Roland Green: The Wayward Knights

"Oh, of course. Everybody takes some every week. But some of ours are not to harm guests. That's an oath even older than the Oath and the Measure of the knights. I can't imagine how anyone in Vuinlod would want to harm you.

"Or perhaps I could imagine it. But it would take a while. My imagination doesn't work well in bad weather, either. So would you like me to tell the story in a poem or a-"

"What we would like you to do," Pirvan interrupted, "is tell Lady Eskaia that we accept her invitation as you have given it. We shall make all the haste we can. Meanwhile, we thank her."

"I go at once," the kender said, turning her mount. "My friends are laboring hard. They will be happy to know their work will not be wasted."

She dug in her heels, and had the mule up to a trot before she disappeared around the next bend.

" 'My friends?' " the chief guard said. "Are the kender preparing the feast?"

"They may try to, if we do not ride on fast enough to help Lady Eskaia stop them," Pirvan said. "Not that the kender would poison us, you understand. But I think we all want more of a meal than they are likely to have ready!"

Famine-or, at least, indigestion-was averted at the last minute. Kender are not the best folk on Krynn for keeping secrets, so Lady Eskaia's cook heard of what the kender planned before it was too late. A flying column of under-cooks and scullions charged in one door of the kitchen as the kender fled with more haste than dignity out of the other.

The only irreparable damage turned out to be the biscuits, which Lady Eskaia suggested be sent to Torvik for ballast for his new ship. Surveying the rest of the scene, Gildas Aurhinius shook his head. "No one can say that kender are stupid," he said. "But they will try to be wise about six different things in the space of an hour. So nothing is done, or, even worse, much is begun but left unfinished."

The banquet ran heavily to fish, and Eskaia noted that this was not to the tastes of some of her guests. On the other hand, Sir Darin seemed to inhale broiled salmon and fried oysters, salted leefish and planked browser with spiced kelp sauce, as if he were having the last meal of this life.

"This is how we feasted at Waydol's stronghold," he explained. "Our feasts were few, but the sea served us most of them."

"You at least could not have been on short commons too often," Lady Eskaia said. She was applying herself to a bowl of pickled rockfish with a peppery turnip dressing. "Not and reach your present stature."

Darin flushed like a boy, which added still further to his notable good looks. He was far too young to stir her, even had they both been free, but he was a fine thing to see, like a blooded stallion or a vase of Ergothian alabaster.

"I have the parents I cannot remember to thank for that," he said. "That was a precious gift, too. Even from beyond the grave, Waydol was wise beyond the common run of men or minotaurs. He still might not have taken such care with me if I had been of more common human stature."

"And you are taking care that your line does not diminish, in any way," Aurhinius said, with that rumbling laugh Eskaia had grown to recognize as the sign to end his drinking for the night.

Eskaia called for spice water and turned the conversation to the affairs of Belkuthas. Darin and Rynthala had made it their seat, then left it under the care of the local dwarven thane when they came north.

"The dwarves said they could do more work on the defenses with us gone than they could with us in residence," Rynthala said. "What was it that they told you once, Darin?"

"They told me that they did not mind having humans loom over them like the cliffs of Bardrof, but when those humans knew not one stone from another, it was a trifle wearying," Darin answered. "Is there anywhere a man can expect courtesy from those who serve him?"

"Don't look for it at Tirabot Manor," Haimya said, and they all laughed. Indeed, there was a warmth in the air of the chamber that to Eskaia seemed to come from the presence of eight friends who were all more or less content with the courses their lives had steered. To be sure, Hawkbrother and Young Eskaia were young enough to be Gildas's grandchildren, and might never reach his years, but….

Eskaia smiled, leaned far over, and planted a kiss on Gildas Aurhinius's cheek. Before he could move to return it, she turned to the assemblage and said, "I have news that deserves our attention. This letter-" she held up the report of the volunteer fleet's being raised "-and an announcement: Gildas Aurhinius has asked for my hand in marriage, and I have consented."

Then, as Aurhinius tried not to gape, she handed the letter to Pirvan.

It made the rounds of the six guests quickly enough. Eskaia was waiting for Pirvan to lead the replies long before Aurhinius had stopped murmuring what he was going to do to her for ambushing him as she had.

"Just he sure you keep those promises, and not only on the wedding night but afterward," she whispered back, then saw that Pirvan was ready to speak.

He spoke briefly, as usual, and wisely, as almost usual. "We cannot refuse this invitation," he said. "To do so, or to send only modest strength, would be to let the kingpriest's minions guide the fleet. We must do our best. Minotaurs dead on this island used so freely by both the Destined Race and our own people could lead us into a costly war. This is a matter of greater import than might be obvious at first from the situation at hand."

Darin nodded. "Indeed," he said. "Ah-I do not know much of magic, or those who work with it, but it seems to me that we now have a chance to send wizards and priests who are not in the kingpriest's pocket.

"If any such are needed at all," he added.

"Likely enough they will be," Haimya said. "I have heard from my kin in Karthay that two ships that intended to call at Suivinari are overdue. We still may not need magicworkers, but if we do not have them with us, we surely will."

"It could be minotaurs-" Aurhinius began, and was interrupted by Darin's clearing his throat. Rynthala put a hand on her husband's arm, and Haimya shook her head.

"That was thought, too, in Karthay, and asked of certain discreet minotaur captains," Darin said. "The minotaurs said that they too had ships missing or overdue in those waters."

"Minotaurs have been known to lie," Aurhinius said, and this time his look alone quelled any reply from Darin. "But not more than humans, and seldom in a matter of life or death at sea. They know that Zeboim has no friends among any land-dwelling race."

Eskaia nodded. "Then Gildas and I will see to it that Vuinlod does its share," she said. "With luck, we can put to sea with enough ships to hold our own soldiers, sailors, and magicworkers. We may even have room to carry the men whom the Knights of Solamnia will surely wish to send on such an important matter."

Pirvan stood in front of the silver mirror in its gilded wood frame and combed his beard. The mirror was one of many little luxuries in the chamber he and Haimya shared; small, but as snug as a ground squirrel's winter burrow.

Pirvan believed Lady Eskaia when she said that Jemar and she had made their fortune honestly. He was not so sure about her having done without help from her father's fellow merchant princes. It would be only wisdom for them to aid a sea rover and later his widow, so as to have their goodwill and some use of their ears and eyes.

The comb tugged at the knight's beard. For all the steel of Krynn, he could not have grown a proper knight's mustache. But his beard was more robust, gray as it was.

Pirvan finished combing and turned to the bed. It was of ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl, with curtains of silk as fine as one of Haimya's summer robes. It was also so piled with quilts and coverlets that it was hard to tell which bulge was Haimya.