Chapter 1
He was twenty-two years old, six and a half feet tall, and strong in proportion. He bore the name Darin, because Waydol, the minotaur who had raised him, said that he ought to have a human name. However, he mostly referred to himself as “Heir to Waydol,” or even “Heir to the Minotaur.” That last title might not always be sufficient, if more than one minotaur came to inhabit this stretch of the northern coast of Istar.
Other minotaurs sailed along the coast, though fewer now since they faced death with scant hope of honor at the hands of Istar’s fleet and coast garrisons. Beyond the sea lay all the lands of the minotaurs.
But when one spoke of “the Minotaur” in this land, one spoke of Waydol.
At this moment Darin spoke neither of Waydol nor of anything else. He wished to be as silent as one of the trees of the forest and as invisible as the breeze that crept through them. Even though the furtive breeze in the forest left him sweating and allowed the insects free play with his skin, he neither wiped away the sweat nor batted at the insects.
The call of a sunwing, three times repeated, made him turn his head. In the shadow between two immense pines was a darker shadow. Darin nodded.
The darker shadow stepped forward, turning into a man. He stepped to within arm’s reach of Darin and, with two fingers and a thumb of each hand, tapped his message onto Darin’s left forearm and hand.
Darin had learned the handtalk Waydol had given the band almost from the time he could use words. He could understand it as swiftly as common speech.
“The village is good prey,” the man was saying. “Log wall with towers and ditch. Solid buildings. Fat cattle. Workers in field wear clothes-even women.” If it was possible to convey disappointment in his touch, Darin felt it in the last bit of knowledge. Not that the man would do more than look; he had honor and also fear of Waydol’s and Darin’s wrath.
Yes, a village so furnished had wealth. It would not be easy prey, and it doubtless had a protector or lord who would seek vengeance for its raiding. It might even be directly under the rule of Istar.
Let would-be avengers thrash the forest as they pleased. Waydol’s band knew paths to their stronghold that no one else did, and not only because they had made a good many themselves. In Darin’s lifetime, the Minotaur had gathered a formidable band of the cunning and the crafty, as a legacy for his heir. He had also proved that a minotaur could lead humans, even against their own folk-something that both races doubted was possible.
What he expected his heir to do with the band over the next twenty years, Darin had realized some time ago that he did not really know. However, it was enough for now to keep the men from growing stale.
It would be a night raid if they waited much longer, and that Darin would not have. The only way to raid by night was to be ready to burn where one raided, to make light to find one’s way about unknown streets or paths. That, or find a wizard with a flexible conscience and command of illuminating spells.
Darin had no scruples about the second, many about the first. There was not a magic-worker in the band, so the raiders would go in now, trusting to their own speed to confuse hostile aim as thoroughly as the gods’ darkness might in a few hours.
The man tapped Darin’s hand again. Darin nodded, squatted, and allowed the smaller man to leap onto his shoulders. The leaper caught a low-hanging branch and started pulling himself up, as silent as ever.
Darin remained kneeling, looking up as the man vanished in the branches with the speed of a squirrel. His name in the band was Stalker; after certain lessons, no one inquired too closely about his birth name. His birth blood was most probably sea barbarian; one seldom found that combination of agility and dark skin in other races. At last Darin heard from high above a faint whttt! That would be Stalker’s shortbow, sending a signal arrow some two hundred paces through the forest to where the rest of the band waited in two wings. Each wing of twenty raiders was now to move to a position already scouted, one on each side of the village’s fields.
The attack would come from two directions, forcing the villagers to divide their defenses. At the same time, the two wings would be able to help one another, and between them sweep up the people in the fields before they could reach the gate.
That was as far as Darin knew he could wisely plan. Waydol had taught him: “Never assume your enemy agrees with your notions of how to fight the battle.”
Darin crouched and listened for any sounds of his men moving to the attack. He heard nothing that most listeners would not have called forest noises, and knew that the underchiefs could fitly punish the noisy. After a while he ceased to listen, and finished his arming.
A man of Darin’s size could put fear in many opponents merely by drawing himself to his full height. However, he did not disdain a shirt of fine mail, knowing that a large man was also a large target. He also donned a good round helmet with a dwarven-work tailpiece and nasal added, a sword, and a dagger.
But Darin’s principal weapons were his forearms and fists, guarded by elbow-length gauntlets of heavy but supple leather over still finer mail. Suppleness in leather that thick had to come from magic, or perhaps there was some other story behind those gauntlets that Waydol would not tell, not on the day he had given them to Darin or ever afterward.
Nonetheless, the gauntlets had allowed Darin to defeat a good many opponents while slaying few. He abhorred unnecessary killing even more than Waydol, and was not one to invent necessity where it was not found.
At last Darin had nothing to do but stretch and unknot his limbs for swift movement, as he took in deep breaths of forest-scented air. The forest smelled different than it did at home, no doubt through being farther from the sea, with less salt in the soil and leaf mold-
Chkkk!
Darin looked up. An arrow, twin to Stalker’s, was quivering just below the second branch from the ground. A moment later Stalker slithered out of the tree, snatching the arrow from the trunk as he came.
The two men nodded. The two wings were in position. Now all they needed was Darin and Stalker in their position, from which to give the signal to attack.
The two men trod silently but swiftly, one behind the other, as they moved onward.
* * * * *
One sharp-eared villager must have heard something untoward from the forest, but courage or foolishness undid him. Or perhaps he wasn’t sure of what he’d heard and wished not to make a fool of himself with a false warning.
The man fell before he could give any warning at all, as a slingball whipped out of the trees and into his skull. Darin waited a moment to see if any of the other workers had noticed the man’s fall and took flight or came to his rescue.
If they came, they would find little to prove what had happened to him. The slingers of Darin’s band carried balls of fire-hardened clay, fit to strike a man senseless and crumble into powder at the same moment.
If the villagers fled-
They did nothing. Perhaps none had seen their friend fall; perhaps they thought he had lain down from fatigue; perhaps they were too near the end of a long and wearying day to think of more than hot water and cold ale at home.
Darin licked dry lips. He himself had never drunk anything stronger than water when in health or herbal infusions when sick, but he understood weariness and thirst as well as these folk ever would! It seemed almost dishonorable to take them at such a disadvantage-unless one looked at the sentries atop the walls.
At that moment, one of those sentries seemed to notice the fallen man. He pointed with his spear, cupping the other hand to his mouth. Darin did not hear the words across the field, but he heard urgency in the man’s tone.