Weasel's Luck

by Michael Williams

  Was the object which plummeted from the heavens a gift from Branchala? As Sath never found the toy soldier (believe me, I took care of that by burying the entire army deep in the moat house midden), he took the evidence of a purple bump on his noggin as physical evidence that the artist must suffer to create.

  Unfortunately, the visionary moments expanded into blackouts over the next several months, from which the elf recovered eventually, writing of his experience in the poem Dark of Solinari, which, though never published, passed through our part of Coastlund by word of mouth. Its reference to “a gray Knight’s morning missive,” though ambiguous, was enough to keep Father guessing whether one of his sons was at the bottom of the mystery, especially when he caught the servants doubled over, reciting the line.

  No, Father would not forgive my insult to a famous bard. He would probably turn me loose to fend for myself in the swamp south of the moat house. ’Warden Swamp: from which, we knew, nobody returned.

  Under Alfric’s threats I took over his chores of cleaning the stables, of cleaning his private chambers. And when a horse or servant showed up lame, it was Galen the youngest, not the responsible Alfric, who confessed and suffered Father’s anger. Indeed, as the months passed into years, I began to wonder if owning up to the whole Sath business would do me some good. Probably not.

  This is the way things were, a time in which I found a great delight in resentment, in plotting a revenge so sweet and elaborate that the pieces only began to fall into place eight years from that summer night, two weeks after my seventeenth birthday, on a night I have told you of already.

  From where I sat now, revenge had yet to become sweet. For no sooner had the light faded from the corridor, had the dungeon in which Alfric and I were confined resumed its silence, than my brother, as I have said before, began to crawl like a monstrous crab across the dark floor, stumbling and cursing in the dark, muttering, “Where are you now, you little felon?”

  I leaped quickly behind the approaching voice, piped, “Over here!” and leaped again. I heard the crab-brother turn, curse, and again leaped behind the sound of that movement. It was hide-and-seek for keeps, and I knew it.

  “Over here!” I squealed again, and there was movement at my feet. I leaped backwards, away from the sound, and into the strong arms of my brother.

  Now it was Alfric’s turn. I felt a strong blow to the back of my head, clumsy but certain fingers encircling my throat, and I was falling somewhere, out of the dark into a greater darkness.

  I awoke to a lantern shone into my eyes, to Gileandos’s face. He crouched above me, holding the lantern at arm’s length, clutching in his other hand a plate of bread and cheese. Two guards stood behind him, the amused keepers of our cell. I knew them from the stables, knew they delighted in Alfric’s imprisonment and were no doubt indifferent to whatever befell me.

  “My lad, you have been ‘pummeled and cudgeled passing well,’ as the old poem says,” Gileandos exclaimed.

  It hurt me to sit up, to breathe, much less to remember any old poem. My left eye would barely open, and the light from the lantern hurt it terribly. Yes, pummeled and cudgeled passing well was a pretty good description.

  But Gileandos was not satisfied, and continued.

  “Such maladies are not unusual among the recently incarcerated. The combination of melancholy, darkness, and damp air is a painful one, but rarely deadly. There are stories of Santos Silverblade, Solamnic Knight and ancestor to Sir Bayard Brightblade, our visitor. They tell how Santos survived the Siege of Daltigoth, though imprisoned in the dungeons of that hateful city, how when Vinas Solamnus and his followers entered Daltigoth as conquerors, opening the prisons, Santos emerged, as the song says, ‘battered and bruised but by no means beaten’…”

  “Galen run into a wall,” my brother interrupted from the corner of our cell. “It was a rat what scared him, caused him to jump untimely.”

  “Come, come, Alfric,” Gileandos scoffed, turning the lantern to my brother’s face, which appeared hungry but otherwise none the worse for wear. “It seems quite apparent that what we have is the aforementioned prisoner’s malady, aggravated no doubt by the unseasonable coolness of the weather, which I have established conclusively to stem from the precipitous action of sunspots upon marsh vapors, all of which factors …”

  “He run into a wall. That’s the way it happened. Isn’t it, brother dear?” Alfric never took his eyes from me.

  I chose my words carefully.

  “My brother is right, Gileandos. It was a wall, of that I am sure. And it was a rat that startled me, made me take the unfortunate leap that caused the wreckage you see here.”

  I lay back, trying to look even more beaten, even more pathetic.

  “And what is more, I could have escaped injury had I only listened to Alfric, who had told me to stand still until he could light a small fire for us to see by—a remarkable talent of his, for he can start a fire in the most unusual places … from the most unlikely materials.”

  Clumsy, and maybe a little obvious.

  “What’s that?” Gileandos leaned forward, his attention mine at last. “What’s that you say about fires?”

  “Oh, never mind. As I was saying, I was startled,” I whimpered, “and perhaps to a small degree prey to that very malady you have mentioned, but rest assured it was a rat—a large one, the largest of the litter, but a common rat nonetheless—that led me to this sorry state you see before you.”

  Gileandos leaned over me, squinted intently, set the plate beside me.

  “There is more to a rat than the cheese he fancies,” he proclaimed, a question in his voice. “Your breakfast. Before it gets cold.”

  He turned, closed the door behind him, and left us in darkness.

  As his footsteps faded down the corridor, I heard movement in the far corner of the cell. I dodged, felt the wind of something large moving quickly past me, heard something hit the wall and my brother curse. I crept to the center—what I thought was the center—of the room.

  “I got that part about the rat,” Alfric growled from somewhere.

  Good. Then Gileandos might, too. I stayed silent.

  “And what was that about fire, anyway?”

  Still I was silent.

  And so I remained for what could have been hours, even a day, moving when I heard movement, standing completely still when there was nothing to hear.

  I was trying to come to terms with the possibility that I would never sleep again when a key jostled in the lock. Light bathed the cell, and I discovered Alfric and I were standing back to back, scarcely a yard apart. He turned, grabbed for me, and before my brother could make purchase or I could even begin to dodge, Father was between us, clutching a torch in his left hand, the front of Alfric’s shirt in his right, holding my rather abundant brother a good foot or so off the ground.

  I marveled at the old man’s quickness and strength, swore to myself I would be as devoted a son as was convenient.

  At the door stood our two burly guardsmen, who stared at us, obviously trying to hide their smirks. At a nod from the old man, they busied themselves with fixing leg irons to the dungeon wall. Upon another nod from my father, Gileandos stepped into the room.

  I counted only two chains in the hands of the servants.

  Father, still dangling my eldest brother, nodded once more to Gileandos, who explained the new circumstances in his best lecturer’s voice.

  “Never lie to your elders, Galen. You haven’t the subtlety nor the experience. For speech, my lad, is a text wherein the trained mind can discover wonders, and there was indeed no way that one of your age and … lack of sophistication … could have known that in lying, paradoxically, he was revealing the truth.”

  It didn’t sound good for me. The old man continued in senile revery. I longed for coals, for phosfire, for Father’s torch. He was asking for yet another enkindlement.

  “For every text, verbal or spoken,” he droned on, “has a subtext, and the subtext of your lie revea
led quite clearly that Alfric was the rat of your little story, that your injury involved no rat in what we might call the literal sense, no wall beyond the simple—albeit violent—constraint of the aforementioned brother. Am I correct?”

  “Yes, Gileandos.” Why confuse him with the full truth? I tried to appear awed, shaking my head, smiling stupidly. He smiled back condescendingly.

  “And what is more, you unraveled a mystery the heart of which I have sought to penetrate these six months passing, since the initial, unfortunate conflagration? Am I correct?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come, come, lad. Did you think I was content to burst unexplainably into flame every now and then without getting to the heart of the matter? In seeking to cloak your brother’s bullying, you have indeed uncovered what we might call his … more dangerous tendencies. Now wouldn’t the truth have been more wise from the start?”

  “I suppose so, Gileandos.”

  As the servants placed a fuming, sputtering Alfric in the leg irons, Father glared at him, waving the torch like a mythical sword.

  I knew better than to speak now. Gileandos continued.

  “Your father and I have counseled over your punishment, Galen, and we have determined it would be most fitting for you to see your brother made an example for his misdeeds. You will continue your stay here in the dungeon until Sir Bayard recovers the armor. We trust you will be edified by the fate of your brother who, having grown to manhood, will be disciplined, no doubt, as befits a man.”

  My father expressed puzzlement at how he could have fathered an arsonist, a mystic, and a liar, with no promising Knight in the whole bunch. The two servants were probably wondering if all wealthy families were like this.

  They left the dungeon in silence. Then, across the cell in the darkness, I heard the chains rattle like in a bad horror story. My brother begin to elaborate on what he would do if he could get his hands on me.

  I sat, rested my back against the door. I took stock.

  “As I see it, Alfric, these threats and dire promises aren’t worth much while you’re in the leg irons. And the way things look, you’ll be in leg irons forever. The odds are you’ll be stuck here for at least another decade until another Knight decides to comb up some renown for fairness by giving you a last try as a squire.

  “How many times has it been, anyway, Alfric?

  “ ‘Too great a reptile to be a squire.’ Wasn’t that what Sir Gareth de Palantha said when you were fourteen? When he found you had rifled an alms box to buy those enchanted spectacles from the merchant, those spectacles that were supposed to let you see through Elspeth’s clothing? Even I could have been a squire at fourteen, could become one tomorrow if I set my mind to it. That is, in any other family.

  “But Father has to farm you out first, because you are the eldest. Can you imagine how embarrassing it is to him, when other Knights of the Order have sons in the lists of Knighthood, have grandsons as squires, and he must care for a twenty-one-year-old slug who lolls around the house eating his venison, drinking his wine, dreaming only of thrashing servants and riding horses to death?”

  A cry arose out of the darkness. With relish I continued.

  “And now it’ll be another ten years for sure. By that time it’ll be the last try, because even an idealist is going to be embarrassed by a thirty-year-old hulk lugging his armor around. The priesthood’ll be all that’s left for you by then, and perhaps you’ll be even a little too old for that, as we both know Brithelm will be well on the way towards spiritual purity and you’ll be some grizzled novitiate whose sum of life experience amounts …”

  It was pat, like the old comedies when you mention someone’s name and he walks in immediately. The key rattled in the door, and led by candlelight and a gust of warmer air from the sunlit rooms above, my brother Brithelm, the one true innocent in the family, entered the room of conspiracy behind the impatient guards.

  It was getting busy down here, to be sure. And it was irritating, especially when I was in the midst of enraging Alfric, who was wrenching himself against the chains.

  But after all, it was Brithelm. And being the one true innocent, he felt sorry for us.

  “How are you, brothers? This damp, smothering cell—the rats, the darkness, the smell of decay. I hate it that we’ve kept you here this long. But I think it’s nearly over.”

  “What’s nearly over, Brithelm?” asked my oldest brother, his voice rising in pitch and volume as, after my speech, he no doubt imagined himself in boiling oil, at best a thick and dangling noose.

  “You’re to come with me at once,” Brithelm continued, crouching beside me, holding the candle in front of him, the better to see the family heir dangling from the wall, “to an audience with Father in the great hall. Bayard returned not quite an hour ago, and he has the thief of his armor in tow.”

  The Scorpion! This was what Brithelm called good news.

  “I expect the truth will out,” he continued, “and the name of Pathwarden will be cleared by both of you.”

  Yes. Unto the fifth generation.

  Torches smoldered in the sconces, lit hurriedly against the gathering dusk and the gathering crowds. For the great hall was alive and astir, and dog-infested: mastiffs, beagles, and bloodhounds clambered on the table, fought by the hearth, romanced behind tapestries. In his haste to render swift and merciless justice, Father had not bothered to clear the room.

  The dog act preceded the main show, which involved us.

  Father and Bayard sat in places of honor, ornate and official, dressed to question the prisoner in black. The servants had gathered, eager for gossip, and even the peasants had returned at the prospect of blood.

  But it was the prisoner that concerned me at the moment. Thin, almost skeletal, his pipe stems scarcely resembling the strong, wiry legs of the visitor I recalled. He was decked in black all right, but sixty years old if he was a day. I awaited the voice to confirm my hopes.

  I was sure that Bayard had brought in the wrong party.

  Which was fine by me. Far better a scapegoat than the real item—the Scorpion who could implicate me in a web of wrongdoings that might entangle the family unto the fifth generation. I walked to the middle of the hall with the guardsmen and Alfric. Brithelm took his place at the arm of Father’s chair.

  Bayard was watching us closely, leg dangling over the arm of his chair, fingers steepled, gray eyes fastened to our faces and gestures. I expect the same idea had occurred to him: that the man in black was hardly the rugged type, no match for Alfric, let alone the rustic likes of Jaffa. This poor soul had probably dropped his weapon at first sight of Bayard. I was half-tempted to identify the rascal in front of us as the Scorpion if it would shake us loose of the cellars. But I kept my tongue, knowing that such an identification would raise ugly questions as to how close a view I had gotten of the assailant in the first place.

  The rascal in front of us had no such restraints.

  “That’s him. That’s the one who helped me,” he said, in a voice as harsh and dry as old paper. He groveled in front of Father and with a bony finger pointed directly at me.

  “You must mean Alfric,” I claimed in desperation. “I have never seen you up until this moment.”

  Bayard rose from his chair, watching me even more intently. He cleared his throat, spoke calmly to the prisoner, his eyes, like Father’s, fixed on me.

  “Do you know at whom you are leveling charges, man? For theft is a grave charge …” Bayard paused, looked toward the fire, and then leveled his gray, stark eyes upon me again. “Theft is a capital charge, not a simple failing such as … such as dozing on the watch. Someone’s life could hang in the balance, lad.”

  I had begun to dislike Sir Bayard Brightblade, who was making me uncomfortable. So I spoke up.

  “Well, sir, never did I obtain clear view of the culprit, as I have said, and never would I conspire against your property or person. You can believe me, or you can believe this wayward sort you have captured red-ha
nded with the evidence.” I gestured dramatically toward the prisoner.

  All eyes fixed on the man in black who quivered in handcuffs at the my father’s feet. All eyes except those of my father, who was deferring in these circumstances to Bayard, whose eyes were focused on me, gray and ever intent.

  “If that is my choice, I’ll believe you, young master,” Bayard replied, rising from his chair and turning his back to me. He stepped lightly over a retreating dog and walked toward the mantle of the fireplace, stopping to stand over his recovered armor, which lay in a glittering heap on the hearth.

  “But that is the one who helped me, and I can prove it,” the prisoner insisted.

  Hardly an orator, but his words drew fire and attention. Now Father sprang to his feet, hearing what he had wanted to hear all along, I suppose—that his precious eldest son, poor Alfric, was really guilty of no more than being petty, dimwitted, and in the wrong place. Bayard did not move, but turned away, staring into the fire a long and suspenseful time before proclaiming:

  “Once again, let us hear your version of what happened that night, Alfric.”

  Clumsily my brother began, his eyes darting back and forth—looking for approval first to Father, then to Bayard. I had seen the look before. He was trying to figure out if he needed to lie to stay out of trouble.

  It was beyond him, so he barreled on into a cloudy version of the same old truth.

  “That night I come up from the banquet, all set to police the upstairs quarters, for as you have always told us, Father, the times is hard ones, and but a few honest men about.”

  “May it not be one less than you’re claiming, boy,” Father threatened, reddening under his red beard and eyebrows. Bayard sighed, returning to his chair as a cloud passed over the sun outside and the windows grew dark, the blue in the wings of the stained glass kingfishers fading to a flat gray until it looked as though someone was standing at the east window. For a moment, preposterous though it seemed. I thought that someone was standing at the window—a spy on the proceedings, perhaps. I looked at Bayard to see if he had noticed.