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Roland Green

Knights of the Sword

Prologue

Unarmored, Sir Marod of Ellersford had never been a great burden for a horse. He was a head taller than the average, but also a span narrower. One who had trained him in youth was said to have jested:

“Think you to defeat all archers, by standing sideways? Think again, young Marod!”

That was forty years ago. Now Marod was no longer young, but a Knight of the Rose in the ranks of the Knights of Solamnia. Still he remained lean.

So his mount had easy work, carrying him up to the crest of a hill not far from Dargaard Keep. He did not look at the great mass of stone and the outbuildings that sprawled about it but instead westward, toward the sunset.

Low but spike-crested hills rose there, where thousands of years of rain and wind had worn away soft outer rock from around harder cores. Some of the spikes rose against the crimson and gold blazing across part of the sky. Others were lost in spreading blue-grayness where storm clouds gathered.

A storm at this time of the spring could be great or small, doing much or little. Rather like the condition of the Knights of Solamnia-one reason that Sir Marod of Ellersford had been doing for some fifteen years the task that he hoped the True Gods would allow him to do for as long again.

That task was simple enough to put into words. It was to find for the knights resources of men, weapons, wealth, and skill not known to the priests who ruled in Istar the Mighty. It was also to keep those resources hidden from those priests-and insofar as Honor, Oath, and Measure allowed, from those knights who did not need to know of them.

The world did not fare so ill under the rule of Istar the Mighty that this was a matter of life or death. Even those lands that refused all but the most nominal allegiance to Istar did so politely (except the minotaurs, and they were no ruder to Istar than they were to anyone else, which Marod supposed was in some degree a gesture of honor). Istar ruled, peace prevailed, and men grew sleek in the arts of peace.

The Knights of Solamnia, given from youth to the arts of war, had little place in this snug world. Few came forward to fill their ranks; many left those ranks as soon as they lawfully could.

If the priests of Istar had not openly rejoiced in this, Marod might have been less uneasy. But it seemed to him that the priests rejoiced at the weakening of the knights as they would rejoice at the weakening of a would-be rival. Marod distrusted those who could not bear rivals.

An educated man, he knew well enough that even among the True Gods there were Good, Neutral, and Evil to keep the balance of the universe. Men, needing balance even more than the gods, needed to be careful about letting any among them gather too much power.

The knights would weigh in the balance against the priests merely by existing. Marod hoped earnestly that none of his and others’ fears of harsher work ahead would prove true. Yet it was already known that the priests called against justice for races other than humankind, or at least for looking the other way when injustice was done.