Weasel's Luck

by Michael Williams

  I believe the old centaur smiled.

  “So thou doest admit,” the old fellow asked, “thy allegiance to the Solamnic Orders?”

  Despite my gestures, my throat-clearing, my elbow in his ribs, Bayard answered as he had before—in all honesty.

  “ ‘Admit’? Nay, I proclaim it, sire! For despite what you have heard, the Order still stands for principles noble and true in a time unprincipled. Stop elbowing me, Galen!”

  “And the armor?” the old centaur asked, staring me down with his wild green eyes, glittering like emeralds on leather.

  “The armor is mine,” Bayard maintained, “though stolen from me briefly days ago, and worn by one for whose crimes I cannot answer.” He folded his arms across his chest and awaited the centaur’s response.

  Which was as I had feared.

  “Sir Knight, if thy testimony stood against only what I have heard, by my troth I should be inclined to lenience. But there is the matter of the satyrs, and in that matter the testimony of mine eyes is witness against thee, and the eyes of my brothers have also looked upon thy misdeeds.”

  “Satyrs?”

  Bayard looked at me in puzzlement. I shrugged. What did I know from satyrs?

  “The satyrs!” the old centaur continued. “The goat-men!”

  Several of his traveling companions nodded roughly in agreement, shaking their manes in a most menacing fashion. Bayard paused, then spoke frankly.

  “I promise you, sire, that I know nothing of what you call ‘satyrs.’ Indeed, the very word is new to me. And I promise you that I had never raised my hand against you or your people, until you rode out from hiding a brief while ago upon the road.”

  The old centaur inclined his enormous, shaggy head, whispered to the bloody-nosed captain at his right, and the two of them galloped off to the far edge of the clearing. Two more joined them shortly—to my relief, neither was the one whose arm Bayard had disjoined in the recent struggle, for I was sure that whatever was to be done to us was soon to be put to a vote. A lively discussion began, but I could hear nothing from where I stood.

  I could do nothing from where I stood, either. So I reached into my pocket, sat down, and cast the Calantina. The grass was ankle high by now, and I had to brush it aside to read the dice.

  Six on twelve: Sign of the Goat. I consoled myself that the virtue of the goat was that he could survive just about anywhere under just about any circumstances. I hoped that applied to swamps and captivity, because I saw us staying here awhile.

  “What do your tea leaves say, Galen?” Bayard whispered, seating himself painfully beside me.

  “They say that sometimes the whole truth is a foolish thing to tell, sir,” I lied. “But then, you’ve told me you don’t believe the Calantina, anyway.”

  The centaurs who were left to guard us seemed more informed than we were. Two of them inspected us from a distance, brandished their clubs, and grinned maliciously. Only Agion remained friendly, and it was fairly obvious nobody was listening to him.

  “Don’t worry,” he encouraged me, as he picked several of the small, glittering nuts from the blue-needled branch of an overhanging aeterna tree and dropped them into his mouth. “Archala never delivers punishment unjustly.”

  Of course, that did nothing to lighten my worries. Far better that this Archala not deliver punishment at all, for I did not care whether he disciplined justly or unjustly, as long as I escaped intact.

  I considered telling Bayard about the third party—the man the centaurs had seen following us a mile or so back down the road. But what would I tell Bayard about who I thought was following us? What would I tell him about the honey-voiced man who scaled the moat house on a mission of burglary?

  To be quite honest, I had no real desire to clear my conscience before the centaurs turned me up by my ankles and drowned me for espionage. Sometimes the whole truth is a foolish thing to tell. So we sat there in silence, Bayard rubbing his bruises and I thinking frantically of ways to dodge judgement. Any judgement.

  But since nobody was moving or scuffling or breaking branches, the sounds of the swamp resumed—the weird songs of unfamiliar birds, now and again the bellow of a bullfrog or the whirring sound of an insect, for these animals had come from hiding when the rain had stopped and the sun had emerged. Around us the air was warmer, but still terribly heavy and humid. Though you could not see the plants growing—not really—you could look away from one and look back in a matter of minutes to find it larger … or what you thought was larger.

  It gave me the jumps.

  I thought of what Gileandos had said about ’Warden Swamp: something that grows so rapidly grows like a boy; therefore it cannot be trusted, pointing to it on the map as it stretched for miles south of the moat house. Of course, stories had come to us through the peasants, stories of animals who had grown to unnatural size or changed unnaturally and roamed the recesses of the swamp. There was talk of legless crocodiles, and huge carnivorous birds, eyeless because they no longer needed eyes in the swamp’s green darkness, moving clumsily but swiftly among cedars and among cypress trees by leaps and lunges, their wings useless in a country covered by branches and leaves.

  There was talk, of course, of the man-eating flying fish.

  Now, there may not have been a great deal of truth to such stories, but other things were undoubtedly true. I knew them firsthand. For we had lost peasants, servants, and on occasion a visitor or two in the dark hollows of the swamp. Indeed, a band of visitors—a party of five dwarves from Garnet who came to visit Father the summer I was seven—had reached the far edge of the swamp when they decided to lie down and pass the evening in safety before continuing a journey they figured would be too dangerous in the dark. They awoke the next morning to find themselves surrounded by swamp, which had reached out to cover them in the night.

  Two of their party were missing, and though Father combed the outskirts of the swamp that afternoon and again the following morning, combed it with servants and torches and dogs and shouting, we never heard what befell those dwarves, nor anyone else who strayed into the swamp and lost his way.

  Such events brought about healthy respect, even a fear, for the green swath Gileandos had marked on the map in his study, the spot he enlarged every spring as the marsh swallowed the countryside.

  That night we slept fitfully. Several times I woke to see Bayard pacing at the edge of the clearing and at the edge of the light from our small fire, his hands clasped behind him as though they were tied together. There were no stars visible beneath this canopy of leaves and vines, so the night was dark without and within.

  After finally getting to sleep in the early morning, I awoke to see Bayard crouching over me, looking down upon me pensively.

  “Sir?”

  “Galen, if tomorrow brings some form of … severe punishment …”

  For a second my spirit soared. I hoped devoutly that my companion’s innate nobility would compel him to bear the weight of that punishment, no matter how severe, and find a sly loophole by which he might send me unscathed back to Father. However, his nobility compelled him toward other things.

  “If that severe punishment does come, I shall rest easily knowing you did not misunderstand something I said.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “About the Lady Enid.” He slowly began to stand.

  “About your betrothed, sir?”

  “Yes. And that’s it. For you see, the Lady Enid isn’t really my betrothed.”

  “No?”

  “I mean, I’m not engaged to the Lady Enid or anything.”

  I had been wakened for this?

  “But you said you were ‘supposed to marry her.’ ”

  “But not engaged,” Bayard emphasized, then turned to face the opposite end of the clearing, where another small fire glowed and where the centaurs still deliberated.

  “It’s more like destined.”

  I was awakened by a rough jostling. I started to shout to the servant, to Alfric, to whoever it was
to begone and leave me until a reasonable time—say, well after noon. But I looked up through the dusky green light into the stern and bearded face of a centaur, and remembered my bearings and my manners.

  Bayard stood between Agion and the centaur whose arm had been injured in yesterday’s struggle. My bearded companion fell in behind us as Agion took me by the shoulder, as the injured centaur took Bayard by the back of his tunic, and as we were half-carried, half-led to the opposite end of the long clearing, where judgement awaited.

  Our escorts deposited us at the feet of Archala and the other centaurs with whom he had taken counsel.

  The fellow whose nose Bayard had bloodied in the scuffle was a herald of some sort. He scowled at us, wiped the blood from his upper lip, and started to speak.

  “All things stand against thee,” he proclaimed, in a honking voice transformed, surely, by the sorry state of his nose. I would have found the honking funny, would have laughed, no doubt, had the message been other than that all things stood against me.

  “The armor, we fear, is terrible, strong evidence,” he stated. Then he paused, and you could tell by the look on his face that he was delighted that someone who had altered his nose was liable to search and seizure.

  “And yet,” the herald continued with what was obviously the bad news for him, “Archala persisteth in the old laws, according to tradition, according to his wisdom. For he saith that thy words arise from an honest heart and countenance unfeigned.”

  It galled the others to no end, I could tell, that the jury was still out. Except Agion, who watched the proceedings in admiration from a distance.

  “Nonetheless,” brayed the herald, clearly favoring his nose by now, “nonetheless, the question of the satyrs, of thine alliance with the satyrs, troubles us all.”

  “No more than it troubles us, Master Archala,” Bayard interrupted, looking past the speaker and addressing the old centaur himself. “Especially since, as I said before, we know nothing of these satyrs or goat-men or whatever you call them. Nor why you suspect our alliance with someone we do not know.”

  “I need not be reminded that thou hast spoken to the issue already, Sir Knight,” Archala replied, smiling patiently. “Of course, thou wilt understand why we remain … in doubt of such explanations when among the ranks of the satyrs—indeed, in a position of command as we saw it across lines of raised weapons—rode a knight dressed in the very armor thou carried upon thy pack mare when first we met thee on the road.”

  Bayard started to protest, but Archala raised his enormous hand, signaled for silence, and continued.

  “But thine armor was stolen. As thou sayest. It was away from thee briefly. As thou sayest. Within which time, of course, the thief could have taken up with our enemies.

  “As thy story would have us believe. Surely, Sir Knight, thou canst see why I refuse to hang the fate of my people on the breezes. Still, our verdict as to thy guilt or innocence awaits the test of seven days and seven nights, during which thou shalt stay with us, under our watchful eyes and guard. Perhaps by then we shall see how thy presence within our midst affects the satyrs.”

  Well, Archala’s judgement pleased no one.

  The centaurs stood behind Archala, obviously more than ready to grab us by the ankles and find the nearest source of water. I’d have bet a fortune that Agion would be our guard, as nobody else wanted the job.

  Bayard was sure we would be found innocent, for the simple and foolish reason that we were innocent. Naturally, he was furious at the delay, for the tournament at Castle di Caela began in scarcely more than two weeks’ time, and any suitor absent from opening ceremonies … well, one doesn’t stand up a rich man’s daughter.

  Even so, I admit I was surprised—even though nobody else was—when Bayard offered to mediate between centaur and satyr.

  “Mediate?”

  Archala blustered at the offer, that wise and tolerant smile gone almost immediately, replaced by one I didn’t like nearly as well. “I suppose thou wouldst want to negotiate a peace settlement with them?” he added ironically.

  “In fact, sire,” Bayard responded, “a peace settlement may not be possible without you. Perhaps I could set the groundwork—a temporary truce, for instance—and then you and your counsel, and the leader of the satyrs and his counsel, might meet in a neutral spot …”

  “Archala, we have respected the old ways quite long and quite faithfully,” the herald interrupted, his nasal voice suddenly brittle and cold. “If thou hast designs …”

  But Archala raised his knotted hand, and the clearing was once again silent.

  “Surely thou art not so foolish,” the old centaur began, addressing Bayard, but then stopped, turned slowly away from us, muttering strangely to himself.

  Bayard and I glanced at one another in puzzlement. Bayard started to speak, to ask what was troubling Archala, or so I suppose.

  But it was at that time that Agion offered to guide us to the camp of the satyrs—as “an emissary of peace,” he claimed, adding, too, that he believed Bayard’s story.

  Archala ceased muttering and stared at the big innocent.

  “But that is just what the Solamnic wants, Archala,” the herald bleated. “An escort to his own lines and to safety!”

  “But what if I’m telling the truth, Archala?” Bayard implored. He had no intention of missing the tournament.

  Archala thought about it.

  “Leave the boy with us, Solamnic,” urged the herald, “as surety of thy good intentions.”

  “Absolutely not!” Bayard exclaimed. “This is my squire, and as such he belongs with me, not with you as hostage to your fears and mistrust.”

  The herald snorted and bristled, but Bayard stood his ground. A half-smile spread over his face, and he regarded the huge and menacing creature with an indifference that danced on the edge of contempt.

  For a long time nobody spoke. Something shrieked far back in the swamp—a small animal, a bird perhaps—and the pools around the clearing rippled as even smaller creatures sought safety in the waters and the deep mud.

  Then, Archala raised his russet arms and nodded at Bayard. The herald sputtered, but an icy glance from the old centaur stilled his clamor.

  But for the life of me, I could not find a way out of the proposition as they set me on Agion’s back and the two of us rode beside Bayard and Valorous out of the clearing, in search of the satyrs, the light becoming greener and greener around us until even my hands looked like leaves.

  Behind us the vines were reclaiming the trail.

  CHAPTER 6

  Passing through the swamp was like traveling in a glass bottle: the stillness, the closeness, the light filtered green by the leaves overhead. And the strange feeling that the leaves and even the stillness and closeness were somehow transparent—that we were watched from behind them.

  For I was sure that we were being followed.

  This feeling of uneasiness changed little as we traveled farther into the swamp. I caught myself no longer noticing the sudden hush of animals as we passed by, mainly because the marshes were quiet for miles around us now. It was the first of several bad signs. Wherever we went, it was as though the swamp had been startled by something minutes before we got there.

  Early in the journey, the centaur took the lead. Bayard followed on foot, leading our two remaining horses through the unsure footing of the swamp. That arrangement seemed reasonable to Bayard and to Agion himself, the only one of us who had any idea where we were going. Unfortunately, I was on Agion’s back when the decision was made.

  I didn’t like the idea of being the trailblazer. But given the choice between riding at the front of the party and walking beside Bayard, I chose reluctantly to ride. After all, an ambush could strike any of us, from in front or from behind, but quicksand and crocodiles struck from below, and they would be so busy with the first thing they came to—centaur or horse—that the rider would have a chance to escape.

  As we traveled, Agion labored us with stori
es.

  “Some of the elders remember the times before there were marshes here,” he began, “but I spent my earliest days gathering herb and root in these very mires. Many’s the time I remember gathering figwort and purple medic with my Aunt Megaera, she who always told me, ‘Agion, purple medic follows the dove, figwort the pigeon’ …”

  “This is all very fascinating, Agion,” I interrupted, looking desperately back at Bayard, whose attention was on the trail in front of him solely.

  “Yes, but there’s more, Master Galen,” the centaur continued. “Aunt Megaera and I once had to fight a nest of bees away from the purple medic when we were making winter poultices and the compresses the older centaurs use for the arthritis. Dozens of bees there were, with the nagging bite of the horsefly and what is always worse with bees, the swelling afterwards. And Aunt Megaera says …”

  Agion began to chuckle.

  “She says … Oh! but she was a caution!”

  His loud laughter shook the environs. A pack of small marsupials leaped shrieking from a nearby dwarf vallenwood and scurried off into the recessed green darkness. Bayard looked at me uncomfortably, his hand on his sword.

  “Agion,” he interrupted, softly and urgently. “Remember we’re traveling toward hostile ground.”

  “Right thou art, Sir Bayard,” said Agion, not much more softly. “But listen to what Aunt Megaera said, when we came out of the medic patch, our flanks swollen and knotted with bee stings.”

  Bayard raised his eyebrows, politely attentive. His hand was still on his sword.

  “She says … Oh! such an oddity she was!” And he began to laugh again. “She says, ‘It is a blessing tonight we sleep standing up!’ ”

  By an unspoken agreement, Bayard and I steered him away from further stories about his life before he met us, which we had soon discovered to be not only boring but noisy. Instead, we asked more and more about the satyrs, and found out, to our dismay and irritation, that the centaurs—or at least this particular centaur, who didn’t strike me as all that knowledgeable—in fact, knew little more than we did.