Roland Green - Knights of the Crown

“Friend, who are you to conjure up such pictures of my betrothed? Or were you wishing that I was beside her in the bed?”

“Gerik,” Haimya said. She tried to rise, then realized that one leg had cramped under her. She tried to straighten it, but before she could Gerik had come over to her and was helping her to her feet.

She wanted to brush off both his aid and the dust from the floor, but that would have taken three hands. She contented herself with stepping away from him and brushing herself.

“You do not look well, Haimya,” he said.

“Nothing you have done lately has made my life easier,” she said. At the back of her mind, a small voice whispered that he probably had no more idea of what to do now than she did. A little kindness would not come amiss.

She took a deep breath. “Gerik. It has come to my ears-I have heard-that you swore true oath to Synsaga.”

She looked at him then, and although he was silent, his eyes spoke loudly enough. She wanted to turn away, or slap him, or do something to mark this moment and her disapproval. (She could not call it by any stronger word. He might have been threatened, and their betrothal would not stand or fall on that oath if he foreswore it and fled.)

“Everyone on the Crater Gulf knows that,” Gerik said. “It is hardly a secret.”

“Except to those who have come to Crater Gulf to-to discuss your future with you,” Pirvan put in.

Haimya shook her head at her comrade. The less he drew Gerik’s attention to himself, the better. Gerik had never seemed like a man who would send an imagined rival to his doom, but then he had never seemed like a man who would join the ranks of Synsaga’s pirates.

“We cannot talk of this at any length in this tower, without Fustiar’s consent,” Gerik said.

“Then you do serve him, rather than Synsaga?” Haimya snapped.

“Be easy, Haimya. There is no conflict, for Fustiar also serves Synsaga, and does not go beyond the bounds the pirate sets for him.” His voice and eyes held a plea, for her to believe him and not question him. Not here.

She began to believe that there had been duress a year ago, or at least second thoughts now. He would go with them, and once he was safely free of the Crater Gulf they might speak freely, learn more of Fustiar, even-

“Hup!” Pirvan shouted.

Gerik whirled. Other pirates were pushing through the ruined door. One of them stared at Haimya. She recognized the sentry she’d stunned, after leaping out of Pirvan’s illusory tree.

“The tree spirit!” the man screamed. Then he snatched his cutlass from his belt and hurled himself forward, straight at Haimya.

* * * * *

If Pirvan had enjoyed his normal swiftness, he might have halted Haimya’s attacker without killing him. Between the pain of his broken arm and the darkness of the chamber, he had no chance to do anything useful.

This left only two possible outcomes. Gerik Ginfrayson could resist the man, or Haimya could die on the pirate’s sword.

Gerik whirled, his sword in his hand. As the man passed him, he laid the flat of the blade across the man’s head. Instead of stunning him, it further enraged him. He turned on Gerik, and only a remarkably agile parry kept the man’s cutlass from splitting Gerik’s head.

“Stop it, you fool!” Gerik shouted. “These are my prisoners. You can die for attacking another’s prisoners.”

“Evil spirit!” the man screamed. There was no reason in his cry, nor any reasoning with him. Haimya stepped forward to help Gerik disarm the man and salvage some remote chance of peace.

Instead, the man drew his dagger and struck at Haimya. She was a trifle slower than usual; the point entered her left shoulder. Pain flared, and she felt blood trickling. She thought of the last drops of healing potion and how much they would have to heal.

Gerik did not think at all. His sword flashed three times, and the last time he drew it back dripping blood as the man crumpled to the floor. He stepped back, the pleading look on his face even stronger. Haimya didn’t know who was supposed to honor the plea now-her, or the pirates by the door, seeing a comrade struck down.

She knew then that she had only one hope left. She poured most of the remaining healing potion on her wounded shoulder, then shook the last few drops onto her tongue. Without waiting for it to take effect, she strode over to the Frostreaver and picked it up.

She didn’t know what she’d expected to happen. Would it strike her dead for stealing it, or would all the pirates discover that they had someplace else to go, and that urgently?

Neither happened. What she held in her hand was a fine two-handed, single-bitted battleaxe. It was heavy, but well balanced; clearly the guard creature’s strength had not been needed. Fustiar must know more than a trifle about weapons; a pity he was entirely given to evil-

“Kill the witch!” someone shouted. He was loud enough to raise not only echoes but dust. He raised more dust as he charged forward, cutlass raised.

Haimya’s arms and shoulders fought the first encounter before her thoughts could catch up with them. She held the axe with her hands wide apart and the head to the left, then shifted her grip to swing hard from left to right. The axehead smashed into the down-swinging cutlass and sent it flying out of the man’s hands.

The impact hardly slowed the axe’s deadly arc. It still had enough force to bite deeply into the man’s torso. He stared down at the gaping red ruin where his stomach had been, then clasped his arms futilely over the wound and went to his knees. He had time only to begin a scream before blood came out of his mouth and he fell, choking and writhing.

Before he was still, Pirvan had rushed in and picked up the fallen cutlass. He brandished it in his good hand, though Haimya saw him wince as the movement shook his broken and still unbound arm.

“They are my prisoners,” Gerik said, his voice tight. “Haimya, Haimya’s friend, you can disarm. I promise you-”

“I promise death to traitors!” another man shouted. “The witch killed my brother. She’s no prisoner!”

Gerik, Pirvan, and Haimya had just time to form a rough line before the general rush came. Then, for a minute or more, the fight became the lightning-quick clash of steel (and ice) that left Haimya no awareness of anything more than a foot beyond the reach of her Frostreaver.

She took down two men with it, one of them dead, and remembered too late that a two-handed weapon is not ideal in a melee against enemies who can get inside its swing. But Gerik seemed to have learned more swordsmanship in the last year than in all his previous years combined, and Pirvan was as quick as an eel and as welcoming as a poisonous serpent. Each of them took a man, and Haimya began to hope.

Hope ended when the door was suddenly filled with more men. The battle must have attracted them, and these newcomers were hideous beyond belief, earless, silent, scarred, and frenzied. Even if they’d had ears, Haimya could not conceive of their listening.

She and Pirvan paired off and kept the newcomers at a distance. They were both fighting with strange weapons, she was sick, and he was wounded, but one mind seemed to move both their limbs and take knowledge from both their senses.

The newcomers seemed reluctant to attack Gerik, and Haimya wondered if this was because of his service to Fustiar, who had to be their master. The pirates seemed to have no reluctance to attack anyone, but they divided their forces so that no one was overmatched.

How long the fight might have gone on, only the gods could say. Its end came in one frightful moment, as Haimya relied on Pirvan’s protecting her front to launch a full overhead swing at a pirate wearing a helmet.