Weasel's Luck

by Michael Williams

  Thinking of the swamp and its illusions, I hurled a rock toward the walls ahead of me and heard it clatter against the stonework.

  Solid, this time.

  “You mean we’re going in?” Alfric whimpered, glancing behind him down the trail.

  “Hush, Alfric,” snapped Sir Ramiro. “We’re at his damned gates, after all.”

  A flutter of wings and the soft gurgling sound of pigeons descended from the wall off to our left. Over there, somewhere near the main gate of the castle, the huge birds, purple and glistening with a dirty metallic shine, were coming to light on the battlements.

  There was movement, then a dim outcry from somewhere within the walls.

  Bayard drew his sword, and the other two Knights did likewise. Alfric ducked behind his horse and drew his menacing long knife.

  Bayard turned to me.

  “You, too,” he admonished softly. “It’s about to begin.”

  I drew my sword.

  Begin it did, in a new and unexpected form.

  I had been prepared for satyrs, for some other half-human, half-beast arrangement such as the Scorpion seemed fond of throwing against his enemies—minotaurs, perhaps, or even the lizard men of whom legends had arisen lately.

  But not prepared for centaurs.

  We had dismounted because of the steep climb, and we were leading our horses toward the castle gate. Then it opened, and two of the creatures issued forth, lumbering unsteadily, almost drunkenly toward us over the rocks and the incline. I wondered for a moment about the truth of the old proverbs about centaurs and wine.

  Then the smell that reached me stopped my wondering entirely. It was a smell of neither wine nor spirits, but of mold and dried vegetation and decay. The smell of a swamp—but the smell of a deeper decay beneath all that moss and mud and vallenwood and cedar—the smell when dead flesh, left exposed to the air and the moisture and the unseasonably warm autumn days, begins to rot.

  “Walking dead!” Sir Robert exclaimed. “Spit into the sunlight by Chemosh!” He stepped toward them warily, followed by Bayard, then Ramiro.

  I waved my knife as menacingly as I could, though I had no idea what earthly good a piece of cutlery would do against creatures of such size.

  A whistling sound arose from their throats, as though they mocked the act of breathing or had forgotten how to breathe.

  They were now close enough that I could see the wounds.

  Who saw them fall, Kallites and Elemon. I remembered Agion’s story.

  Riddled with arrows as though they had walked through a gathering of archers.

  Who saw them fall.

  Still in the side of the larger—Kallites or Elemon? I could not remember the details of the tale—arrows were imbedded to the nock, to the feathers. With the smaller it was as though the arrows—feather and shaft entirely—grew from his chest and shoulders.

  My companions raised their swords as the centaurs stumbled blindly into their midst, flailing with their huge arms and the clubs they carried.

  The larger centaur struck Sir Robert a heavy blow with its forearm. The old man was knocked off his feet and tumbled into a cursing heap at the side of the trail. At that moment Enid di Caela almost came into her inheritance, for the big creature reared, preparing to bring his front hooves crashing down on Sir Robert.

  I rushed toward Sir Robert, knife drawn.

  Bayard, however, slipped behind the centaur before it noticed—indeed, before I had noticed—and hamstrung the creature with a blinding swipe of the sword. The big thing tottered and fell over on its side, struggled to right itself. It was only a second before Bayard’s sword flashed once again, and the big centaur’s head rolled several yards down the slanting trail.

  Ramiro had that strange fat man’s grace—the quickness and agility you never expect in someone his size. He went for the smaller centaur and circled it like an immense and deadly fencing master, sword extended in front of him. His first serious lunge struck home on the stumbling, ungainly centaur.

  Which did not fall.

  Which hissed, widened its dull black eyes, and climbed down the blade toward Ramiro. It climbed until the blade burst through its back and it had Ramiro in its fetid, crushing embrace.

  But its arms were not long enough to encircle the big Knight, much less crush him. Quickly Ramiro shrugged away his attacker and dislodged his sword with the sound of a knife drawn through a rotten melon. Then he spun quickly, putting all his considerable weight behind his sword.

  The blow was so clean that the centaur’s head came down upon its shoulders and wobbled there for a moment before toppling off.

  The air about us lay stilled and foul.

  Sir Robert groaned and creaked as Brithelm helped him up from the roadside. Ramiro and Bayard sheathed their swords, standing over their fallen enemies. And something sniffled in the road behind us, curled into a dark heap.

  “Alfric?” Bayard called.

  “Alfric?”

  But there was no answer. My brother lay clenched and shivering in a pile of gravel, covered by a blanket. Bayard looked back at me.

  “Alfric?” I began, with no better results.

  “Get control of yourself!” Sir Robert ordered, shaking himself from Brithelm’s grasp and striding toward my veiled brother. Robert di Caela was never one for charity.

  “Maybe,” Alfric stated flatly, eyes still tightly shut, “this rescue business has got out of hand.”

  “That’s absurd, Alfric,” Bayard said calmly.

  “Absurd and treacherous,” Ramiro muttered, as he turned and lumbered toward Alfric.

  “Come now, Alfric,” I joined in. “How do you think Enid would take this hysteria?” At which he burrowed even more deeply into the blanket, shivering even more fiercely, as if caught up in a strange and deadly fever. Brithelm rested his hand on Alfric’s shoulder.

  Ramiro stepped forward, dealing a swift kick to the knot of blanket and brother. Alfric grunted, whimpered, and curled into a tighter ball.

  Now it was Sir Robert’s turn, and we all dreaded it.

  “Alfric. Son.”

  No response. Sir Robert sighed.

  “Alfric, if you don’t come out from hiding this minute, you’ll have to answer to this.”

  If anything outweighed Alfric’s fear, it was his curiosity. He peered from beneath the blankets and saw Sir Robert holding a sword.

  In no time, Alfric was out of the blanket quickly, and we all started toward the gates of the castle, Sir Robert whispering to Brithelm a judgment that the wind picked up and carried down to us as we followed them.

  “It is a fortunate thing that your brother came when called. A few minutes more of this disobedience and I should have been forced to kill him.”

  Sir Robert followed that with a threatening glance back at Alfric, who had begun to shiver a little once more. Sir Robert turned to face the castle ahead of him, and his shoulders shook in turn.

  But from where I walked, it looked like the shaking of laughter, a pleasant relief after a long afternoon of sorrow.

  It was at that moment that Agion stumbled out through the gate. At first both Bayard and I cried out joyously, sure that we had somehow been mistaken during that sad time in the Vingaard Mountains, that the trident through his great heart and the humble little funeral had all taken place in a nightmare we now only dimly remembered as we saw our friend weave toward us.

  We rejoiced until we saw the look in his eyes.

  The dullness, the flatness. The look of the dead, beyond caring or recall.

  Agion weaved slowly toward Bayard, club raised in his swollen, yellowed hand. Bayard stood his ground, drew his sword, and raised it.

  Then lowered his weapon as the centaur drew near him.

  “Bayard! It’s no longer Agion!” I shouted.

  But my protector stood there motionless, his sword at his side. The centaur stopped in front of him and slowly, mechanically raised its heavy club.

  I do not know how I got to Bayard’s side. B
rithelm said later that he had never seen me move so quickly, and don’t forget he had seen me in flight many times about the moat house. Whatever the circumstances, the next thing I knew I was between Bayard and Agion, facing the dead centaur.

  “No! Agion! It’s Bayard! It’s Galen!” I shouted, waving my arms.

  For a moment the dull, flat eyes softened. But only for a moment, as the steely hardness of death returned, and the Agion-thing raised its club, hissed, and prepared to bring both of us into its darkened world.

  The moment of delay was enough. Sir Robert, battered and sore though he might be, was not entirely disabled—as we discovered when he rushed between me and the centaur, deflecting the downward stroke of the club with the flat of the ancient di Caela sword. Then, turning the sword above his head in a time-honored, brisk Solamnic fencing maneuver, he brought it up and over, slicing neatly through the bloated neck of Agion.

  Everything went away. I was deep in black nothingness, and though I may have dreamed while I lay unconscious on the ground in the Chaktamir Pass, I do not remember dreaming.

  I remember only the waking, Bayard shaking me back into light and cold and pain, and into a sadness I did not recognize for a moment—a sadness I could not place until I saw the centaur bodies and remembered.

  “As you said,” Bayard soothed, helping me to my feet, “it was no longer Agion.”

  “And yet … for a moment there, I thought it was Agion, thought that despite death and what the Scorpion had wrought, our old friend stayed his hand,” I murmured.

  “Perhaps he did, lad,” Sir Robert replied softly. “And let it encourage us, for it shows that the Scorpion’s power does not go on forever.”

  “That some things,” Brithelm added softly, “are stronger than death.”

  We paused in silence for a moment.

  Sir Robert pointed toward the open gate.

  And two by two we walked toward its menacing arch.

  Through a curtain of driving snow, through the hovering mist, they appeared—the shadows of men, crouched, shambling, almost apelike in their movements. Though the forms were dim behind us and beside us, I could tell they were carrying weapons; the slim shadows of curved Nerakan swords lay in their shadowy hands. The cold air around us drummed with groans and inhuman cries.

  It was as though someone were smothering an army.

  Bayard drew his sword and started for the heart of the shadows, but Brithelm grabbed his arm.

  “Sir Bayard, your duty lies in the castle—a task none but you can perform. For who knows but that the Lady Enid faces horrors that make ours seem light?”

  “B-but …,” Bayard began.

  “Into the castle, sir, and may the gods speed you.” Brithelm smiled serenely, confidently. An arrow flew out of the mist and clattered on the stony ground beside him.

  “By Paladine, you’ll not stand against an army alone, lad!” bellowed Sir Ramiro. “Give me an armed enemy any day, rather than the cloudy hocus-pocus you’ll find in that house of mirrors there. Bring ’em on, dead or alive! I’ll be watching your back, Brithelm!”

  Ramiro drew his sword, pushed me toward Bayard, and took his place beside my calm, clerical brother. Bayard grabbed my arm and pulled me, struggling, onto the drawbridge, Alfric and Sir Robert following closely behind us.

  As we crossed the bridge toward the gate looming dark in front of us, Bayard leaned into me and whispered, “Don’t worry, son.”

  We looked back upon my brother, the man of peace, bearing weapons among mist-covered stones. Beside him stood that hulking, merry man, Ramiro, whose enormous shield was raised over both of them to guard against the arching arrows.

  “I trust we shall see them both again, Galen. Accidents avoid them.”

  Suddenly a red light shot from Brithelm’s hand and buried itself in the shadowy forms in front of him. A loud shriek tore through the mist, and the army stopped in its tracks, hovering some distance away from our little rear guard.

  “Damn!” I heard Ramiro rumble before I lost his voice in the mist and the outcry of shadowy soldiers. “Everywhere you look, this damnable sleight of hand! What does it take for a man to find sensible company?” And he laughed heartily, shaking his shield in front of the gibbering soldiers.

  From that point on, the laughter faded. We passed first under the great arch of the castle gate. The courtyard itself seemed dreamed up, half-remembered from images of Castle di Caela and built with an eye to the floor plans only. The buildings were the same shape and size, rising from the same points within the courtyard.

  That is, as far as I could see. For at the far reaches of the courtyard, the towers and shops and stables—the battlements themselves—were lost behind mists, or dissolved into mists. Sometimes a wall would be there, then seemed to be there no longer, as though it were solid or insubstantial, depending on a gust of wind or the intensity of the snow.

  I was possessed of the uncanny feeling that the builder had it right only by blueprint. The keep and the towers and the other structures looked hollow, made up for visitors.

  Whether it was from the mist or from some darker intention, the ground seemed to appear in front of us as we crossed toward the bailey. We dismounted at once, letting the horses go where they would in the confines of the courtyard. They would be safe, no doubt, and perhaps unnecessary from this time on.

  Behind us, outside the walls, screams arose out of the fog. For a moment Bayard paused, turned, and prepared to go back. Then he muttered “Enid,” grabbed me by the arm, and virtually lifted me above the mist as the horses galloped off. Together, slowly, we tested our first few steps, then picked up the pace to catch Sir Robert and Alfric, who had sprinted on ahead of us. We overtook them at the door of the keep.

  Which, unlike the gate, was locked. Sir Robert had tried it once, twice, and now was pacing, stomping and blustering, while Alfric used Father’s sword in an idiotic attempt to pry open the door.

  “Out of the way!” Bayard shouted, and Alfric, accustomed to scrambling out of everyone’s way, did so with surprising ease and grace. Bayard took four steps and leaped toward the door, giving it a resounding kick.

  The door shivered but neither broke nor dislodged. Bayard bounced off the thick oak and clattered to the ground where he lay winded and dazed. Behind us and around us, the courtyard seemed to come to life. From somewhere in the mists I could hear heavy movement, the creak of leather and of metal, and the grumble of something large stirring and breathing. It was beginning to move our way.

  Bayard labored to his feet with help from Sir Robert and prepared to rush the door again. Alfric moved quickly beside me and tugged at my sleeve.

  “There’s something out there, Brother, and I expect it has designs on us by now.”

  I agreed and said, “We’d better distract Sir Bayard before he injures himself, and then find a window to gain entry. Whatever lies in store for us is not through that door, evidently.”

  Bayard crashed against the door in question, then lay motionless beside it before beginning once more the painful struggle to his feet. The sounds—the snuffling, the movement of armor—grew nearer, and huge, horned things now hovered dark at the edge of the mist.

  “Demons!” Alfric exclaimed.

  “Men of Neraka,” Sir Robert corrected, grabbing my eldest brother, “dressed in their ceremonial minotaur helmets, calling on Kiri-Jolith to scatter their enemies. And some time dead from the smell of them. Pick up your sword. They’re coming this way. Quickly, around the side of the keep. If I’m not mistaken, there will be windows there.”

  We understood well enough, and the four of us started off toward where we hoped devoutly would be windows, Sir Robert clanking in the lead and Alfric no less noisy right behind him. I followed the two of them, blending in and out of the mist as quietly as one of Mariel di Caela’s cats, and Bayard hobbled along at the rear, sword drawn.

  It was evident by the time we reached the topiary and the chamber window that the Nerakan soldiers—or whatever they
were—had gained ground on us. At first, thinking they were upon us, we drew our weapons as we turned the corner of the keep wall and saw horned figures in the garden by the window. But those were only shrubbery in the shape of owls, and we relaxed but a moment before we could hear, through the mists beyond the garden, the sound of snuffling and steady movement.

  “Keep going around the wall!” Alfric urged. “They’ll catch us here for sure! There must be other windows! You should know, Sir Robert!”

  “Oh, there are other windows,” Sir Robert mused calmly, “but none on this side of the keep that we can reach. Just listen; ahead of us, along the wall, is the same sound we have been running from since first we heard it. Whether it is armed men, or monsters, living or dead, we should prepare to take them here. The last thing they’ll expect is a fight, so that is precisely what we’ll give them.”

  So we stood there, looking at one another, Pathwardens and Brightblades and di Caelas.

  All of a sudden the garden crashed and crackled with the sound of something huge, and the sound of breathing and snuffling increased into low rumbling, with an occasional bellow, as the rotten throats tried forgetfully the bull-cry of the Nerakan warriors.

  The enemy approached us through the topiary, sometimes pushing aside the shrubbery with the sound of twigs snapping, of leaves crumpling, sometimes grunting as they staggered into the boles of trees. They were like the walls of the castle in the mist: forming, dissolving, then reforming. But continuing to move toward us.

  “Galen!” Bayard snapped. “Can you reach the window from my shoulders?”

  Reach the window? Desert my companions?

  Desert my companions? What kind of Solamnic notions had infected me, that I should condemn myself for seeking the safest prospect available? Had I been listening to myself when I answered, I might well have heard that Solamnic self-righteous little quiver in my voice.

  “I shall try, sir, if you see a further purpose in my doing so.”