Roland Green: The Wayward Knights

"How fare our defenses?" Eskaia asked, when Aurhinius had drained two cups of tea and one of wine, and was halfway through a plate of cakes.

"All the necessary posts have sentries, and I would not ask anyone to face this weather otherwise. The tunnelers to the northwest are too busy bailing to dig. The rest are putting in extra props and moving stores and weapons to higher ground."

"No word of our friends?"

"None, but they are surely traveling more slowly than they intended. The roads are too thin for riding and too thick for rowing."

"As well," Eskaia said. She reached into her overgown and drew out an oiled leather packet. "We shall have more time to consider how to reply to this."

Aurhinius's eyebrows no longer rose when she handed him a letter concerning some matter of war or statecraft that she had already opened and read. He had accepted that Eskaia ruled in Vuinlod and he was her consort by courtesy; no less, but no more.

His eyes, however, seemed to move from her to the text of the letter and back. She realized then that his embrace had turned the thin silk of her overgown transparent. She wore an undertunic of heavier silk against the cold, held in place by a single thong around her neck.

At last Aurhinius placed the letter on the table. One of the cats crawled out from under the couch, perched on the letter, and started licking crumbs from the nearly-empty tray. Eskaia lifted the beast onto her lap and stroked it until it purred.

"This idea speaks well for whoever had it," Aurhinius said at last. "Have you any notion who that might be?"

"None," Eskaia said. "Except that it is someone who listens to the merchants of Istar. They would be the principal victims of Karthayan enmity, which would be certain if Istar sent a great fleet wandering about in northern waters."

"Whereas a call for volunteers for a voyage to Suivinari Island," Aurhinius finished, nodding, "could bring in Karthayans, rovers, even minotaurs. Can you ask among your father's friends, if they know more?"

Most of them believe that they have long since paid all debts to one who has, after all, become a rival in her own right," Eskaia said. She did not keep a certain smugness out of her voice. Being a good steward of what Jemar left her had made her proud. Enlarging that fortune until she was called, only half in jest, "the Princess of Vuinlod" had made her prouder still.

It had not, however, made Gildas Aurhinius prince. His lack of envy of her wealth and power was another of his numerous virtues.

"More than an additional voyage each year or the price of tar could be at stake here," Aurhinius pointed out. "Can you ask, even if you expect no answer?"

"I-wait. I can ask Torvik and Chuina to ask their friends. Torvik will certainly get answers, now that he has been made captain."

Aurhinius stared. "You did not tell me that news," he said.

"It came only two days ago. He is leaving Kingfisher's Claw , to be captain over Red Elf . She is only a small ship, twenty crew at most, but she is his own, and at twenty-one-"

Aurhinius interrupted Eskaia by kissing her soundly on her lips, then her cheeks, then her forehead, while his arms went around her waist. The cat squalled a brief protest, then hastily took itself off.

Presently Eskaia realized that they were both on the couch, and she was nestled against his chest. It was a comfortable chest, rather like that of a large bear grown gentle with age, and warmed her almost as much as did her pride in her son.

"We shall need a banquet worthy of so much good news," Aurhinius said. "Your son a captain, our friends among us, and wisdom in Istar."

"I thought all wisdom had left Istar when you chose exile," Eskaia said.

"Oh, I am sure some remained who could find their shoes at dawn without help," Aurhinius said. His embrace tightened.

In time, Eskaia felt thick but still deft fingers undoing the thong around her neck.

At long bowshot from the foot of one of Vuinlod's shielding hills the road made a sharp bend. There, an escort met Pirvan and his companions. They were three men and two women, mounted on shaggy, undersized horses, and had the air of being more at home on a deck than in a saddle. They took their positions like seasoned fighters, however, and the procession wound its way onward into the hills.

From here the hills were mostly bare. In spots, too bare to be natural, with hardly a brown and wizened weed rising higher than a man's calf. Pirvan mouthed "Fields of fire?" at Haimya, and she nodded.

"It seems they have cleared the ground to allow archers free play," Hawkbrother said. "If I were they, I would also have tunnels dug through the hills, so that my men could pass through and take in the rear anyone who thinks himself safe on the crest."

One of the escorts gave Hawkbrother a bloodthirsty look. Pirvan hoped it was over his chattering, not his being a "desert barbarian" wearing the marks of a Solamnic Knight.

Before Pirvan could inquire, Sir Darin fixed the new-fledged knight with a look only a trifle less hostile than the Vuinlodder's. "We know that you did well in the course on fortifications, at the Keep," Darin said. "We also know that blood and training, your eyes are sharp. But you need prove neither of these, by blathering to all secrets that our hosts may wish to keep close."

Hawkbrother gave the wisest reply: silence. This left both his betrothed and her father without cause to speak.

Darin told the truth about Hawkbrother's study in fortifications, which to Pirvan was no small marvel. The Free Rider chief's son turned knight had been raised in a tent that could be struck in half an hour, and pitched two days later a hundred miles away. Pirvan had never known anyone with less experience of having a roof over his head, except for certain seafarers who never came ashore except to die.

But then he remembered the caves and tunnels within the sacred mountain of Hawkbrother's birth clan, the Gryphons. These showed magic or tools or both, no perhaps the ancestors of the Free Riders had not been strangers to permanent dwellings, and the memory ran deep without having died.

Meanwhile, the Vuinlodder who had glared at Hawkbrother was now trying to stifle laughter without falling off her horse. Pirvan labored as hard, stifling a sigh of relief. Knights of Solamnia, after all, did not admit to being so much as uneasy, let alone fearful.

The road now wound upward across slopes too steep for a more direct path, and straightened out only when it plunged into valleys between the hills. In one of these valleys, so steep-walled that it might have been gloom-shrouded even on a sunny day, a messenger from Lady Eskaia rode up to them.

The messenger was a kender, perched on a mule nearly the size of a horse, with elegant grooming that had suffered somewhat from the weather. So had the kender herself; her hair resembled a mop recently used to scrub the mule's stall and her clothes hung on her like wilted leaves.

"The Lady Eskaia bids you make haste," the kender said. "She bids you to a dinner, the knights and their ladies, and must know if you will come."

"Ask the road and the weather," Pirvan's chief guard said. Human stare and kender stare collided with an almost audible clang. Pirvan then saw the kender frown, and suspected she was waiting to see if the guards objected to being excluded from the feast or to receiving the news from a kender.

"Aye," the chief guard said. She was so short that some suspected her of dwarven blood, but no dwarf was ever that wiry or that fast on her feet. "We have duties to our knights."

"Duties?" the kender said, wiping hair and rain off her forehead and nearly poking herself in the eye with a thumb.

"Yes," the chief said. "Guarding our knights. As we swore to do. You've heard of oaths?"