The Wayward Knights

by Roland Green

  Bellows from half a dozen throats made him raise the clabbard and take a fighting stance by sheer instinct. He almost made a fool of himself, looking around, before he saw someone pointing. Then his first instinct was to shout for the archers.

  In wedges of five or seven, more than a hundred great birds were flying in from the sea to the north. They flew over the outpost and Juiksum's column too high for the archers, then began slanting down as they crossed the island. Each bird shone with blue feathers so fine and so glossy that they seemed almost like scales, and had a long white crest and bright yellow bill and claws. They called to one another as they flew, and as they passed overhead Zeskuk saw they had sharp teeth in their beaks.

  The whole hundred and more passed over the minotaur column as if they were no more than rocks on the slope. Zeskuk realized that they were flying for the human beach, and ordered the archers to make ready on the right. It it would not look well if the minotaurs ignored the birds and gave them a free attack on the humans.

  The birds flew on over the humans with the same sublime self-absorption as they had shown the minotaurs. Only when they reached the sea did they halt. Now they formed a vast semicircle, nearly blocking the human beach from seaward. Then, almost as if a single mind controlled a hundred bodies and a hundred pairs of ten-foot wings, the birds dived. They plunged into the water, then leaped sky-ward again in showers of spray.

  "They're catching the snakes!" someone shouted.

  In moments, Zeskuk could make out the birds dipping and rising, and each time one rose, it held a snake in its beak Sometimes they gripped and crushed the head straightaway. Other times, they flew side by side in pairs, one bird holding the snake while the other crushed the thing's head.

  Only two birds fell from the sky, bitten by their prey. The rest went on with their deadly dance from sky to sea and back again, and the shallows began to foam with snakes desperate to find safety.

  "Forward!" Zeskuk shouted. With their rear freed of the snakes, the humans would be advancing faster than ever. It would never do to let them outpace minotaurs, even if the humans had Fulvura and six picked minotaurs at their spearhead.

  A bush some fifty paces uphill seemed to quiver in a way Zeskuk did not trust. He had nothing to throw, but a fist-sized rock lay at just the right distance. His clabbard whirled, then sang through the air. The toothed blade hooked the rock and flung it up the hill, into the heart of the bush.

  Branches writhed, showing white where the stone had broken them or stripped off bark. The bush tried to pull itself out of the ground, roots and all, but fell over like a kender drunk on dwarf spirits. It rolled down to within reach of more clabbards than Zeskuk's. When they were done, only splinters remained.

  The birds were not circling over the human beach, as the human rear guard slaughtered the snakes. Zeskuk saw one human leap back, holding a spear on which wriggled no less than three snakes. Before they could wriggle up the shaft to bite him, he thrust the spear into a tar barrel someone had set afire. The smoke turned from black to the color of putrid wine, and the stench reached Zeskuk even far uphill.

  He was still sneezing when a bolt of fire lanced from the Smoker. It held all colors and none. It struck one of the birds, and consumed it in a moment as the tar barrel had consumed the snakes. Zeskuk could not even be sure he saw ashes floating downward on the breeze.

  "Do I have to repeat myself?" he roared. "I said, 'Forward!' "

  Wilthur did not know from whence the birds had come, and would not have withheld his fire if he had. He did know that the birds' coming had doomed the snakes, but perhaps that could be the end of the injury they wrought against him. So the fire went out, and the birds drifted downwind as fine ash.

  All his magic and all his wits aimed at the birds, Wilthur spared not a thought for his Creation. Nor did anything else on Suivinari Island now have more magic than he had already put into it.

  Chapter 20

  From the head of the human advance, Pirvan saw very little of the battle of the birds against the snakes, and not much more of the war of firebolts against the birds. He smelled a good deal—both the lightning-reek the firebolts left behind, and the charnel house smell of the birds' drifting ashes.

  He even had to draw his sword once, to kill a snake that a bird dropped just before it died. A single clean slash clove the snake's head in two, upper and lower jaws flying in separate directions, and the body swiftly twitched itself into stillness. Haimya touched his arm, with a flash of teeth in a face darkened by dirt, sweat, and sun.

  "Another ten years, and you will be a better swordsman than I ever was," she said.

  "Another ten years, and the gods willing, we will neither of us have to wield swords, except to teach our grandchildren," Pirvan replied, returning her playful smile.

  "Perhaps. Meanwhile, it does not hurt that we are both fit to take our place at the head of a column of assault."

  Pirvan did not quarrel with the siegecraft term. The battle for Suivinari Island felt more like the siege of Belkuthas than any other battle he had ever fought, but he was less sure about their being at the "head" of anything. To be sure, he could see no one ahead of him, which probably meant that the scouts were lost from sight in the dense foliage of the valley, or else lost to some trap of Wilthur's.

  He also could see no one to his left, and precious few—too few to be properly named a "column"—to his rear. To his right stood a more solid block of fighters, mostly Vuinlod infantry, with a company of picked sell-swords just behind him. Gildas Aurhinius stood between the two bands, so that he could watch and command either, and would be ready to take over the lead if Pirvan fell.

  Tarothin and Sir Niebar were also on the right, with a dozen even more carefully picked fighters, Solamnic and sea barbarian. They had not asked for this bodyguard, but Pirvan had sent it and they had not refused.

  The Red Robe (actually now Sun-Bleached Pink Robe) staggered a trifle as he surmounted a sandy slope made treacherous by thorn-studded vines. The vines did not move, however, only lying in wait for the unwary to stumble and sprain or gouge themselves.

  "Wilthur plays with fire, and that is not a jest," Tarothin said. He needed three breaths to get out the words. Sir Niebar, Pirvan noted, was silent, having either still less breath, more sense, or nothing to say.

  "We are all in the gods' hands," Pirvan said.

  "Yes, but some of us spurn those hands as a miser spurns a beggar," Tarothin replied. "Wilthur's striking at the birds seems to me to be such a spurning."

  Pirvan had suspected that die birds were the gods' creation as much as the snakes were Wilthur's. He rejoiced. He would have rejoiced more if the gods' hands had been open to Niebar, Tarothin, or both, giving them at least the knowledge that they should be easy on themselves.

  Niebar at least had the strength to climb in full dismounted knights' armor, but Tarothin looked hardly better than Sirbones had, the day he died. The Red Robe would never be as lean as the servant of Mishakal, being too heavy-boned for that, but there was not much of him left save skin and sinew stretched tight over those bones. His eyes seemed to have grown to twice their size, and his formerly bulbous, almost clownlike nose, was a thinning beak. As for his hair, what was left of it was as much white as gray, and only the odd strand here and there was still brown.

  A horrible tearing of wood that sounded like a large ship running on a reef made Pirvan whirl. In climbing the last slope they had almost reached the point where the trail vanished into a stand of trees, fanleaf greenbarks or their near kin. They were tall as masts, either virgin timber or mature second growth.

  They were also leaning toward Pirvan. Their branches writhed in a way that could have only one meaning.

  As the greenbarks' roots began to pull free of the ground, Tarothin raised his staff. A wind blowing vertically down from the sky caught Pirvan, making him stagger so that he and Haimya needed to brace each other like the timbers of a doorframe. Two of the snake-eating birds plummeted from the sky, to be
blown among the writhing limbs and vanish.

  The wind blew on downward, stripping leaves from moving branches and still ones alike. It blew on the moving roots and the earth around them like a cold draft on a cup of hot tea. The roots now quivered instead of writhing, while the ground rose in clouds of dust that settled back into mounds as solid as sandstone.

  For as far ahead as Pirvan could see, Tarothin's immobilization spell had frozen the trees against Wilthur's latest effort to turn them into lethal weapons.

  Pirvan shouted off toward the left, to rally the unseen and (he hoped) unscathed fighters there. He shouted to Gildas Aurhinius to speed the advance. Then he turned to Sir Niebar, intending to ask him to send a guard back with a message for the remaining Solamnics to join the rush forward. They would have to put as many fighters as possible beyond the trees before Tarothin's spell wore off or Wilthur conjured some new menace.

  Instead of commanding, Pirvan found himself keeping Tarothin from falling. The Red Robe had dropped his staff, and his hands shook so badly that he could barely make one last gesture at the fallen length of wood and ivory.

  "There," he muttered. "Safe now. Can't leave…"

  His voice trailed off into a silence that Pirvan told himself was only weakness or at worst fainting.

  He told himself that as many times as he gave orders for healers, litter-bearers, and guards for his old friend and comrade. The orders, however, brought everything Pirvan wanted. The wish brought nothing, not even a blink of Tarothin's eyes.

  By the time the litter-bearers shouldered their burden, Tarothin's only movement was the shallow rise and fall of his chest. A fly buzzed near to the closed, sunken eyes, and Pirvan nearly drew his sword to bat it away from the dying wizard.

  "Better use for it up forward," he muttered. Then he sprang forward with such swift strides that Haimya could barely keep up and Sir Niebar quickly fell behind.

  The minotaurs marched off the Green Mountain four abreast, stamping their feet to defy Wilthur's magic and also crush any stray snakes or roots in their path. They bellowed war cries and curses, they clashed shatangs and clabbards on their shields, they beat drums, blew trumpets, and played on the war pipes that Thenvor favored.

  Altogether, they made such a din that Zeskuk thought the gods themselves must be stuffing hanks of wool into their ears, to keep from going deaf. No minotaur's courage needed the inspiration of this uproar, or at least no minotaur would readily admit it. All hoped that advancing into the valley in this manner would inspire even Wilthur's most potent conjurations with the urge to flee, or at least draw all of them onto the minotaurs.

  Then the minotaurs would have the glory of the great killing, even if they lost the honor of first into Wilthur's lair. Zeskuk hardly cared who had which honor now, as there would likely be enough to sate a host three times the minotaurs' and humans' united strength.

  Moreover, even without glory there would be the sense of a necessary work accomplished. Leaving Suivinari Island, Zeskuk realized now, had never been really an acceptable choice. Not after minotaurs had spilled as much of their blood as they had, even in the first battle.

  Thenvor would have gloried in calling him a coward.

  Fulvura would have questioned his wits, if not his honor or courage, and in private.

  Darin had done man and minotaur alike great service, even if he had done so through listening to Lujimar's blandishments, and without considering all the possible consequences.

  Zeskuk hoped that Darin would survive his grapple with Wilthur's Creation, and that he and Rynthala would have many tall sons with the knowledge of minotaur ways bred into their bones. He even allowed himself to hope that Lujimar would think again about his march to death.

  But hope was all the chief could do. Against a priest determined to wash out dishonor with his blood, even the Emperor stood as much chance as a babe matched in the arena against a full-fledged warrior.

  Hiding it with his body, Zeskuk made a gesture of aversion, for Darin's and Lujimar's good luck. He had just finished it when a cry rose from ahead: "We've found a cave!"

  "Big enough for minotaurs!"

  "It has to lead into the Smoker!"

  Zeskuk hurried forward. There was no such thing as "has to" in this battle; even caves could have a mind of their own. But it was promising news, nonetheless.

  The only problem was that one of the first to discover the cave seemed to have been Lujimar. At any rate, several warriors said they had seen him entering it when they arrived, and no one had seen him since. Zeskuk himself walked about half a shatang-throw into the cave. The passage twisted, turned, rose, fell, and generally behaved like a snake drunk on bad ale. But it allowed minotaurs fighting room nearly everywhere, and its general course was toward the depths of the Smoker.

  The chief strode back into the light, and called for volunteers to follow him and Lujimar over the final stage of the journey to Wilthur's lair.

  Darin was not good at measuring distances underground, with few marks to guide him. Rynthala was better, the sailors better still, and the Dimernesti best of all. So he had plenty of trustworthy observers to tell him that the underground attack had covered perhaps a mile and a third, when they came to the barrier.

  It was not an unconquerable barrier, bringing all their efforts to naught. It was merely that a rockfall had blocked part of a natural arch, leaving at the top a clear passage—but only for persons of moderate stature. At the bottom was a partly blocked opening that would allow a minotaur with a kender standing on his shoulders to march through without stooping—once it was cleared.

  There could be no simple solution, either, because on the far side they could hear the lapping of water. Not where it would be released as by a broken dam when they cleared the passage; that was not the peril. But any large body of water in these depths might hold the Creation. Any party who passed through at the top would need to be fighting-fit.

  "I shall lead," Torvik said. "Chuina, I will need archers more than anything else. Archers and spearmen, and if they have fire arrows, so much the better. The more we can fight at a distance, the longer we can hold."

  "What are you thinking, picking my people to help you die?" Chuina almost snapped.

  Torvik said nothing, merely put an arm around his sister's shoulder.

  "All right," she acquiesced. "Just be careful, or this could be a bad day for Mother."

  Chuina's look said that a direct command from their mother could not have kept her from leading her people into this fight. Darin realized that if he had not already wed Rynthala, he might have begun to think of becoming Torvik's brother-by-marriage. Chuina had a sense of honor as fierce as a minotaur's, the discretion of a human, and such skill in war to make one reluctant to question either.

  The knight and his lady stepped back. The tallest person able to fit through the upper gap was a good three inches shorter than Rynthala. Their task for now lay below, commanding, and, if need be, guarding the stone-movers.

  He looked at the stones. The dwarves might not think much of his knowledge, but he had listened when they spoke, whether they knew it or not. Wise stonemasons always braced the upper stones before beginning work on the lower ones….

  Torvik scrambled down the last slope of rock, crested the miniature sand dune, and looked at the underground lake. Behind him he heard the vanguard spreading out, to keep watch in all directions. Then he heard a not-quite-muffled oath.

  Mirraleen was still in the upper passage, not through it as he had expected her to be. Indeed, she looked as if she were stuck.

  He scrambled back up. The rough rock had scraped her skin the color of her hair in several places.

  Now Torvik cursed. "If I took your hands—" he offered.

  Mirraleen groaned, saying, "Don't tempt me. I would likely as not block the passage for everyone behind me, until folk came up from below to pull me back. And I would have no skin left to speak of."

  It was no use suggesting that she transform. She could not do that a
gain for several more hours. Even if she had been able to become a sea otter now, she would have been trapped in that form—and nearly helpless on land—for even more hours.

  "Well, I appreciate your skin too much to wish it marred," Torvik said lightly. "But we need one of your folk on this side. The water looks too deep for human exploring, at least not without a boat."

  Indeed, the lake seemed to have no end and no bottom, but that might only have been the weakness of the glow-balls. The band was not yet running short of light, but to avoid being cast into darkness they had to be cautious with the light that they had.

  "Oh, stop panting for your lover and let one whose passions don't toss him like kelp in a whirlpool go forward," someone muttered. Mirraleen disappeared almost as fast as if she had been dragged backward. A moment later Kuyomolan scrambled through the opening. He was no more than a finger or maybe a thumb's breadth smaller than Mirraleen, but that was enough to make the difference.

  Chuina squealed at the sight of the Dimernesti least fond of humans.

  "You sound like a mating porpoise," Kuyomolan growled. "The first sign of pleasure at the sight of me I've heard in a good while."

  Chuina looked as if her fingers itched to put an arrow through Kuyomolan, or at least spank him raw with her unstrung bow. The Dimernesti looked hardly fonder of her.

  "Peace, both of you," Torvik said. At least that was what he tried to say. Echoes of what had already been said were still flitting about the cavern, and they trampled half his words into oblivion.

  Then he heard a deep gurgling, like a barrel the size of Solinari emptying itself into an infinitely deep cellar. Something hissed like a clan of serpents, and an indescribable stench blew past him.

  He turned, without surprise, to behold the Creation rising from the depths of the lake.

  Gerik was thinking that the line of smoke plumes had reached the village when a kender scuttled out of the underbrush. It was one of the Shorn One's companions, looking as if he himself had been shorn of nearly everything but life itself—and a desire for vengeance.