Darin smiled. "It was not always at your back where you wished me close," he said. Then he looked at the sky. Half of it had now vanished behind the oncoming clouds. He had not voyaged far enough to see such a warm-seas storm for himself, but Waydol had memorably described them.
The question tonight might not be guarding one another's backs from minotaurs while they slept. The problem might well be sleeping at all.
The clouds had begun to blow wind on the marching column. Darin and Rynthala had nearly closed with the vanguard when the first attack came. The humans were close enough to see the minotaur with the tessto whirl it, and see something fly into the air, caught in the hilt loop.
It was a snake, easily twice as long as a man. Darin had just time to see that before lightning flashed from the clouds above. The bolt split into a dozen spears of raw yellow fire, and half of them lashed the ground. Sand turned suddenly red hot and flew in all directions; minotaurs bellowed as pain seared even their tough hides.
Most of the other bolts seemed to strike where Darin could not see the results. All except one.
That one took the flying snake in midair. The blaze of fire briefly dazzled the knight. When he could see again, he saw fifty, a hundred, perhaps more snakes flying through the air where there had been only one.
They were not as large as the first snake. They didn't need to be. What they lacked in size, they made up for in viciousness. Also, in the length of the fangs that flashed in the sudden twilight as they opened their mouths to bite.
Darin felt something slap his shoulder, then a whick of disturbed air as steel flashed within a hairsbreadth of his neck. He turned to see Rynthala, face the color of a snow-field, stamping on the two writhing halves of the snake she'd slashed off his shoulder.
Before it could bite? He felt his neck and looked at his upper arm. Rynthala interrupted him. "It didn't bite you," she said. "Let's go help our friends."
Darin wanted to laugh at his wife pulling him out of a battle-daze. But she was right. Minotaurs had thick hides and thicker clothing, but that did not mean they had no vulnerable spots for a snake to thrust its fangs.
He drew his sword and prayed to Kiri-Jolith that the island's wizard had not used this same trick on the human column on the other side of the island.
One arm of the storm had advanced faster than the others, bringing rain down on the human column by the time the magical attack began.
The snakes here wriggled out from under bushes rather than sailed through the air. The shadows, particularly under the trees, made it hard to see the dark-scaled creatures, as long as a man's arm, attacking in a frenzy.
The humans fought back in an equal frenzy, but they had thinner skins than minotaurs, and not everyone wore boots or heavy clothing. Fangs sank deep and human fighters screamed and clawed at flesh turning purple-black or red-orange around the twin fang marks.
Some people slipped on the wet ground and fell in the path of the snakes, to be bitten on the face. They did not scream as long as the others, but nobody could look at what had been their faces after they stopped moving.
Pirvan was fighting in as close to full armor as he ever had. Past fifty, he was still faster than most warriors, and preferred to rely on that speed. He wore boiled-leather breeches and a boiled-leather tunic almost as rigid as steel, but a good deal lighter and nearly as proof against fangs and thorns. What else he might have to face, he would worry about when it came at him.
He also wore a leather helmet that protected most of his head and face but let him see to either side. That kind of vision had been life or death to a thief in the streets of Istar. It was the same to a Knight of Solamnia in a battle against who knew what sort of evil on a strange island in the hot northern seas.
His hands held a shield, with the edge sharpened for striking, and a short, heavy-bladed sword. He had been offered an axe but knew he could use any sort of sword better. He had never been muscular enough to wield armor-chopping weapons anyway.
A man ahead clutched at a bush that Pirvan half-expected to attack him with writhing, thorn-studded branches. The man fell into the bush and managed to entangle himself as thoroughly as any foe could have wished. A snake lurking under the bush attacked. It struck first at the man's booted foot, then at his leg, loosely garbed in sailor's trousers. The fangs missed flesh both times.
Foiled in its early attacks, the snake started crawling up a branch. Pirvan saw that the man might not untangle himself from the bush before the snake reached striking distance.
"Don't move!" Pirvan shouted. The man struggled more frantically. Branches waved. The snake fell off, nearly at Pirvan's feet. He stamped down, and felt the spine snap.
Good. The snakes might have magically-enhanced poison, but they were still of the same flesh and blood as nature had made them. Pirvan leaped back, dragging the man with him. The man howled as broken branches ripped his skin.
He stopped howling when he saw the writhing snake. Instead he drew his own curved sword and slashed down. The snake stopped writhing as its head flew from its body.
"Thanks, Sir Pirvan," the man said. He rushed on ahead, vanishing in the murk before Pirvan could reply.
Scorpions followed the snakes, but the rain seemed to slow them until they were almost easy prey. A few men were stung, however, by scorpions perched on branches at face level. They did not die-the scorpions being less poisonous than the snakes-but only wished they could die. Some of them begged for friends to kill them, and one or two found friends who were willing.
But even Istaran healers were equal to the scorpion stings-when they came up and started to work. Pirvan wondered if they would refuse to heal "sea barbarians," Vuinlodders, or others without virtue. He thought the best cure for that reluctance would be a foot or two of steel fed to enough Istarans to improve the manners of the rest.
But that would take the approval of Sir Niebar and Gildas Aurhinius, at least, not to mention his own conscience. The two senior leaders were well back in the column by now, as speed came to mean survival and youth, in most cases, meant speed.
Pirvan decided to catch up with the vanguard before his seniors caught up with him. He really wasn't supposed to be that far forward, but in for a piglet, in for the sow.
He took two steps, and a branch above dumped a bird's nest onto his face. He wiped dead leaves and bird dung out of his eyes with the back of his hand, then held his face up to let the rain wash it clean.
A hand clutched his arm.
"Where do you think you're going without me?" Haimya said.
"Forward."
"To the lead?"
"I'm not going back to Eskaia and tell her that I didn't try to be at her son's side," Pirvan said.
"Then I have an older right to go up there than you do."
Pirvan spat his mouth free of foulness and grinned. "I don't think we have time to argue," he said, looking at her. Wrinkles and crow's-feet, gray hair and thickening waiste vanished in the rain, and he saw again the battle maiden, Haimya.
"Pity you don't have a shield," he said. "We've never gone into battle with shields locked."
Haimya kissed him. "It's not as useful a way of fighting as you think, against most opponents," she said. "Now let's waste no more time arguing."
They did not lock shields, but they took their first few uphill steps hand in hand.
Sirbones was using only his staff for healing those stung by the scorpions. He had enough different potions to fill several cups, as well as many pouches of herbs. He did not want to expose any of these to the wind and the rain for anyone not already sliding into the Abyss.
The staff did not completely heal the scorpion-stung; they walked haltingly and with pain written large on their faces. But they could walk, away from the battle if they had the sense the gods gave lice, and back to more potent healing.