Weasel's Luck

by Michael Williams

  I liked that last phrase, closed my eyes, repeated it.

  I then surveyed my squirely work and realized that I had no idea how to put the armor back together. Greaves lay by the fireplace, the breastplate on the mattress where I had set it aside out of boredom, the gloves on the plain rug in front of the fire, and the helmet half-polished in my hands. Cords of leather lay strewn everywhere. There was elaborate lacing to this machinery, but I wasn’t a party to its workings.

  “The pieces never fit together,” I whimpered. “None of the pieces fit, in Bayard’s armor or in Bayard himself. What am I supposed to tell the Scorpion when I don’t know what I’m spying for, can’t figure out the man I’m spying on?”

  I walked to the fireplace and held my hands to the warmth of the little blaze.

  “First of all, he doesn’t believe me when I identify his prisoner as the Scorpion. Of course, he wasn’t the Scorpion, but Sir Bayard couldn’t know that. Anyway, he doesn’t say anything, but I figure he can’t believe me because of the questions he asks. Now where was that wax?”

  I reached into my pockets, took out the high-pitched dog whistle I had used to disrupt the great hall time and again, turning Father’s formal reception room into a churning frenzy of hounds, terriers, and mastiffs. I tossed it onto Brithelm’s mattress by the breastplate.

  Then my even more prized possessions. First, the red Calantina dice, twelve-sided wooden curiosities from Estwilde. There were one hundred and forty-four numbers you could roll with them, and tradition had assigned to each number a symbolic animal and three lines of verses that were supposed to be prophetic, but usually turned out to be too obscure to be helpful. Only later, when you looked back on the reading, could you usually say, “Oh, that’s what the reading meant.”

  It wasn’t ever much help, but it made you think there were ways to see things coming, and the thought was strangely reassuring.

  After the dice, my gloves. I had purchased them from a merchant who swore they had adorned the hands of a Solammic captain at the Battle of Chaktamir. I paid for them with the servants’ money when they had heard that Sir Bayard was coming. He had quite a reputation for heroism, and before his arrival the younger servants had begged me in the scullery, in the broom closet, in the downstairs corridors, offering me their pennies for just one peek at the fabled armor.

  Those pennies were gone now, spent on the pair of thick leather gloves I tossed on the bed by the dice. I had not dreamed of wearing them around the moat house, since their stitching was intricate and costly, down to the phases of the red moon dyed and stamped upon the knuckles. Sporting such attire in front of Father would raise uncomfortable questions.

  But the servant children raised no such questions, being the innocent and trusting souls they were. The night before the theft I had gotten around to telling them that viewing the armor would be impossible and that it had cost me all of their pennies even to ask for such a viewing. They bought my explanation, too, thinking perhaps that such was the way one transacted business with a Solamnic Knight.

  With the whistle, the dice, and the gloves on the bed, I continued to ferret through my pockets.

  “There must be wax in here somewhere …”

  I gave up on the one pocket and moved to the other, all the while pondering my change in circumstances. Pondering Bayard Brightblade, who was a mystery.

  “First he strips Alfric of squirehood for nodding off and losing the armor, then he takes me on for the same job when he seems to suspect I did far worse. And it isn’t soft-heartedness on his part, some bygones-be-bygones kind of gibberish. He slapped the poor man in black in the heart of the dungeon and is talking execution. Beheading! I didn’t know the Knights of Solamnia let you do that kind of thing, much less that Bayard would take it on himself to do it! The joke on him is that the poor fellow is hardly the Scorpion, for the Scorpion, as I and only I well know, is cavorting in the body of a raven presently. Ha! Ha!” I glanced over my shoulder nervously, just in case someone was eavesdropping. No one.

  Exploring the new pocket, my fingers brushed against something leather. I drew out the little purse and looked in it for wax, but it was empty except for the six opals that came in it that fateful night of the Scorpion’s first visit. I remembered the scorpion standing in my hand and shuddered.

  They looked like eggs, those stones, and I wished the raven had settled for them. I started to hide them in Brithelm’s room, thought better of it, and set them lightly on the bed by my other possessions.

  The wax was growing more necessary. For it seemed like a good plan: to melt bits of it over the pieces of armor, using it as a sort of makeshift glue or mortar. It wouldn’t hold them together long, but it might work long enough so that I could ask an unwitting kitchen servant to move the suit to Bayard’s quarters, blaming the poor boy loudly when the suit fell apart.

  Such was my strategy, but you probably know what they say about the plans of mice and men.

  That goes for weasels, too, evidently.

  When I heard the rattle of a key in the lock, I thought of Alfric, who was even less fond of me now that I had become Bayard’s squire in his stead. He was still condemned to fester in the moat house, while Father pondered his inadequacies, and though his hand was usually stayed by the presence of others, I did not doubt that he plotted outrage.

  So it was deep into the closet for me, closing the door behind me and slipping under the hanging robes as though they were a curtain. I checked to see if they were a curtain indeed, testing the back wall for secret doors, for passageways, but with no results. I was backed into here, brought to ground.

  Outside I heard the movement of metal on stone, the muffled ring of metal on metal.

  Someone was doing something to the armor.

  Sometimes curiosity outweighs prudence, and this was one of those times. I parted the curtain of robes and opened the closet door ever so slightly, admitting the light from the fireplace and from the one lamp in the room.

  Needless to say, I thought first of illusion when I looked through the crack of the closet door and saw Bayard’s breastplate floating above the bed, nothing supporting it but the dark air below it. Done by mirrors, no doubt. I mean, isn’t that the first thing you think when the magical intrudes in your otherwise unmagical life? I did what almost all of us would do: I looked for trapdoors and fictions.

  Which there were none of in view at the moment. Only Brithelm, standing motionless in the center of the room. He watched calmly, even playfully, as the armor glowed red, then yellow, then white. Slowly it collected itself. The greaves got up and walked from the fireplace to the pallet, as though strapped to the body of an ancient phantom. There, as an unearthly music began to tumble out of the walls of the room, the greaves joined the assembling suit.

  And all of this having something to do with my middle brother, standing serenely, left hand in the air, singing along with the music from the walls. The armor, now entirely assembled, stood shakily in the air, as though suspended in water. The music faded, and Brithelm laughed softly and sat down upon his mattress.

  I fell back into the closet, marveling. Sat there for a few minutes, marveling further. There was a soft rattle of metal in the room outside my door, then the sound of movement, of Brithelm walking across the room, then nothing but silence. Outside the window the song of a nightingale started up, much as it had on the night the intruder crept into Alfric’s quarters and started all this mess. The last song before departure.

  Beyond the sound of bird song rose the whicker of a horse. Bayard had sent the grooms to the stables and was readying things for our journey.

  But I nearly forgot departure in the face of this revelation—this trick my middle brother could do with armor, which was probably not the only trick in his bag. Apparently, I had been duping the wrong sibling for years. If Brithelm could rearrange armor like that, imagine what he could have done with dice!

  Which reminded me. The gloves, the Calantina dice, the dog whistle, and the purse lay
out in the open, well within the view of even the most distracted of brothers.

  I stepped into the room. The armor had settled, reassembled, in the corner by the door to the hallway, as though it had been donned by a ghost who, now tired of wearing it, had laid it carefully out of the way.

  Brithelm was carefully out of the way himself, lost in thought or meditation or revery, seated on the thin and obviously uncomfortable pallet in the center of the room. I called to him softly, called again, and then a third time, but there was no answer. He sat cross-legged, palms upward, eyes closed blissfully, like an icon in an old temple, the kind that you still chanced across if you traveled far enough into the swamps or high enough into the mountains, abandoned hundreds of years back.

  It gave me the willies, that was for sure. And it was worse when Brithelm began to rise from the pallet himself, not standing, mind you, but hovering in the air like a hummingbird, while he still sat blissfully, sat with his eyes closed and his palms raised. Once more I tried to rouse him, but it was no use.

  Judging from the sound outside the window, Father was helping Bayard prepare the horses in the courtyard, giving him final advice as to how to care for me.

  “I suppose, Sir Bayard,” his voice boomed, “that the time will come when you have to teach him a better horsemanship than he’s accustomed to, the teaching of which may involve beating some sense into the lad.”

  “That it might, Sir Andrew. Tighten that cinch there, if you’d be so kind.”

  “And he isn’t a lancer. I spent my time with Alfric in the lists, and he’s the best jouster of the three, but our best is none too good. The time will come when Wea—uh, Galen will have to sit the charger, the teaching of which may involve beating some sense into the lad.”

  “Indeed, Sir Andrew. Is Valorous’s bit too tight?”

  “I think not, Sir Bayard. And in swordsmanship …”

  “I suppose I’ll beat him there, too. Are the stirrups high enough?”

  And so on. Father could think of many things I lacked the sense to do, so he could be trusted to keep talking for an hour or so, after which Bayard’s politeness would be stretched to the absolute limit and he would ask where his squire and his armor had gotten to.

  I glanced over at Brother Brithelm, who floated above his thin mattress of reeds. I reached under him, collected my belongings. Then I went to the door and started to hoist the armor, but turned suddenly.

  I set the whistle in Brithelm’s palm as a keepsake, as a mystery he might well ponder when he awakened to reality. This was no more than mischief, for I knew that addle-brained Brithelm would no doubt spend hours trying to decipher the meaning of the dog whistle that had materialized in his palm. I thought at first of giving him the opals, but considering the road and those upon it, I fancied I could use them more. How could I know that the dog whistle, in different hands and in different ways, would continue its history of disruption?

  The horses resented their loss of sleep, too. The courtyard filled with their coughs, their snorts, their other, less polite sounds. About their legs scurried dogs, who barked hysterically at the cold and the surprisingly early movement of people and livestock. Steam rose from the horses’ bodies, steam also from Bayard’s breath and Father’s breath, clouded by the mysterious winter which had come early to our part of the country.

  With Bayard’s help I managed to sling the armor over the back of a pack mare, who stared at me over her shoulder with pure and absolute hatred. I covered the armor with a light canvas blanket, strapped on my own sword—a pitiful little weapon it seemed now—and Bayard helping me once again, I managed to rise to the back of another horse. To my embarrassment I was riding old Molasses, a horse we kept about so that visiting small children might be entertained with brief rides around the courtyard.

  Father still had no respect for my horsemanship.

  My last minutes at the moat house were occupied in receiving advice.

  “You are to be a good squire to Bayard, bay. That means you don’t lie or steal, which I know is asking for profound change in your conduct, yet nonetheless, I ask—no, demand it.

  “Do not let the armor get dirty. Keep the weapons in good condition—they may save your hide in some unforeseen circumstance.”

  Some unforeseen circumstance. I liked that. The old man was waxing chivalric. But the whole ritual of advice and farewell was tiresome. I peeked into my saddlebags.

  “Pay attention when I am addressing you! Carry the messages word for word. Curry the horses when Bayard tells you, and nose at their shoes for stones and bruises. Moss grows on the north side of trees—that in case you find yourself lost. When you encounter evil, face it bravely—as the Order says, ‘Without regard to personal suffering.’

  “As life is a precious and most holy gift from Paladine, in whom we breathe, fight, and dream for the betterment of all, see that no life is ever taken or sacrificed in vain.”

  A cold gust of wind swept over the walls and into the courtyard, and Molasses twitched and shivered.

  “We should be on our way now, Sir Andrew,” Sir Bayard announced, rising into the saddle atop Valorous.

  “But a moment, Sir Bayard. Never enter the water until an hour after you have eaten, and never enter the water with a storm brewing, for rivers and streams and ponds draw lightning, as do the blue branches of the aeterna tree.”

  Bayard muttered something, flicked the reins of his horse. The big chestnut stallion began to move, the pack horse and Molasses following him by instinct. Father walked alongside me, not finished yet.

  “Excess of drink before the age of twenty blinds a boy. As does gambling of any sort, or foul language.

  “Most of the women you will meet carry knives.”

  Despite my fear of what lay ahead of me, of the road that stretched uncertainly beyond the moat house and into the farthest regions of Krynn, where Bayard had some adventure brewing for the both of us—despite all of this, with the clamor and the confusion of dogs and directions, whatever lay waiting at the end of that road seemed less forbidding now. Seemed, you might say, a kind of relief.

  A relief, but only until the moat house sank quietly in the darkness behind us, into the morning mists as though it burned, slowly and without flames, on an ocean at midnight. Just when the walls had almost become indistinguishable from the darkness of morning, the tiny form of a man appeared at the battlements.

  I watched for a moment, as he surely watched us dwindle away from him, from the moat house, from home.

  Father, perhaps?

  Then the shape burst into a sheet of orange fire—a candle in the windows of home.

  “Gileandos,” I chuckled, remembering.

  A parting shot in return for lectures in a dungeon. All sorts of chemicals can find their way into the pocket of a robe, when one gives a weasel the run of the library.

  Already the night birds had begun to hush, and what little sun there was washed the green tops of the vallenwoods with a lighter green, almost a yellow. Occasionally I heard the quarrels of jays above us, and the rising songs of birds I had heard before but never thought about until now. Still, the songs themselves were familiar, so it seemed pleasant in the upper branches, but below the light and noise, the way before us was quiet and dark. It was cold, a morning drizzle had begun, and the road looked dire and unfriendly.

  The horses moved in single file now, Bayard leading on his stallion Valorous, followed by the pack mare. I brought up the rear on my excuse for a horse. The distance between us widened as the day went on and as Molasses tired. I wished for a mule, but more than that, I wished Bayard would talk, would say something, as my several attempts at conversation had been met with only casual reply.

  No doubt his mind was south of here, preparing for the lists at this almighty tournament he was so set on winning.

  It was as quiet as a dungeon on the road. As dull as a dungeon, too: the knocking of the horses’ hooves against the rain-spattered ground as regular as the dripping of water in a cell,
the air as cold and damp and uncomfortable, the company as listless and silent.

  “So …,” I began, and my companion leaned forward in the saddle, looked straight at me, and spoke for the first time in almost an hour.

  “Castle di Caela.”

  “What?”

  “You were going to ask where the tournament will be held, weren’t you?”

  “It gives me confidence to know that kind of thing, Sir Bayard.”

  He looked back at the road, then once again at me.

  “Castle di Caela. A fortnight’s journey from here. In southwestern Solamnia, about halfway between Solanthus and the Vingaard Keep. If we make good time we still have three days before the tournament begins. You can set up our tent, carry my regards to Robert di Caela, and enter my name in the lists.”

  “Aren’t you …”

  “A little old for the lists?” Though he put it bluntly, he had guessed my thoughts. Slowly the drizzle built to an actual rain, and the path ahead of us grew even darker, even more uninviting. “I suppose. But that’s what happens when you court a girl of eighteen. You grapple the eighteen-year-old boys to get her attention.”

  He hooded himself against the rising rain.

  “Should be a lesson to you,” I muttered unwisely.

  Sir Bayard smiled, lowered his face so that the water tunneled down the front of the hood. No longer could I see his expression when he replied.

  “And your first lesson should be respect.”

  The morning progressed into early afternoon, and the rain showed no intention of letting up. All about us the road was filled with sounds of wetness—the splash of horses’ hooves in standing puddles, the tumble of rain through the leaves and branches of the surrounding trees. After a while these sounds blended into a constant murmur, became a continual rushing sound, as familiar as breathing, so that any unusual movement or noise was more sudden, more disturbing.

  Twice something crackled in the underbrush beside the road. Twice I drew my sword and tried unsuccessfully to steer Molasses away from the sound. On the third time Bayard pushed back his dripping green hood and stared at me flatly, disgustedly.