“Now run along. We will hold Grimsoar to his promise if you keep a promise to finish your lessons before we call you to dinner!”
The children scurried off, allowing Pirvan and Haimya to stand briefly with their arms about each other’s waists before they started hanging up their equipment.
* * * * *
The ceremonial part of the welcoming-home feast was done. Now, at last, Darin could allow Waydol to lead him aside, into the Minotaur’s stone hut, and speak where no one else could hear.
The first thing Waydol did was embrace his heir, for the fifth time since they had met at the end of the entryway. It was the fiercest embrace of all, and Darin knew that he had to give back, if not as good as he got, then the best he could do with merely human muscles.
This done, Waydol motioned his breathless heir to one of the stone stools on the rush-strewn floor. Waydol himself sat down cross-legged on the floor, and stared at Darin with that look that seemed to say the Minotaur could look into a man’s soul and judge his honor and everything else in it.
Waydol did not have to look up very far to meet his heir’s eyes. The shortest of adult minotaurs was Darin’s size, and Waydol was taller than the common run of his folk. In his youth he had fought with a minotaur broadsword in each hand and, while that youth was past, he had not yet reached the age when even a minotaur begins to stoop.
“So, Heir Darin,” Waydol rumbled. His Istarian vocabulary was excellent, but his accent remained strong, and no minotaur could ever sound less than guttural to a human ear. “Is there aught of this raid that I alone should know?”
“Nothing that comes to mind at once,” Darin said.
“Do not ask to sleep and then speak,” Waydol said, but the smile took the sting from his words.
“When did I last do that?”
“Oh, when you were sixteen or so.”
“Ah, one of my first raids. I think I remember it, even though it was so long ago.”
“It was, as you remember perfectly well, no more than six years ago. Or if you do not remember it, then I fear I must look elsewhere for an heir. My memory has not crumbled to rubble, at five times your years.”
“Ah, but for a minotaur, your years are but those of a green youth.”
“Indeed?” Waydol said, pretending to make a twisting pass with his horns at Darin’s stomach. The young man rolled off the stool and came up holding it like a shield.
“Bring me the mirror and a polishing cloth,” Waydol said, chuckling. A minotaur’s chuckle sounded to most folk like millstones grinding together, but to Darin it was a sound of home.
Darin brought the bronze mirror and a sack of cloths impregnated with various scented resins, then held the mirror while Waydol carefully polished his horns. They were a fine pair, and the more precious to Waydol because he had narrowly escaped losing them.
This had been many years ago, when he suggested that one should learn the weak spots of the humans before one charged headlong at them. After all, honor did not require being foolish.
Some fairly powerful minotaurs thought this insulted their honor, and gave Waydol a choice: exile or dehorning-or death in the arena, of course, a battle Darin thought the other minotaurs should have been grateful never took place.
He chose exile. Shortly after that, he chose to make himself chief of a band of human outlaws, or at least those who survived their first encounter with him. And shortly after making himself chief, he adopted as his heir a stout-thewed child who had washed up on his shore, clinging to a timber from his family’s lost ship.
That was nineteen years ago. The horns that Waydol had not lost in his homeland had continued to grow in exile, and were formidable weapons in their own right. Neither were the Minotaur’s wits any less sharp.
Indeed, Darin thought that if the minotaurs had met in solemn conclave for months, they could hardly have picked one of their number better suited to learning the weak points of the humans. If those who remembered Waydol’s insults were dead in the arena and those who lived had sharper wits, he still might carry out his task.
Which, to be sure, would mean a fearful burden on the honor and conscience of the Minotaur’s heir. When it came about-and even without Waydol, Darin’s life would have taught him that worrying about what may never happen deserves perhaps one minute out of the day, when one is using the privies or shaving or doing something else that makes small demands on one’s wits.
“I think you should go out again soon, and with the greater part of the men,” Waydol said.
“That will mean underchiefs,” Darin replied.
“Kindro and Fertig Temperer are both seasoned enough to lead.”
“And young enough to be spared if they fail?” Darin said.
“You may be such a cynic when you have a beard as long as my horns.”
“If I have to ride with Fertig Temperer often, the beard will be white before it is long.”
“He is no worse than most dwarves, and better than some.”
“Then I pray I never meet the some.’ ”
“Not one likely to be granted. The realm of Thorbardin is at our backs. We will need to withdraw into their lands if we are driven from the coasts.”
Darin no longer marveled at a minotaur thinking of retreating in the face of superior force, rather than dying on the spot. What bemused him was where the superior force might come from.
By the time Waydol had finished explaining the significance of the coming of Gildas Aurhinius to the northern territories of Istar, not far from their own range, Darin understood more on the matter of superior force. He also wondered what he was supposed to do with, at most, two hundred men against ten times their number.
“If you find them gathered together, I expect little, apart from driving in their patrols, taking prisoners-the higher-ranking the better-and generally testing their fighting qualities. But you are not likely to find them all together.
“Aurhinius is, by all I have learned of him, a man with ambitions to rise high in the councils of Istar once he hangs up his helmet for the last time. Such a man will surely heed the cries of the northern towns for a hundred men here and fifty there to guard their walls, fields, and caravans.
“You and your men could eat any such handful for breakfast and save the odd survivor for a midmorning snack, lightly salted or sprinkled with vinegar. Do that once or twice, and Aurhinius will take the field against you. Then I leave it to your judgment-but do something to make the man angry.
“An angry opponent will charge straight ahead. He will not make the best use of his strength or weapons. He will not guard against surprise attacks.
“He will, in short, become the sort of man who can be beaten even with long odds in his favor.”
Darin knew that well enough from personal combat-but this was the first time he’d be applying the principle in battle-indeed, on a full campaign against a civilized soldier at the head of a small army. He knew the uneasiness was lack of confidence in himself rather than lack of confidence in Waydol, and he also knew that the uneasiness would disappear once he had fought the first battle or two.
Meanwhile, he was Heir to the Minotaur. He slipped off the stool, took the mirror from Waydol’s hands, and held it up in front of the Minotaur so that he could work more swiftly at polishing his horns.
* * * * *
“Good night, Papa.”
“Good night, Mama.”
The children’s duet came from either side of the corridor. The years when they shared a single nursery and a single nursemaid were gone; now Gerik had a tutor as well as instruction from the men-at-arms, and the younger sister of Haimya’s maid attended Eskaia.
Not that Haimya really needed a maid, but had she done everything for herself as she had during her years as a mercenary, tongues would have wagged in gaping mouths from streamside to hillcrest. Her one consolation for being waited on was that she had a chance to teach both her maid and her daughter the rudiments of fighting, and with bare hands as well as steel.