The Wayward Knights Page 4

  Pirvan stood in front of the silver mirror in its gilded wood frame and combed his beard. The mirror was one of many little luxuries in the chamber he and Haimya shared; small, but as snug as a ground squirrel's winter burrow.

  Pirvan believed Lady Eskaia when she said that Jemar and she had made their fortune honestly. He was not so sure about her having done without help from her father's fellow merchant princes. It would be only wisdom for them to aid a sea rover and later his widow, so as to have their goodwill and some use of their ears and eyes.

  The comb tugged at the knight's beard. For all the steel of Krynn, he could not have grown a proper knight's mustache. But his beard was more robust, gray as it was.

  Pirvan finished combing and turned to the bed. It was of ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl, with curtains of silk as fine as one of Haimya's summer robes. It was also so piled with quilts and coverlets that it was hard to tell which bulge was Haimya.

  Pirvan walked to the bed and began prodding the bulges. At last he was rewarded by a murmured, "Ouch!"

  "I thought you were asleep."

  "Not quite." Haimya thrust an arm out and drew her husband onto the bed beside her. "Do you think Eskaia was jesting when she said she had accepted Aurhinius?" she asked.

  Pirvan frowned. That was a question he had not expected, and for which he had no ready answer. "You were her attendant for two years," he said. "You ought to know her better than I."

  "I attended her for two years when she was hardly older than our daughter is now, and greener than our Eskaia was at fourteen," Haimya explained. "And that was many years ago."

  "You evade your duties well."

  "When have I ever done that?" she asked. "Come here, and I will tend to them this very moment." Her grin and the tight grip on his arm showed what she meant by "duties."

  Pirvan laughed, "If the question is serious—"

  "To be sure," Haimya said.

  "Then I would say that she does not jest. That she may speak of a previous proposal, but that she considers herself to have accepted it regardless. I think she would break Aurhinius's head if he refused now, as she would break his heart if she jested. Eskaia is not the sort to make such jests."

  "I am of the same mind," she said. "As well, because with Eskaia and Aurhinius leading Vuinlod's volunteers, there will be space enough for the Knights of Solamnia."

  Why do you think any knights will come?" Pirvan asked. "Or that I will even ask for them?"

  "Because I have heard you muttering to yourself, in a way you do only when you are composing a letter to Sir Niebar. If you did not intend to ask for knights, you would not be intending such a letter."

  Pirvan felt that Haimya's logic leaped ahead at a pace that left him floundering far to the rear. He was, however, used to her mind working as the Free Riders raided: too fast for others to follow. She also made sense.

  "If the knights sail to Suivinari in the ships of Vuinlod and its friends," Pirvan said, "then they will blazon their friendship with the town for all to see. For the town, and for all its folk, human and otherwise."

  It occurred to Pirvan that the Grand Master might also listen to those who argued that the knights should declare no such friendship, lest Istar take it amiss. Pirvan hoped that no Grand Master could be such a lackwit as to confuse the kingpriest and his minions with Istar and all its folk, great or small, wise or foolish.

  Hope was all that he could do, however. That, and not put his doubts into words. That would spoil the warm mood in the chamber tonight.

  He realized just how warm it was, when Haimya gripped his arm again, and with her free hand tugged at his beard until he lowered his head to receive a kiss.

  "I thought you were too weary," he said.

  "Weary, but in need of soothing," she whispered. "I wonder how much of the light loving among the sell-swords came from that need, after a battle or a hard march."

  Pirvan let himself be drawn under the bedclothes. He wondered briefly if Haimya had a portion of the "light loving" herself when she was a sell-sword, then decided that it did not matter if other men had once held her.

  For twenty years he and his lady had held each other, and held to each other. The gods might take away everything else they had given him, and he would still be richer than he had ever dreamed of being.

  Chapter 3

  Gerik of Tirabot halted his descent from the wall as a loose stair stone turned under his foot. He knelt to examine the stone more closely.

  One more piece of work for the masons, he thought. A long list already, certain to become longer and costlier.

  He wondered what it would cost to gird the manor house and outbuildings with a wall such as had once defended the old Tirabot Keep up the hill. Or one such as the dwarves were now finishing at the citadel of Belkuthas, far to the south. This would certainly be a sum far beyond his father's means, and likely to daunt even those Knights of Solamnia who supported the idea of a strong Tirabot.

  Another reason for not submitting himself as a candidate for the knights, Gerik decided. If they did not think they owed his father protection, then certainly Pirvan of Tirabot did not owe them his only son.

  He leaped down the last few steps, landing with flexed ankles and no unexpected pains. He was proud of being as fir and trained in arms as any knight—even Sir Niebar had called him so. Perhaps not having to spend so much time memorizing all the books that the Orders demanded helped, giving him more time for arms practice.

  No, that was unjust to the Knights of Solamnia, and flattered himself. Gerik had not asked to join the knights because, as the son of Sir Pirvan, he was captain over the manor when his father was away. Even when Gerik traveled with his father, both Pirvan and his other companion treated him as a full-fledged warrior. To return to being treated as a child, as he would be during his training among the knights, was not something Gerik could face.

  This was hardly a reason he could confess to his father, Pirvan had submitted to the training of the knights when he was rising thirty, a seasoned master thief of Istar and all but a married man as well. Pirvan would wonder (aloud) if Gerik thought the rule about learning to obey before you learned to command did not apply to him.

  Footsteps behind made him turn. His sister Rubina was hurrying up to him, holding a pewter tray with a letter on it, the ink still drying.

  "Brother, can you read this letter of mine to our parents before I seal it?" she asked. "I want to know if I have said everything as I ought to, and not written down any family secrets."

  "I thought your tutor does that," Gerik said impatiently.

  "He's asleep."

  "Not drunk at this time of day, I hope."

  "No," she said. "He complained of a headache, but I didn't smell wine on his breath."

  "Good."

  Chedishin (the short form of his name) was a half-elven retired man-at-arms, whom Pirvan kept on as a tutor for his children; one way of keeping him from starving. With no need to worry about food, Chedishin had for a while indulged himself in wine, until Pirvan frowned and threatened.

  Gerik read the letter with great attention, not wishing to offend his younger sister. She wrote a very fair hand and seldom put a word wrong. It was almost as if the great learning of her namesake, a Black Robe wizard who had helped to win Waydol's War but had not survived it, had been passed on to the girl.

  As for the rest, she promised to be sturdy rather than tall, and comely rather than beautiful, but Gerik was sure she would have as many suitors as a reasonable girl could wish. He hoped that his parents would live on for many years yet, so that all the work of telling the decent suitors from the others would not fall to him.

  He finished the letter and handed it back to Rubina. She read doubt on his face. "Is it the part about how the walls are growing that you do not like?" she asked.

  "Yes."

  "I thought of that. But Father and Mother have been away long enough that matters have changed. Also, they talked much about strengthening this place, when the
y thought I could not hear. I know it is a worry to them."

  “It is also knowledge our enemies might pay to have," Gerik told her.

  "Yes, but if the king—"

  "If 'our enemies…' " Gerik said, an edge in his voice.

  Rubina shrugged, and said, "We know friends from enemies. Even I do. But I was going to say, if our enemies want to buy the knowledge, they can have it for pennies from any herdsman who has driven his cattle past our gate. They do not need to open our letters."

  That was, unfortunately, true. Fortifying Tirabot Manor was not something that could be hidden—any more than could the fortifying of other farms, manors, and estates among their neighbors go unnoticed. A plague of building was abroad in the land, and Gerik thought that by the time it was done, the only folk left with any money would be the masons!

  Rubina could send the letter, however. He was about to tell her so when a sentry hailed him from the roof of the manor. "Ho, Master Gerik!" the soldier called. "There's a woman coming out of the woods across the stream from the lower pasture. She looks a mite ragged and sick, and there's some children with her, too."

  This was no surprise to Gerik. Tirabot Manor had a name for being hospitable to those driven off their land by local feud, natural disaster, or sheer ill luck. Four or five such parties knocked at the gate during the average month.

  "Rubina," Gerik said, "go to the arms room and have the men there ready to ride. Then go to the stables and have my horse—"

  Rubina looked rebellious, but before she could turn looks into words, the sentry called again. This time his voice shook with incredulity.

  "By all the True Gods! That woman's got a band of kender with her!"

  The shouts that sounded from behind the kender named Horimpsot Elderdrake grew louder. Either someone had seen him, thought they had seen him, or decided to shout just to encourage himself or his comrades.

  The kender thought that the humans needed encouraging. Not so much that they caught him, of course, because if they did that they would surely kill him, and he did not want that to happen.

  Not that he was really afraid of death. Kender do not fear death, in and of itself, so much as they hate the fact that death tends to keep them from finding out what happens next. Elderdrake had this curiosity as strongly as the next kender, and the next kender (and all other kender) were a race that seemed to have been created by the gods with an extra measure of curiosity.

  However, he was afraid, though not exactly as a human would understand it, of failing his new comrades and their human friend. He had wandered onto the land of the Spillgather clan just after they had decided to befriend a young woman named Ellysta, who had offended the kingpriest, or a friend of the kingpriest, or someone who used the kingpriest's name a great deal.

  The Spillgathers had not explained Ellysta's alleged offense in much detail. Elderdrake doubted that he would have understood it if they had. In spite of all the time he had spent traveling, he was still young, and not all of that time had been spent among humans. In fact, he made a serious effort to walk very wide of some kinds of humans.

  Being properly brought up, Elderdrake had decided to help his hosts bring Ellysta to safety, which turned out to be Tirabot Manor. This seemed wise to Elderdrake, who knew a good deal about Sir Pirvan, Knight of the Rose and lord of Tirabot, and had learned still more from his own former traveling companion, Imsaffor Whistletrot.

  All of which explained why Horimpsot Elderdrake was 'darting hither and thither in the forest. He was trying to keep the men who had come for Ellysta on his trail, and lead them away from the trail of the Spillgathers who were taking the woman to the manor. If he kept them chasing him long enough, they would never find Ellysta before she was inside the manor's walls and under the protection of its lord and lady.

  More shouts echoed through the trees, now conveying more pain than enthusiasm. Stinging nettles grew freely in these woods, even if not so heavily during the late winter as at other times. It sounded as if someone had blundered into a patch of them, or maybe skewered himself on a comrade's weapon.

  Elderdrake reached back to pat his hoopak. Even slung across his back, it was a trifle awkward in dense under-growth, but he would no more abandon it than he would his pouches. It had been a gift from Imsaffor Whistletrot, when the older kender gave up traveling.

  The underbrush gave way to a slope deep in dead leaves and the blackened remnants of last year's ferns. By crouching low, Elderdrake discovered that he could be almost completely invisible to anyone either upstream or downstream.

  He had just made this discovery when men charged into the open from both directions. They seemed to have some idea of which way he was going, but not where he was. Elderdrake decided to use this fact.

  He cupped his hands, pitched his voice to imitate a human's (as well as any kender could, and better than most), and shouted: "Down there! By the big redstripe!"

  He had taken note that there were well-grown redstripe trees near both human parties. So naturally, both thought that the shouter was referring to the other redstripe. The range was long for spears, but easy shooting for both longbows and crossbows.

  So many arrows and bolts flew, besides the spears, that Elderdrake was amazed the humans did not wipe each other from the face of Krynn. However, few of the archers and none of the spearmen were true masters of their weapons. Only four men went down, and of these, two rose again. One of those who remained lying down howled and cursed like a man in rude health.

  Elderdrake realized that he had not reduced the odds against him much. So he crawled down the slope until he had a clear jump to the other side of the ravine, gathered himself into a ball, and hurled himself across.

  He landed sprawling and breathless, having made a very fair jump even for one of his nimble race. Shouts said that he was in plain sight of one human party, but only a few arrows flew his way and none struck close. Either the pursuers were short of arrows, or they were suddenly cautious about striking down comrades.

  Two humans attempted to follow Elderdrake's leap. One of them made the jump and after much scrabbling and scrambling, managed to reach level ground. By then Elderdrake was again well hidden.

  The other men failed the leap and plummeted into the ravine with crashing and screaming that suggested they would be pursuing no one for a while.

  Elderdrake used the time it took the other humans to decide on evergreen whose needles would hide him, stout enough to support him at a great height, and close enough to other trees so that after dark he could leap into their branches and make his escape.

  Of course, the humans might realize that his letting himself be treed was a ruse. But even if it only took them the rest of the morning to gain this insight, that would be enough for Ellysta and the Spillgathers. Meanwhile, Elderdrake intended to listen carefully to anything the humans said. The Spillgathers might think they knew everything necessary about their enemies, but Elderdrake's experience of war told him otherwise. Also, even if the Spillgathers knew much, he knew very little.

  Picking a path through the underbrush, where a four-foot kender could slip along easily and a six-foot human would become hopelessly tangled, Horimpsot Elderdrake sought his tree.

  The ship house smelled of fresh lumber, sawdust, paint, and sundry oils. Torvik stopped to watch two workers applying a foul-smelling concoction to the bottom of the ship propped up in the middle of the house, Gridjor Hem's Flying Dart. Hem himself was standing on deck amidships, and hailed Torvik when he saw the younger captain. Torvik sometimes wondered how much his acceptance owed to trust in his skill and how much to memory of his father—or even fear of his mother.

  However, Hem seemed sincere in his affability and his fraternal embrace of Torvik, when he had scrambled down to the ship house floor. "Don't worry," he added. "We'll have Dart out of here within a day or two. Plenty of time for your little beauty."

  Torvik knew undue optimism when he heard it, and besides, it was nearly the end of Brookgreen. Half the work on the
ships gathering in Vuinlod was already being done outdoors.

  "Don't cut yourself short for my sake," Torvik said, trying to sound wholly at ease. "A day or few more, and we'll be able to take her over to Hauldown Strand and do her bottom by careening.

  "We might buy some of your bottom grease, though, if you've any left when Dart is done. It doesn't smell like you're using whale oil."

  Sailors planning a long voyage in warm waters often smeared their ships' bottoms with poisonous grease, to discourage weeds, barnacles, and woodborers. The most common base for such grease was crudely-rendered whale oil, except in waters where the Dargonesti were known to roam.

  The Dargonesti knew that humans hunted whales elsewhere, but in their home waters they regarded all the great sea mammals as under their protection. This had led to ugly, even bloody incidents more than a few times in the past, when the Dargonesti had been more numerous, better armed, and more widely scattered.

  "I'm not," Hem said. "If there are Dargonesti around Suivinari they might help us, with knowledge if naught else. Small point to offending them. That's seal blubber that went into the oil. Takes more seals than it does whales, but we won't be in—eh, Torvik? You still listening?"

  Torvik realized that his face must have shown more than it should have. "With all my ears," he lied.

  "Didn't look like it. Your mind was—ha! Is it true what they say about Dimernesti around Suivinari?"

  Torvik shrugged. "I only know what I think I saw," he said. "Everybody's used their own imagination on that, to spin tales. So what have you heard?"

  Hem lowered his voice. "That a Dimernesti came aboard, in her woman shape, and—ah, what men and women do, she did with the men of Kingfisher's Claw?"

  Torvik laughed. "Don't forget the other half of the story, the Dimernesti in man form who entertained all our women!"

  Hem laughed in turn, longer than Torvik thought the joke deserved. When he'd caught his breath and wiped his eyes, the older captain shrugged. "I suppose the odd Dimernesti or two's nothing important," he said. "Not when Suivinari's grown magic that can kill minotaurs and make tree roots dangerous, and we've got to sail up there and put it down before the minotaurs blame us for it! But it's been so long since there've been any tales of the Dimernesti worth hearing that I'm curious.