He looked around. The only people awake were the sentries, and they would probably think he was going out in the trees to answer a call of nature.
Close by his feet, the two kender slept, each under a separate blanket (cut from one of Sir Darin’s cloaks, which made three or four kender-sized blankets). Horimpsot Elderdrake had an arm thrown protectively over Imsaffor Whistletrot.
I wish you a safe return home, thought Tharash formally. And for you, young one, your Hallie Pinesweet’s goodwill, if no more.
Then he went through his final wishes for all the folk he was leaving behind, ending with Krythis, Tulia, and Rynthala.
I wish that all of you learn why I did what I did, and that I did not die a traitor. But I could not live on, knowing Lauthin died unforgiven.
Besides, I may not die.
It occurred to him that he also might die, his honor sullied, without succeeding in his purpose. But that was a thought to take away the courage of a minotaur. He would not dwell on it, lest his feet refuse to take him out of the camp.
Tharash turned and walked into the night.
Rynthala was sitting in the same spot along the wall where Belot had bid her farewell. Tonight, though, it was Sir Darin’s splendid head that rose from the stairs. There was enough moonlight to show it plainly, and not for the first time Rynthala wished he had not followed the custom of the Knights of Solamnia in growing a mustache. It was a fine mustache, but she thought he would look better without it.
“May I join you, Rynthala?”
“Certainly.”
He sat at a polite distance, which to her seemed rather far away, and remained silent so long that it began to oppress her.
“What do you think of this tale about Tharash?” was all she could think of to break the silence. “If it is a tale. It might be true.”
Small comfort you are to one whose oldest friend has run mad or turned traitor, she thought.
“It might be true that Tharash has vanished. On the other hand, reports that he has gone over to the enemy-those I cannot believe.”
“I can believe it. We have too much reason to believe that anyone can turn traitor. I do not want to believe it. But what I or you want makes but little difference to telling truth from falsehood.”
His words might lack comfort, but his voice was so soothing that Rynthala almost felt ready to sleep-if she could sleep in Darin’s arms, with that voice calming her as she drifted into slumber …
Abruptly, she realized she had fallen asleep, and was in Darin’s arms. He was holding her with a gentleness that belied his immense strength-but did not hide the steel under the gentleness.
“Please do not beg my pardon, Rynthala,” Darin said. “You might have fallen off the wall otherwise. Perhaps whatever preys on your mind-perhaps we could talk about it in your bedchamber.”
Rynthala swayed to her feet. She hoped he would realize the swaying was fatigue, not enticement.
“Will you carry me there?”
Darin did her the courtesy of staring before he smiled. He did not laugh at all. “I would be honored. Save that if I tried to carry you down these stairs, I might well fall. Then Belkuthas would be short two more captains, and your father and Sir Pirvan would be more at odds than they were over Sir Lewin.”
“The gods forbid! But-will you carry me on level ground?”
“If you wish.”
“I wish.”
Darin actually did carry her across the courtyard. Somebody-a dwarf, from the voice-shouted something at them. Rynthala suspected it was bawdy and did not care at all. The sensation of actually being carried as if she was as light as a child or a kender was new and not at all disagreeable.
The knight opened the door of her chamber with his foot and laid her on the bed as if he had been returning a kitten to its mother. Then he straightened.
“You have sacrificed enough dignity for one night. I will not undress you and tuck you in bed. But if you wish, I can brush out your hair.”
Rynthala looked in the mirror. Even in the guttering lamplight, her hair looked like an empty bird’s nest after a long winter. “I did not know you knew the ways of women so well,” she said, which nearly tangled her tongue.
“I am not so much a stranger to women as some might think,” Darin said. “Not even to women who endured what you suffer. I am neither a paladin nor unduly forward.”
“You are a wonder,” Rynthala said, but she tried to kiss him as she said that, missed, and fell forward on the bed, so that the words were muffled and (she hoped) lost in the bedclothes.
She was falling asleep by the time he finished her hair. Her last waking memory was of his immense hands gently smoothing it, and his long sword-callused fingers touching her temples and cheeks.
Chapter 19
To the delight of his allies and disquiet of his foes, Carolius Migmar reached Belkuthas two days early. Within ten days, the first siege engines were erected, though parts of them had been living trees on the first day. They began to play against the walls of Belkuthas, and its defenders began to die.
Not in great numbers, to be sure. Belkuthas was large and stout, its hiding places numerous, its defenders adept at dodging, and the siege engines none too accurate or swift-shooting, even under the best circumstances. The defenders made sure Migmar’s forces were not working under the best circumstances.
The scouts and rangers had lost Tharash’s leadership, but by now even the Silvanesti who had come north with Lauthin knew the land better than the besiegers. Also, for whatever reason, it seemed Tharash had told his new friends little or nothing of the hiding places and tactics of his old ones. The swift-moving, swift-shooting rovers remained unmolested in their secret camps, and could approach as close as ever to the enemy, despite the fact that Migmar’s troops were far more alert than Zephros’s raggle-taggle sell-swords.
Sappers, sentries, and servants all died from arrows that came out of nowhere. Tents full of supplies burned. Soldiers lay writhing with fluxes after drinking wine that had been wholesome the day before. Essential forgings that had been solid iron the night before greeted the daylight as smoking puddles of molten metal, which not even dwarven smiths could have turned back into usable form.
Messengers vanished with their messages, mounts, and gear. It became necessary to escort men going to the jakes, if it was dark and the jakes were more than a few-score paces outside the line of sentries.
The elves, humans, and kender had help in this. Tarothin gave modest assistance, though he was saving his strength to find and, if need be, ward off Wilthur the Brown. Even more, he rested up for the grand assault.
The centaur family dwelling near Belkuthas had lost two of its kin to the citadel’s enemies; that made its enemies theirs. Giving singleness of purpose to centaurs was normally as difficult as giving it to kender, but the besiegers had succeeded-and paid the price.
The price was not great, in lives or anything else material. It was different in the realm of the spirit. Somewhere in a scroll of the Measure that was not considered quite authentic, Pirvan had read the dictum: “In war, the spirit weighs three times as heavily as the body.”
Unauthentic, perhaps, but not unsound. Even as their engines struck flying shards of stone from the walls of Belkuthas or crushed men to death, the besiegers were more and more looking over their shoulders for enemies in unexpected places. They eyed each other suspiciously, hoarded supplies and weapons, drank too much though Migmar did his best to maintain discipline, and generally took several steps down the trail from formidable host to the well-armed mob.
Pirvan hoped they would finish that march before they laid Belkuthas in ruins about its defenders’ ears. Either that, or that the dwarves and elves would arrive in numbers sufficient to give pause to the united hosts of Istar.