Knights of the Rose Read online

  “Can you listen—forgive me if that’s not the best word—for the source of the magic?” Pirvan asked. “Can you try to locate it?”

  Tarothin’s wrinkled face acquired yet more furrows as he frowned. He ran his fingers over his bare and parchment-hued scalp, as if hunting for the hair the years had taken.

  “I can try, but not without danger or with certainty of success.” Tarothin had grown more modest about his powers of late, but they were not declining. The Red Robe would be the first to tell Pirvan, if it were so. “Danger, if the source is living, detects me, and strikes back—by magic or by common means. Failure, if the source no longer lives or is not in a single place.”

  “Old magic?” The chill of the desert night seemed to strike deeper into Pirvan. He reined in his imagination.

  Tarothin nodded. “No one knows what lies beneath this desert now. Oh, we know who lived here in the ages before it was desert—mostly elves and ogres. But even the elves know little of the magic of their distant ancestors. Only the gods know who wrought what, how long ago, and how much might have outlasted the living spellcasters.”

  The chill would not ease, but Pirvan chose to ignore it. “The Desert—the Free Riders—”

  Tarothin laughed softly. “You’re doing better each day.”

  “I should hope so,” Pirvan said testily. “The last thing I want is to be mistaken for an Istarian who repeats the kingpriests’ lies about ‘the lesser folk.’ ”

  “Especially to be mistaken by one of those folk,” Tarothin added.

  Pirvan gave something between a sigh and a grunt of impatience. “Those who roam the desert survive well enough.”

  “We hear only of those who do survive,” Tarothin said. “Who knows what might befall whole tribes, of whom word never reaches the outside world? Perhaps the Silvanesti know, but they might as well be on Nuitari for all they tell humans these days.”

  “All of which is why we are blistering our aging arses riding across this trash heap of the gods,” a voice rumbled from just behind Pirvan. He turned to see Grimsoar, and put a finger to his lips.

  Pirvan’s old comrade muttered something in the tongue of the sea barbarians, and frowned before going on more quietly. “All right, all right. But we are here, and Tarothin is only pointing out new problems that the rest of us might never have worried about if he’d kept quiet. What can he do to get us safely out of the desert, besides what he’s said?”

  “Nothing,” Tarothin said with a grin.

  Grimsoar started a roar of laughter, then strangled it at birth, and clapped Tarothin on the shoulder so hard that the wizard staggered. “Still honest as ever, friend Red Robe. Well, I’ll sleep no worse tonight for this mystery magic, at least, even if you can’t tell me the wizard’s name, color, teacher, and what his staff looks like.”

  “If I could do that from what I have sensed,” Tarothin said, “I could probably fly us to the borderlands. Being what I am—well, it grows late. I will keep vigil for a trifle longer, then bind my staff with a light spell to make it wake me if danger threatens. Best put the sentries in pairs, too, if you have not already done so.”

  “The day I need a Red Robe to tell me how to guard a camp—” Grimsoar began.

  “ ‘—is the day Serafina bears three sons at one birth,’ ” Tarothin and Pirvan finished for him.

  “Don’t say that too often,” the wizard added. “Words like that have a way of turning around when you least expect it and biting you like a serpent.”

  “For serpents I have a good stick,” Grimsoar said. He turned, and threw a final word over his shoulder. “Also for wizards who give unasked-for advice.”

  Then he vanished toward the camp. After seeing that Tarothin wished to keep vigil alone, Pirvan followed him.

  Gildas Aurhinius, Captain of Hosts in the service of Istar, awoke from a dream in which a sand dune had fallen upon him. He could feel the hot sand immobilizing his limbs, squeezing his chest, fighting its way into his nose and mouth to stop his breath—

  Then he was awake enough to realize that he’d become tangled in the blankets piled on his cot. The desert night was chill. There were more blankets than he’d pulled over himself when he lay down. His servants were as determined as ever to take care of him according to their wishes rather than his own.

  Ah, the omnipotence of a senior commander in the field, Aurhinius thought.

  Then he realized that he had been awakened by more than blankets. From the camp outside came shouts, curses, more than an occasional obscenity, the braying of asses and mules, and the neighing of horses.

  Since he first put on the captain’s belt at the age of eighteen, Aurhinius had slept clothed while in the field, with weapons in reach. He still did, although his belt was a good deal longer, his clothing much finer, and his weapons as decorative as they were useful.

  He had his feet on the gravel floor of the tent when the flap burst open.

  “Ah, Nemyotes. I would have sent for you to explain this uproar.”

  Aurhinius’s secretary nodded. “I would have been here sooner, but en route I gathered that explanation. It is merely another band of tax soldiers joining us. Some of them had been long without wine and stole it from other bands better provided.”

  Aurhinius rinsed his mouth from the water jug, then spat on the floor. He wished he could have spat in the face of the captains who had so mishandled their men.

  “The watch commander asked that his men be allowed to remain on duty even after the change of watch. That will give us twice as many reliable men.”

  “Did he perhaps ask this after a hint or two that this would please me?”

  “I said nothing that a reasonable man could call a hint. Both captains are simply clearheaded men who know what to do when faced with such disorder.”

  “And green dragons sell their eggs in the public market of Silversmith Square on the third day of every month,” Aurhinius said.

  Nemyotes had the grace to flush. Aurhinius laughed. “You did well. Just remember in the future not to waste my time explaining that you did not do what you plainly did.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Aurhinius donned the rest of what would make him look like a general commanding armies and not a sleepy fat old man roused from his bed. Boots, back and breastplate (straps tightened with Nemyote’s help), helmet tied under his chin with that touching if impractical gold and silver clasp that was a love-gift from Synia—

  As Aurhinius buckled on his scabbarded sword and slid his boot dagger into its sheath, trumpets blared outside. He started, then recognized the ceremonial guard-mounting calls. The new soldiers arriving for guard duty were doing so with as much formality as if they were changing the guard outside the kingpriest’s gates.

  Not to mention as much noise. That should certainly draw the attention of even the most thoroughly soused sell-sword. Once you had such a man’s attention, you had begun the process of restoring him to discipline.

  The trumpets blew one final flourish, a bit ragged as a few of the trumpeters ran out of breath. Then the drums took their place, beating out a steady, slow march—the one used when the regular foot of Istar was advancing into battle.

  “The captain of the relief is a clearheaded fellow, even if you say so,” Aurhinius said. Nemyotes covered his embarrassment this time by helping his commander buckle on his white-bordered red cloak of rank.

  “Now, let us go out and see what these fellows are about,” Aurhinius said.

  Nemyotes opened the tent flap and stepped aside as the sentries beyond the opening slammed their spear butts on the gravel or raised their swords to the vertical in the salute of honor.

  As Aurhinius stepped out of the tent, a high-pitched scream rose above the drums. It sounded like a woman’s cry, and Aurhinius grimaced.

  “If the new men brought camp followers, in violation of my express orders—”

  “That didn’t sound like a woman,” Nemyotes said. He swallowed. “If I were guessing—”


  “We all are. Better guess than stand gaping.”

  “A kender. A kender is hurt.”

  Aurhinius would have kept all the “lesser breeds” away from the camps of both his men and the sell-swords, for their own protection if nothing else. But try to use gentle persuasion on a kender! Not in living memory had it succeeded, which made kender all the harder to deal with when some wine-swollen, hate-ridden fool saw a kender as sword meat.

  Aurhinius briefly considered what might happen to his dignity if he thrust himself into the middle of this. He also considered what might happen to his aging stomach if he forced himself to stand outside the brawl, waiting for others to tell him what was going on. His stomach was barely equal to field rations; it would never survive such an ordeal.

  Aurhinius did allow Nemyotes to take the lead, and refrained from drawing his sword. Otherwise they moved out at a trot that threatened to become a run at any moment.

  Hawkbrother was nineteen, an age at which a warrior is often ready to die rather than admit that something is beyond his or her power. However, he was wiser than his years. On his father’s side he was descended from seven chiefs, on his mother’s from four, and none of the eleven had left behind the reputation of a witling.

  The Gryphons lived near lands ruled by dwarves, Silvanesti elves, Istarians, hostile clans, and the sand spirits that reigned over the deep desert, no matter what city-bred clerics might say. Given their neighbors, Gryphons could not afford to be led by fools, or breed such among even their youngest warriors.

  It took Hawkbrother only a short while before he saw that there was no easy approach to the animals. The sentries were too well placed and too alert. All that had kept them from detecting him so far was the lack of wind. On a night so still that a grain of sand fell straight from one’s hand to the ground, scents did not carry readily.

  Hawkbrother briefly considered retreating to One-Ear’s position, and returning with at least one companion. That, however, would take time. More briefly, he considered making a gap in the sentry line. As a chief’s son, he would not sully his hands by killing the innocent with a garrote, but he had other equally sure methods of silencing folk who happened to be in the wrong place. But a kill, silent or not, would sooner or later be detected. Then even those who had been friendly or neutral before would owe Hawkbrother, son of Redthorn, a blood debt.

  He also considered slipping in among the tents and learning of these intruders from what he found there. However, he would then have to make his escape on foot from a perhaps alerted enemy. He shuddered briefly at the idea of trying to outrun that long-limbed giant, who could probably run down an antelope on most ground.

  This left only one way in among the animals, and that was the most perilous. He would have to slide down into the canyon, crawl like a fly along the wall, and come up among the animals from the unguarded canyon side. And he would have to do all this silently, or far enough from alert ears for rattling stones and bruising falls not to raise the alarm.

  Hawkbrother decided that tonight would give him the reputation of either a shrewd and courageous warrior, or else a hotheaded fool.

  If he thought too long about the odds in favor of either outcome, he realized, he might lose his nerve or at least go fumble-fingered into the canyon. Then he would have no reputation at all, a dead man being neither coward nor hero.

  Hawkbrother studied the moonlit canyon rim until he found what seemed to be a promising gap in the rock. It was also far enough from the sentry circle that if he was wrong, he could try again.

  Belly as close to the ground as a snake’s, knees and elbows moving with the precision of a well-greased mill, Hawkbrother crept toward the canyon rim.

  As Gildas Aurhinius strode toward the scene of the riot (or whatever name the law counselors might later give it), he knew that he could not really cut an imposing figure for long, moving at this pace. Too many years of good living had taken their toll—and for the last ten of those years he had been drinking more than a wise man should.

  What was wisdom, though, against the frustration of doing justice to all folk and saving your men in the bargain, only to be sent farther and farther from Istar with each new command? It had been three years before Aurhinius realized how the rest of his life would be shaped by Waydol’s War. He’d taken wounds in the field that hurt less than that realization. For wounds of the body, there were healers. For wounds of the spirit, there was only wine.

  Nemyotes was in glaring contrast to his commander. The secretary was short and small-boned, but he had the lean fitness of a hunting dog, as well as the cropped hair, permanent tan, and scars of a seasoned fighter. His armor no longer fit him like a man’s gear on a boy; he could afford to have it made to order.

  I wrought better than I knew, the day I saved him from drowning on the north shore, Aurhinius thought, not for the first time. I gave Istar a notable soldier and, the True Gods willing, the kingpriests a formidable foe.

  By now the commander and his secretary had acquired a respectable escort. A score of soldiers formed a square around them, hemming them in so closely that Aurhinius could barely see what lay ahead. He was about to protest this delicacy when Nemyotes pushed his way through the rank, shouldering aside two soldiers each twice his size. The square halted, the soldiers opened out—holding their weapons at the ready, Aurhinius noticed—and the commander was allowed to contemplate the scene.

  Two kender stood over the corpse of a third—it had to be a corpse, with such wounds. Kender were tenacious of life, but even they were beyond healing when cloven from shoulder to belly with a sword or axe. Beyond the kender stood a line of Aurhinius’s soldiers, and beyond them he saw the shaggy hair and leather-helmeted heads of the cutpurses and burglars who had been renamed sell-swords and sent to collect taxes from the Silvanesti.

  “Who is senior here among the tax soldiers?” Aurhinius snapped. It hurt his tongue like the edge of a broken tooth to use formal titles under these circumstances, but one might as well begin with politeness.

  “I am,” said a voice that was hauntingly familiar. Then a tall man in richly decorated armor pushed through both ranks to face Aurhinius.

  Aurhinius at once knew why the voice had been familiar.

  “Captain Zephros. I see you have risen in the service of—Istar, since we last met.”

  The last time they had met, Zephros slaughtered a Black Robe wizard, fearful that she was trying to enspell Aurhinius. With her died much knowledge that might have served Istar well. Aurhinius had dismissed Zephros from his service, hoping the dismissal would end his career in the hosts of Istar, and prayed that at least their paths would never cross again.

  The hopes had been in vain and the prayers had gone unanswered, or so it seemed.

  “It seems so,” Zephros replied. “Or I would not have come here as commander of this new band of tax soldiers. Is this the sort of order kept in your camps, my lord?”

  “This camp is not mine, as you well know,” Aurhinius snapped. “Its discipline is a matter for its own captains. But incidents such as this are a matter for all who have come on this campaign. They can make us unwanted enemies.”

  “Kender are friends to no human,” Zephros said. Aurhinius thought he saw the kenders’ fingers twitch, and noticed that they were both armed.

  Justice, in this case, would probably be letting them carve on Zephros until he was in the same state as their friend, thought Aurhinius. So, forget about justice; consider how to keep order.

  “Kender,” Aurhinius said. “What have you to say for yourself and your friend?”

  One of the kender (he wore a blue-embroidered vest, which was all that set him apart from his comrade) nodded. “Edelthirb was trying to do a hurt man a favor. He’d fallen and was going to be trampled—”

  “Edelthirb or the man?” Aurhinius asked. He also prayed silently to every god whom he could name in one breath that for once a kender would speak briefly and to the point.

  That prayer at least was answered. It
seemed that Edelthirb had tried to pull an unconscious man clear of the riot. (The kender offered no opinions on the cause of the riot; Aurhinius did not ask.) Possibly he had looked as if he was “handling” the man, turning out his pockets and pouches for the odd valuable or curiosity.

  Then along came Zephros, who drew his sword—a desert-style scimitar, with a heavy curved slashing blade—and cut Edelthirb down. The kender’s death cry awoke the unconscious man, who had run off and hidden himself in the tent city of the sell-swords.

  “Wonderful,” Aurhinius said. “Zephros, is this true?”

  He had been prepared for a blustering denial that any kender could count fingers in front of his face, let alone identify a swordsman. Instead, Zephros nodded.

  “It wasn’t handling, it was plain theft. Anybody who thinks the two aren’t the same knows nothing about kender. And theft is a crime that I can punish with summary justice, even death, under the warrant given me and the other tax officers.”

  Aurhinius immediately rejected the simplest solution, which would have been to serve Zephros as he had served the kender. But the warrants did give the commanders of the sell-swords unusual discretion in discipline—probably the only way such a flock of cutthroats and wastrels could be kept in any sort of order.

  Zephros had at least a respectable portion of a case. More than enough to make his summary execution out of the question.

  “That warrant applies only to people under your command,” Aurhinius said.

  “Or defending them.”

  “Have you identified the man who was being handled?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you know he was under your command, or anybody else’s? He may have been a bigger thief than any kender, for all we know.”

  “Are you saying the kender was under your authority, Lord Aurhinius?”

  Nemyotes laughed so loudly that everyone, including the kender, stared at him. “Friend Zephros, have you ever tried to claim authority over kender?” That drew laughter, even from the kender.