by Roland Green
The desert warrior seemed to have briefly lost his sense of direction during the last quick exchange. This made it easier for Pirvan to lead the fight toward the patch. It still took time, breath, and strength, and also allowed Hawkbrother to get home one quick slash at Pirvan’s left arm.
“I suppose you will not yield either?” Hawkbrother asked. He spoke with a grin that made it plain he asked foolish questions only to preserve custom and honor.
“You suppose correctly,” Pirvan said, returning the grin. To his left, he saw the patch only a few steps away. To his right, he saw Hawkbrother beginning to realize where the fight was leading them.
Then Hawkbrother came in fast again, trying to drive Pirvan onto the patch. There was nothing for the knight to do but let himself be driven. That, or take a serious wound. This might make Hawkbrother doubt Pirvan’s courage, but it should ease any suspicion.
Pirvan’s bare left foot touched the pebbly crust. Now he had to move as fast as he ever had in his night work, and against an opponent more dangerous than most folk who ever served in a city watch.
Instead of tilting left as his foot crunched through the crust, Pirvan tilted right. He turned the tilt into a cartwheel. Hawkbrother lunged at a momentarily helpless opponent—and it was the desert warrior’s foot that crunched through the crust, to be held fast.
Pirvan spun out of the cartwheel on to his feet, tossed his knife, caught it by the blade, and slammed the weighted hilt up under Hawkbrother’s jaw. The younger man had turned by then, so willpower and reflex together let him slash Pirvan across the ribs.
Then Hawkbrother crumpled. The fight was over, with the bloodier of the two opponents still on his feet.
Pirvan knelt and listened for Hawkbrother’s breath and pulse. Both seemed in reasonable order, for a man who probably had a broken jaw.
“Pirvan, stop dripping blood all over the poor man,” Serafina said sharply. “Eskaia, we need to wake Tarothin. If he hasn’t slept off his illness, he can always go back to his blankets after he heals these two bulls.”
“Best I come with you,” Darin said. “My judging is no longer needed, and Tarothin may have to be carried.” Unspoken, except in his glance at Pirvan, was the notion that he might awaken the Red Robe a trifle more gently than the two women.
“Well and good,” Haimya said. “Now, if somebody will bring me herb water and bandages, I can at least stop the bleeding while we wait for Tarothin.”
When Gildas Aurhinius awoke, the sun was too high for him to believe he had slept only a few minutes, though he felt as if he had.
When Nemyotes brought him the news, however, he very much wished he could go back to sleep.
“Zephros deserted during the night, during the rain,” the secretary said. “Most of his men went with him. We found several bodies. One man was still alive. Before he died, he said that those who refused to follow Zephros were murdered.”
Aurhinius could not think of anything to utter except a groan, which would be unmanly, so he held his peace; also his head.
“I fear there is more,” Nemyotes said.
“How fearsome?”
“Enough. The other tax soldier bands have held muster. Most of them count a score or more of deserters. Even Floria Desbarres’s company has lost a few.”
“Gone with Zephros?”
“Most likely. The rain washed out tracks for miles. The captain of scouts has men hunting Zephros’s trail.”
“Bid him report to me the moment his men find anything,” Aurhinius said. Then, as a realistic afterthought, he added, “or when they decide Zephros has too much of a head start.”
Aurhinius drank from a goblet of watered wine Nemyotes held out. It took the sourness from his mouth, if not from his spirit.
“Did the dying man say where Zephros might be going?”
“If anyone besides Zephros knew, he held his peace,” Nemyotes said. “Or perhaps Zephros himself did not know more than that he and his men were not safe here.”
“He was quite right, kingpriest or no kingpriest,” Aurhinius said. “But I do not like to think that he has such a hold over his men, and others’ men, that they will hare off into the desert with him, the gods alone know where.”
“Evil men have won followers before,” Nemyotes said. Aurhinius’s glare said what he thought of that pedantry. “Also,” the secretary added, “Zephros may have been playing on the ambitions of some men to be in the favor of the kingpriest or his followers. Ambition can often do the work of gold or honor.”
Aurhinius said nothing, as there was no denying that plain truth, and drank again. His thirst quenched, he stood and began peering about the already oven-hot tent for his clothes.
“Call a meeting of all the captains for noon,” Aurhinius said as he struggled into his undertunic. “I cannot order the tax soldiers’ captains to come, but remind them that I can perhaps help them prevent more desertions if they do. Some of them at least must hope to return to Istar with more than arrow-wounds and sunburn.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Tarothin had less sleep that night than Gildas Aurhinius, but at least did not wake to dire news. His healing of Pirvan and Hawkbrother left him weak, but it was thoroughly done, and both men were fit to ride at dawn.
The Red Robe was not, however. He slept through the day, which the men he had healed put to good use.
Hawkbrother called in his men, and they refilled their waterskins using the spring in Dead Ogre Canyon and Pirvan’s sledge. The Free Riders and knights traded sour looks at first, but Pirvan and Hawkbrother were each eloquent in praising the other’s skill and honor.
“If any doubt that Pirvan and those sworn to him are friends to the Free Riders and likely to aid us in this time of troubles, let him challenge me in the matter,” was the way Hawkbrother put it.
Where others could hear, Pirvan was quite as firm. “The Free Riders are fierce but honorable. We have nothing and can have nothing to fear from them, bound as they are by Hawkbrother’s oaths.”
This, Haimya pointed out when they were alone, applied only to the Gryphon clan. The last time she had studied the matter, there were at least nine other great clans and some fifteen lesser ones among the Free Riders.
“I also do not care for the narrowness of your victory,” she said. “Gerik and Eskaia say little, but their eyes speak plainly. None of us can quite bring ourselves to say—”
“That I am too old for contending in this sort of bout?” Pirvan said. He smiled to take some of the sting from the words, not wishing to make an enemy of his lady and love after making a friend of Hawkbrother. The gods themselves would fall down laughing if that happened.
Haimya flushed. Pirvan laughed aloud and kissed her. “Well, you have heard me say it myself.”
“Yes, but—oh, how to say it? Does your heart accept your years, or must I wait for mine to break when you go into one too many battles?”
Pirvan wanted to praise her warrior’s courage by doubting that her heart would do any such thing. But her love for him—and his for her—was quite as real as their courage. He vowed not to ask her lightly to bear what he himself might not be able to endure.
In silence, they stood arm in arm until the unease passed, and the dawn breeze began to blow dust in their eyes. From the canyon came the shouts of both Free Riders and guards urging the sledge up the slope. From the vast sky came only the distant cry of some bird still hunting a meal after a night spent in vain.
“When do we ride?” Haimya asked.
“I had thought to break camp as soon as we were watered,” Pirvan said. “Anyone who has followed us is less likely to ambush us by day than by night.
“But there is Tarothin, who must have sleep and may need healing, himself. I hope the Gryphons can supply it. Also, Hawkbrother says that his friend One-Ear knows ways out of this land that none but the Free Riders know.”
“That serves well enough against the tax soldiers,” Haimya said. “What of other clans, the Hawks and their ilk?�
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Pirvan shrugged. “A little in every guess, and much in some, always rests with the gods. They have so far sent us safety, water, friends, and knowledge we did not have before. I think we can trust them to keep away hostile clans—and can trust our own steel if the gods turn their attention elsewhere.”
This met with no argument from Haimya, and they returned to the camp hand in hand.
Chapter 4
As the gryphon flew, it was three days’ or four nights’ ride to the principal camp of the clan named after those fierce flying predators.
“Although in truth, I have never seen a gryphon fly half that distance in a straight line,” Hawkbrother added. “They could do it if they wished. They are strong flyers, but they must eat. Or at least they wish to eat, whenever they see something that might be food. And I tell you that a gryphon will make a meal of what would make a carrion bird spew. So they are always swooping down, gorging themselves, then sleeping off their gorging.”
“Have they no enemies to surprise them in their sleep?” Eskaia asked. She seemed insatiable in her curiosity about the life of the Free Riders and about the southern lands in general.
“None but humans, and be sure that we take advantage of this,” Hawkbrother said. “Not our clan, for the gryphon is our totem and thereafter we may not shed its blood. But others, including the bolder Silvanesti, go hunting gryphons in their sleeping lairs. Not altogether a bad thing, either, or the desert skies might be filled with gryphons and the land below be eaten bare of men and their herds alike.”
Pirvan’s company and the Free Riders had no need to stop and gorge, but they did need to avoid lands where hostile clans (the Hawks, the Ravens, the Serpents, and the Dragons) might be roaming. That was doubly true where the Istarians might have gathered, whether the regular host or the ragged mob of tax soldiers.
So they struck away from the river, which Pirvan knew by the Silvanesti name Fyrdaynis and the Free Riders called the River of the Green Moons. (It was said that from its banks, at certain times of the year, any or all of the moons in the sky appeared green. Tarothin found this of more than passing interest, and would have shown more than passing regret for leaving the river, but was not fit to argue.) They rode a twisting path that to Pirvan seemed to go in two or three directions during each night’s ride. Yet at dawn he could always tell from the sunrise that they were farther south. Even by night, he could feel the air turning cooler and see moonlit patches of grass and bushes and dwarfed trees, which did not grow farther north.
“Are we going all the way to the Silvanesti lands?” Eskaia asked as they made camp on the fifth morning of the journey.
“Would it make you uneasy if we did?” Hawkbrother asked in return.
Eskaia did not stamp her foot or slap the chief’s son, but both gestures were in her voice as she replied. “Not in the least. We wish to learn how the Silvanesti see Istar’s intrigues. Who better to ask than the Silvanesti themselves—if they will answer us with words and not arrows?”
“That is indeed the question,” Pirvan said. “And because it is the question, it is why we are going to Hawkbrother’s clan first.” He did not add the question he wished answered but could not ask yet: Would the Free Riders ally with the Silvanesti against Istar, or the opposite?
Neither choice sat well with the knight. If elves and Free Riders made common cause, Istar would invoke the city’s terms of alliance with Solamnia and summon the knights to aid them against “barbarian hordes.” Some injustice had come of this the first time, even without the hand of the kingpriest’s minions. It would be much worse this time.
If Free Riders chose to help Istar settle their old grievances against the Silvanesti (which were many, and some possibly just), the knights might not be required. But the Silvanesti would be direly beset enough without them, and elves driven to desperation had dread resources to unleash when their heartlands were threatened.
It would bring the great war closer, the war of which the kingpriests had spoken more loudly with each generation, the final confrontation of humans and “lesser breeds.” Too much closer for Pirvan’s peace of mind.
When everyone else was out of hearing, Pirvan asked Hawkbrother: “How do you keep peace with the elves?”
“With the Qualinesti, by being too far away to have dealings. Likewise with the Kagonesti.”
“You know who I mean, my friend,” Pirvan said. It had been a long night, and he recovered from hours in the saddle more slowly than he had ten years ago. He was stiff enough that he doubted sleep would come easily, but knew he must not lose patience.
“There is a stretch of the southern desert or the northern forest, call it what you will,” Hawkbrother said, after a moment’s hesitation. “We both claim it, but our fighting over the claim is more sport than war. We do not go far into the woods, where our mounts cannot move swiftly, our eyes are baffled, and an archer lurks behind every tree.
“The Silvanesti return the favor. They do not go far north, where there are no trees but only scorching hot rocks, our mounts let us move ten paces to their one, and the sun flays their pale hides in a matter of hours.”
Pirvan had heard of such long-standing wars, hardly more than amusement for either side, save for the few who were killed or maimed. When the gnomes fought, among one another or with anybody else, it was much like that. Dwarves sometimes seemed to fight simply for an excuse to wander outside their mountains. Kender hardly ever took anything seriously, unless their whole race was in danger, which might become the case if the kingpriests grew more ambitious. The morning was growing warm, but within, Pirvan was chilled at the thought of the whole kender race united to fight for their very existence, with all the skill and ingenuity at their command.
Hawkbrother seemed reluctant to say more about Free Riders and Silvanesti, but Pirvan had learned enough, both for his own use and for the archives of the knights. Both peoples seemed likely to chose freely; their minds had not been shaped like clay on a potter’s wheel by centuries of bloodshed.
With that thought, Pirvan realized he could hope for sleep today, in spite of stiff muscles, saddle sores, and the near-exhaustion of the soothing oil that Haimya used as skillfully as she used her hands.
Krythis, called half-elven only by those who wished to insult him, put both hands on the sun-warmed boulder and vaulted out of the pool. He shook himself like a wet dog, so that his long black hair flew about his shoulders.
From the pool came silvery laughter. A head with near-ivory hair rose from the water, with green eyes and a smile below the hair.
“You look like a dwarfsfoot hedge after a heavy rain.”
Krythis gripped his hair and began wringing the water from it. “Speak for yourself, wife. You sometimes make me think of a snowpod too long without water.”
“You’ll pay for that, Krithot.” The affectionate form of his name took the bite from his wife’s words. Krythis continued to dry his hair until he looked up and saw that Tulia’s head had disappeared. Not even a ripple marked the pool’s surface where she had been.
Krythis’s mouth went dry. It would take magic to bring danger into this pool, where they had been swimming and taking other pleasures since they had made their abode in Belkuthas. But there was more magic abroad than there had been, much of it aimed against nonhumans. Even if none such was directed their way, the Silvanesti rivaled the kingpriests in their distaste for half-elves.
He bent over the pool—and two slim, muscular arms darted from the water and wrapped around his neck. His balance vanished before he even knew he was losing it, and he plunged headfirst into the water.
A man’s height below the surface, he saw Tulia grinning, and felt her tighten her embrace, adding the grip of her long legs to that of her arms. When this happened, he knew from long and agreeable experience what she had in mind. So he did not resist her drawing him toward their private trysting place between two rocks.
A little beach lay there, soft with moss and fallen leaves, but Krythis could h
ave lain down on sharp stones as long as his wife was in his arms. She drove all the world but herself beyond the reach of Krythis’s senses—and she said that he did the same for her.
At last, they slept in each other’s arms, briefly but long enough that the pool was more sunlit than shadowed when they awoke. Tulia was the first to sit up and begin finger-combing leaves and bits of moss from her hair. Krythis decided to lie still. He felt too peaceful, and Tulia was too beautiful.
“Consider, my love, whether we grow too old for this,” Tulia said at last, when her hair at last flowed untangled over her lightly freckled shoulders.
“Does the water pain you?” Krythis asked. “Are you old enough for stiffened joints?”
“I should hope not!” Tulia said. “If one is going to be slow and pain-ridden barely into one’s second century, one might as well be human!” She leaned back against a sun-warmed rock face, looking rather more like a human woman barely past her thirtieth year.
“Then what do you mean?” Krythis said. He could, at least on most days, bandy riddles with Tulia for hours on end. But today was a special day, their daughter Rynthala’s coming-of-age celebration. There was so much to be done that he had doubted the wisdom of slipping away for this morning swim.
“Perhaps Rynthi wants a trifle of dignity in her parents,” Tulia said.
Krythis knew he had been tricked again. “You almost said that with a straight face and an even voice,” he replied. “If she wants dignity from us, let her ask it to our faces.”
“Though not, please Paladine, with a dozen pairs of ears in hearing,” Tulia said.
“Ah, yes, you remember.”
“It was not easy to forget,” Tulia said almost sharply.
Krythis saw that she seemed genuinely ill at ease, more so than could be blamed on the party. Rynthi was doing half the work for that, and Sirbones and the dwarves were doing most of the rest.
“I would wager my manhood that our daughter is a clean maid. Not for want of men who would make her otherwise, but because it is her own wish.