The Wayward Knights

by Roland Green

  Not all of the horses were willing. Gerik saw one rider, with a hairy chin and a balding head, somersault over the head of his mount as it stopped suddenly. The horse then fell as another, running loose, crashed into it. Both went down on top of the man. Frantic neighing and hideous human screams made a din that might have daunted the Dark Queen.

  Before Gerik could see another such horror, the last of the riders had thundered past. A few riderless horses cantered off in various directions, trampling fallen horses and fallen men. Gerik was now more frightened than he would have been in a battle at odds of ten to one. In the darkness, amid the fading cries of maimed men and panicky horses, the Abyss seemed about to gape at his feet.

  To spare his own steed, he dismounted. The horse was tossing its head nervously and whickering. Gerik stepped up to the gelding's head and whispered in its ear. Nothing that would have made sense, in Common, but in some horse-speech it seemed to say what the horse needed to hear. Gerik had just decided to mount again, when for a second time the darkness spewed movement.

  This time no one died. A torch flared behind the movement, showing them to be eight or ten armored but unarmed men, all on foot and most looking as if they had been used as kickballs by giant trolls.

  Behind them rode Bertsa Wylum. She held a torch in one hand and her sword in the other, guiding her mount with her knees at the head of her band.

  "Take and bind them," Gerik called to his people, pointing at the men on foot. His men looked relieved at having something to do. The new prisoners looked almost relieved at being taken, as if their captors could protect them from what was abroad tonight. What that was, Gerik hoped Bertsa Wylum would know.

  But when he rode up to her, all she said was, "Their horses went mad on them. I think a certain kender we chased off had something to do with it."

  "I thought the kender had turned on you," one of the men whined.

  Wylum grinned. Only Gerik saw the mockery in her bared teeth. "Of course they did," she said. "But you know kender. They can't tell friend from enemy when they're up to a joke. How much do you want to wager that he aimed at us and hit you?"

  The man's curses said that was no wager, but certain knowledge.

  "I suggest, good sir, that we leave some of our people here to bring these along after us, while we ride for the village," Wylum added.

  "How so?" Gerik said, not minding at all sounding as if he did not know what was happening. He was one of many.

  "Well, the rest of these witlings are heading straight for Tirabot," Wylum said. "I'd not wager they'll all fall off their horses before they reach it."

  Gerik nodded and turned his mount.

  Grimsoar One-Eye found himself second among the captains in the manor itself, after Gerik rode out of sight. So after a decent interval he asked the senior's permission to go down to the village and ask Serafina to come up.

  She was spending the night in their house, and probably would not come up to the manor even for its greater safety. Her duties to the village would come first, but he had to try. Also, if he could help her pack along more healing material, perhaps that would persuade her that she could do useful work in the manor. After all, no one could tell where the attack would come.

  Grimsoar presented his case to the senior, a retired sell-sword who called himself Orgillius, which could hardly be his proper name. He seemed even more seasoned a fighter than Bertsa Wylum, but his manners went far to explain why he had less rank.

  "I thought you were too old to need a woman every night," Orgillius said.

  Grimsoar shrugged. He wanted to do something rather more eloquent, such as knocking Orgillius down. He only said, "If the woman thinks I'm young enough, what odds? Wait until you're my age, then complain if a woman wants you!"

  "We can't open the gates or give you a horse."

  "I'm also young enough to climb down a rope," Grimsoar warned. "One never forgets that. And don't you forget that I can walk to the village faster than any horse here could carry me."

  "On your head be it," Orgillius said. His tone suggested that he hoped Grimsoar's head would next be seen flung over the walls by an enemy siege engine.

  Grimsoar turned away, vowing to make sure that Orgillius never got behind him in battle.

  Pirvan's old companion had not in truth felt so young and vigorous in years as he felt tonight. Perhaps he would stay in the village a bit longer than he had planned, even if Serafina was willing to come. The manor was a trifle crowded, unless you were Gerik and Ellysta, and the gods knew they deserved their good luck.

  It was easy going over and down the walls, and Grimsoar was halfway to the village before he realized that he had company. He thought at first he was being stalked by one of the kender, to keep up the game of their being enemies, then realized that the figure was only kender-sized.

  When he knew who it was, the journey to the village began to seem less like a good idea.

  "Rubina?"

  "Sssssh. If you shout like that, they'll hear you in the castle."

  "They won't open the gate or send out riders."

  "Not for you," Rubina hissed. "But maybe for me. And there's the village. They do have horses, and people who won't let me come with you."

  "What makes you think I will let you come with me?" Grimsoar hissed back.

  "What makes you think you can stop me?"

  Grimsoar recognized the total deafness to the word "No" that he had encountered often enough in his own life. No doubt Rubina had it from her mother.

  They came up to the village from the south, and the first thing they saw was Pel Orvot's wagon, still at the wheelwright's even though it had been repaired two days ago. Or so Rubina said, but she admitted that she might not be wholly fair where the farmer was concerned. Grimsoar was about to praise her for that sense of justice when he heard the sound of riders coming up from the south, so fast that they threatened to overtake their own din.

  Somebody on the road challenged. The reply was nothing any Tirabot fighter would have given. Grimsoar pushed Rubina hard. "Run out of the road, now," he ordered. "Get behind a house! Enemies coming!"

  "I am the daughter of two warriors and do not obey orders to run from danger!" Rubina shot back.

  But she was addressing Grimsoar's broad back, as he bent to grab the wagon's yoke pole. One heave and it moved. Another heave and sweat broke out on his brow, and the wagon rolled. A third heave and it rolled out of the wheelwright's yard and into the road.

  Grimsoar had just time to use a fourth heave to center the wagon on the road when the riders came storming up. They were no Tirabot folk, looking more like cheap sell-swords, and not one of them had any command over his horse. All fifteen or more of them crashed straight into the wagon. Fast-moving flesh and bone met solid, immobile wood. The wagon tipped up on edge, then one wheel cracked beyond any wheelwright's craft to repair it, and the wagon fell over on its side.

  Most of the riders and horses fell on top of it or around it. They piled up in a hillock of writhing, screaming human and animal flesh. Grimsoar came near to losing his supper at the expressions on some of the faces, both men and horses.

  Then a man was before him, with an expression on his face that Grimsoar knew too well. It was the tight, angry look of a seasoned killer, one common among the old Servants of Silence. That unwholesome order, it was said, no longer existed. The same could not be said of the men who comprised it.

  Grimsoar reached for his dagger, but the man struck first. Fire blossomed in Grimsoar's right arm, and the man snatched another dagger from his boot and drove in, ready to gut the old sailor like a flatfish for broiling—

  —when a smaller figure leaped onto the man's back. The man was off-balance for his thrust, and, under the sudden weight, fell facedown on the road.

  Grimsoar stamped on the man's wrists in turn. He wanted a prisoner, but it would help if no one had to worry about the man's daggers for a while.

  Nobody would. Not only had Grimsoar broken both the man's wrists, but Ru
bina had reversed her dagger and knocked the man senseless with the butt.

  "I told you I would not run," she said, panting. "And a good thing for you I did not. They would not come out of the houses—and you're bleeding!"

  After that Rubina chattered so busily while she bound Grimsoar's wound that he could not have put a word in if he'd driven it with a shipyard maul. She only broke off when more riders loomed up. The pile of men were being bound by the villagers, and horses who were injured were being put out of their pain.

  "Kiri-Jolith defend us!" came Bertsa Wylum's voice.

  Then, another and more familiar, even if less welcome voice called: "Grimsoar, what in the name of the hundred ghouls are you doing taking my sister into battle?"

  "Fifty brass bits that he says Rubina came herself," Bertsa Wylum whispered in Gerik's ear.

  "I don't have that much to spare, and anyway, I know my sister," he replied.

  He did not find this much of an occasion for jesting. The Tirabot folk had lost no men and only two horses tonight, but their enemies had a dozen dead, as many hurt, and all their horses and war gear gone. Somebody would ask a price for that—House Dirivan, out of sheer pride, if no one else—and that price might yet end being paid with friends' blood.

  But Rubina stepped forward. "Brother, apologize to Grimsoar," she demanded. "He pulled the wagon into the road and brought down all the riders. He is hurt, and I did not ask to come with him."

  "No, you just came," Gerik said.

  Rubina nodded solemnly, then spoiled the occasion by thumbing her nose at him. Laughter rose into the night, and even Gerik had to smile. He looked up. The clouds were breaking apart, although since Nuitari was the only moon high enough to benefit, they had little light from above.

  "Very well," Gerik said. "Grimsoar One-Eye, we thank you."

  "We, O exalted chief?" Grimsoar said, bowing deeply, then wincing at the pain in his arm.

  "My lady and I—"

  "She's your lady?" Rubina exclaimed. "I didn't know you had asked her about that. And don't Father and Mother have to know?"

  Gerik knew he must have turned scarlet. Bertsa Wylum was ready to fall out of the saddle in her efforts not to laugh. Some of the other onlookers were not being so polite.

  Gerik finally arrayed thoughts and tongue. "I will," he said evenly, "as soon as I return to the manor, ask her to grant me the great honor of her becoming my lady. I am of age, and can ask her this without permission. If she says yes, I will write to Sir Pirvan and Lady Haimya, and hope they will be here to bless Ellysta and myself. I hope that you will all be here, too, when we take our oaths and vows, sing our songs—"

  "Dance!" Grimsoar roared.

  Serafina pushed her way through the mob. "If you try to dance, my old dear, you will fall down and break something important," she said. "Tonight, you lie down… and sleep, so take that look off your face."

  More softly, she added, "You're full-blooded enough for five men, so this little nick won't keep you down long."

  Now the laughter was bawdy. Gerik wondered if Rubina understood all this, then decided that she probably did, nor would it do her any harm.

  Tonight a little war had begun in deadly earnest. How deadly, he would know when they spoke to the prisoners.

  But other things besides a war had begun tonight.

  Chapter 13

  Zeskuk was hosting this meeting in his personal cabin aboard Cleaver, so it was hotter than usual and as crowded as could be, with three minotaurs. There was Zeskuk himself, there was Thenvor, leader of those who disputed his leadership (more precisely: those who wanted him food for sharks or magical monsters), and there was Lujimar, chief among the magicworkers with the fleet of the Destined Race.

  Zeskuk would gladly have had a fourth—his sister—but her post of duty was with the humans. He had allowed himself to feel some happiness that after her feats in the battle she would have less need to guard her back. Not that she would lack enemies ready to thrust steel into it, but she now had human friends who would stand against their own kind even for a minotaur.

  The chief judged that his guests were waiting for something. He doubted it was the servant bringing a second helping of supper, although Lujimar clearly suffered no lack of appetite. If he was ill, as rumors babbled, it was not in the stomach.

  "We have done—"

  "Not well enough," Thenvor said.

  Zeskuk raised a fist as politely as one could execute that gesture. "Pray be silent until I am done," he said, "then call what I say nonsense. If you consent, you have leave to speak freely."

  He hoped Thenvor would not interpret that as freedom to question Zeskuk's honor. Even here, in such privacy as a ship afforded, that meant a challenge; a challenge meant lost time. That concerned Zeskuk more than the possibility of losing to Thenvor, who was a formidable fighter and might carry the bout to the death. Whatever course the fleet might steer, it had best not wait to turn on to it until after a challenge bout.

  Vivid images of the fleet perishing on the reefs had come to Zeskuk several times during the night. Once he had been sure he was asleep and having a nightmare. Once he had been sure he was awake, but perhaps uneasy in his mind. About the other times, he could not be sure, but the images had been just as vivid, including even the cries of the drowning.

  Zeskuk was a sensible minotaur, which was to say that he believed in prophetic dreams. Lying awake in the dawn he had seriously considered whether or not he had received a warning. A warning, perhaps, that he risked thousands of lives over mere curiosity about the mysteries of Suivinari Island.

  Had he been sure he had received a warning, and from some source he could trust, his course would have been clear. As it was, he thought he could wait a few days, sending no more warriors ashore to die, but remaining off the island to see what happened—in the waking world and in his dreams.

  Thenvor's jerk of the head might have been a nod. Lujimar s eyes said that it would be taken as such. Zeskuk went on. "We have done less well than I had hoped. We have sent stores and reinforcements to our comrades on the Green Mountain. We have made no path that we can use day after day."

  "The humans did not even do that well," Thenvor said, as politely as he ever spoke.

  "No, but their magic allowed us to do as well as we did, by breaking the storm and slowing the attack of the mage-monsters," Lujimar said. "They may well have done this more to save themselves than to aid us, but honor requires one to acknowledge a gift, even if unintended.

  "I know the scrolls as well as you do," Thenvor said, reverting to his usual pettishness. "Perhaps I know the scrolls of war better than you. I acknowledge that we owe them something. Not killing them outright would seem to be enough."

  "Are you thinking, as I have been, that Suivinari Island is too useless to anyone except the mage who calls it home for us to fight anyone over it?" Zeskuk asked. "That we should withdraw, giving that as our reason?"

  "Yes," Thenvor said.

  "No," Lujimar replied.

  Such needle-horned contradiction was rare for Lujimar. Not only had he never questioned anyone's honor, but he had seldom publicly questioned anyone's judgment.

  Perhaps he did not consider this public.

  "You think we should remain?" Zeskuk asked Lujimar.

  "I know that we should," Lujimar replied.

  "The gods have told you?" Thenvor sneered.

  "It may have been the gods, speaking to me or to others among us," Lujimar said, with the bland confidence of one who sold horn-strengthening potions in the stands of the arena. "But the message was clear."

  Zeskuk wondered if Lujimar had received one of the dreams, or sendings, or prophecies. This was not the time or place to ask, however—certainly not when it would mean he and Lujimar comparing dreams in Thenvor's hearing.

  "The danger to the fleet is also clear, if we are here for the next storm and no magic can stand against it," Thenvor said. "We had enough trouble on land when we went armed and by intent. Cast away, we will b
e doomed."

  "You croak," Lujimar said, which was the strongest word Zeskuk could ever recall him uttering to another. For a moment it seemed that Thenvor would ask for Lujimar to appoint a champion for a contest of honor.

  "We will remain here three more days," Zeskuk said. He would give Thenvor a cup of water if he were dying of thirst, if only to prevent challenges from his kin. He would not give his rival the satisfaction of watching an open quarrel between war chief and magic chief.

  "That is not enough," Lujimar said.

  "I say it will be," Zeskuk said, as firmly as the priest. "We shall not leave later, unless a way is found around the mage-monsters to cleanse the island of their creator. We shall not stay that long if we learn that the humans have knowledge that they have withheld from us."

  "Ah, that witling Captain Torvik," Thenvor said.

  "Not quite," Zeskuk concluded. "Captain, yes. Witling, hardly. Unless he is no true son of either his father or mother."

  Two of the three Wayward Knights met with Sir Niebar, in Sir Niebar's cabin. Pirvan would have preferred a boat with no one else but them in it, and he and Hawkbrother would gladly have rowed. But even with Tarothin's healing spells fighting it, ship fever had left Sir Niebar too weak to leave Wavebiter and barely with the strength to come on deck. Even if no unwanted ears would hear, on deck unwanted eyes might see. So they stayed below.

  "They will leave if they can't do better than we can," Hawkbrother insisted.

  " 'They,' as in the minotaurs?" Sir Niebar asked.

  "Of course."

  "I would take that better coming from Sir Darin," Niebar said. "Although I must admit that you are as right as anyone could be, Sir Darin included."

  "The secret may lie with Torvik," Sir Pirvan said. He crossed one leg over the other and crossed his hands on the upper knee. The others in the cabin knew this meant he was uneasy; he did not care.