* * * * *
In every direction but one, the darkness about the farm was so complete that Pirvan and Haimya might have been plunged into a thick sack of black velvet.
In the direction of their soldiers’ camp, the watch fires still burned, though the cook fires were fading embers. By the light of those watch fires Pirvan could make out sentries, the least armed with spear and helmet, making their rounds. Others, he knew, waited in the shadows, to surprise anyone who slipped past the visible watchers.
His men were fit and ready for whatever might come of the trial. If his speech to them tomorrow was fated to be a farewell-
He swallowed. That meant a farewell to Haimya, too, and he would have to use all the discipline of mind he had learned to keep that thought from unmanning him before the soldiers. They would understand; he had heard their praises of the knight’s lady and comrade when they thought he was not listening.
But it would still seem ill-omened, and he needed to raise more hearts than his own tomorrow.
An arm stealing around his waist made him jump, but he recognized the touch before he drew steel.
“You came so quietly I did not hear you.”
“Forgive me.”
“No, you forgive me. Please, Haimya. What I said when you seemed commanded by your fear-”
“You speak truly about my fear getting the best of my tongue. That shames me as much as you think your reply shamed you.”
“I note that you were yourself again before the fighting started.”
“Yes, and when the trial is over I am going to sit down with that bola-tosser and that kender and learn how they work together. I had not thought a kender had the discipline for that.”
“Waydol seems to bring out from many folk what even they did not know they had in them.”
“Yes. It would be well if we all lived past the trial. I want to learn more about Waydol. Either he is the shrewdest minotaur ever calved, or his folk can be even more formidable enemies than we have thought.”
“Both could be true. But we can think on how to fight for a bloodless victory tomorrow. Tonight is ours.” Her arm tightened, and her head rested on his shoulder.
“Ours?”
“The house has three habitable rooms, my love. Birak Epron and Rubina are at last asleep, the gods be praised, in the one at the far end of the house. In the nearest one I have laid blankets and furs. I traded a dagger for them, to one of Waydol’s sergeants.
“We can sleep soft, for this one night.”
Pirvan turned and let Haimya lead him into the house, and when at last they slept, the blankets and furs were soft indeed.
Chapter 16
Pirvan finished smearing the oil on Haimya’s back and started working farther down her body. Briefly, he let his hands linger.
She laughed, turned, and kissed him, then spat. “Kah! That fish oil tastes worse than it smells.”
“No doubt we should have asked for fresh oil, or perhaps bear grease.”
Pirvan finished smearing his lady from head to toe, then turned while she returned the favor. As she picked up her fighting garb, two strips of leather, she frowned.
“Is this oil really going to do anything, save make our friends and foes alike fight to stand upwind of us?”
“Believe me, every thief I knew had done it three or four times in their night work. Mostly they did it to slip through small spaces, but it made them hard for any thief-taker to grasp as well.”
Pirvan donned his own fighting garb, a strip of leather over a padded loinguard, and walked to the corner where their quarterstaves stood. He picked them both up, twirled one in each hand, and grinned at Haimya. She might have seemed more desirable and more deadly at other times, but Pirvan could not remember them.
Haimya took one of the staffs, dropped into fighting position, then whirled and jumped at the same moment. But her smile as she turned back toward him was a bit uncertain.
“What if they do wear armor?”
“We’ll have a bigger edge in speed than we would otherwise. But I doubt that they’ll shame themselves that way. I made sure that everyone knew that you and I would be fighting without armor.”
The trial would certainly be not only without armor, but also with no overabundance of rules. They would fight in a square a hundred paces on a side, and anyone who stepped outside the line of stakes marking it would be out of the fight. Neither side would use edged weapons, spears, or bows. Anything found within the square could be used as a weapon, but nothing could be given to the fighters after the fight began.
Once it began, it would go on until one side or the other declared that they’d yielded, or became clearly unable to continue the fight. Death, if it came, was intended to come only by mischance-but both sides would have guards posted against anyone tempted to follow in the footsteps of Pedoon’s murderer.
“My lady?” Pirvan said, with a bow in the direction of the door.
She brushed his cheek with her lips and stepped through the door. As Pirvan followed her, the horses sent by Waydol whickered softly.
“Come along,” Fertig Temperer, leader of the escort, growled. “Some trader slipped into the cove last night with a load of wine. Give those loons an extra hour, and there’ll be no keeping the peace.”
Pirvan swung into the saddle. A breeze blew, chill on his bare skin. The oil would make him hard to grip, but gave little protection. At least the sky was a uniform gray, so that there should be no time wasted maneuvering to get the sun in the other man’s eyes.
“Forward!” Pirvan called, and his men’s newly acquired drummer started pounding out a slow march beat. As the column fell in behind the mounted escort, Pirvan admired their order and how they’d managed to clean their weapons and even try to clean their clothes.
The drumbeat went on, a small but determined voice calling out against the vastness of the gray sky and the scarred land.
* * * * *
The breeze had dropped by the time Pirvan and Haimya led their men up to the fighting square. It had been laid out the day before, at a safe distance from both camps to avoid disorder. Pirvan studied Waydol’s men, saw no signs of any drunkards, and looked for his opponents.
What he found was a large brown tent, erected at one end of the square. It had the look of an improvised affair, probably an old sail, but it meant that Waydol and Darin could step straight from hiding into the square. No chance for their opponents to study them in advance, while Pirvan and Haimya were fully exposed in more than one sense of the term.
Your pardon, knights, for not thinking of that myself.
“Ah,” came a familiar woman’s voice. “I thought you would be fair to the eye, Sir Pirvan. Now I am certain.”
Pirvan took a firm grip on his staff and turned to Rubina with a thin smile. “I thank you, my lady. But I also warn you. If you distract me so that I perish in this fight, I will come back to haunt you, if Haimya does not have your blood.”
Rubina put her hands on her hips and laughed. “Your pardon, Sir Knight. I gave oath to let this fight be fair, and I would not break it.”
“Good,” Pirvan said shortly and, turning his back, began exercising to loosen his muscles.
Haimya did the same; then they each picked up their staffs and worked with those, though they did not work against each other. The less known about how he and Haimya made a fighting pair, the better-though if Waydol was half as shrewd as Pirvan thought, he might well have guessed something.
Which is as the gods will have it. We can do no better than our best.
What was no doubt intended to be music broke the waiting silence. Waydol’s band had five drummers and even someone who thought he could play a trumpet. Pirvan thought that if anyone ever broke the sleep of the knights at a keep with such wretched braying, he would be swimming in the moat before the echoes died.