Roland Green: Knights of the Sword

The keep was a quarter of an hour’s walk, and the road to it was also the main road from the village that went with the manor. Pirvan passed a goatherd with her flock, a carter with a load of barrels (new, empty ones from the local coopers, judging from their polish, rattling staves and the speed the cart was making), several small boys doing nothing in particular, and an older lad carrying home two scythes freshly sharpened at the smith’s.

One and all, they greeted Pirvan with courteous respect rather than servility. This was very much to his taste, and would have been more so if he’d been sure why they did it. Was it their natural custom, their knowledge of what an exceedingly odd sort of lord and knight he was, or the growing suspicion of the Knights of Solamnia spreading across Istar?

To be sure, even the last and worst reason hardly meant danger. Istar’s claim to be the seat of all virtue in the world was more uttered than honored, and even many Istarians could not say the word “kingpriest” without smiling. It would be generations before the Knights of Solamnia had to contend with the hostility already shown toward nonhumans and human “barbarians”-unless the knights had to step forth as defenders of those folk.

Which, in truth, they ought to do. Indeed, ought to have done before now. But the knights had gained too much at the time of the Great Meld by fighting Istar’s battles. Too much that they would be reluctant to lose over a minotaur thrown from a tavern without even being allowed to get drunk first, or a kender maid molested when nothing belonging to anyone else could be found on her person …

More dark thoughts, Pirvan realized. At this rate he would need to be going up and down the keep until noon to clear his head.

* * * * *

The keep walls were in even worse condition than Pirvan had remembered. His men-at-arms had the right to use them for climbing practice and other training, but there were only eight of them. A dozen knights climbing in full armor could hardly have left these gouges and cracks, and Pirvan wondered if the local boys were using the keep for wagers and dares.

Another reason for pulling the lot down, before one of those bold ones breaks his neck and his parents’ hearts .

Pirvan had to find a new route to the top before he could climb, then just for the challenge found another new route for his second climb. That one proved longer and harder than it had seemed, and when Pirvan reached the top, he was drenched with sweat, bleeding on several knuckles and one cheek, and quite prepared to catch his breath, then turn homeward.

“Good day,” said a cheerful voice from out of sight beyond the battlements. “May I offer you some water?”

Pirvan moved up another finger’s breadth, slapped both hands down on a flat stone, and vaulted onto the roof of the keep. He drew his dagger as he landed, rolled, and came up with it held by the point, ready to throw.

But his wife, Haimya, had already drawn her own knife, as well as the buckler, hardly larger than a pot lid, with which she was so deft. They stood on guard against one another for a moment, then, as one, sheathed their knives and embraced.

“As well we didn’t decide to practice,” Haimya said, bending down. “We might have punctured the water bag, and Kiri-Jolith knows you look like a man who needs a drink.”

Pirvan was too busy uncorking the bag to do more than nod. He spoke only after the water, laced with extract of tarberry and a hint of lemon, had washed the dust and sweat from his mouth and throat.

“Bless you, Haimya,” he said. “It was a pleasure to see you. How did you come up?”

“By the stairs,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes. No one could fault her courage or her skill with arms, but she had little head for heights and had never quite gotten over being ashamed of this.

“And how can it be a pleasure to see me when all you’ve looked at is the water bag?” she added, hands on her hips. The pose brought out the full splendor of her muscular figure, as tall as her husband’s and, if anything, broader across the shoulder, without being any the less desirable.

She wore a loose tunic over men’s breeches and low boots on her long-toed feet, and it did not hurt that the tunic was damp enough to cling closely in interesting places. The breeches, too-and Pirvan gently put a hand on each of his wife’s hips, then kissed her on each cheek before his lips found hers.

They stood that way for some while, the pleasures of lovers, old married couples, and tried battle-comrades all mingling in the kisses and the embraces. It was impossible afterward to tell who first took a step backward, but both laughed.

“A good thing, too,” Haimya said. “My knees were beginning to tremble from all this standing close.” She brushed a hand across his cheek. “If they’d started shaking the keep-”

Pirvan made a rude gesture and trapped Haimya’s hand with his. “Standing close” was the oldest of their pet phrases, going back to the time after their first quest when they had known that they must part for a while. Haimya had said that a time might come for them to “stand close,” and so it had, which Pirvan considered the greatest good fortune ever to come his way.

At last he forced the pleasure of Haimya’s touch from his mind. “Does anything call you down from here?”

“No duty that I can think of,” she replied. “But if we stay up here much longer, surely something will happen. Besides, I promised the maids to help bring the laundry back from the stream.”

“So be it.”

Pirvan took another drink before he left, then Haimya drank, then he emptied the rest of the bag over her head and licked the drops off her cheek and neck, which had both sets of knees trembling before the last drop was gone.

* * * * *

Haimya drew a few stares on the way back to the house, as her tunic was damper and closer-clinging than before. However, none of the stares held anything that Pirvan could fault. It was well known in the land that the Lady of Tiradot was very fine to look at, but if you did more than look, she would not even waste time complaining of you to her lord, but settle the matter at once and in a way that might leave you inapt for any woman for years to come.

“I trust Sir Niebar the Nuisance found us trustworthy for another year,” Haimya said as they passed the roadside shrine to Mishakal.

Pirvan nodded, stepping aside briefly to sprinkle the last few drops from the bag as a libation on the dusty stone.

“He does his best, and surely neither he nor his people ate the larders bare in four days.”

“A wizard with a good scrying spell could have done the same work in a day or less, and eaten little or nothing.”

“He would still have needed escorts,” Pirvan said. “There is the odd bandit, and there is always the dignity of the order. Also, a wizard working truly potent magic can eat like a tree-feller in the winter woods.”

Haimya’s gesture was fierce, also eloquent of what she thought of upholding the dignity of the Knights of Solamnia out of her private purse or her children’s inheritance.

“Besides,” Pirvan continued, lowering his voice, “we are a trifle too close to Istar to play host to a wizard not from an Istarian temple without setting tongues wagging. Tongues whose wagging might reach the ears of those about the kingpriest.”

“One day, the folk of Istar will have to choose between their worship of their own virtue and the worship of the True Gods,” Haimya said with a grimace. “I suppose there’s nothing we can do in the meantime, except pray that they make the right choice?”

“That, and serve the knights. They are not yet under Istar’s yolk.” And one of Marod’s purposes and mine is to see that they never are .