Chapter 8

Sir Taxony, the captain of the guard, is intrigued by the contrasting roles of women in his homeland. He and his fellow cavaliers, Sir Arnott and Sir Eluvian, are waiting in the dark for their new friend, Sir Serena, who is scouting ahead. They encounter the formidable Drin, a difficult enemy to defeat. Sir Taxony is determined to form a new cavalry and restore honor and courage. Sir Serena surprises them with her appearance and leads them back to their hideaway where they find Sir Tarsidian injured. Using a spur fragment and a thread, Sir Serena prepares to treat his wound. Where Sir Taxony was from, women cooked, served dinner, and made babies. They did not creep through tunnels like dark angels and slay demons with swords writhing with blue flames. He might not admit it, but Taxony found this contrast most alluring. Sir Serena was a creature he'd never before beheld. To take instructions from any other was an unfamiliar and not wholly pleasant experience for the captain of the guard of His Majesty King Macabre's Royal Cavalry, and to take instructions from a woman even less palatable. But he ceded his authority nonetheless. He was indebted to the Chardin, and as he'd learned, the order of the Chard made no distinction between the sexes. Once the test of ordainment was passed, a Chardin knight was given the title Sir, and with it came all the prestige and privilege of the legendary order. Sir Serena's instructions had been clear. They were to stay here and await her return. She'd gone hunting, scouting the way forward. Now they—famed cavaliers of the Southern March—were the women, staying behind. He looked across the corridor and saw Sir Arnott—out of habit, he still thought of a man as a sergeant—waiting grimly with the black-iron morning star he'd liberated from Almitra's tomb. Faint vapors of deep purple bled from each spike and dissipated slowly in front of his face, according his gray eyes with an ethereal light. Arnott sensed Taksini's attention and flicked those surreal eyes at Taksini with a wink though his face remained grim. tunnels. They'd been waiting. Never had Taksini seen such patience. As cavaliers of the Southern March battled with the evils that stalked the night was nothing new. They'd crossed sores with the walking dead, ridden against the goblin hordes forever testing the southern boundaries of their beloved homeland, had even hunted down a king of the nightbreeds, a vampire, in the ruins of Mount Decivius, but never had they encountered the likes of the Drin. During the Battle of New Rome, Taksini had seen with his own eyes the long gladiuses and broadswords of the legionnaires simply bounce off the thick hides of the Drinian horde and soldiers, barely drawing so much as a seam of blood. The Drin's bones were dense and their talons were made for carving through rock. Any armor not woven with magical wards or charms might as well have been the schemes of boiled turnips. The Drin could see in the dark even better than the nightbreeds and were damn near impossible to kill. And yet this wasn't the first time he'd been waiting in the dark with the echoes of screams wafting through the clicks of claws on stone. Every friend he'd ever had had died in the Pass of Almitra. Sir Arnott, Sir Eluvian and Sir Taksini himself were all that remained of an entire civilization. The banner of the Southern March would fly again, but first he would accompany his new friends to their homeland, the fabled realm of Vallas where the Magi ruled. It was important to them that they get there. Sir Taksini would see it so. He gripped his new sword with both hands and drew comfort from it. It was long and straight, double-bladed, with calligraphic runes engraved at the base of the blade on its fricasso. Once freed from its scabbard, the runes would fill with pale green, effervescent light and spill over the blade itself, creeping along its edges and swirling into the air around it. Sometimes Taksini would just hold it to his face and stare into its light, mesmerized by its hypnotic shifting. But it served him well in the Battle of New Rome, better even than his trusty longsword that had been handed down to him by his father and his father before him. His new blade, a hand-and-a-half sword of unrivaled craftsmanship, possessed light weight yet could cleave through steel and stone as easily as if it were kindling. It was a simple joy just to hold, calming, reassuring in the silence of the dark. Of course he would have preferred riding atop a fully armored destry alongside his old cavalry in a phalanx of lowered lances and a full gallop, rather than standing in a lightless, haunted corridor in the bowels of a gutted city. Regripping his new sword, Taksini made the decision in that moment to form a new cavalry and once again ride with the eight swords' banners snapping in the wind behind him. In the end, honor and courage, as it had always, would win the day. He would see to it. The darkness shimmered, and Sir Serena appeared like an apparition. He should have been used to it by now. He'd seen them do it a dozen times, but still she was able to surprise them, much to his embarrassment. A cavalier was never startled. We must return to the room, she whispered. What of the drin? Arna asked. What of them? she asked, breezing past them both. She left a faint scent of leather and steel behind her, mingled with sweat and some other fragrance that tantalized him. Taksini found her most fetching. Their brains are decorating the walls quickly. Others will come looking for them. Most fetching indeed. With a glance and a shrug, Arna and Taksini followed her back to their hideaway. The rings of mail that comprised of her habergeon jingled softly with her strides. At about ten paces from the door of the room, Taksini heard a muffled grunt. Sir Serena tapped a quick pattern with her fingertip on the front of the door. It opened. A dim candlelight bled into the dusty corridor, as well as a whiff of an open wound and wine. They closed the door quickly behind them. On a tangle of blankets on the carpeted floor was Sir Tarsidian in all of his southern plainsman glory. Never in all his life had Sir Taksini met a man as large and as built of muscle. He was a walking mountain, and yet that armor of muscle beneath the legendary breastplate of the Knights of the Shod had not been able to protect him. Alluvian had given Sir Tarsidian his belt to bite on and had doused the formlessly hideous injury with wine in an attempt to stop any rot from forming. After the giant plainsman had ingested the flask of ambrosia, the wound looked much better. No longer did his entrails poke at the side of his stomach, and yet it was by no means completely healed. They'd learned that what Marcus had found was not primrose ambrosia, but a leesome ambrosia, which wasn't as strong and did indeed weaken over long stretches of time. Still, it had saved his life. Any trouble? Sir Tarsidian asked. His eyes were glassy with the effects of the gold mushroom and wine. Sir Serena answered with a shake of her head. Two last men in the world, she said, but there will be others. Ready for a little knitting? I have a choice. Sir Taksini was fascinated by their manner of speech. Even though it was high-comm and it sounded like a different language, their accents were Sir Stavanger had said it was due to this American-English tongue they'd been forced to learn on their stay on Earth. Their cadence was rapid and flowing, less stilted, and their vowels sounded as if they'd been trampled by an ogre. But there was a charm to it, but perhaps it was because it sounded so exotic, coming from Sir Serena's perfectly shaped lips. No, she said primly. I ask that simple utterance was music to Sir Taksini, and if I cannot find a needle, she said, pulling out something small from within the folds of her blue cloak, then I will have to make one. Sir Tarsidian narrowed his left eye and tried to see what she was holding in her tapered fingers. It was small and pale, like a bone fragment. Spur? the planesman asked. She nodded, and then kneeled beside him with her eyebrows furrowed. When she found what she was looking for, a loose thread in one of the silk blankets Sir Tarsidian was lying on, she took it between her thumb and forefinger and began to work it loose. They watched her in silence slice a foot-long thread, pierce the spur fragment with the very tip of a blade that rippled silver, with the chardon called a koronai, insert the tip of the thread through the hole she'd made on a single attempt, tie it into a knot with quick nimble fingers, and then, finally, hold it up, where it glinted in the soft candlelight. She then folded a leather belt and motioned with her jaw to open his. He hesitated, but after an affirming nod from her, he accepted and clamped down. It seemed as if this was going to hurt.