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Knights' Attack, 8


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#1 Guest_Ananke_*

Posted 22 July 2007 - 01:30 PM

(8)

It is not given to many to meet a Child of Bhaal and escape unscathed.

The Children bring death, destruction and chaos with them wherever they go, to those they love, those they hate, and those they do not care for, alike; whether they wish it or not; such is their cruel fate and their lot in life. And while death, destruction and chaos are sometimes useful and necessary, more often than not, they are not.

Anomen Delryn, over the two days he had spent thus far in the company of Bhaalspawn, had been tied, charmed, beaten, teased and taunted; gifted, tried, tested, forced to speak, listened to, heard, and, finally, accepted and trusted with the future well-being of a sister. To say that his mind was in chaos would be to grossly devalue the severity of his predicament.

To find one’s mind, seek one’s roots; hence, let us draw on the relative lull in the tale, as the Children of Bhaal and their companion walk through the maze of the burial chambers of a long-dead king, and examine the past of the heir to the House Delryn.

He had grown up in the tender care of a Helmite mother, the presence of a younger, beautiful and thoroughly accomplished sister, and the almost complete absence of his merchant father, who believed that Anomen was a bastard.

There had not been much evidence for that—the mother, as said, had been a Helmite before she died when Anomen was thirteen; and what manner of a Helmite would cheat on her husband? But the Lord Delryn, as Anomen had learnt shortly and definitely before the Lady Moirala’s death, had himself no compunctions against trysts with wenches and harlots; and, to such a man, casting unfounded suspicions on an honest innocent comes ever so easy.

The only truth was in that Anomen shared neither his mother’s nor his father’s colours; and in that, whilst the father had a merchant’s mind, filled with numbers, sums, and subtractions, the boy’s was filled with his mother’s tales of the accomplishments of her own ancestors the Wessalens: of fights, and battles, and honour and glory. He had no skill in business, only in combat; all unlike Moira, who had her father’s dark eyes and hair, his head, good for arithmetic, his intent dislike for weaponry, and his favour. The siblings loved each other, nonetheless; and it was to Moira, though she was the younger one, that Anomen would go to after an argument with his father.

By his fourteenth birthday, Anomen had already learnt the simple truth: he would never be good enough for his father, he, with his stain of possible illegitimacy, his crudeness, his clumsiness around the ladies he did not know—and that, having been raised among women!—his lack of a skilled merchant’s tongue and his inherent hatred of duplicity; a hatred so much greater for the constancy with which he must not tell the truth of what he thought. At times, he would burst out in anger and speak out his mind, against all his better judgment; and this made him ever so more of a bumbling fool. “You’re worrying too much. You’re just like everyone else,” Moira would say, smiling; he would smile back, the way he had learnt to smile, just as he had learnt to carefully edit the truth, until the next outburst of anger. He was not like everyone else. He was, at most, pretending to be like everyone else, and, sooner or later, would be revealed as a pretender.

On his fifteenth birthday, the Lord Delryn made the only ever overture in his son’s direction: he invited him to one of his assignations with low-born ladies of ill repute. Anomen refused; his father rejoined with certain allegations about his son, women and, especially, men, which shook said son to the core. Given that that bastard will not have an heir, the Lord Delryn said, I may as well disown him; it was only Moira’s intervention which prevented him from carrying out the threat. In fact, Moira asked, begged and pled until she made her father swear that he would never disinherit her brother. (She claimed that she might need Anomen as a figurehead for her business when she would take over; this was what in the end convinced the Lord Delryn.)

At an age as early as possible, for the purpose of the preservation of familial bliss, Anomen joined the Most Noble Order of the Radiant Heart. Once there, he found out that, since on his father’s side, his family had been nobles for two generations only, he was a parvenu; blithely, he let it be revealed that he was not skilled in the dance; but, worst of all, he relaxed and started to speak out his mind, instead of saying the things he supposed he should say. Shortly, the impression that he was different, and out of his proper place, returned; and so did the time-honoured practice of doublespeak. He needed it to fit in among his peers; and he wanted to fit in among his peers, to hide himself, and pass as one who saw things clearly. The irony was not lost on him.

He also prayed; and his prayers were answered; but Helm’s powers being what they are, and unkind to all imperfection, Anomen Delryn left his prayers with a heart as heavy as he entered them. He strove for honour, yet he never caught it; he had all the fighting skill, but none of the true paladin’s conviction. He had been chosen as Lord Firecam’s squire; he wished to ask for guidance: how does one believe in the words one speaks? How does one become the knight of whom one is the image? How does the image become the self, and the words the truth? How does one hide well enough that one is never revealed as a dirty fake and a bastard, a cuckoo’s egg and a pretender? But, in speaking these words, he would have revealed himself— And, whatever question he managed to stutter out, the answer was the same as Moira’s. He worried too much. He was doing well. Very well, indeed.

Ajantis was knighted, and Anomen was jealous, although he knew he should not be, but should, instead, be happy for his coeval’s happiness. Then, Moira was killed, and his father told him that he would not disown him, but that he should have been at home to protect his sister, and that, if Anomen was thinking that he would rise any in the Lord Delryn’s esteem now that the two of them were left alone and to themselves, he was mistaken. Greatly so. Because justice had been served, but Moira was dead, and that was Anomen’s fault. And Anomen, though he knew that this was what he would hear, still felt bad; because, in a part of his heart, he had hoped, timidly, that it would not be.

And now, Anomen had no honour to strive for, which was just what he had always suspected, and the revelation of which made him… light on the heart. He had made as much of a fool of himself as he could have, and had spoken out his mind, and had been revealed as a fake, and still he had not been rejected. And he had been told that whatever he thought, and said, and whom he esteemed, was his own matter. All that was required of him was that he fight, and that he find a lawyer to represent a sister. That was easy. The Delryn solicitor was a good one.

He was in the company of a fellow bastard, and, with some guilt and shame, though that one was a murderer, he did not want to leave it. He was— He had been accepted.

Except that, tomorrow, they would part. And there was also the… the other matter.

For now, however, he was praying fervently for a life.

-----


It was too tight and too dark for Imoen to try and shoot an arrow and hope not to hit the men. And all the magic she had had had been lost in the black hole of drained life. She watched, instead.

A narrow corridor, lit by nothing by the small globe of a conjured light under the ceiling; the light reflected off Anomen’s armour as Sarevok and he were fighting the dark, wraithlike creature which had appeared suddenly from beyond the corner.

The creature put up a red shield of fire; and, a few moments and a few hits later, exploded into a brilliant fireball which raced down the hallway in Imoen’s own direction. The wizard found herself on the ground, over Pangur, before she realised it.

Before her, Anomen, behind his shield, protected by his ring, yelled in pain; Sarevok, preternaturally, managed a half-turn and a half-fall to protect his face from the full impact of the explosion. So this was one of the special guardians of Strohm’s tomb, Imoen thought as she ran to her brother across the still-hot floor. Sarevok was still alive; his clothes had been enchanted, and, mostly, held; his burns were terrifying.

The maze was absolutely beautiful, with corridors of bas-reliefs and murals showing, presumably, the feats of the deceased king: he had slain a red dragon. He had been a fair judge, a good husband to his wives, and a great warrior and ruler who had collected tribute from many lands; his rule had been a time of plenty and had been utterly devoid of plagues; or so it was painted. There were explanations in the cartouches next to the murals, but there were no runes Imoen recognised.

The maze was also preposterously dangerous. There were false doors, and illusions, and traps, and pitfalls, and guardian golems of clay, stone and iron which activated in certain rooms; and now, these special guardians Firkraag had, supposedly, told the orcs about, and the orcs had, supposedly, told Sarevok about. According to Imoen’s makeshift map, the party must, indeed, be nearing the heart of the labyrinth.

Anomen was praying to heal Sarevok, fervently; and his prayer was being heard; meanwhile, Imoen wondered. It occurred to her, namely, that her brother had an insidious mind; that she had not seen Firkraag write the note Sarevok had delivered to her; and that the party did gain something off this eerie detour. Not she, personally—save the acrid taste of helplessness, she gained nothing: without her magic, she disarmed the traps, and scouted, and fired the occasional arrow, and, while once it would have been enough, now it was not. But Anomen and Sarevok were learning to fight in tandem; and that was as much practice as they could get in the half a day they had at their disposal; and, without that note, even if Anomen had entered the maze, he would have been probably terminally ashamed and guilty at having so much fun diligently crushing guardian golems into smithereens.

And Sarevok—Sarevok had, of course, killed the insane Kara-Turan swordsmith who had created the Edge of Chaos. The man had begged him to test the meitou’s sharpness on his body, claiming that since he would never manage to forge its equal, he had lost all reason for living, her brother had told her when he had shown her the runes of Muramasa Sengo’s name near the sword’s hilt; this was how Sarevok had learnt what the tradition of a kirisute was. But if the smith had lived, he would have now despaired at the use to which his hands’ child had been put while fighting the soft clay golems which were so hard to penetrate with a blade: Sarevok, merrily, had grabbed the sword by the blunt part of the edge near the hilt, and started to pummel the golems with the pommel— Imoen only hoped he would manage to clean it later.

Now, her brother was waking in the stale, suffocating air of close quarters which had not been exposed for centuries, in the odour of sweat and burnt flesh and residual heat after the spell. The squire was crouching by him in an utterly uncomfortable position, which must be the best he could assume in his armour; he had his helm off, a smudge of blackness across his mouth and the woeful, desperate eyes of someone who had just laid his soul bare open, and was now expecting it to be thoroughly maimed and ground into dust as the submission was rejected.

Imoen cursed, privately; and then, as golden light flowed when her brother opened his own eyes, encountered the squire’s, and promptly measured him critically, she said, with feeling, in case he had missed it, “Brother. You are an arrogant jerk and a failure.”

“Water?” Sarevok put forward, tentatively; accepted the flask offered to him by the squire; then, after he gargled his mouth and swallowed, he said thoughtfully, “The classical explanation, sister, would, I believe, point to the fact that I am only a demihuman. And that the creators of this tomb had not been mindful enough to advertise their security measures,” he added, belatedly, changing the topic.

“You are making excuses,” Imoen said wondrously. “Are you allowed to make excuses?”

“I said explanation, sister, not excuse,” her brother retorted; then, at last, looked at the squire again. “Delryn, I believe that I am in your and in your god’s debt? When you pray to him next time, ask him what he wants of me in return. You have not healed yourself,” he added, as Anomen opened his mouth. “Do so. Your cat is guarding us, I presume, sister?”

“Yes, he is,” Imoen replied acerbically, casting a particularly meaningful look at the squire. “We are low on components,” she lied helpfully.

“We are,” Sarevok repeated flatly; he must be still dazed, she thought, because a fairly long moment passed before he said, “Squire. Can you bother your god once more on my account?”

“To ask Him to shield you against fire?” Anomen asked, with sudden, badly hidden enthusiasm. “Aye. I can— I shall.”

The other man studied him meticulously once again. “Then do so, squire.”

Then, he laid his head against the sandstone wall of the passage and closed his eyes; and would have perhaps sighed, if he were not in company.

Instead, he said only, “It will not be long now.”

-----


It was not long, though they had to destroys several more guardians on the way; and the burial chamber was beautiful—or, at least, as beautiful as a burial chamber can be when one does not have much light to see it. The entrance had been sealed; inside, once the dust fell, there was nothing save paintings, and sculptures, and a sarcophagus in the middle. Perhaps Strohm III had been good enough a king not to take his riches into the grave with him; or, perhaps, the grave had been robbed and then resealed by its own constructors.

There was a skeleton under the heavy leaden lid, dressed in dark, ceremonial armour, with a helm of red, white and green scales on his skull: a tricolour uraeus of a dragon with outspread wings. There was also a sheathed sword, and a shield: the shield was of red skin, with a pattern of green and white scales which, together, formed the face of another dragon. Sarevok, curious, pulled the sword out of its scarlet sheath: it was long, sharp, red and much like a claw, and with a hilt made to look as if it had been made of extremely tiny scales. It was easy to see why a dragon might take offence at all three; and especially so if the scales had been genuine, and dragons’, as they probably were.

Anomen was visibly queasy at the thought of the sacrilege; Imoen decided not to placate him with any false comfort, and said, instead, “Let’s take what we must and leave.”

“Aye, my lady,” the squire sighed, watching, mesmerised, the inside of the tomb. “I cannot say that this grave-robbing sits well with me.”

“Yes,” Imoen said. There was nothing to add, really.

Looking at her brother, who was still amusing himself with the dragon-slaying sword, she hoped, for everyone’s sake, that Firkraag’s message had been genuine.

-----


There is no time within a grave. The backtracking through the maze took much less of it than the search for the maze’s heart; even so, Imoen could not tell if it would be evening or night when they would get to the territory of the Stuck in Craw again.

“Grasshopper and Deneb are unharmed, I believe,” Sarevok said suddenly, breaking the silence of the tired party’s march. “I told Dig Dag that Altair and I would be keeping an eye on them. He would not have decided to search through the effects, for fear of alerting us to his intent.”

“Not that we don’t know it,” Imoen said, wearisome. “Jal khaless zhah waela.”

“My lady?” Anomen stirred.

“I didn’t know you spoke drow, sister,” an equally surprised Sarevok added.

“I don’t,” Imoen replied, turning the corner into the corridor which, after several further twists and turns, would take them straight to the clan’s territory. “And I didn’t know you spoke orc—”

She was shot at at that moment; she ducked; a surprised Pangur started on her shoulder and scampered down her back and between the men’s legs, followed, closely, by Imoen herself. There was an arrow where she had been a moment before.

There was an enraged orc snarling and barking behind the corner, as the hasty archer was scolded by his commander; then, some incantations as blessings must prayed for; in the meantime, on the human’s side, Anomen was chanting, Sarevok was casting a spell, and Imoen was dipping the tips of her arrows in poison.

There was a brief pause as Sarevok, now protected against not enchanted weapons, looked behind the corner and cast another spell. The effects were almost comical: amidst a sudden chorus of porcine wails, some orcs dropped their weapons; others sat down on the ground and covered their lupine ears and their red, beady eyes; yet others, in their hopelessness, started to snivel and cry, in large, hot tears. Only a few had been strong enough to resist the spell; and it was from them, once the humans got to the orcs, that the slaughter began.

The throat-cutting was, perhaps, more murder than killing, because, for the second time that particular day, Imoen faced an enemy who did not resist; and this time, her enemy, though orc, was alive. For certain, the feel of cold, ruthless purpose was there, creeping just under her skin; a potential begging and pleading to be used. She did not need it for now; she remembered what the thunder had said— Datta; dayadhvam; damyata. Damyata. Control. There was no sympathy in her for the orcs, but that much, she could stay in control of herself. Even if Anomen Delryn was looking at both Sarevok and her slightly… oddly; that is, when he was not occupied with either the killing or the murder himself.

The ambush of some twenty orcs was felled within minutes; the chieftain, Dig Dag, was not with them. “He will not have moved from the elders’ circle,” Sarevok replied to Anomen’s question, shaking blood off his private blade. “This way, in case of failure, he can pretend that this was licence.”

The squire—red-cheeked not from a blush, but from exertion—snorted contemptuously. “A spineless coward, just like every other orc.”

Sarevok looked at him with clear amusement; and said nothing.

-----


They moved slowly out of the maze into the clan’s grounds; and, shortly, they started to find the bodies. They were freshly dead—the blood barely started to congeal—and there were not many of them, not for the size of the clan. And, apart from the bodies, there were no orcs.

“They are gone,” Imoen, poisoned arrow on bow, reported, perplexed, after she peeked into several nearby side passages. All the equipment, save the orcs’ dirty, untended weaponry, was there, intact; even the totems. But there were no inhabitants.

“They have fled before us!” Anomen declared triumphantly.

“Or, possibly, they are preparing another ambush, squire,” Sarevok added casually, curbing immediately the other young man’s enthusiasm. “Sister? Shall we proceed?”

They proceeded, through malodorous, deserted caves lit by torchlight; and, in the end, entered the main cavern again. It, too, was empty, save for a single figure kneeling by the central fire, within the ring of stones: Sarevok’s bride, kneeling by the headless body of her chieftain and father.

She had almost finished taking off his armour; Imoen looked away. An almost naked orc was a much worse sight than a fully clothed one.

Sarevok growled out a question, lightly; the half-orc froze; looked up at him with pure terror in her eyes; lowered them, and started to spew out words, quickly.

Imoen’s brother, half-frowning, half-scowling, listened to the torrent; gradually, his face smoothed out; at last, he smirked. “She says,” he said when the half-orc finished, and Altair flew to him from a side corridor, greeting him with a happy cry of reunion before settling on the ground, near Pangur, “that a group of young males, led by a Derg and a Flaylan, decided to exploit the absence of the strongest warriors, and take over the control of the clan. They told her to wait for us and tell us that they won’t stand between,” the smirk became, in Imoen’s opinion, unbearably full of itself, “the Son of Murder and his dragon. They won’t fight for us; they won’t fight for Firkraag, either; and they had no intent to die for Dig Dag. They are off to the werewolves’ caves, and will stay put tomorrow.”

“And she?” Imoen asked, pointing at the woman, who had, in the meantime, calmly resumed her gruesome task.

Sarevok shrugged. “She is mine, and a half-orc. They didn’t want to kill her, in case I wanted her. And they certainly wouldn’t fight me for her.”

“And—I mean. Her—father, brother?”

Another shrug. “She killed him herself, sister. I do not believe that any condolences are in order.”

“What?” Anomen demanded, incredulously. “Are you telling us, Anchev, that that—that—that orc—that it was she who—who lopped that swine’s head off?!” He looked in the direction of the green-skinned creature on the floor with an expression which clearly could not decide whether it was supposed to be approval or condemnation, and ended up being utter confusion.

Sarevok watched him calmly. “Unlike Derg or Flaylan, she could get near her father in a secluded place with a naked sword. No one pays attention to orc females, squire.”

A certain nasty suspicion suddenly occurred to his sister; and so, she asked, “That’s why you told them to do it like this, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” her brother replied, quite amused; before, suddenly, casting a fairly alarmed look in his squire’s direction. “Try to understand, Delryn,” he said, matter-of-factly, as Anomen returned the look with something which was still very much confusion, but was quickly turning into a feeling of righteous betrayal, “The alternative would be to kill off the whole clan. We are after half a day of continuous fighting, which is what Dig Dag was counting on; and,” here, Sarevok fairly snarled, “I am not versed enough in your Order’s internal policy to know its stance on killing orc children.”

There was a moment of silence, during which Imoen’s brother set his bag on the ground, sat on the closest stone bench, rubbed his eyes and yawned; then, he barked something at the half-orc. She gave no hint that she heard him; but she lifted the headless corpse and, circling carefully the eagle and the cat, carried it out of the elders’ circle, leaving behind only Dig Dag’s armour. The glittering among the rags she wore must be the rubies and emeralds adorning the sheath of Sarevok’s Calishite scimitar, the woman watching her understood suddenly; the man had had another gift for his bride.

“What if we had killed only the men?” Anomen, meanwhile, asked slowly.

“Orc females, Delryn, are entirely dependent on their men, for sustenance and otherwise,” Sarevok rejoined, suddenly amused, “I would not that you suffered remorse when you finally decided to apply yourself to the study of your enemy.”

“As matters stand, squire,” he concluded, businesslike again; perhaps, again, because he saw the teased squire’s unhappy face—“we have a cover low enough that a dragon will not assail us in our sleep. And Flaylan and Derg have a harem to think of instead of attacking us.”

“And she is a patricide,” Anomen retorted, steering unhappily and unerringly towards the reef against which the sea of muddled reasoning broke.

“That, among the orcs— If it eases your conscience, squire,” Sarevok said, “she had no choice. I ordered her to do it—” (The necklace, Imoen thought; and—Altair? How?) “—and, as I said, orc females obey their husbands. Most really are incapable, by the way,” he added as the look on the squire’s face announced clearly that no, this revelation had not eased his conscience; at all. “Gudrun is an exception; I asked Dig Dag for a bride with enough wits that she would go with us tomorrow… It was a fortunate coincidence that she also was one who had a better than average reason to hate her father,” he added pensively, before looking up at Anomen again. “She is, as I believe I have also already mentioned, half-human.”

The squire’s eyes widened as he finally heard openly that which he had, perhaps, refused to realise before; shortly, he sighed, deeply and wistfully, and with lowered head. “‘Tis— I understand it all, Anchev, but— I must think of it,” he pled, almost.

Sarevok shrugged again. “Then do, squire,” he replied lightly.

At this final guise of charitable nobility, Imoen, calmly furious, decided to interfere at last. “So, your wife is called Gudrun, brother?” she asked, seating herself across the fire. “Perhaps, now that she’s to be a half-human, we should rechristen her Kriemhild.”

Gudrun—or Kriemhild—returned at that precise moment, with a tray with three cups of something hot and steaming; her husband asked, casually, taking one of them, “What do you mean by that, sister?”

“You know very well what I mean by that, brother,” his sister replied viciously, refusing her own. “I grew up in Candlekeep, remember. There were books there. Not only catacombs to invade.”

The squire was now watching the siblings with an utterly bemused expression; and Sarevok said, frigidly, without taking his eyes off Imoen, “My sister and I must speak alone, squire. You are still in armour; if you are not tired, and,” a thoroughly unpleasant smile, “my wife fits her own equipment, would you spar with her? If you are, I will have her show you around.”

It was, perhaps, a mark of the current chaos in Anomen Delryn’s mind that, seeing the muscular, green-skinned and boar-tusked patricide timidly offering him refreshments, and hearing her husband’s request, he recoiled only slightly; then, clenched his teeth, took a cup, said smartly, “Thank you, my lady,” drank the hot, bitter brew within the cup, yet without overly grimacing; and finally, mustering all the knightly courage and chivalrous gallantry at his disposal, declared, “‘Twill be a pleasure to assist the Lady Anchev in her training.”

There was another moment of brief hesitation upon seeing the Chieftain Dig Dag’s leather armour laced with fire-hardened bones instead of studs, as, in the background, Sarevok took out the dead king Strohm’s helm, shield and dragon-slaying sword, and barked and snarled very precise orders at his mortally frightened wife, telling her that she was to make sure she would not permanently harm the weakskin—and then, the squire was gone.

-----


“Well, sister?” Sarevok, as tired as Imoen herself, said slowly after the siblings gave leave to their hungry familiars. “The analogy, by the way, is not apposite. Kriemhild killed her children before feeding them to her husband. Not her father.”

“You are her first husband,” Imoen reminded him coolly. “I’m only curious if you assigned me the part of Gunnar, brother. The poor, cuckolded Gunnar; the husband to Sigurd’s true beloved— Was I supposed to marry Anomen? And you would only drop in ever so often, brother?”

“What?!” she yelled, angrily, in the silence which greeted her words, “You’ve already given him your own Andvari’s ring— You were supposed to leave him in peace,” she added, shaking her head. “Not have him feel that—whatever that is. Some sick hero worship. Not that. You were not supposed to make him understand an orc patricide, brother. You were not supposed to make him sympathise with you just because you happened to be right in a particular case. And you were certainly not supposed to make him look at you like that.”

Just don’t deny it, she thought. Don’t deny it. It’s not like he’s even hiding it, not like you’re hiding yours, those stolen, furtive, proud—fond—looks, looks which do not exist for him— Just don’t deny it, brother. Please.

There was a massive scowl, and a flat-out denial; not of the sort she had expected, but an even more infuriating, “I did not.”

“Then what happened?” she attacked, enraged. “I’m not a paladin. I have the right not to be your enemy, if I decide not to. He doesn’t. He’s a squire—not your squire, even if you keep repeating that, and he starts believing that, because a lie repeated enough becomes the truth— He’s a future paladin. He’s not supposed to feel anything like this—this conflict of interests. He’s Helm’s, brother, not yours! He’s supposed to try to arrest you tomorrow, after we kill Firkraag—if we kill Firkraag—”

“We will, sister.”

Imoen smiled, desperately, disarmed. “Yes. But, brother, you promised. You promised to Helm that you would protect him. You promised to me that you would not give him your sword, although you gave him his field marshal’s armour. And you almost managed to stay businesslike and professional, and not friendly, and demanding only obedience and respect and fighting, and you lied to him that you don’t want him to worship you, and he’s still—he’s still grown attached to you. You’ve gone and proven that you’re half a human, with about the worst timing possible. And then, to make things worse, that your wife is. How come he’s to be a Helmite if he’s sympathising with murderers? You’re such a failure, brother,” she laughed, in a wretched, compassionate mockery of a mocking laugh.

Her brother sighed, and, rather changing the topic, asked, “Has it ever occurred to you, sister, that Helm is not a benevolent god? He is a judge; he tries his followers, to judge if they answer to his requirements. Delryn might have told you about his Trials. Do you not think that, being left alone with us; or, better said, with me—” A scowl. “—that it might be a good crucible for his resolve? That this was the purpose why he was made to obey me? To see if he managed to stay true to his creed?”

“I was thinking something like this, when he pledged himself to me,” Imoen said, suddenly intrigued. “That he’d be avenging his master, slaying dragons and rescuing maidens while he’s with us. All those things which are… traditional, I guess, for becoming a knight. But, well, they are not important, really. A knight really is not a knight without—” She shrugged, searching for a word. “Integrity? Some basic decency?” She could not help the barb. “The things you’re not interested in, brother?”

“Honour?” Sarevok, studying the ground, offered flatly from his side of the fire. “However, yes, this is what I mean, sister. Delryn might have begun to find the alternative, as such, intriguing. And the icon of the alternative is, in this case, me.” He did not appear to be especially proud of himself as he added, suddenly, “I wasn’t planning to foster an unwanted marriage, by the way.”

“I know,” Imoen replied. “I didn’t mean to say that, I think. Or the rest. It was vicious. I’m sorry.”

“I hoped, perhaps, at most, that you might convince yourself to him, eventually,” her brother continued calmly, now looking slightly higher, at the fire. “He would give you the security of nobility: a name, a title, a steady income, a privilege, and an order of paladins to protect you against our siblings. None of these are assets to be easily rejected.”

“You would take them.”

“And he is, as I believe we have agreed, an honourable man.”

At the sound of the unsubtle inducement—for, apparently, though his cards lay open, and he had superficially denied his intent, her brother had not, in fact, given up his game—Imoen burst out with, this time genuine, laughter. “And a handsome, loyal Helmite who will soon be in possession of a barony and the majority of a dragon’s hoard. In other words, he might be just up to my standards, you mean? Even if my standards so far include a dissolute elf, a Thayvian who turned out to be my brother, and a one-night werewolf? And, of the three, the werewolf was the best? You know, brother, perhaps I should stop limiting myself to half of mankind, too—”

“But, what I mean is,” she said, seeing her exposed brother’s indignant face, “while it’s all true what you said—and though I know I could even love Anomen, eventually, friendly-like—I wouldn’t want to spend whatever remains of my life among people who would look at me like Itona does, brother. Because they would know that I was a nameless bastard who, like a true bastard, insinuated herself into a decent family. And not just your average bastard, but a god’s unholy bastard, at that.” Pensively, she added, “The last is Anomen’s expression, by the way. He called you it this morning, when you left us alone.”

“He did,” Sarevok said, wondrously amused. “Perhaps there is still some hope for him.”

Imoen shot him a pointed look across the fire. “That was before you fetched him clean armour from an orc encampment, and then almost died in his lap.” She snorted. “Even though you didn’t want it, right now, he would be marrying me because he would want to marry—” She interrupted; too late. “Is there some particular reason why you’re not killing me right now, brother?” she asked casually.

“I believe I gave you a word, sister,” the man replied, with lethal composure.

“Ah. Then, your particular feelings on a certain matter—”

“—will, hopefully, remain my own,” Sarevok finished smoothly; then, he smiled, privately, and said, “His tail is like the crescent moon at sunrise.”

“What?!”

Her brother looked at her, amused. “Altair is a bit of a poet. She says that all birds are; she once knew a sparrow—or ate a sparrow… Either way, sister, she said that about your cat.”

Imoen leaned out over the fire, and saw that Pangur and Altair had returned, and were currently feasting on a fairly large tenderloin. Pangur must have heard what Sarevok said, because he was looking intently at the limb in question.

Then, he looked at Imoen. The chick said that ‘bout me?

The tail lashed. Tell’er…

Another lash. Tell’er…

An extremely self-satisfied lash. Tell’er she’s hot.

Imoen wondered, briefly, if she was still going to have a cat within a few moments; but her cat was looking at her meaningfully. “Altair, Pangur says that you are one hot chick.”

The eagle looked at the cat, carefully; and then, tore off a large piece of meat and, with a glimmer in her golden eyes, put it in front of him.

-----


Sarevok almost touched her when they were leaving the elders’ circle to see which way his latest experiment in educating a future paladin had gone. It was an odd move, as if he wanted to put his arm around her waist and hold her close to himself, for a moment, now that they were still alone; and, in view of all the evidence gathered since she had first taken notice of it, she was forced to amend her views: it was Sarevok who would not handle her, now, as if, in some extremely abstract way, he was afraid to break her. She had no such compunctions. She wondered if her brother even realised his.

“How long are you going to continue this farce?” she asked him, quietly, after it turned out that the experiment, predictably, had not gone especially well; but that, surprisingly enough, nor had it been a spectacular failure. Both the wife and the squire still lived; they were actually sparring; Anomen was ducking a vicious, utterly uncouth and unschooled, cut at neck level, as the siblings entered the side cave.

“What do you mean, sister?” Sarevok asked, before yelling something long and, by the sound of it, utterly obscene, at his bashful wife; who promptly cowered. Forthwith, the dragon-helm was corrected on the almost-human head, the dragon-shield was put to actual use, and the dragon-slaying sword hit the Delryn legacy shield again, to the accompaniment of a fairly barbaric cry.

“Her. Gudrun.”

“Kriemhild, sister,” the man corrected calmly.

“Kriemhild, then,” Imoen replied; the half-orc may, indeed, profit from a new name now that she was among humans. “Everything Anomen said about her is true, you know: she is filthy, ugly, uncouth and utterly homicidal. She is no Drizzt.”

“Good,” Sarevok decided, before yelling, “Delryn—” A long list of commands followed; when it was finished, and executed, he added, “Kill her, if you wish, sister. Preferably, though, postpone this until after we fight the dragon.”

“Stop this noble posturing as emancipator of oppressed half-orc females, brother,” Imoen retorted. “It does not become you. And you should know that it’s one thing to tolerate a monster, but it’s another to welcome it into your household. Why does orcish sound like you’re cursing all the time?”

“Conceivably, because I am. The female tongue is much politer, of course— Actually, I thought about sending her off to Cernd. Either that, or I can take her with me to Aran; he will find use for another bodyguard.”

“I think, brother,” Imoen said thoughtfully, “that if there is anyone who can accept her, it’s Cernd. And Cernd’s people, half the time, aren’t human themselves.”

“They are a tribe,” Sarevok agreed civilly. “She will find the loose chieftain structure familiar. The matter is settled, then. I will leave her in Trademeet, with the envoys.”

For a moment, they watched the fight; Anomen, though still happy and bright-eyed, was looking extremely tired. She wondered if he had ever fought this much during a single day— Perhaps during his missions with the Order; suddenly, she wished she had heard more about them. Possibly tomorrow, after Sarevok would be gone, she would ask the squire about them.

“And he?” she asked in the end. “Anomen?” And then, because the thought still nagged her, she added, “By the way. Was Firkraag’s message for real?”

Sarevok looked at her oddly. “It was. And Delryn—” He shrugged. “I will hurt him tomorrow, when he tries to arrest me. I— He will have everything he has always wanted, sister, and this will have to suffice him. He will not have caught an outlaw to boot; and, when he answers to his superiors why, he will be telling the truth— It will not be long, now,” he said, hard-faced.

Imoen smiled, and probed, lightly, further, “Have you considered, brother, that Helm extracted a promise from both of you? That—”

“That he might have predicted that I would resent being used as anyone’s crucible, and decide to fulfil my part of the pledge, and not… go out of my way to put hurdles in Delryn’s path to fulfilling his?” A small, bitter laugh. “It appears that, if so, his plans failed— Even so, it’s only until tomorrow,” her brother said. “Tomorrow, he will have everything,” he repeated, watching the squire without much obvious feeling. “And I will be with Aran.”

And then, suddenly, and completely incongruously; for, as it turned out in the end, the matter under discussion was irrelevant in this regard—Imoen remembered what Edwin Odesseiron had once said during a breakfast in Mae’Var’s guild; and understood the reason of a very private scowl a night before.

“Sarevok,” she asked incredulously, “Aran Linvail had a geas cast on you, hadn’t he?”




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