Roland Green: The Wayward Knights

"Free minotaurs," Zeskuk said. "Surely you have ridden in enough borne by minotaur slaves, a lady of your rank? You must allow us to give you the gift of this new experience, trusting yourself to freeborn minotaur warriors."

Lady Revella's face said that she would as soon trust herself to ghouls, but prudence kept that message from her lips. Before she could frame a more diplomatic reply, moreover, glowballs and hurrying footsteps told of the arrival of the human vanguard, and nothing could undo her embarrassment now.

Wilthur the Brown was not embarrassed. He was enraged at the demise of his Creation and the destruction wrought around the lake. His defenses would surely prevail against flesh and blood, but would the mountain be safe afterward?

Perhaps, perhaps not. He could still make a new abode in the Green Mountain, even if there was less magic to draw on in it. He would not flee.

The gods were not embarrassed, either. They were quite content with the progress of the battle. Some were not so content with Takhisis's reminding them that Wilthur had been White, Red, and Black, so was a balance in and by himself, and should be carefully preserved.

Zeboim spoke rarely, but now said things about Takhisis that the Queen of the Abyss had seldom heard even when incarnate as a human woman, from the most foul-mouthed males. There was silence among the gods for some while after that, except for some subdued laughter from Sargonnas.

Gerik was still less embarrassed. He had no time. When one is within minutes of attacking eighty men with thirty, one has no time for anything except the work that will soon be at hand.

Particularly, one has no time for a kender tugging at one's sleeve, even when he is being quiet about it.

With the strength of fury, Wilthur flung spells at his defenses. The spells contained the stolen vitality of the dead of Suivinari. Fed into the defenses, that vitality would render them invincible.

Instead, the spells went astray, some of them, or reached the defenses but bounced off them, like arrows off the finest plate armor. As the spells scattered, so did the stolen, hoarded vitality. As the vitality failed to enter the defenses from within, and the enemies tore at them from without, the defenses weakened.

At last Wilthur rested. He would have to find the point in the defenses (or points, perhaps as many as three) where the enemy sought the final penetration. He would strengthen the defenses there, and there only, however much he could.

He might not break the bodies of all his foes, human or minotaur. But he might do enough harm to break their spirits.

It was a sad decline in hopes, from being ranked near to the gods to merely disheartening foes who were close to victory, but the only alternative was still flight. And that alternative was as futile as ever.

Wilthur girded himself with spells against despair and for greater concentration, and prepared for the final battle.

Horimpsot Elderdrake did not dare make more sound than came from tugging at Gerik's sleeve. When that failed to draw the young lord's attention or even make him turn his head, Elderdrake felt as close to despair as a kender can.

He still wanted to find out what would happen next; a kender's curiosity dies only when he does. But he did not expect that next event to be something he would enjoy. Not if a second band of enemies came down on Gerik's rear while his attention was fixed so completely to the front.

They would have to do something about that themselves, he and the kender who had brought the news.

Elderdrake slipped out of the bushes and back toward his comrade. The other kender greeted him with a sour smile. "What took you so long?" the other kender asked.

"Trying to keep us from having to do this all by ourselves?" was Elderdrake's reply.

The smile grew even more sour. Then the other kender nodded. "His name was Fujindor Staffbinder," he said.

It took a moment for Elderdrake to realize that he had just heard the name of the priest whom Gerik called "the Shorn One." He had only known the dead kender as "the priest of Branchala."

"You are as likely to get free of this as I am," Elderdrake reminded his comrade.

"Or as unlikely," the other replied. "But all the others of our woods band know, too. Our friend's name will not die unless all of us do."

It took the two kender no more than the time for hard-boiling an egg to slip through the trees to within reach of the second enemy band's trail. Indeed, it was more of a series of gaps between the trees them a proper trail, but the ground was damp, soft, and moss-grown in places; the horses' hooves made little noise.

Elderdrake briefly wished that they had a few more packets of Staffbinder's horse-allergy powder. But there was little breeze to scatter it, and what there was might bring it down on Gerik's band as well. They didn't want that. Gerik's enemies could still win even if on foot, while Gerik needed to be able to mount and ride.

There was no time for subtlety, so the kender used none. Elderdrake's friend simply whipped his hoopak over his head, flinging a stone from the sling-thong. The stone struck a rider in the forehead, dropping him from the saddle. Then the first kender flung himself out of shelter, striking or stabbing with his hoopak depending on which end was closest to an enemy. Elderdrake followed, considering that neither he nor his friend would likely tell anyone much of anything-but if they did, it would be a far better story than just the priest's name, as deserving of memory as he was.

Something struck Elderdrake hard in the right arm, and all sensation and use left it. Fortunately a hoopak was one thing he could wield with either hand. He dived to retrieve his fallen weapon, rolled under the belly of a horse, and prodded the belly as he came up on the other side.

The horse reared, throwing its rider. The rider landed on his head, leaving his neck at an impossible angle to his shoulders. Elderdrake wasted no time, because a rider who hadn't seen that his friend was dead was coming in. The kender held the hoopak up with his good left arm, then twisted aside as the shaft deflected a sword cut, whirled the hoopak like a sea barbarian cutlass-dancer, and rammed the spear into the rider's thigh as he swept by.

The thigh was armored, but the spear point had not lost its sharpness, nor Elderdrake's left arm its strength. The man shouted, swore, and twisted in the saddle. He was left-handed, so he had to bring his battle-axe around and over.

As the axe blurred downward toward Elderdrake's skull, he heard something that sounded like a kender's death cry. He heard a hideous din that sounded like the death cry of many humans. He even heard, for a single heartbeat, the whisper of cloven air as the axe completed its downward arc.

Then he heard a sound that was not a sound, but the end of all things, as the downward arc ended in his skull.

Pirvan thought briefly that a few folk not eager to be in the vanguard would now be more help than the small army of those who were. The tunnel showed no signs of broadening enough to accommodate more than two humans and two minotaurs. Each folk wanted to have the greater numbers in the vanguard, and Pirvan and Zeskuk were too jostled, squeezed, and short of breath to take counsel and introduce a trace of order to this underground chaos.

It could have been as bad with the magicworkers, except that no one of either folk wished to deny Lujimar his place ahead of all warriors. Certainly not Lady Revella, who could not have kept up with the advance on foot and whose bearers took up the whole width of the tunnel where they were.

In his mind, the knight made gestures of aversion, that the tunnel not drop so low overhead that the bearers must set the Black Robe down. Trampling underfoot one of a host's two most powerful magicworkers was not a recipe for victory.