Knights of the Sword Page 2

  The man fell before he could give any warning at all, as a slingball whipped out of the trees and into his skull. Darin waited a moment to see if any of the other workers had noticed the man’s fall and took flight or came to his rescue.

  If they came, they would find little to prove what had happened to him. The slingers of Darin’s band carried balls of fire-hardened clay, fit to strike a man senseless and crumble into powder at the same moment.

  If the villagers fled—

  They did nothing. Perhaps none had seen their friend fall; perhaps they thought he had lain down from fatigue; perhaps they were too near the end of a long and wearying day to think of more than hot water and cold ale at home.

  Darin licked dry lips. He himself had never drunk anything stronger than water when in health or herbal infusions when sick, but he understood weariness and thirst as well as these folk ever would! It seemed almost dishonorable to take them at such a disadvantage—unless one looked at the sentries atop the walls.

  At that moment, one of those sentries seemed to notice the fallen man. He pointed with his spear, cupping the other hand to his mouth. Darin did not hear the words across the field, but he heard urgency in the man’s tone.

  Darin stepped into the open and slammed his fists against the trees to either side of him. The forest spewed men dressed in a motley of rust, green, and brown, all bearded and long-haired. Some of the men showed a trace or more of elven blood, and on the shoulders of a man nearly Darin’s height rode a kender, belaboring his mount with a featherduster.

  They raised no war cries; the only sound was of forty-some pairs of booted feet running hard. They had little breath to spare for shouting; it was also the custom in Waydol’s band to be silent until first blood.

  That would not be long; even now sentries were nocking arrows to bows. Darin raised his left hand, palm facing toward the ground. His archers unslung bows, opened quivers, and pulled out shafts, all without missing a step. Only when it came time to nock and shoot did they halt, for better aim. Darin’s band had not nearly enough archers for an arrow-hail, which also led to unnecessary slaying even when one could use it.

  So two sentries fell from the walls and one fell back out of sight, in return for one of Darin’s men down with an arrow in his leg. Meanwhile, the onrushing line overtook the fleeing villagers. Before Darin drew ahead, he saw his men starting to bring down their captives, each in a different fashion.

  Some men used clubs or fists. One man threw a woman over his shoulder and spanked her soundly; one could not tell whether she was screaming or laughing.

  Stalker used his bolas, his own design, drawing on both Plains barbarian and kender styles. When he had used both, he drew from his belt a weighted belaying pin and stopped two more villagers in their tracks with that.

  Now it was becoming vital to keep the villagers from closing their gate. A good dozen of their folk were still outside and free, but from the gate tower and from within the gate people were screaming “Close the gate now!”

  Darin charged through the ranks of the fleeing villagers, slapping aside with his gauntlet one dagger thrust. He reached the gate just as it started to swing shut, gripped it with both hands, took a deep breath, and heaved.

  The gate swung wide open again, and in the moment it stood so, two of Darin’s archers shot down the men standing in the gateway. Darin leaped forward, snatched up the gate bar, which was twice as long as he was tall and as thick as his thigh, gripped it like a quarterstaff, and laid about him.

  He struck only a few. Some fell in panic or simply lay down to save themselves, as others did by taking to their heels. In moments all those villagers who had been caught outside the gate were captives, and the gate stood open for the raiders to enter the village.

  Darin would not give that order without giving the villagers a chance to yield. Even the briefest of fights at close quarters could strew more bodies in the village lanes than an honorable man could wish to see.

  Darin cupped his hands. His voice was not quite in proportion to the rest of him—and a good thing too, Waydol said, or he would have deafened half his comrades by now—but it carried well.

  “Ho, village of Dinsas! We have you at our mercy, and bid you yield at once. If you yield, little wealth and no blood will you forfeit. Fight on, and harsher fate awaits you.”

  Only after a long silence followed did the raider chief remember that these villagers might not understand his minotaur-accented Istarian speech. This was farther than he and his men had raided, so Dinsas should be within the area settled directly from Istar or cities that spoke its tongue. But every land had villages where the folk walked their own path, spoke their own tongue, and made rude replies to the polite requests of strangers whom they could not understand.

  The silence grew longer still. Several of Darin’s men picked up the gate bar; a battering ram was always a useful addition to the raiders’ arsenal, but a heavy one to carry through the forest.

  At last, a square-built man with a red beard appeared in the gateway, facing Darin. He wore a well-kept sword hastily slung over a cobbler’s apron.

  “My name is Hurvo, Speaker of Dinsas. Who are you?”

  Darin looked down at the man. Hurvo looked more like an oversized dwarf than a short human, complete to the work-calloused hands. He did not appear to be short in courage, however.

  “I am he who possesses your village,” Darin replied, in measured tones. “I and my men wish to share that which lies within these walls.”

  “You possess the gate of Dinsas, no more,” Hurvo replied, in an equally level voice. “What are you prepared to pay for the smallest portion of the rest?”

  “As much as necessary, and if it grows to be too much, we shall possess all of it when the paying is done. This will not be of much concern to you, for you will no longer need possessions beyond your graveclothes.”

  “Oh, you don’t mean to eat us?” Hurvo said.

  The kender mimed spewing all over the big man carrying him. The man hastily set him down.

  “A kender!” someone said, in tones of loathing. Darin saw that several other villagers had come out from doorways and lanes to stand behind Hurvo.

  “Imsaffor Whistletrot,” the kender said, with an elaborate bow that turned into a handstand that in turn flowed into a somersault. The movement brought him close to Hurvo. Some of the villagers took a step backward.

  Darin quietly hand-signaled to his archers. The first man to try taking Whistletrot as a hostage would get an arrow through his gizzard. He would also probably get Whistletrot’s dagger in some less vital but surely painful spot if he survived the arrow.

  Kender lived without fear, for which there were many explanations, some more fanciful than true. One explanation which Darin suspected might hold truth was that it was not easy to kill a kender if he seriously objected to the idea.

  “Then you must be the Heir to the Minotaur and his band,” Hurvo said, tugging at his beard as if trying to estimate the price of repairing a shoe. “Rather far afield, aren’t you?”

  “We have come as far as Dinsas, which is all that concerns any of us for the moment,” Darin replied. He felt impatience creeping into his mind, but fought to keep it from his voice.

  Never give a man the notion that he can fight you by delaying matters. That was another of Waydol’s sayings that had proved true in many a skirmish, battle, and raid.

  “I will hear your terms,” Hurvo said. “Hearing them does not mean accepting them. Nor does offering you drink mean offering you our village. But we need not fight one another with dry throats.”

  The water was cold and clean, and, from the men’s sounds, the ale was good. Hurvo also sampled the first cup from each barrel before he allowed anyone else to drink.

  * * * * *

  “Speak now, Heir to the Minotaur, or is there another name you prefer?” Hurvo said, wiping foam from his beard.

  “That one does most honor to he who raised me—” Darin began.

 
Several villagers hissed. One made a gesture of aversion and threw down his cup.

  Hurvo sighed. “We have been through this argument before, Speko, and more often than you could count without taking off your boots. He may be heir to a red dragon, for all I care, but he is here, which makes it wise to listen to him.”

  Darin spoke quickly, before Speko or anyone else could complicate matters. “Our terms are simple. We shall remove from each house and shop one or two objects of value, as well as a certain amount of coin for the whole village. Also, we may eat and drink as we see fit tonight, and tomorrow when we break our fast before departing.

  “If no harm comes to our people, none will come to yours. We shall even help heal your wounded. For every man harmed, though, a life will be forfeit. If battle is forced on us, the village will be burned, over your heads or not, as the gods allow.”

  Hurvo frowned. “Have you wizard or cleric with healing magic at their command?”

  “Only the healing craft of those dwellers in the greenwood who must heal swiftly or die,” Darin said. He felt a certain compulsion to honesty with this self-possessed village speaker, whose refusal to change countenance had begun to remind him of Waydol.

  “Let it be so, if the village consents,” Hurvo said. “I can decide myself if there is no time, but there will be a better chance of peace if I may hear the leading folk.”

  The sun was westering, but darkness made neither peace bloody nor battle kindly. Nor would eagerness escape Hurvo’s sharp eyes.

  Darin nodded. “Do not dally, or there will be a higher price. But you have until the sun touches the top of that tree over there.” He pointed at what appeared to be a young vallenwood, at the southwestern corner of the fields.

  Hurvo nodded and led his villagers back into the shadows. Darin quickly ordered wedges thrust into the gate, to keep it open, and three or four archers climbed into the gate towers.

  The rest of the men set to guarding, tending the captives, and fitting the gate bar with handles to make a more useful battering ram. Even if Dinsas yielded, there was always someone who had lost a key, run away, or been killed, leaving no gentle way to reach the valuables behind a locked door.

  * * * * *

  Hurvo’s argument with his village took nearly all the allowed time and most of Darin’s remaining patience as well. The leader of the raiders was sitting on the battering ram, whetting the sword he had yet to draw in anger on this raid, when Hurvo reappeared.

  “We consent to your terms,” he said. Then he looked at Imsaffor Whistletrot. “Best keep that kender close by you.”

  “I am of this band, and go where I please,” Whistletrot said. “If it doesn’t please you—”

  “Any harm to him is harm to one of us,” Stalker said. He never raised his voice, even in battle, but Darin saw Hurvo take an exceptionally tight grip on his beard before nodding.

  After that, the evening went well enough, if one can so speak of the looting of a village by a band of robbers, however moderate in their conduct. It helped that for the most part Darin’s men chose to remain sober, although he noticed a good many water bottles in the piled loot. He’d wager that most of them would leave Dinsas tomorrow morning, tied to a man’s belt and filled with ale or wine.

  One man found a jug of mead and emptied it before he staggered out into the lanes again. Darin had him tossed down a disused well, then pulled up only when he was thoroughly frightened, half-drowned, and a little more sober. His chief hoped that the man would be fit to march in the morning. He had never left a living man behind on any raid, and few dead, but litters were always a burden.

  Imsaffor Whistletrot was here, there, and everywhere, seldom in Darin’s sight for longer than the chief needed to assure himself that the kender was still alive. Darin vowed to pass word to the kender’s village, although, any word that implied system and order seemed odd applied to kender.

  Regardless, it was not much more than a day’s march from Dinsas, though hard to find if the kender did not wish visitors. Darin thought they ought to know that the poison of hatred for nonhumans had flowed all the way from Istar to Dinsas, and to be on the watch against their once-friendly neighbors.

  Then he decided to leave the warning to Whistletrot, if in fact the local kender hadn’t learned all they needed to know by their own methods. They would also have their own methods of dealing with hostile neighbors, and if it came to betting, Darin would not bet against the kender.

  It was well after dark when Whistletrot reappeared for the last time. By now the village square was well lit with torches and bonfires, and the loot formed a glittering pile in the middle. The kender swung out hand over hand along a projecting rooftree to its carved head, then dropped lightly to the ground, turning a somersault in midair before landing.

  Darin looked up from a plate that held meat pie, porridge, and brownfish pickled with onions. “There’s a house that hasn’t been visited, and it’s locked,” Whistletrot said.

  Several men laughed. “You didn’t get in, and you call yourself a kender?” one said.

  Whistletrot looked hurt. “I was told not to bring my lockpicks along on this raid. I—” He fished in the pocket of his coat. “Oh, my. I suppose I forgot to clear out my pockets before we left. Let me see.”

  Quite a few things turned up in the pockets, including the lockpicks. Another was a small, shiny metal ball.

  “Ha, that’s one of my bola balls,” Stalker said. Short as he was for a sea barbarian, he still managed to loom over the kender.

  “It is? Come to think of it, it does look like it came off a ship. Let me hold it up to the light and—”

  Stalker tapped the underside of the kender’s arm lightly with his belaying pin. The ball flew into the air. Stalker’s hand plucked it from midair and pocketed it before it could fall more than a hand’s breadth.

  “You really ought to start putting your name on things you’re going to leave lying around,” Whistletrot began indignantly. “Otherwise there’ll be so much confusion—”

  Darin held up a hand for silence; Hurvo had appeared in the square.

  “Yes, Speaker?”

  “I heard you talking of a locked house. Did the kender—ah—do as usual with it?”

  “No.”

  “As well for him. That is the house of Sirbones, our priest of Mishakal.”

  “Then why hasn’t he come out to help us? We have enough work for three healers, I should think.”

  “Ah—we have been taking our hurt to him—eh—in private. He has been busy since it was still twilight.”

  Darin’s first thought was of taking a villager’s life—preferably Hurvo’s—for this piece of deceit. Then he realized that he had not said anything about Sirbones in the agreement. It would be dishonorable to punish the village for not granting what had not been asked in the first place!

  Also, none of the raiders were dead or even mortally hurt. There were two who needed healing to walk—one with an arrow wound and another because one of his captives had bitten him on the thigh—and several more who would march in greater comfort if they had healing.

  Darin took a deep breath. “If he is done with your folk, then let him come forth and heal mine.”

  “I cannot command him. That was not part of the agreement.”

  “You have a fine memory,” Darin said.

  Hurvo smiled. “Not so fine for a villager, really. My great-uncle—now that was a memory. He could hold all the buying and selling of a village’s three-day fair in his head, without writing a single figure on a wooden slab. Of course, he couldn’t write in the first place, but—”

  “That sounds like Uncle Trapspringer,” Whistletrot put in. “He once had to judge a contest—”

  Darin made a sound that plainly declared the unwisdom of continuing this contest of marvelous uncles.

  Hurvo turned and led the others toward the healer-cleric’s house, with Whistletrot riding on Darin’s shoulder.

  * * * * *

  The house was a
small one, only two rooms with a woodpile out back and a well-mortared chimney now trickling herb-scented smoke on the night wind. The door was ajar, and in the torchlight Darin saw that it bore what looked like blue scratchings.

  A closer look suggested that it was intended to be a carving of a woman holding a staff. It was hard to tell if she was intended to be clothed or not.

  Since Mishakal was supposed to be a rather chaste goddess, Darin decided in favor of her being clothed. He also decided that the carver had never seen a woman, clothed or not.

  Then he knocked.

  Two half-grown girls supporting an older man who limped but looked otherwise hale appeared in the doorway. “Bless you, Sirbones,” one of them said. “I don’t know what Father would have—oh!”

  Darin stepped aside. The others scurried past, unable to take their eyes off his towering form. It was a while before he noticed a small man with a sleek and full head of silver hair standing in the doorway.

  “Ah—you are Sirbones?”

  “Oh. Yes. Hurvo warned me you were coming. He was not quite telling the truth about my being done with the villagers. However, I have worked on all the wounded as well as the regular sick. Kyloth was my last for the day, and for him it would take a greater healer than I to give him back his youthful pace. The one who healed his ankle the first time left some of the spell bound into the bone, which no doubt seemed a good idea at the time and might have been if the healing had been properly performed—”

  Eventually Darin was able to get the priest’s attention, though not before he’d begun to feel as if he were listening to an elderly gnome recite his entire name. In fact, Sirbones did look rather like an oversized gnome, much as Hurvo resembled a large dwarf—had there been mixing of blood with more than elves around here in days not only long past but wholly forgotten?

  A fine jest, if some of those in Dinsas who loathe nonhumans have themselves the blood of elves or gnomes, kender or dwarves!