Knights of the Crown, page 21
“On your head be it, my lady. Ah—do you want a helmet, so if what’s on your head is a stone—?”
“Thank you, Grimsoar.”
“I’ll see if there’s one that fits.” He went out, muttering not quite under his breath about the futility of helmets for women who didn’t have anything important in their heads.
* * * * *
The two sentries both looked like men farther out in the darkness and much farther from their comrades than they cared for. They were also well armed, one with a bow as well as a sword. Both wore breastplates and low-crowned helmets with rims.
They would still have been no great matter except for one problem. Their post was astride the only route Pirvan and Haimya could take to the castle without passing close to one of the two guard camps. Each of those camps contained twenty times two soldiers, and would have sentries out as thick as bees around a rosebush.
Haimya whispered, “If those two have the wits of a hen, we can’t take one without alerting the other. We don’t have bows, and one of them does. So we have to be close, silent, and take both of them at once.”
Her words did not say that this was impossible or at least dangerous. Her tone was eloquent.
Pirvan feared he would need eloquence, too, if he was to persuade her of the need to avoid killing.
“We also have to leave them alive,” he said.
“In our rear?”
“If they are senseless—”
“They can awake and give the alarm. Even their absence from their posts might do that.”
“They will be even more absent if we kill them and have to dispose of the bodies. That will cost us time, and perhaps any hope of peace with Synsaga. He may not hold his men back from vengeance for slain comrades.”
“You were not so reluctant to kill the night we went to Hipparan.”
“Nor will I be reluctant if such a situation comes again. It has not.”
Her jaw set. He wanted to loosen it with a kiss, but knew she would in return loosen his teeth, at the very least.
“Haimya, once you spoke of doing the work we came here for. So do I.”
A silence broken only by dripping from the trees and a distant rumble of thunder lasted so long that Pirvan wondered if his companion was still breathing. Then she sighed.
“Perhaps a soldier’s memories are not always the best guide.”
“I will say the same of a thief’s. Now, let me turn a thief’s eye on these gentlemen.”
Pirvan studied the edges of the open ground where the sentries stood. If they had a comrade, even one, hiding under cover—
He saw no one, and his night-sight was as good in the country as in the city. He picked a tree near the left-hand sentry, one whose branches drooped with a burden of seed pods. He began the familiar exercise of committing every detail of the tree to memory, until the spell would let him appear to be that tree for a few minutes.
Which, with luck, would be all they needed.
“Pirvan, what—?”
Pirvan put a finger to his lips. He finished the memory work, then motioned Haimya back into the thicket, where they could whisper without fear of being overheard.
“We have to move fast, because I don’t know when they relieve the sentries. If we wait, we could stumble on four men instead of two.”
“A pleasure I can do without.”
“Likewise. But the two—have you noticed that they’ve chosen places where they can watch without having to move far?”
“Places with good views, too.”
“Yes, but their movements are still predictable.”
“I have done sentry duty, Pirvan.”
“I’m sure of it. And I’m sure you moved around unpredictably. I wasn’t trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs.”
“Then what—”
“There’s a part of their rounds that brings them close together, close enough that they can be taken together.”
“If they weren’t out in the open, able to see anyone coming …”
“What about trees?”
“Walking trees—?” Her face started to show scorn, then her mouth opened. “Your Spell of Seeing the Expected?”
Pirvan nodded.
* * * * *
By the time Eskaia came on deck, the two minotaur ships were close enough that she could make out details.
They were low, rakish craft, more like Jemar’s ships than Golden Cup, though minotaur size meant they were higher out of the water. They had two masts, with square rigging on the foremast and lateen on the mainmast, a bowsprit, and what looked unpleasantly like rams at the bows.
As Eskaia watched, minotaurs swarmed into the rigging and clutched lines. Their red-and-green sails vanished, and the ships slowed until the water barely rippled over their rams.
Then white sweeps thrust out of ports set low along the waterline. It made the minotaur ships look as if they had a sea bird’s wings.
Kurulus came up beside Eskaia. “Here, Ma’am. Grimsoar found it, but he had to go up forward.”
Eskaia set the helmet on her head. It was heavy enough to make her arms tremble while she held it, and her neck trembled after she put it on. She had worn pageant armor for costume parties a few times, but this was very different—smelling of leather, sweat, and oil, tight on top and loose at the sides, and with a chin strap she was making a hopeless botch of tying.
“Let me help you, Ma’am.”
She stood, staring at the approaching ships as the crew took battle stations. Most remained on the fore and aftercastles, where they would have the advantage of height. That would make it harder for the minotaurs to force a hand-to-hand grapple, where their superior strength and reach would give them the advantage.
Now the two minotaur ships were turning bows-on to Golden Cup’s port side. Smoke curled up from their low aftercastles, and Eskaia wondered if they mounted siege engines, or by some miracle had caught fire.
It was neither. Two smoking pots rose slowly up the mainmasts, until they dangled just below the tops, swaying in the slight breeze. The smoke drifted away downwind, turning from black to brown to pale gray before vanishing in the haze over the sea.
Eskaia started as the mate slammed a large fist against the bulwarks. Her mouth was too dry to let her ask what was happening. Besides, she knew she would learn in moments.
“Sorry, Ma’am,” the mate said. His words came out like the last breaths of a dying man. “That’s the sign for an honor fight.”
“Is that—?”
“Important? Yes. Those minotaurs—they’ve had their honor attacked. So they’re out to regain it. They’ll fight hard and demand high ransoms if they win and think we’ve fought honorably.”
“What happens if they think we haven’t—?”
“Then they’ll give no quarter.”
No quarter. No quarter. No quarter. The words tolled in Eskaia’s mind like a great bell in some distant shrine, borne down the wind.
Then foam gushed over the enemy’s rams, as both teams of rowers dug in their sweeps.
* * * * *
Pirvan raised a hand, then dropped it palm down. The two sentries were both looking away from him. This wouldn’t last more than a few seconds, but that would be enough for him to prepare his only spell.
Without looking behind him, he took three steps to the right and two forward, then knelt. The kneeling made him harder to see. He could not safely change position while surrounded by the spell. (That was one of the few things that made him regret not putting himself in the hands of the Towers for more formal testing or training.)
The two sentries seemed to be talking. Certainly they were close enough to do so, without Pirvan hearing. Lower down on the mountain, the jungle life was louder.
The sentry would never accept the tree sprouting from nowhere as he watched. The spell had to be done before the man turned back—
There. Everything around Pirvan took on the wavering aspect of the world seen through the veil of magic. The jungle noises were as loud as ever. So was the sound of footsteps coming up behind Pirvan.
Haimya, barefoot and lightly armed, sprinted up behind Pirvan, slapped both hands on his shoulders, vaulting over him. Her impact jarred him from teeth to knees. For a moment he feared the spell would break.
It did not. What broke was the silence, as Haimya dashed up behind the nearer sentry and punched him in the neck. Then she rammed her knee into the small of his back.
He was the archer. Haimya snatched up bow and quiver almost as the man hit the ground. The other sentry stood gaping at the spectacle of a woman apparently sprung from the earth or fallen from the tree behind her.
Pirvan heard the twang of the bowstring. The arrow skewered the second man’s leg—and as he began to dance around on one leg, a third man burst out of cover to Pirvan’s right. He ran toward Haimya, a foolish thing when he should have fled to give warning, but showing honorable courage as well.
He also had a good chance of killing Haimya, if he closed faster than she could shoot again. For speed, she had left behind all other weapons but her knife, and he had a sword.
Pirvan’s dagger was in his hand before he thought of drawing it, then in the air. The pommel cracked against the third man’s temple, below the rim of his helmet. He went down in midstride, furrowing the mud with his face.
Meanwhile the crippled second man had realized it was prudent to flee. Prudence came to him too late. Haimya caught him before he reached cover and kicked him hard under the jaw. If Haimya had not been barefoot, she would have broken his neck, if not taken his head clean off his shoulders.
The Spell of Seeing the Expected had died the moment Pirvan had drawn his dagger. The thief rose to his feet. He really wanted to sit—or better, lie down, preferably with some brandy and a bowl of lamb stew.…
“You would make a good soldier, Pirvan,” Haimya said as she came up.
Pirvan let her squeeze his shoulders until the worst of the pains were gone. Then he touched the back of his hand to her cheek. It left a muddy streak.
“You would make a good thief, I should say.”
“Thank you. Shall we bind these gentlemen and be about our business?”
Chapter 17
Much of the time, Grimsoar One-Eye did not miss his lost eye. Without it he had lost some of his power to judge distances, but that was a loss a man could live with, except in a fight and sometimes even then.
Today would be a fight that everyone who survived it, human or minotaur, would retell to his grandchildren as long as he had breath in his body. A man who could not tell whether a minotaur with an axe was in striking range might have to survive in the stories other men told.
At least he would die among men who would see that his body received decent rites and his death was properly reported to the brothers. That would ensure the lawful division of what he had left behind.
Grimsoar shifted his gaze from the onrushing minotaur ships to study the decks of Golden Cup. Lady Eskaia lacked the wits to go entirely below, but remained on the aftercastle. She looked to be well guarded and alert, which was about as much as anyone could contrive now. Up there was a less likely victim of stray arrows or stones, and if the aftercastle fell, Golden Cup was doomed anyway Gazing forward, Grimsoar sought Tarothin. So did some of the men beside him, the largest, strongest, and most finished fighters aboard. The fore- and aftercastle had to be held, but the longer it took the minotaurs to fight their way onto the midships deck (the waist, as sailors called it) …
Grimsoar saw no wizard; neither did his comrades, and some of them cursed. Grimsoar clamped a hand on the shoulder of the loudest.
“Tarothin can’t do a blessed thing except heal in this battle. Otherwise, we’ve gone beyond the limits of honor, and the minotaurs will fight to the death. Ours or theirs, it won’t matter.”
The sailor was suddenly stricken mute. In the next moment a dozen voices cried out as one. A minotaur slid down to the ram of the leading ship, guiding himself with one hand while he held a shatang—the heavy, barbed minotaur throwing spear—in the other. Balancing as if on the level sand of the arena, he raised the shatang and flung it.
“Stand!” Grimsoar bellowed, echoed by Kurulus and the captain. “Flinch, and they’ll fight harder.”
Nobody flinched, and mercifully the shatang flew high. It cleared the bulwarks and sank a hand’s-breadth into the tough wood of the mainmast’s stump. Everyone stared at the quivering shaft until Grimsoar walked over to the mast, jerked the spear free, and snapped it over his knee. Then he held up the broken pieces, and made an unmistakable gesture with them. The minotaur spearman shook both fists at Grimsoar, then scrambled back onto the deck of his ship.
No further minotaurs made any such grand gestures; the ships were too close. Indeed, the nearer ship was now within easy bowshot. Golden Cup archers let fly from both fore and aft, but Grimsoar saw they’d been given the right orders. None of the arrows sank into minotaur flesh; they merely sprouted from bulwarks, decks, oars, and gear. The minotaurs had been warned, not hurt, let alone enraged.
Not that it ever takes much to get a minotaur into a rage, Grimsoar reminded himself. Even the most honorable ones act like they were born in a bad mood.
The first ship was slowing now, and some of its oars were disappearing through the oar ports. Grimsoar heard someone shout a taunt, but knew that this could hardly be good news for Golden Cup.
The next moment proved it. The rowers below were leaving their oars, arming themselves, and swarming on deck. More spears flew, and not warnings or defiant gestures now, but aimed to kill.
Only one shatang found a mark. With its barbed head and the impetus of a minotaur’s throw behind it, the spear not only pierced a sailor’s throat, it nearly took his head off. His blood was the first to spread across Golden Cup’s deck as two of the ship’s boys ran to pour sand on it.
Hope we don’t run out of sand, was Grimsoar’s vagrant thought.
Then the second ship swept past its comrade, oars flashing and rainbows blazing in the spray, driving straight at Golden Cup. Its crew seemed determined to show that no beings created by the gods could row like minotaurs.
This ship is supposed to be proof against ramming, Grimsoar reminded himself. Then somewhere in his mind something impudent added: But did anyone tell the minotaurs?
Then the show ended, as the second minotaur ship drove its ram into Golden Cup’s side. Grimsoar jerked his head back just as the deck quivered under him. He still needed a good grip to keep from sprawling, and he heard tortured metal screaming and overburdened wood cracking. He could not tell which ship was giving off those agonized sounds.
He could tell the minotaurs’ tactics at a glance, however. With the ram wedged in Golden Cup’s side, the minotaur whip might not have given the enemy a mortal wound, but it was a wide, firm bridge to let the minotaur crew reach the larger vessel’s side amidships.
Reach it, and perhaps swarm onto Golden Cup’s decks in numbers that—
Trumpets blared from both sides, drums drowned out the trumpets, and war cries fought to drown out both. The minotaurs’ bellowing gave them the advantage in this war of dreadful sounds, but they weren’t relying heavily on their stout lungs and deep chests.
The crew of the second ship was already swarming aboard its comrade. Meanwhile, the crew of the first was rushing forward. Some held lines ending in grappling hooks, some hooked poles, and still others light ladders (at least “light” by the measure of minotaurs).
All of them carried more than one weapon, but wore them on their belts or across chests and backs, to leave their hands free for climbing.
Grimsoar finished his previous thought: We may just have too many minotaurs coming aboard to do them much damage with a rearguard action.
Again the blare of trumpets, but this time only from Golden Cup, and before they died, Grimsoar heard the whine and hiss of arrows.
* * * * *
Pirvan and Haimya did their best to stay under cover, move quickly, and avoid leaving a trail as they fled the place of their battle with the sentries. The moment the men were found, the hunt would be up, perhaps less merciless because the men were not dead, perhaps not.
On this ground, it was impossible for the thief and warrior-maid to do all three tasks at once, until the rain began. By the time the rain was in full spate, they might as well have been marching under a waterfall. Their footprints vanished before they’d covered fifty paces, the rain itself was as opaque as the undergrowth and much easier to push through, and they hardly needed to move quickly. Nobody was likely to be following them.
“Nobody may need to follow us, either, if we fall down a cliff in this murk,” Haimya reminded Pirvan. She had to put her mouth close to his ear, spit rain out of her mouth, brush strands of hair from her face with her free hand, and then shout to be heard above the rain. When thunder rumbled and crashed across the land, no human voice could make itself heard.
“Are you suggesting we find shelter?” Pirvan replied, making himself understood after four tries. “Look for it, anyway. In this rain I don’t know if anything but a cave will do, and somebody may have already claimed it.”
“The black dragon?” Haimya asked.
“I was thinking more of sentries who don’t want to face the rain. I’m sure you’ve known that breed.”
Haimya had enough wits left to grin at Pirvan’s words. “Then you suggest we go on?”
“It’s the last thing anybody will be expecting us to do. That makes it the best way of keeping our surprise.”
Haimya had the grace to look up at the sky and shake a fist at it before nodding. Pirvan dug in his staff and took the lead.
I hope I don’t have to use the Spell of Seeing the Expected, the thief thought. How does one look like a rainstorm, anyway?
* * * * *
As the minotaurs swarmed up Golden Cup’s side, to Lady Eskaia they looked like a rockslide—solid brown, black, and gray masses moving in an irresistible wall. Except that this rockslide was sliding up rather than down, each “rock” a strong, seasoned, and well-armed fighter, and there was no safety out of their immediate path. This avalanche would pursue every human aboard Golden Cup to death or slavery, unless the humans could fight it to a standstill.
