It was a long while before they spoke again, at least in words, and then it was only to say good-night as they plunged down into sleep.
They woke before dawn, bathed in a bucket of water heated on a revived hearth fire, lay down again, and in due course slept. The sun was high when they woke, and they had barely broken their fast and garbed themselves when the knocker clattered again.
The man who stood against a harsh blue sky was almost as tall as Grimsoar One-Eye, but leaner and lighter on his feet. His long face showed breeding as well as an imposing mustache, and his hands showed Pirvan the same sort of marks left by years of work with steel.
“Warrior, what brings you here?” Pirvan asked. Behind his back, he signaled Haimya to arm herself.
“A matter of interest to all of us. May I enter?”
“If you keep the peace, you may enter and we will hear you out.”
“Paladine and Kiri-Jolith hear me, that I swear to do you no harm. Whether I do you good is for you to judge, but I trust the judgment of both of you.”
The man entered, looking even taller under the low ceiling and formidable even when he sat. The scabbard of a broadsword showed under his riding cloak, and Pirvan caught the glint of mail at his throat.
“I am known as Niebar the Tall-”
“Sir Niebar, by any chance?” Haimya asked.
“You see clearly. Sir Niebar, Knight of the Sword, here on a matter of concern to the Knights of Solamnia.”
“Very well,” Pirvan said. “But it will go ill with you if you lie.”
“Lies do harm-at least here and now,” the knight added with a wry little smile. “Therefore I shall tell none.”
The knight might have been telling no lies, but his recital of Pirvan’s history seemed to take forever. Pirvan half expected the shadows to be lengthening before the tall warrior was done.
“All this praise of my skill, honor, virtue, and the rest make pleasant listening,” Pirvan said. “But some of it is only known to my brothers and sisters. On your oath, answer-have you spies among them?”
“Tes,” Sir Niebar said blandly. “We have spies in many places, seeking folk worthy of entering the ranks of the knights.”
When those words sank into Pirvan’s brain, he gritted his teeth to keep his jaw from hitting his knees. Or at least that was one possible interpretation of those words, even if it might be a dream.
“If you had spies, then you knew where he was,” Haimya said. If the wine in her cup had been any closer to her, it would have frozen as solid as the crater lake. “Do you know how long it took me to find him, after I knew I wished to do so?”
“Yes,” Sir Niebar said again, as blandly as before. Pirvan reflected that the knight’s manner of tossing off these stunning answers might one day get him killed. Not today, by Pirvan. Haimya might prove another matter.
She was quivering, and her hand was not far from the hilt of her sword, as she spoke again. “Then-may I assume that you followed me?”
Sir Niebar seemed to realize the possible consequences of another bland yes. Instead he nodded. “Forgive me, but we trusted your judgment once again, for it has never led us false. You are your grandfather’s blood, as true as a sword blade and as sharp in destroying evil.”
Under all this poetry, Pirvan detected another astonishing truth. Haimya’s grandfather had been a Knight of Solamnia.
It’s always nice to know about your wife’s ancestry before the wedding, he mused.
“We followed you,” Niebar went on, “because your coming to Pirvan was the final test. If he was worth seeking out, then he was worthy of the knights.”
Pirvan looked at the ceiling. “That is not one of the lawful tests I have heard of, in the tales of the knights choosing men.”
“Hard times strain the best laws,” Niebar said. “Now-I assume that you know what I wish to know. When may I have your answer?”
“In an hour,” Haimya said.
“I asked-I think it is not impious to call him ‘Sir Pirvan,’ among us three.”
“An hour will be enough,” Pirvan said.
Sir Niebar rose and bowed himself out, without taking his eyes off Haimya. Pirvan doubted he appreciated her beauty. More likely watching her sword hand.
Then Haimya fell down on the furs, biting one of them to keep from howling with laughter.
“What is so amusing?”
She strangled a last few giggles and sat up. “Pirvan, are you going to enter the knights?”
“I have left the thieves and Istar. The knights are a place where I can do some of what I do well, that others will be the better for it. If that is not enough reason for them to accept me, on their heads be it.”
“Very good. All the more reason for Niebar to wait the full hour. That much time standing in the cold will let him practice austerity or some other such knightly virtue.”
“Oh?”
She put a hand to the laces of her tunic. “Pirvan, the training of a knight keeps a man celibate for a year at least.”
This time when Pirvan said “Oh,” it was in a very different tone.
Epilogue
From the courtyard Pirvan heard the clatter of horses as the last visitors rode away from the house where Sir Marod maintained his quarters.
The older knight ushered him in, dismissed his squire with a glance, and pulled up two chairs. Pirvan chose one, but refused to sit until the other was seated.
That brought a smile to Sir Marod’s face. “You bore up under the day better than I did, and I was ten years younger than you are now. My legs refused their office, and I more fell than sat on the first chair I thought would not collapse under me.”
Sir Marod went on for some time in this vein, jumbling together anecdotes of his own career, that of other knights he knew, and that of knights who were history or even legend. At least he thought it was Sir Marod doing the jumbling; it might be his own wits. Fasting was only the least of the demands on a knight, on the day when he could lawfully call himself one.
“But I ramble, without enough years to be explanation or excuse,” Sir Marod said. “Have you guessed what your purpose shall be as a Knight of the Crown?”
Pirvan ran past his inward vision all those anecdotes he remembered, and nodded slowly. “I think you wish me to seek out people worthy to be knights, or at least to aid them. This will mean living in the world, and moving about, using much of what I learned as a thief.”
“Exactly so. Much of that can be taught in no keep, nor in twenty years of knighthood. Many knights would refuse to learn it even if they had the chance. Yet much of it is good.”
“You ask a great deal of me.”
“I ask no more than you just swore to give us, Sir Pirvan. Nor is it more than you did for ten years without any bond except your own honor and whatever oaths you took to your brothers and sisters.”
“I think it is with honor as it is with courage. Half of both is wishing to sleep well at nights,” Pirvan said. He had thought Sir Marod might take offense, but instead the other knight nodded slowly.
“Often thought by wise men, seldom uttered out loud,” he said. “Also, what you do not know of such work, you can learn from your lady.”
“I thought Haimya might have been doing such work. How many knights has she found?”
“That is her secret,” Sir Marod said severely.
“Very true,” came a voice from behind Pirvan. He whirled. Haimya was standing in the doorway. She wore a plain gown of dark green with silvery trim, not immodestly cut in any way, but still making a man vowed to celibacy regret his condition-and a man just released from such vows rejoice.
Presently, Pirvan became aware of a voice behind him. Sir Marod was saying, “Perhaps I should order wine and cakes, to sustain me until you have time to listen to me again. We old folk need our meals.
“Of course,” he added, “I could just leave the wine and cakes for you and depart. You young folk also need strength, and perhaps privacy.”