“Yes, but-”
“Sir Pirvan!” A small figure darted between the two mounted warriors. “Good to see you again. We must talk. These are Zephros’s men you’ve fought. We met them a few days ago at a pass with a lot of rocky spikes. We knocked down some of the spikes and both sides of the pass fell. That blocked their way. They must have found another road through the hills. The other men are common sell-swords. I don’t know if they are on the same side, but Zephros’s men are evil from the heart out. If every last one of them-”
Pirvan held up a hand. This did nothing to still the kender, whom he recognized under the dust as Imsaffor Whistletrot, once one of Waydol the Minotaur’s band. Ten years did not age kender greatly-or slow their tongues.
What did silence Whistletrot was Rynthala’s sliding out of her saddle and picking him up bodily by the scruff of the neck. This brought Pirvan to realize that the woman-barely more than a girl-was taller than he was, and probably stronger.
Whistletrot used quite a lot of what had to be vulgar language, but it was in the kender tongue, so that it offended no one. While he was relieving his feelings, Eskaia rode up and hailed her father as a junior captain hails a senior.
“Greetings, Father. Sir Darin reports that he has slain, taken, or driven into flight all the sell-swords. The ones you fought-Zephros’s band, they say-are asking for a truce to bury their dead and recover their wounded.”
“I grant it,” Pirvan said. It was pleasant to talk to someone he could trust not to interrupt him-at least not on the battlefield.
But the pleasure would not last long. He needed to learn a great deal about those whom he had defeated, and learn it before sunset, which was coming on fast. Then he had to place his men-hale, hurt, and slain-and his prisoners, in safety. In the morning, he would have to fight another battle, and resume the march to Belkuthas.
If the heiress to the citadel had come out to meet him, it was only courteous to follow her home. But Pirvan prayed to every god lawful for a knight to name, and a few others who might help if they were feeling generous, that Rynthala would also help him through the mountain of work that remained before they saw the towers of Belkuthas rising ahead!
Chapter 10
At sunset, Eskaia stood side by side with Hawkbrother on a low rise, overlooking the camp. They did not touch, but for now, an occasional glance served as well. They had also measured precisely and now kept between them a distance that pleased them without displeasing Eskaia’s parents or the Gryphon warrior’s elder brother.
Closest to them were the captured sell-swords, most of them unbound save for a few who had refused to give their word of honor not to escape. Amidst them stood Pirvan and Tarothin, with several of the captives in a circle around them.
“What does your father mean by so wearying Tarothin?” Hawkbrother asked. “The Red Robe pretends valiantly, but I see grave sickness on his face. Better he should have stayed behind. Skytoucher might have been unable to heal him, but the two could have taught each other much.”
Eskaia ignored the criticism of her father. “I think Tarothin is using a modest truth spell. One that will let him tell if a sell-sword lies.”
“Better to make the man unable to lie.”
“That demands more strength than Tarothin has.”
“All the more reason for his resting in safety,” Hawkbrother said.
Before they could quarrel over this, they saw Rynthala of Belkuthas riding up with half a dozen of her mounted archers. Close behind her rode Sir Darin, with a similar number of the Solamnics. As the two parties dismounted and began to unload scavenged weapons from their saddles, Darin and Rynthala somehow contrived to end up standing close to one another. Eskaia was prepared to wager all her armor and her second-best mount that this was Rynthala’s doing.
“They seem to find each other’s company pleasant enough,” Hawkbrother said.
No need to ask who they were. Eskaia smiled. “Why not? You tell me if she is not a fine woman. I say Darin is intelligent, honorable, brave, and good to look upon.”
“I wonder that you have not set yourself at him, if he has so many virtues!” Hawkbrother said. Eskaia heard an edge in his voice that had not been there since the battle ended.
She turned and stared. His wide brown eyes seemed moist from more than dust, and that neat mouth was set in a hard line. Eskaia stared for a further moment, cursed herself, then licked her lips.
“Hawkbrother, I beg your pardon. You are not jealous, are you?” Her mother had always said that more than a trifle of jealousy in a man cast doubt on both his honor and his intelligence.
“In truth-oh, somewhat. Perhaps a little more. How do you regard Darin? Did you praise him to make me jealous?”
Eskaia let out a long breath. “Paladine and Habbakuk be my witness, no! If I did anything that foolish-you could take me away and do to me whatever Gryphon men are allowed to do to foolish women.”
“I have not that right, and if I did your parents would say more than somewhat against it, perhaps my brother as well.”
Eskaia sighed. “I shall have to speak to my parents on this and other matters, before many days pass. Also my brother, who may feel freer to do something foolish because he has not a chief’s burdens.
“But as for Sir Darin-I was saying about him what I have known myself since I was not yet a woman. To me, he has always been something between an uncle and an elder brother. He was, as much as our parents, my teacher and Gerik’s in weapon use and many other matters.
“I think he walks a little apart from most, because he was raised and taught by a minotaur. He fears that some flaw in the minotaur’s teaching may someday lead him to injure another, and dishonor Waydol’s memory.”
“Waydol was the minotaur?”
“Yes.” Daring, Eskaia reached for Hawkbrother’s hand and gripped it. “I have always regretted never meeting Waydol. I think you would have regretted it. I think you would have respected him, too.”
“I think anyone who knows Sir Darin would say the same,” Hawkbrother replied. He might have said more, except that Eskaia’s delight moved her to kiss him-starting on the cheek but working around to his lips.
He replied, at first, with restraint, but before long with his arm around her. When they stepped apart at last, both were a trifle breathless, but Eskaia hoped the smile on Hawkbrother’s face was mirrored on her own.
“Well, my friend,” she said. “Our first kiss.”
“Better than our first quarrel, which is what I feared,” Hawkbrother said. He looked ready to kiss her again, but at that moment they noticed that Pirvan was done with the sell-swords and looking at them.
They did not, however, step apart.
The sunset light through the lancet window in Sir Marod’s study now glowed rose-almost the same hue as much of the stonework of Dargaard Keep, or the emblem of his rank embroidered on the cloak hanging over his chair.
He leaned back in the chair, imagining that he heard his joints and the chair’s creaking in unison, and stared at the map on the far wall. It was a splendid map, hand-colored on the skin of several large deer sewn together, the whole framed in half a dozen different kinds of wood, all so aged, darkened, and polished that it was impossible to tell what they had been as living trees.
It was also more than a hundred years old, but it showed plainly enough every place that was in Sir Marod’s thoughts at the moment. It showed Bloten, whose keep had some days before reported the departure of Sir Lewin and his company, well-supplied, armed, and mounted, and bound over the mountains for good or for ill. It showed the Khalkist Mountains and Thoradin, whose dwarves would have a busy year if matters went awry.
It showed the desert and its western fringes, the land where Aurhinius’s host, Pirvan’s company, and (if what Marod had heard was report instead of rumor) numerous sell-swords wandered about on separate business. It could not have shown where any of these were, although Marod would have liked to be able to say, of Pirvan’s whereabouts, more than “somewhere between the Khalkist Mountains and the Abyss.”