Roland Green - Knights of the Sword

“You and your men could eat any such handful for breakfast and save the odd survivor for a midmorning snack, lightly salted or sprinkled with vinegar. Do that once or twice, and Aurhinius will take the field against you. Then I leave it to your judgment-but do something to make the man angry .

“An angry opponent will charge straight ahead. He will not make the best use of his strength or weapons. He will not guard against surprise attacks.

“He will, in short, become the sort of man who can be beaten even with long odds in his favor.”

Darin knew that well enough from personal combat-but this was the first time he’d be applying the principle in battle-indeed, on a full campaign against a civilized soldier at the head of a small army. He knew the uneasiness was lack of confidence in himself rather than lack of confidence in Waydol, and he also knew that the uneasiness would disappear once he had fought the first battle or two.

Meanwhile, he was Heir to the Minotaur. He slipped off the stool, took the mirror from Waydol’s hands, and held it up in front of the Minotaur so that he could work more swiftly at polishing his horns.

* * * * *

“Good night, Papa.”

“Good night, Mama.”

The children’s duet came from either side of the corridor. The years when they shared a single nursery and a single nursemaid were gone; now Gerik had a tutor as well as instruction from the men-at-arms, and the younger sister of Haimya’s maid attended Eskaia.

Not that Haimya really needed a maid, but had she done everything for herself as she had during her years as a mercenary, tongues would have wagged in gaping mouths from streamside to hillcrest. Her one consolation for being waited on was that she had a chance to teach both her maid and her daughter the rudiments of fighting, and with bare hands as well as steel.

Pirvan heard the doors shut and slipped a hand around Haimya’s waist. “I think we should be ready to say good night before long, too.”

“You are not, I trust, in too much haste in that matter?”

“Not such haste as to displease a lady.”

“I commend your honor.”

“It’s more good sense than honor, considering what displeased ladies can do.”

Haimya drew closer. “Perhaps you should contemplate the possibilities of a pleased lady.”

They did more than contemplate possibilities; they explored them thoroughly. They were lying close together when Haimya stirred and propped herself up on one elbow.

“Have we forgotten anything we need for going north?”

“We haven’t packed the supplies yet.”

“I was thinking of making sure that the knights do not accuse us of disobedience.”

Pirvan drew Haimya down onto his chest and savored that pleasure for a moment before replying. “We do have to spend some time in Karthay. Sir Marod was quite firm in his letters about the duty of all who served him, to learn what Karthay intends with its fleet. If we spend even a few days there, that and what we learn from Jemar will satisfy Sir Marod and anyone else who may ask questions.”

Haimya sighed and relaxed against her husband. Then he felt her shoulders quivering, and also warmth and dampness on his chest.

“Haimya?”

“Forgive me,” she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her free hand. “It’s foolish, but-this is the first time we’re going off and leaving the children since they were old enough to understand danger.”

Pirvan tightened his grip. “My lady and love, if you cry over that, you’ll have me joining you, and the bed will be drenched. You think I do not slip into their bedchambers at night sometimes, to stand looking down at them and all of our hopes that they carry?”

“I thought that was my secret.” She bit him gently on the shoulder, then started kissing him. The kisses made their way up his neck and cheek to his ear.

“My lady, in some ways you have no more secrets from me at all,” Pirvan said as he tightened his embrace still further.

Darin’s raiders were four days’ march from their stronghold before they reached the first town to the east. It had no garrison of picked Istarian troops, and indeed had not even heard of the soldiers’ coming.

“Which is about the way Istar always treats us,” one merchant said. “We wait a year to get the message with the permission to put new gates on the storehouse. Then the messenger comes, with two hundred mounted escorts who eat the storehouse empty so there’s no need to put so much as a ribbon across the door, because what’s left wouldn’t feed a mouse!”

This was not the first time Darin had heard complaints from folk in the north, that the rule of distant Istar was capricious and as often harsh as helpful. That was certainly a weak point, at least of Istar, to bring back to Waydol.

Meanwhile, Darin felt no inclination to loot the town, particularly as its walls were of well-laid stone and its people robust and determined, if not particularly skilled in arms. Instead of raiding, he paid some hundred and fifty Istarian towers for a dozen reasonably stout horses. This would give him a band of mounted scouts, to ride in the vanguard, on the flanks, or to the rear, wherever the need was greatest.

The raiders moved on, in two columns now, with the scouts carrying messages back and forth. Darin found Fertig Temperer no less harsh-tongued than ever, but under the harsh tongue was usually shrewd advice. The dwarves did not often come out of their mountains in great numbers to fight in human wars, but their own wars were the stuff of legends. A dwarf resolved on battle had everything a minotaur did except stature and strength, and frequently made up for those with keener wits.

The seventh day took them past two villages, whose farmers were all in the field when the raiders burst out of the woods. Panic sent the farmers fleeing, raising the alarm as they ran.

Instead of barring the gates, one village left them open. Out of those open gates thundered half a dozen horsemen, so well accoutred and sitting their saddles so well that for a moment Darin feared they had encountered Knights of Solamnia.

Instead of charging home, however, the mounted men circled wide around the fleeing villagers. They rode to Darin’s flank, then charged that flank in as wide a line as six men could make, keeping beyond the reach of most of the archers in Darin’s center.

The riders struck home with vigor and skill. They spitted two of Darin’s men on lances, and a third fell with his skull slashed open. They wounded two more raiders, and one rider was dismounting to take prisoners when the archers finally came running to within range.

Unsettled, their shooting was wild, and narrowly missed adding to the toll of hurt and wounded friends. But two horses fell; the first dismounted man went down bristling with arrows, and Darin rode up to deal with the others unhorsed.

At least that was his intent. The two remaining mounted men turned their mounts hard about and flung themselves at him. The archers could not shoot, friend and foe being utterly mingled, and while Darin tried to learn the art of swordfighting from horseback the two dismounted men scrambled onto their dead comrade’s horse.

Then all the survivors put in spurs and were out of sight in the woods before the archers realized that they had a clear target again. Darin dismounted, hoping that at least the fallen man was alive to talk, but two arrows in the face had pierced deep enough to silence him forever.

“This,” Darin said, “was not well done. We were to annoy the enemy, learn his strength, and take prisoners. It would seem that Aurhinius has given his captains the same orders-and that this day, his scouts obeyed his better than we obeyed Waydol’s.”