Roland Green: Knights of the Sword

“Maybe they will, maybe they won’t,” the man-at-arms who’d spoken up for helping kender said. “But you know how it is with those little folk. What one knows, all do before long. That didn’t do us any hurt tonight, Sir Niebar, and mayhap it won’t do us harm in the future.”

“Let the future look to itself. What we need now is less talk, sound horses, and the night staying dark.”

“Aye, Sir Niebar.”

In five minutes, the men and horses had departed as completely as the kender, if not as silently, and were riding through the night.

* * * * *

On a stretch of coast that was more naked rock than forest, Rubina was also alone with the night.

She was not alone in this land, she knew. From where she sat, she could see the torches of four Istarian searching parties, going over the battlefield. They seemed to be looking under every brush or even pebble for dead and wounded comrades and strays from Waydol’s men.

Twice she heard the clash of steel and the screams of the dying, as they found people who were either enemies or could not prove that they were friends. So far they had not found her, or even come far in her direction.

Takhisis, on the other hand, had not come at all. Rubina had long since expected to be in the Abyss, tormented to the edge of death and then brought back to life for further torment. Perhaps the Dark Queen was healing or consoling her daughter Zeboim?

Perhaps. More likely, Takhisis would come when she chose. Forcing Rubina to walk alone for days, months, even years, for fear of involving others in her fate, would be a subtle torment. The Dark Queen was a goddess, after all, with more time as well as more cruelty than any mortal.

Now one of the clusters of torches was finally crawling up the hill toward Rubina’s perch above the sea. Soon she could hear the thump of boots above the boom of the surf. Then she could make out torchlight reflected from armor, and finally she could make out faces.

One of them, in the middle of a ring of soldiers, was none other than Gildas Aurhinius himself. Proving that his night sight was that of a younger man, he was also the first to see Rubina.

“Ho, Lady! What do you here?”

Rubina stood up on legs that seemed ready to turn to water. She left her staff lying wedged in the rocks, not wishing to alarm the soldiers. Aurhinius might be on foot, but he was on foot with some twenty armed guards.

“I wait.”

“For what?”

“For my fate.”

“Stop talking riddles, woman,” another, younger voice snapped. “Men, forward and bind her. This must be the Black Robe of Waydol’s stronghold. There is much to learn from her.”

Aurhinius turned to the younger man, who wore ornate armor and seemed to be captain of the guards. “Permit me, Zephros.”

Aurhinius stepped forward. “Lady-Rubina, is it not?”

Rubina swallowed. She had not expected any Istarian to know her name.

“We try to learn where wizards are, and whether alive or dead,” he said mildly. “Sometimes we even succeed. Now, I do not promise that the Towers of High Sorcery will accept you back after this escapade, but I do promise that if you come peacefully, you will in time be free to return to them if you and they wish.”

Rubina turned the words over and over in her mind. This was the promise of a full pardon from Istar’s masters, if she helped them solve the mysteries of Waydol and the day’s fighting.

It was, alas, not a bargain she could accept. Involved were too many secrets that were not hers to reveal.

But in making such a bargain, Aurhinius proved what kind of man he was. The kind of man who should not be close to her when Takhisis struck back. The kind of man whom Istar, Karthay, the Knights of Solamnia, and everyone else needed alive rather than dead.

So the choice was simple. She only hoped that she could find among the ranks of the guards someone to help her over the last step.

She bent, and picked up her staff, at the same time thrusting a hand inside the front of her robe.

* * * * *

Aurhinius thought that Rubina was merely picking up her staff and perhaps offering him her pouches of herbs for safekeeping.

Zephros howled in rage and fear. “She’s trying to enspell Aurhinius!”

Some of the guards were light infantry, armed with short swords and javelins instead of long sword and shield. Zephros snatched a javelin from the nearest man, raised it, and threw.

In sporting contests, at least, he had become a deft hand with the javelin. Now he proved that he could throw well in battle-if hitting a standing woman at thirty paces’ distance could be called battle.

The javelin took Rubina just below the breasts. Angling slightly upward, it pierced her heart. She barely had time to feel relief at her body’s end coming so swiftly, before she felt nothing at all.

Aurhinius tried to keep her from falling, and succeeded at the price of getting her blood on his hands and arms. He turned to Zephros, who had taken another javelin-and now promptly dropped it.

Aurhinius walked down the slope to Zephros, with a look on his face that no man who saw it ever forgot.

“You young idiot,” he said quietly.

Zephros cringed at the quiet reproach, as he would not have at a torrent of oaths.

“She was trying to kill you.”

“She was a mine of precious knowledge that you have just flooded.”

Aurhinius’s patience snapped. He gripped Zephros by both arms and thrust his face into the younger man’s.

“You can go where you please, tell what you please to whom you please. But you do not serve under me again. If I ever see you in a camp under my command again, I will kill you!”

For a moment, it seemed that Zephros’s death would not wait that long. Rage can turn a mother cat into a tigress to defend her kittens; it can also give a middle-aged human general a minotaur’s strength to tear apart foolish young captains.

Aurhinius knew that, took his hands off Zephros, and stepped back. Then he spat at the young man’s feet, a vulgar gesture he knew, but anything finer was wasted on the merchant princeling.

When Aurhinius walked off into the darkness outside the circle of torchlight, no one made to follow him.

* * * * *

Waydol died just before dawn.

It was as they had feared. The Minotaur had spent too much of his strength fighting after he was wounded, and Sirbones had spent too much of his power healing other wounded. Sirbones did what he had warned Delia against, giving what was not really in him trying to save Waydol, but it was in vain, and the priest of Mishakal nearly followed Delia and the Minotaur.

Fortunately Tarothin was sufficiently recovered, after a long sleep and a hearty meal, to come aboard Windsword and administer healing to the healer. “Now, if someone will just tie him to his bunk for a few days,” the Red Robe added, “he should be fit to heal anything from blisters to broken heads.”

They decided to bury Waydol and Delia at sea-“so that my father will in time make his homeward voyage, even if transformed,” as Darin put it. The fleet hove to, the two shrouded bodies were placed on planks, and Tarothin said appropriate blessings since Sirbones was asleep below.

Eskaia was on deck for the burial, though she looked as if she should have been in her bed. However, she had already made it clear what would happen to Jemar if he denied her permission, and everyone else had the sense to hold his tongue.

Darin spoke a few words about his father-“who will live longer than if he had ten children of his body, for all who followed him were like his children.”

Then he threw back his head and roared out a better minotaur’s mourning cry than Pirvan had expected to hear from a human throat.

But then, he had never expected to meet anyone like Darin.