Roland Green: Knights of the Sword

Waydol stepped to the side of the square facing the horsemen, drawing two shatangs from his rack as he went. The men in front of him crouched low. He raised his right arm, swung it back, then snapped it forward so that it was a blur.

The shatang flew even faster. One moment it was in Waydol’s hand. The next moment it was buried halfway to its butt in the chest of a horse. The horse, dead in midstride, crashed down on top of its rider.

Before the horsemen could even notice their comrade’s fall, the second shatang was in the air. This time Waydol took a man.

He took the man in the chest, and the man flew backward off his horse. He was in midair long enough for Pirvan to see that the shatang had pierced completely through breastplate and body, to stick out a good arm’s length behind the man’s back.

The second cavalry attack was more prudent than the first. They fled, for the most part without having to be killed. A few archers sent farewell arrows after them, before turning their attention to the onrushing infantry levies.

Pirvan knew this was a crucial moment for Waydol’s men. If one town’s infantry hurt them seriously, others would be encouraged to swarm in. If they stood off the first assault, it might dishearten the rest.

Then Pirvan could lead the square back to the stronghold and the sea, with no fear of anything except Istarians, magic, storms, treason, and falling off his horse. He could do something about the last danger by walking, but as for the rest-

Then the infantry was on the square.

Waydol seemed about to draw his clabbard, then to realize that he couldn’t wield it without lopping heads and limbs of friends. Instead he drew the third shatang for thrusting, while the other hand sprouted a katar.

For all his preparations and might, Waydol was not at the place where the square gave way. That honor fell to Pirvan and Haimya.

It began when one shrewd levy swordsman ducked under a spear thrust and stabbed the spearman. This opened a gap, and the swordsman had comrades with equal courage, skill, or luck. Suddenly three spearmen were down, four levies were pushing back the second rank, and some archer from the far side of the square loosed a wild shot and hit a friend in the second rank.

Pirvan vowed to kick the wild shooter in a vital spot at his first free moment, which he suspected would not come quickly. What came instead was what seemed half the population of a village, shouldering its way into the square.

They met Pirvan and Haimya, Pirvan with sword and dagger and Haimya with broadsword and shield. An attacker tried pulling her shield aside with a billhook; Pirvan stabbed him. His comrade swung an axe down at Pirvan’s unprotected head; Haimya sidestepped and caught the axe on her shield, then cut the axeman’s legs out from under him.

Meanwhile, Pirvan had shifted to Haimya’s temporarily unprotected side, wielding sword and dagger in a blur of motion. It was intended less to kill than to alarm. It succeeded. Several advancing levies became retreating levies.

Not all, however. A man ran at Pirvan with a spear, to be lifted off his feet on the point of Waydol’s shatang. The man was still screaming as Waydol shook the heavy spear, flinging the man into the middle of his comrades.

Trying to avoid the flying body, some of those comrades moved the wrong way. Some came within reach of Waydol. One of these screamed as a hoof crushed his foot, another died gurgling as the katar sliced his throat.

On the other flank, Pirvan and Haimya faced four men, all with swords and apparently either brave enough or witless enough to stand and fight. It did them little good.

Haimya hooked one sword aside with her shield and slashed the next man to the right with her sword. Pirvan ducked under Haimya’s shield and stabbed the man with the immobilized sword. This put him behind the two other men, with Haimya in front. The two men between them drew about three more breaths before they were both stretched on the ground.

Pirvan whirled to see to his back, but discovered that it was safe. Seeing their point slaughtered, the rest of the attacking column was retreating. In fact, they were running as if they expected Pirvan, Haimya, and Waydol to sprout wings and fly after them.

Pirvan wished he could. It would do no one any harm, least of all the levies, if they kept running until they were back in their local taverns, telling lies about their prowess over the wine.

As it was, the whole line of the levies drew back out of bowshot. From the way their ranks heaved like boiling porridge, Pirvan suspected that they would be slow to attack again.

“I think we have outstayed our welcome here,” he said. “Send the messengers to bring in the mounted patrols, and let us be off.”

Waydol nodded. “I did not have half the fighting I had anticipated, you know. However, there was a reward. I saw you and your lady fighting as a team, when I could appreciate it.”

Then Waydol roared with laughter, as loud as his challenge before. The levies, Pirvan noticed, didn’t seem to be able to tell the difference. Some of them broke and ran for the woods even before the echoes of the Minotaur’s laughter died.

* * * * *

Jemar’s boat grated on the gravel of the cove’s beach. The captain leaped out and ran uphill, toward the hut that showed the blue-staff banner of Mishakal.

Eskaia had been there for the best part of an hour, ever since the pilot boat offered to take her and Delia ashore. How the pilot had learned of Eskaia’s danger, Jemar did not know.

Waydol had a priest of Mishakal called Sirbones; maybe he had something to do with it. Likely enough, he was farther forward, though, closer to the fighting that was spreading along the landward side of the cove and creeping closer to the stronghold’s entrance. Rubina seemed to have disappeared-or at least no one knew where she was, though Jemar suspected that this was for fear of asking.

The only consolation for Jemar was if the Black Robe had wholly thrown her magic to the side of the Istarians, they would together have swept the sea clean of all foes and be starting their deadly work on the land.

And now he could put all of this out of his mind and go see Eskaia. The pilot had also told the boatmasters to start loading the women and children, and some of Jemar’s ships already had crowded decks.

The slope steepened quickly, so that a run became a walk, and the walk on a path became a walk up a flight of stone steps. He wanted to keep walking, right through the door and into the hut, to take Eskaia in his arms.

But the door was solid oak behind the blue paint, and locked as well. Jemar knocked, then stood, trying to smell out death or health within. The village was none too clean, so he was still straining nose and ears when the door opened.

It was not Delia, but one of the outlaw women-girl, rather. She could hardly be more than fourteen.

Jemar started to raise a hand to cuff her out of the way, for her impudence in being here at all, then stopped. The girl was smiling.

“Is she-?”

The girl nodded, then nearly went flat on her back as Jemar rushed in, to trip over a stool and nearly stun himself against the far wall of the hut.

“Jemar,” came a familiar voice from the shadows at the end of the hut, “is this how you enter a sickroom, and a house of Mishakal as well?”

Eskaia’s voice was weak, but under that weakness the old bite had returned. And the pain, the labored breathing, the sense of a desperate struggle for the strength to speak at all-they were gone.

“She is well,” a voice Jemar hardly recognized as Delia’s came from the other end of the hut. “So is the babe. It will go to full term, though the midwife should be wary of its breathing when it is born, and it may be sickly at first. Also, I forbid your lady to take any more sea voyages until the babe is born.”