by Roland Green
Tulia said nothing. Krythis put his hand over hers and contemplated the pride of the Silvanesti nobles. More and more, it seemed like the pride of those humans who would claim all virtue for their race and leave none to others.
Pirvan and Haimya had a chamber to themselves, a gift they had not expected. It came to them through the efforts of the captive sell-swords, who formed themselves into a working party and, under Darin’s guidance, cleaned out and furbished several chambers in the keep.
“There’s no fire, but it’s a warm night,” the leader of the captives said. His name was Rugal Nis, and he was a burly, plain-spoken man without airs but with a well-worn harness and possibly some ogre blood.
“We are grateful,” Haimya said, “but I must ask a question. Why?”
“We did this?” Nis laughed. “It’s poor return for a gift to ask the giver why. But I’ll tell you, Lady Haimya. You and yours fought us fair, treated us well even when we wouldn’t turn our coats, and kept the desert cutthroats away from us. It does nothing against the kingpriest to show our thanks.”
“Then you surely have ours,” Pirvan said, and ushered Nis out. He closed the door without turning, and still without turning said to Haimya, “We shall have to think about the sell-swords, if we have to stand a siege. I would not turn them back to the friends of the kingpriest. Perhaps to a reliable sell-sword captain, since their own is dead, but—”
He broke off. At that moment, he had turned around and beheld Haimya. She lay on the bed, having removed not only all her armor but all she wore under it. She had propped her head on one hand, and almost, but not quite, beckoned with the other.
“The sell-swords can wait one night.”
“You cannot?”
“If I have to, you will be sorry.”
In the forests to the north, Sir Lewin’s party joined the march of a company of some two hundred sell-swords. The knight heard the tale that Belkuthas had sold itself to the elves, and that a high elven captain was commanding there. He also heard another tale, that a high elven lord was captive there, and that great favor would come to anyone who rescued him.
“It seems to me no one knows what is going on, and perhaps some are putting about tales to confuse us,” Sir Esthazas said. “May I beg caution?”
“A knight does not beg, nor does he ever forget caution when he does not know the way of honor,” Lewin said. “But in this case, we can hardly take the side of the elves. Not that I would oppose our rescuing the elven lord, if he is a prisoner of his own traitors, but even that will mean working with the sell-swords.”
“Even if they besiege Belkuthas?”
“As you yourself said, no one here seems to know what is going on. The place to learn the truth will be closer to Belkuthas. There, Istar’s tax soldiers will not thank us if we hold ourselves aloof from the fighting. The reputation of the knights for loyalty to Istar—that is the way of honor here.”
The younger knight looked ready to dispute the matter, but seemed reluctant, within the hearing of the sell-swords. Lewin decided he would leave Sir Esthazas to lead the men-at-arms and negotiate with the sell-swords himself.
In the forest outside the camp of Zephros’s men, now a thousand strong and only an hour’s march from Belkuthas, strange rumblings echoed among the trees, and acrid smells trickled into camp on the night winds. Sentries gripped sword hilts and spear shafts; sleeping men turned uneasily and dreamed of monsters rising from the earth.
Far below the ground, tunnels hewed through solid rock echoed to the stolid tread of dwarves moving purposefully, as always, and faster than usual.
In the keep of Belkuthas, a certain freshly scoured chamber echoed to happy cries.
Pirvan and Haimya slept entwined, but the knight awoke much sooner than he had expected, given that this was the first bed he’d seen in many weeks. He felt strange sensations, also not wholly expected.
Perhaps the years had not taken as much as he had feared? More likely, Haimya in his arms was even more inspiration than he had thought.
He kissed her and felt her stir, then roll over to return the kiss. Likewise the embrace—
The keep was shaking. Pirvan knew that passion for Haimya could shake him. Their embraces had shaken many a bed, but never had he felt a castle keep shaking in such a moment.
Earthquake. And the first rule in such an event was to get outside, so that you would not be buried under falling stone or timber when the tremors grew too violent for the building you were in.
They were only one story above the ground. A jump would be safe, and faster than the stairs. Now, if that window was wide enough—
The knight was crouched in the window, trying to fit his shoulders through, when he saw men run toward the citadel’s well house, then suddenly recoil. They recoiled before a dark flood pouring out of the well. It was touched with foam, and silvered here and there by Solinari.
The flood continued. Now it was more like a wave breaking on a rocky shore. The courtyard was ankle-deep in water, and the well was now the source of a fountain rising higher than Pirvan’s perch.
Suddenly, the fountain turned into an eruption of water, steam, sand, mud, bits of rock, and less identifiable debris. The roof of the well house soared into the sky like a pot lid flipped aloft by hot steam. A good part of the well house wall followed it.
A vertical pillar of water, foam, and wreckage towered high above Belkuthas. Then it arched away from the vertical, and Pirvan heard above the roaring a mighty splashing as the water struck the ground.
The heavier debris rained down all over the citadel. Pirvan heard thuds as stones struck the ground, screams of pain as they struck flesh, more screams of terror at the falling stones and the noise.
Pirvan himself would not have minded finding release in a scream. Cold knowledge sank into him: the citadel was under attack by magic. Magic directed at its water supply, and also at the courage of its defenders.
Without either, Belkuthas was weakened. Without both, it was—he would not say doomed—in grave peril.
He was still so cat-nerved that he jumped when an arm stole around his waist. He turned and saw Haimya, peering over his shoulder at the uproar in the courtyard. She wore only the dagger she had snatched from under the pillow.
Outside, Rynthala rode up, wearing a tunic thrown over a night robe. She also wore her bow and quiver. Pirvan suspected she would take them to the bedchamber on her wedding night. A man lacking the courage to face that prospect should be unlikely to woo her, let alone win her.
“Rynthala!” Pirvan called.
The heiress of Belkuthas looked up. “Sir Pirvan. You and Lady Haimya are well?”
“We’ll be better when we know what’s happening.”
“Gone!” somebody screamed. Then a tumult around the remains of the well house threw shouts into the night air. From them, Pirvan extracted the heart of the matter.
Something—he agreed with those who shouted “evil spells”—had flung all the water out of the well, then collapsed the well shaft. Some thirty or forty yards down lay solid rock. There was talk of somebody climbing down the well, to see for sure, and at least one sensible person had lit a torch. Nobody seemed eager to be the climber—nor did Pirvan doubt anyone’s courage for that.
“Rynthala!” he called. “Are there scouts out?”
“Why?”
“Because I think our enemies will want to follow the ruining of the well with an attack, before we can rally. A few scouts could give warning, perhaps delay them with archery.”
A new voice called out, “I would expect them to wait until thirst forced us to yield without a fight.” That was Krythis, who had just appeared, striding through the mud in barely more complete garb than Pirvan and Haimya.
Pirvan did not want to say that the kind of sell-swords coming would want loot and refugee women, which they would not have without storming Belkuthas.
The refugees would be sufficiently frightened already, without hearing that.
Instead
, he said, “Who commands now?”
Krythis looked about to reply, when Rynthala bent down and whispered in her father’s ear. Slowly he nodded, then looked up at Pirvan.
“Could you take command? You are senior knight, and no one else has such rank or experience.”
“Very well. But you will rank second, along with Threehands. In the citadel, when I am not present, he obeys you. Outside the citadel, likewise, will you obey him?”
By now others were listening to this public discussion of what ought to be a private matter. There were curses and a few mutterings about “desert horse-(obscenities).”
Pirvan raised his voice. “It will have to be that way, or the Gryphons may leave. Certainly honor will demand that they fight a separate battle. We can’t have that.” It was a piece of advice for the archers of Lauthin the Loud as well, if they were within hearing.
“Very well,” Krythis called. “I will tell Tharash.”
“Do that,” Pirvan said. “Wait a moment, and I’ll come down and see to the well. I’m not as young as I was, but I should still be better underground than anybody save a dwarf.”
Haimya’s voice hissed in his ear. “You will do no such thing. First, because you now command here, and your life is not your own. Second, because you are clad like a new-born babe.”
“The best garb for digging wells, or so I have heard,” Pirvan said. Then he turned, and almost fell into Haimya’s embrace.
She was shaking, but stopped when she felt and heard him laughing. “I still have the dagger, if you do not tell me the jest.” But it was not the hand that held the dagger that touched him.
Pirvan managed to put into words the absurdity of discussing the matter of command in a besieged fortress while crouched unclad in a keep window, with a half-elven lord standing in a similar state ankle-deep in mud from an ensorcelled well.
By the time he finished, Haimya was at least smiling. “Although if the absurd is the worst that befalls Belkuthas before this is over, we shall all be very lucky,” she replied.
“Too true. Now, for the love of the True Gods, let me get dressed. I have to go down to the courtyard at least, if not down the well. I have to start my command here with a little dignity!”
Chapter 13
The road of honor was anything but clearly marked. Anything other than caution would be a folly that would make the name Sir Lewin reek down through the ages in the chronicles of the Knights of Solamnia.
Upon joining what seemed to be the main body of the march to Belkuthas, Sir Lewin immediately regretted his remarks to Sir Esthazas.
He was unnerved not only by the rumored presence of Sir Pirvan and his companions at Belkuthas, nor the equally rumored presence of elves of some exalted rank (some rumors claimed even King Maradoc himself). The first would be a problem, the second perhaps a problem or an opportunity, but Sir Lewin could live with both.
What he could not live with—perhaps literally—was the “host” in whose ranks he now found himself. He could not deny that he was endangering those he led by keeping company with Zephros’s army, now swollen to nearly a thousand. At least he was endangering them as long as he did not assume command and try to delay the assault on Belkuthas until those thousand men knew more of war.
There were in truth many valiant, skilled, and well-armed men among the thousand. But they obeyed twenty different captains, with Zephros their commander only in name. It took half a day to agree on what was needed for some companies, abundant in others, and stolen and bartered almost everywhere.
Lewin finally worked his way around the camps to Luferinus, who seemed to know the most. The knight had to be cautious in dealing with Luferinus, who was the recognized leader among those sell-swords who would do anything for the glory of the kingpriest and the injury of the lesser races. He was not universally loved; the rumors of his having a pet mage did not help. Nor had Lewin come all this way to cut his own throat by so openly aiding the kingpriest’s cause that the knights would have to bring him before a tribunal.
Still, the meeting with Luferinus was not without value. It became plain that Zephros could be a weapon in the hands of anyone who left him the glory of command. For now, Luferinus was wielding him.
But the chance of battle could alter that. Lewin was not quite sure if he should give chance a helping hand; there was that mage to think about. But he resolved to meet privately and secretly with Zephros as soon as he could arrange it.
Of course, the whole question might be settled on the morrow by a victory at Belkuthas—although the last march to the citadel did not make Lewin hopeful.
The plan was to finish the march by daylight, camp just out of sight of Belkuthas at nightfall, then march at first light and attack once the sun was up. A night attack or even a night march were assumed, quite correctly, to be well beyond the power of this motley host.
The march actually began around noon. By the time the shadows lengthened, the army was barely halfway to Belkuthas, and scouts from the citadel had long since sighted them. Attempts by mounted sell-swords to drive off the scouts had led to skirmishing, in which the only casualties were a round dozen of horses and a centaur accidentally shot by one of Zephros’s archers.
By nightfall, they were hardly farther along. They made camp wherever they could, a cold, thirsty, and hungry camp. Lewin offered the service of his men to at least keep Belkuthan scouts from slitting the throats of sleeping men, and even Esthazas agreed that honor demanded it.
The offer was accepted. Lewin and his men spent a sleepless night guarding men who were not their comrades, who would hardly be fit to fight at all on the morrow, and who would have a wearying march on what promised to be a hot morning, even to reach the battlefield.
The only consolation was a rumor (ah, those rumors!) that someone had poisoned, or filled in, or boiled away, the only well within the walls of Belkuthas.
From below came a continuous scrape, thump, and clatter. New refugees hauled loads into the huddled encampment. Dwarves piled more stones onto the walls of the crowded pen. (The kitchen gardens of the citadel would be well fertilized for the rest of the year.)
With buckets and basins, barrels and bottles, and everything else that would hold water, every able-bodied person among the citadel’s defenders not otherwise occupied was hauling water from the two wells beyond the inner citadel. That had been Pirvan’s first order when he reached the courtyard. He had hauled the first bucket himself.
Now the last scout had ridden in, reporting that the attack would come in the morning.
Lauthin and his archers had barricaded themselves in the base of one of the towers. No one cared to try to get them out. What they would do when the fighting began, no one knew.
All those who would listen to orders had received them. Pirvan had even found time to console Eskaia, who was drawn and blinking back tears at the thought of being a widow before she was a wife. The knight had the sense not to console her with the notion that Hawkbrother’s wounds would keep him out of the fighting.
At last, Pirvan climbed the walls, where he found Grimsoar One-Eye.
“Hello, old thief,” Grimsoar said. “Pull up a piece of stone and sit down.”
Pirvan did so gladly. They stared off at the dark bulk of forest beyond the moonlit open ground. Pirvan thought he saw a spark of fire, but doubted any attackers were that far advanced, or any refugees that far behind.
“A long road from the sewers of Istar, eh?” Grimsoar said.
“Not so long, considering what we’ve found along it. I would walk it again, even if I had other choices.”
“Aye. You found her early on. A pity I came so late to Serafina.”
“Old friend, when you and I were thieves in Istar, Serafina was a baby.”
“I know. It’s not that I’m complaining, but—well, I’d rather we’d started our own babe before this all began.”
“Serafina might have broken your head, thinking it was a trick to leave her behind. I know Haimya came close to br
eaking mine when she learned she was carrying Gerik just before we were to leave on a certain matter.”
“I don’t doubt it. Well, we could both have done worse. Still, a man does like to leave behind him something that won’t die with his last friend.”
From below, a shrill altercation burst suddenly into the rest of the noise. After a moment Pirvan recognized the kender, speaking their own tongue.
It might be well to learn it. The kender went everywhere, saw or heard everything, and would not discuss most of it if they had to use the common language.
Too late for that tonight. Too late for anything except a few hours’ sleep. Don’t call it the last sleep, he thought, even in your mind, you fool! In Haimya’s arms, and then a battle for justice and against—what?—in the morning.
Pirvan hoped Zephros’s men would lose their way and not come until after lunch tomorrow. He wanted to sleep late.
The first warning, birds flying up and deer running out of the forest, had long since come. From the walls, Rynthala saw nothing else moving. The enemy must be arraying their men under cover of the trees, or else, they had fulfilled Sir Pirvan’s wish, and gotten thoroughly lost.
A pity this is all rocky ground, Rynthala thought, with no bogs for them to fall into.
She watched Eskaia leave Pirvan’s side and descend the stairs, toward the healer’s station. She was plainly going to spend some of the waiting time with Hawkbrother.
Eskaia was a lucky girl, with no men to command today—although Hawkbrother’s own followers clearly saw her as their chief’s lady and were careful to stand between her and strangers. Also, she was lucky in knowing that her man knew he was her man.
If Rynthala or Sir Darin fell today, neither would ever be certain what there had been between them. Certainly warriors’ mutual respect, and that from the beginning, but this was not entirely what Rynthala had in mind.
At least they would be fighting side by side. If it came to counterattacking outside the walls, Darin and Rynthala’s men-at-arms would mount up and ride out. That would be her third battle in six days, all three fought under the eyes of Knights of Solamnia.