do nothing about it. He owed them nothing; he owed Haimya and Pirvan (and all their friends, might Paladine protect them) a great deal.

  His wings quickened their beat until he was flying faster than he ever had, even in the high skies.

  * * * * *

  Pirvan’s arm was throbbing as if it had been held over a fire, by the time he and Haimya reached the roof of the tower. They met no one on the stairs, either friendly or hostile, though the crumbling steps, cobwebs, and reek of mold and still more unwholesome life were menaces enough to the two battered questers. Several times Haimya had to stop-for breath, she said-but Pirvan saw blood soaking through her breeches and even the rough dressing she’d torn from the clothing of a dead pirate.

  When they reached the roof, they were still alone, and Pirvan quickly saw why. The roof was more holes than either stone or timber. A misstep could send them plummeting to death in the shadows.

  At least it would be a quicker death than the pirates now surrounding the tower would mete out to them. Pirvan hoped he and his companion could at least force the pirates to kill them, but with his arm and her leg and fever, he was making no large wagers. The last strength she’d gained from the healing potion had gone into wielding the Frostreaver with a skill that an ice barbarian warrior would have envied-and what had it brought her?

  Gerik Ginfrayson’s death, and that had taken from her something that she might never gain back, not if she survived tonight and another fifty years as well. He had thrown away his oath to Synsaga to save her, and she had repaid him with death.

  Pirvan could see in Haimya’s eyes that in her mind she would look upon Gerik’s dying face a thousand times over, until either her mind could endure it no more or she could make her peace with what was not her fault and in any case past all altering.

  He had firmly put the thought out of his mind that she was now free. She would welcome no man’s approach for years, if ever. Now all he could do for her was be silent and if it came to that, keep her from dying alone.

  More torches were coming across the courtyard toward the foot of the tower. Pirvan looked down, and an arrow whistled up toward him, striking the stone a good ten feet below him. Chips of stone and large chunks of mortar showered from where it had struck, however. This whole tower had to be on the verge of coming down of its own weight; how it had survived Fustiar’s residence, let alone his magic, was something to marvel at.

  Haimya was sitting slumped against the remnants of the battlement, her eyes as blank as if she were senseless. Only the slow rise and fall of her shoulders and the slow trickle of blood from her wound told Pirvan that she was still alive.

  With every step and every movement, his arm now flung pain up and down until every part of his body seemed to hurt. It would be easy to sit down beside Haimya, take her hand, and wait until Fustiar awoke or the men below gathered their courage and came up with steel in hand.

  It would also shame the brothers and sisters of the night work. Thieves either escaped or died on their feet, like badgers defending their burrows.

  The torches wavered. Several arrows flew, but none of them anywhere near the castle. They seemed loosed straight up into the sky. Pirvan’s ears seemed stuffed with wool, but he heard cries of alarm.

  The black dragon was returning, of course. The men would retreat, but that made no difference. Between them, the black dragon and his mage master would finish the night’s work-

  It was not the black dragon that swooped out of the night, but Hipparan. He seemed to have grown to twice his previous size since they last had seen him, his wings blotting out the sky and his body longer than the tower’s width.

  Magic, natural growth, or illusion? Illusion, Pirvan realized, as Hipparan flung out his wings to stop himself in midair, then settled cautiously onto the roof. Not all the stones under him could bear even his carefully placed weight; some gave way and rattled and crashed down into blackness.

  “Come and ride,” Hipparan whispered. “This roof may fall or Fustiar awake, and the black dragon is coming.”

  Haimya stared in silence for a moment, until Pirvan thought he would have to slap or drag her. He wondered which god he should pray to, to avert this.

  Then speculation ended as Haimya pulled herself painfully upright. “I must tie Pirvan in place,” she said. Her voice might have been that of a swathed corpse in a tomb a thousand years old. “He has broken his arm.”

  “Then be quick about it,” Hipparan said.

  Haimya’s first movements were corpselike as well, but her hands were no less deft than before. In moments, Pirvan was as snugly bound as a barbarian’s infant on a woman’s backboard. He did not see Haimya tie herself into her harness, but he did feel the lurch and stomach-dropping effect as Hipparan took wing.

  The last thing he saw was the tower, now encircled by torches, dropping away beneath them.

  * * * * *

  Hipparan knew less than he wished to about human injuries and sickness. He knew even less tha
n that about healing them, though he had once commanded some healing spells and also read more than a trifle in Tarothin’s least secret spellbook.

  This modest knowledge was sufficient to tell him one thing: Pirvan and Haimya would not survive their present hurts without healing. They might not need more than rest and good food brought by helpful hands every day for a few weeks, if they were aboard Golden Cup or guests at some castle such as this one had been long ago.

  Alone in a wilderness, barely able to tend each other, though, they were doomed. Even if he remained with them and guarded them from enemies, he could not attend them as they needed.

  Nor could he be sure of remaining with them. The black dragon was closer yet, and asking querulously what was amiss. So far Hipparan had not heard Fustiar reply.

  May this continue, he prayed.

  Hipparan had flown as high as he could without chilling his passengers, to see far and wide and be out of arrowshot or even siege engine range from the ground. Seeing no immediate danger from human weapons, dragon’s claws, or mage’s magic, he descended in wide circles to a landing place on a hill opposite the ancient volcano.

  He had thought of landing on that weathered summit, for the lake would offer unlimited fresh water and the forests rose high and were rich with game and fruit. But the rock was crumbling and treacherous, and above the forest line there was little cover for two humans who could not move swiftly and would surely be hunted on the ground and perhaps from the air.

  Hipparan had also sensed a trace of ancient magic deep within the mountain. He could not recognize anything about it, but it seemed to him that his friends would best be well clear of the mountain when Fustiar awoke in fury, like the ancient volcano in eruption.

  The clouds were low and the mist rising as Hipparan descended. He had to slow his flight until he was almost hanging in the air, at a height at which a small boy with a slingshot could strike easily. He reached out with all his awareness, searching the land about for any signs of life.