The Wayward Knights

by Roland Green

  "As long as it's not—poison—" he said, feeling as he spoke a chill that gave the lie to his words.

  "It is," a voice rumbled behind him, in the minotaur tongue. Darin wanted to turn, but knew he would faint if he tried, so only stood, swaying gently, until the speaker came around to his front.

  The minotaur wore sandals, an apron with many pockets, and a sleeveless vest hung with pouches. In his prime, he must have matched Waydol's height, but now that his muzzle was gray and his russet hide speckled with white, Darin could almost meet his eye.

  One eye only—the healer wore a patch over the other, taken by some injury beyond his powers to heal.

  "Hello, Grimsoar," Darin said. "I always knew you were too big to be human."

  The minotaur healer looked from Darin to Rynthala, and Darin was vaguely aware of having spoken without making sense. Rynthala made an imperative gesture; Darin wanted to remind her about not ordering minotaurs about.

  For a moment he thought his reminder had come too late, as the minotaur drew a katar from an apron pocket. Then the minotaur jerked a pouch off his vest and let its contents—some sort of pinkish jelly—ooze over the katar. It was when the minotaur thrust at Darin's cheek with the katar that the knight became sure his wife had doomed them both with a mortal insult to the healer.

  Then Rynthala clutched him, holding him motionless, and for a moment rage and pain nearly drove him to smashing her jaw with his good hand. In the next moment there was no room in him for rage, only pain. He was certain that the minotaur had driven the katar clean through his head, and wondered if the point would erupt through the other cheek.

  Then the pain in Darin's cheek was gone. Rynthala was still holding him, and the minotaur was running the katar along the wounded hand, so the knight had no way to feel his cheek. Even when the minotaur stepped back and Rynthala released him, he did not quite dare to use his wounded hand to feel his cheek.

  He was sure it would fall off if he used it.

  But the left hand brought no pain from the wounded cheek, only brushing fingers over a ridged scar. He would have a barbarian's look to him if that scar did not heal, but now he was content that it did not hurt.

  And his sword hand was only stiff from its scar, not painful at all. He flexed his fingers; they all moved. No muscles torn, or at least none left unhealed.

  He looked around for the minotaur healer. He saw only the backs of two minotaurs, one with bandaged eyes, walking down the hill. He also realized that the storm had died completely that he heard the last rain dripping from the trees and little else. No, he heard distant moans, too deep to be human. Minotaurs did their best to die in silence, but some pain no being of flesh and blood could endure.

  He now knew that better than ever before. He hoped that somewhere beyond the world, Waydol also knew that those he had left behind had some care for the human child he had fostered.

  Then Rynthala was embracing him, so that his ribs creaked and might have broken had he not been wearing armor. As he bent to kiss her, the last thing he saw above was a flock of seabirds soaring in from the ocean.

  Chapter 12

  The night after the battle on Suivinari Island, Wilthur the Brown contemplated the future with distaste, although not yet with foreboding.

  Certainly he had untapped powers for physical resistance to the invasion, Just as certainly, physical resistance would not be sufficient. The will of the gods was manifest in that matter. His aspirations came too close to upsetting the balance the deities cherished for them to tolerate his extending his attacks offshore—into the depths of either earth or sea, or into the sky. Wilthur privately thought that the gods feared his aspirations to enter among their ranks rather as a hall of nobles fears the petition of a wealthy commoner.

  He would not petition. He would preserve his stronghold and, in due course, prevail.

  But if physical means could not provide that defense, he knew he had to attack the enemy on a field that had not been forbidden him: their own minds. He had methods requiring spells so demanding that he could only set them upon one being at a time, that would yield poor or even dangerous decisions, without anyone knowing from whence those ideas came.

  He had knowledge of the various leaders. After contemplating that knowledge, he decided that the most vulnerable target was the minotaur chief, Zeskuk.

  Gerik was warm in bed and in a dream of riding through a field of wheat so ripe that it almost glowed in the sun, when he heard the knocking.

  It took a moment for him to separate the noise from the dream. It took him much longer to reach full wakefulness, but he did not wait for that before reaching for his clothes. His hands instead encountered warm skin, and a giggle sounded, almost as loud, and far more pleasant than the knocking.

  He had a brief, almost overwhelming impulse to forget the door in favor of the owner of the skin and the source of the giggle. Then he felt a bare foot in the small of his back and suddenly he was rolling out of bed, jerking awake as if he had been plunged into cold water. His clothes followed him, and he fought down a brief impulse to curse.

  "Duty calls, my lord," came the voice from the bed. As if he needed further reminder, the knocking grew louder. Gerik allowed himself one rude word about duty, then clad himself and opened the door.

  Bertsa Wylum greeted him. From one look at her face, he knew this was no jest. What else it might be—

  "You have come, Captain Wylum. Speak," he said.

  Wylum wrinkled her nose and gave a mocking parody of the sell-swords' salute. "We have a sighting," she said. "Forty riders in Botsenril Woods."

  That was to the south, in a direction from which neither robbers in past years nor ghost-riders this year had usually come. It was also within a half hour's ride of a number of the manor's tenant farms. And forty riders. Far too many for anybody's jest, if the tale held truth….

  "One of my most trusted people," Wylum said. She did not describe the watcher further, which suggested to Gerik that he or she would be one of Wylum's secret allies. He knew that she had such, she knew that he and his father had their own, and each trusted the other's judgment in secret matters. Names one did not know, one could not reveal, either through too much wine or less pleasant influences.

  "I came myself with the message," Wylum went on. "Less noise before you give permission."

  "Permission for what?" Gerik had thought he was too awake to ask that sort of question. Wylum frowned but held her peace until Gerik could command both wits and his tongue. "Yes," he said at last. "By all means take the six riders of the ready guard. Take one or two more for messengers, if that will not delay you."

  "Thank you, good sir," Wylum said. "The Botsenril's a tangle, and the roads more like trails. You can creep up close unwatched, but it's not much help if you can't send back what you learn."

  "No, and remember that two can play at the game of creeping through the woods," Gerik said. "If these visitors have anyone who knows Botsenril, they could surround you. We need your arm and your wits, and I don't want to hear what my father or Floria Desbarres would say if I allowed you to be killed."

  "If it's my time, fathers and Florias have no say," Wylum replied. "But I'll be careful just so you can sleep easy."

  "Who said anything about sleep?" Gerik said. "When you go out, sound the alarm. I'm mounting up the rest of the riders, and sending a patrol out to the Alsenor Crossroads. Most of the ways out of the woods go by there, sooner or later."

  "Manors left undefended fall to attackers the lord didn't see—sooner or later," Wylum said.

  Gerik flushed. "All right, half the remaining riders," he acquiesced. "But you alert the village as you leave. This is not a night for anyone to spend abed."

  Wylum's look spoke eloquently of her agreement. She turned, drew her silver whistle, and blew hard.

  Those not awakened by the whistle must have been awakened by messengers standing ready to pass the alarm. The whole manor was in an uproar before Wylum could walk from the door to the head of
the stairs and disappear down them. Drums and trumpets had joined the neighing, clattering, and shouts before Gerik had even decently begun donning his armor.

  It was only when he had finished that he noticed Ellysta was sitting on the bed, rather than lying in it, and was fully clad, rather than as she had been when his hands found her skin. She wore a man's garb, with several pouches on her belt that Gerik had not seen before. Beside her was a stout pack, oiled leather that looked like kender work. It bulged, and across the top was strapped a dagger Gerik had not seen since the day Ellysta came to Tirabot Manor.

  To keep himself from having to speak and possibly say the wrong thing, Gerik started knotting his helmet cords.

  "Let me play squire," Ellysta said. Her nimble fingers did up the knots in half the time Gerik would have taken. All of Ellysta's outward injuries seemed healed now, except few that would need potent magic to avoid leaving scars.

  As for the inward hurts…

  "I have to take my place on the walls," Ellysta said. "For what good I can do, if only by being there and in danger along with the rest."

  "In danger ahead of the rest, I should say," Gerik said.

  "Sell-swords and household guards will not climb walls to carry me off," she said.

  "Some might, promised enough gold, and have you never heard of archery?"

  "That reminds me. Is there a bow to spare?"

  Gerik held his tongue. If he didn't, he would insult her, and she seemed ready to tell the truth regardless of whether he spoke or not. Or even whether he wanted to hear it or not, but he had to want it. He was captain and lord, and being told other than the truth put everyone at Tirabot or under its protection in danger.

  "Gerik, do not take this amiss, but if you do not return—if our enemies are ready to take knights' blood—I must take to the road," Ellysta told him quietly.

  Gerik thought his face asked "Why?" loudly enough, and perhaps he was right. Ellysta ran her fingers across his lips, then continued, "With you dead and me gone, there is no way to prove that my being here was other than your fancy. Without that proof, the laws against private warfare will weigh heavily against any attack on the manor. Against any harm to your folk."

  She laughed. "Also, the kender and I and certain friends can lead anyone who does want my blood on a merry chase. They may still be turning over fallen logs and rotten mushrooms when the snow flies, too busy to think of Tirabot Manor—even if it is not guarded by the Solamnics."

  Gerik looked at the ceiling. "Why do I have the feeling that the hens of this flock are wiser in war than the rooster?" he sighed.

  "Because we are, for now," Ellysta said, with an unrepentant laugh. "But that will change, if the young cockerel lives long enough. So don't get killed, Gerik."

  She kissed him decisively. "I came where some women might have seen or even expected a boy. But I looked with open eyes and mind." She kissed him again. "And I found a man."

  Gerik walked steadily as they left the chamber, for all that his head was spinning.

  The horsemen awoke Horimpsot Elderdrake from a sound sleep in Botsenril Woods, one that he had intended to continue until dawn. So he was in a worse mood than usual for a kender when he started counting them. Before he had finished his count at forty, he had heard a human watcher slipping away along another path. A warning was on the way to Tirabot, so he could do as he pleased.

  It pleased him to make these fumble-witted humans pay for their silliness in making trouble for Tirabot Manor. It was going beyond what he or any other kender might owe to Sir Pirvan and all of his people. It was reaching the point where the humans needed to be taught a lesson about making nuisances of themselves.

  Really, they were killing each other over things that no kender would have considered worth a quarrel, let alone a fight. Oh, there had been the time when his aunt put a lock on her biscuit cupboard, and half the village vowed not to dine with her or even speak to her for a year. The vow hadn't bound anybody that long, because somebody (Elderdrake suspected who, but would never tell) had picked the lock within a month.

  But killing for the freedom to break one's own laws, even if some of those laws were so stupid that no kender would have lived under them for five minutes—this was "virtue"?

  Elderdrake used a kenderspeak word that was usually translated as "idiots," in Common.

  The kender unslung his pack and pulled out a glazed pottery jar wrapped in straw. He undid the wrapping and held the pot up to his ear. Good. They sounded all right.

  One of the Spillgather guests was someone Shumeen hadn't told him about at first. Like many kender priests of Branchala, this one had chosen a practical joke for his masterpiece. It had gone a little far, and his friends had told him to hide out until they had forgotten it, then come back and try again. That was ten years ago and the priest had been with the Spillgathers ever since.

  They hadn't asked him to stay away ten years, but like Imsaffor Whistletrot (and how was the old fellow doing, Elderdrake wondered) or Sirbones (who was really too old to be climbing aboard ships and sailing off to fight wizards at the rim of the world) this priest liked the road. He could also make more of his masterpiece, anytime anyone asked, without being paid—although people didn't ask very often, for obvious reasons.

  Now it was time to turn the joke loose on Tirabot's uninvited guests. That should keep them from spoiling Gerik's party.

  And afterward? Elderdrake studied the riders. They had fine horses and much better weapons and armor than such starved-looking, unkempt sell-swords deserved, or were likely to be able to pay for. Somebody was giving them all this, but there wasn't anybody to the south for quite a distance. So these men had to be like the ghost riders. They had to have their supplies piled somewhere that wasn't on anybody's land.

  That meant it wouldn't be protected by anybody's house guards. It might be protected by that fat little wizard who'd been with the ghost-riders, but Elderdrake would worry about him when he turned up.

  The riders were talking now, as if nobody could be within a mile. In the intervals between loud boasts, Elderdrake thought he heard gurgles. He hoped it was wine or ale they were drinking, not water.

  Dwarf spirits did even more than ale or wine to increase the power of the priest's masterpiece, but it was too much to hope for that this band of starvelings would be given dwarf spirits—or stay in their saddles at all, if they drank any.

  Gerik led twelve fighters down the road to the Alsenor Crossroads under a cloudy sky that made him glad for the five villagers who had volunteered to play scout or messenger. He had accepted them on the condition that they would ride for their lives if it came to a serious fight, and look to their families and homes first.

  He hoped they would keep their oaths. The fight might be no more than his twelve, Bertsa Wylum's six, and the odd roving spy against forty or more. It might be fewer, if Wylum's luck was out and she and her people were down before the fighting started.

  If it started. Gerik vowed to keep his hand off his sword and use his tongue first, remembering many admonitions about how the best way to win a fight was not to have it at all.

  One came to memory, in his mother's voice. "Only leeches, mosquitoes, and vampires must shed blood. The rest of us prefer to see what a little sweat or wine will do first."

  However, he suspected that the forty riders would be in a mood to talk only if they were here on some completely legal task, with no connection to Ellysta's being a guest at Tirabot Manor. Gerik would not bet a worn-out sandal thong that this was so.

  Choosing speed and sure footing over secrecy, Gerik used the High Road. He reached the crossroads before too many of the curious routed from their homes by all these nocturnal comings and goings could come out and ask silly questions. This let him array his men for battle, with himself and three others mounted on the road, four more on the road behind, and four dismounted ahead in ambush. The villagers were farthest to the rear, and Kiri-Jolith grant that they would stay there!

  Fighting for Ellys
ta was something in which he was honor-bound, both in his own right and as the son of his father. Getting unarmed loyal villagers killed was not. Indeed, honor demanded that he protect them from their own enthusiasm if he could, so that they would not be enslaved or imprisoned, their children sent to labor as "children of virtue" in certain secret temples, and the like.

  He had not believed the stories of kidnapped children, until Rubina told him that two of her friends had lost kin that way, one of them a half-brother. He had then written down what she told him, and left the tale in a safe place, where his father might find it if he returned.

  The night wind piped faintly in Gerik's ears. Off to the right and up the hill, a stand of templebeams twisted and dwarfed by something in the soil were mere shadows. It was easy to imagine them as the clawing hands of buried giants, bursting through the ground, reaching for the light and air.

  It was also easy to frighten oneself into a fit with such imaginings, like a child in a dark room.

  Gerik had just reined in his fancies when a sudden uproar broke out to the south, toward the woods. He heard horses neighing and screaming, men shouting and cursing, then a great many fast-moving hooves and even the clatter of steel on armor. It sounded as if someone there had frightened himself into a fit.

  Gerik's men had made ready without his command; they had ears too. The young man's were now turned wholly toward listening for Bertsa Wylum's voice. A battle cry, even an oath, would help tell friend from foe.

  Gerik realized that he should have had all the Tirabot fighters mark themselves somehow, with bands on their arms or patches on their backs. Something visible in the darkness, that would distinguish them from the enemy—

  The enemy was upon Gerik before he could think further. His sword leaped into his hand. He had cut two men out of their saddles and was engaging a third when he realized that the man's comrades were not fighting. They were fleeing, as fast and as far as their horses could carry them.