Roland Green: The Wayward Knights

Those around the boat were not the only ones who gasped in horror. Yavanna's party guarding the way inland, and Sorraz's men resting on their oars just outside the surf line, also lost countenance at what the righting of the boat displayed.

It was a minotaur, well grown even for that massive breed. He had plainly died fighting, with courage that would guard his honor, but had not saved his life. His foe had all but torn one arm out of its socket, crushed his chest, and bitten clear through one thigh and nearly through the waist. The minotaur's tough hide also bore gashes and round marks, a hand's breadth across. It was those round marks that finally loosened someone's tongue.

"I've seen those circles," he said. It was barely above a whisper.

"Louder," Torvik called. "What one knows about this, all must know. Would you steal a shipmate's knife? Leaving him ignorant is as bad."

The man swallowed. "I saw them on the hide of a whale," he said. "A whale one of my mates said had met a kraken."

That ill-omened name made everyone look toward the sea. Sorraz and Yavanna left their parties, hurrying to Torvik's side. Before looks toward the sea could turn into a rush toward the boats, Torvik whistled for everyone's attention.

"I've never heard of krakens in these waters," he said, "or this far inshore."

"Krakens go where they will," Sorraz the Harpooner muttered. The captain was a fine fighter and a better shark-chaser, but hardly a master morale-builder.

"So do we," Torvik snapped. "Or is Kingfisher’s Claw a fat merchanter, thinking only of a safe profit, crewed by those who expect the sea to make itself safe for them?"

Those were much more florid words than his father would have thought wise for rallying frightened men, but at least they seemed to take men's thoughts off krakens.

"What I want to know is what is any triply-cursed bullhead doing on our beach?" someone asked.

"Could have been heading for the nearest land," Sorraz replied. "Habbakuk only knows I'd do the same with a kraken after me."

That seemed to ease the men, about minotaurs if not about krakens. Torvik was about to suggest that they draw the minotaur's body up above the high-tide mark, for an honorable burial, when one of Yavanna's men came running down from the tree line as if the flames of the Abyss were licking at his heels.

"There's another one up there!" he shouted. "Dead, and not mark on him!"

"Another what?" Yavanna and Torvik snapped almost together. Torvik realized it was the first Yavanna had spoken.

"Another minotaur," the man said.

Both Torvik and Yavanna had the same idea at the same moment, and in the next, shouted the same name: "Beeyona!"

The ship's healer scrambled out of the boat and ran lightly across the sand to the mates.

"Your wish?" she asked.

Her manner was as gruff as one might expect from a woman of gray hair and large stature, instead of one short of thirty and barely able to look Torvik in the eye. But she had once studied to be a priest of Mishakal, and although she had taken no true vows, she still walked somewhat apart. All aboard Kingfisher’s Claw agreed that her healing arts made it worth tolerating that minor vice.

Torvik wasted no more words than Beeyona.

"Learn how the minotaur died. The one inland," he added, as she turned toward the mangled corpse.

Beeyona had seldom enjoyed such a strong guard-or such a large audience-as the sailors who surrounded her all the way to the trees and afterward, when she knelt beside the dead minotaur. They did not much care to remain, for the trees might hide anything. The dead brown eyes of the minotaur stared blindly upward in a way that was the stuff of nightmares. Also, some of Beeyona's spells were rumored to be of her own devising, or even borrowed from non-humans-and there were folk aboard Kingfisher’s Claw who did not much care for that last.

Whatever their origins, Beeyona's spells served as well as ever. When she rose from beside the minotaur, her face held what to Torvik seemed both dire knowledge and grim purpose.

"She died of fright," Beeyona said.

"She-?" Yavanna asked.

The healer pointed at the corpse and said, "She and her mate came ashore from a boat. She saw him taken by what pursued them, and saw him the way we saw. Her heart stopped."

"That's reading a good deal from a minotaur body, for human magic," someone said.

Before Torvik or Yavanna could identify the insubordinate sailor Beeyona shrugged and said, "Nor could I have done as much, had she been dead a few hours longer."

Torvik added what that implied-the killer from the sea could not be far away-to what he had already reasoned from the first minotaur not being devoured. The killer had not fed. The sun made the hot forest suddenly seem as cold as the face of a glacier, and nearly gave his legs the power to send him fleeing back to the boats.

Honor and good sense restored his wits to command of his body. "We have as much need of water as ever before," he said plainly. "I say let us fill our barrels and be off. I want an answer to this mystery as much as you do, but I doubt we'll find it on land."

"And if it comes back-?" the same voice that had questioned Beeyona's honor muttered.

"It is a thing of the sea," Yavanna said sharply. "On land we can choose where to fight, and none of us have weak hearts. If it comes by sea-well, Kingfisher’s Claw is not a ship's boat, and our captain is not called the Harpooner without good reason. And that is the last word for laggards and cowards until we have watered. Any more backchat, and I won't be talking."

"Nor I," Torvik said. Several of the leaders among the sailors nodded assent, and Sorraz smiled enigmatically.

But even they kept looking from the forest to the sea and back again, as they rolled the empty barrels out of the boats and up the beach toward the spring.

The hours came and went, the pile of empty barrels shrank, and several boatloads of filled ones had already returned to the ship. The watering would have gone faster had the heat of the day not made the sailors as thirsty as if the springs ran ale instead of water, so that they drank as much as they loaded.

Torvik took his turn at the hard labor, but both he and Yavanna spent more time watching the sentries, who in their turn were watching the tree line. Nothing had happened since they found the second dead minotaur, but Torvik knew that didn't preclude the possibility that something could happen and might mean the sentries were growing less alert.

Torvik was leaning against a tree when he felt a quivering-in the tree, not in the ground. He had just time for the thought that this was a most peculiar earthquake, when the sandy soil burst apart and a root as thick as his arm rose into the air, twisting and writhing like the tentacle of a kraken.

Torvik's sword rasped free. He had just time to take one slash before the free end of the root wrapped itself around his left leg. He slashed again, the root writhed more fiercely, and the tree shuddered again. Suddenly he was dangling upside down.

He slashed a third time, but only struck a glancing blow with the tip of his sword that barely chipped bark. Then the root was drawing back, still holding the young mate of the top, like a tossball player limbering up his arm for a throw-with Torvik as the ball.

Yavanna struck before the root could finish its work. Wielding a snatched-up axe in both hands she flung herself on the root. It jerked from one blow, spasmed from a second, tightened its grip on Torvik's leg so that he cried out after the third blow, and on the fourth blow fell severed into two pieces.

The portion still attached to the tree promptly vanished, like a snake diving into a burrow at the sight of a fisher hawk. Torvik thumped down on the sand hard enough to knock the breath out of himself, which was just as well, or he would have cried out again from the pain as Yavanna jerked the severed piece of root from around his leg.