Galen Beknighted h2-3

by Michael Williams

  There had been no trouble finding the red-haired man, the messengers had said. Camped not a mile from the entrance, he was in a rickety house on stilts decorated with holly and paper lanterns and an odd, foul-smelling old stuffed parrot that frightened the youngest Que-Tana out of a year's growth.

  Other than the simple fright of the boy, there were no wounds, no casualties. It had all been terribly easy.

  If this was the man he wanted. The brother of the one with the opals.

  He looked like the one in the stones-the flashing image of the cleric in the makeshift camp, high in the mountains amidst the snow. But it seemed too easy.

  "Brithelm?" Firebrand asked quietly, repeating a name he had heard while wearing the crown.

  The blindfold was lifted from the eyes of the red-haired man, who blinked in amazement as he looked about him.

  "Oh, my!" he exclaimed. Then he looked up the cataract of stone to where Firebrand was seated, silver crown blazing on his brow.

  "Oh, this is not how I pictured the afterlife!" the man announced, to the bewilderment of his captors. "I always thought it would be less gloomy, a little greener! But at least Gileandos was wrong about the whole thing, and that's gratifying beyond belief!"

  He smiled foolishly at the Que-Tana assembled around him. Several of the older men stepped away from him, making the warding sign against madness. He stepped toward the closest of the warriors, extending his hand in that old, Solamnic gesture of acquaintance that Firebrand had learned to despise over the centuries.

  "Brithelm Pathwarden, I am!" he announced. "And I suppose we should be friends, seeing as we'll no doubt be here for eons and all!"

  Chapter XI

  The Namer stirred the fire, and its sparks rose to illumine the crags and furrows and green eyes of a nearby face. Slowly he took yet another cord of metal from the weathered hand.

  "In the Bright Lands," the Namer murmured, "the young Knight had not foreseen other meetings"

  We traveled much of the afternoon, snaking north over broken trails and around rubble-clogged passes, over terrain I would have imagined impassable.

  Our destination was still Brithelm's camp, a little beyond the site I remembered from my former visit. For according to Shardos, my ethereal brother had settled less than a mile from the underground entrance through which these nocturnal Plainsmen were wont to come to the surface on rare occasions. Leave it to Brithelm to wade into dire circumstance. Unfortunately, it appeared that on this occasion, no fool's luck had arisen to spirit him away from danger.

  It was to this entrance we traveled, guided by a blind man. I did not have time to stop and laugh at these ironies, for my brother Brithelm lay endangered somewhere below us, and who knew what the coming days would hold for him if I was not quick and resolute?

  We rode in a column, sharp-eyed little Oliver at the head, leading by the reins the stocky little pied packhorse on which we had seated the old juggler. Though the young squire guided the horse, he was more on the lookout for adversaries than for directions since we steered ourselves by Shardos's dark sense, by the smell of the evergreens, and the soundless pressure the old man felt in his ears as the landscape altered, rising and dipping around us.

  Birgis weaved merrily through the legs of the uneasy horses, his thoughts no doubt on squirrels and his freedom. Indeed, there were several occasions when the dog wandered completely out of sight, and then, for the first time in my recollection, the dog whistle Brithelm had given me came in handy, bringing the beast back over the rocky terrain at full waddle, lugging along a stick or a bone or whatever else had struck his foraging fancy.

  I watched him approach merrily and marveled at how even the most obscure and apparently useless things- whistles, it seemed, and certainly opals-came into their power if you endured their keeping long enough. Perhaps I would feel that way about Shardos and his dog soon.

  Behind this unlikely trio-Shardos and Oliver and Birgis-came the rest of us. The trip had reached that juncture when adventure wears off, when the first blush of excitement fades into fears and the drudgery of making daily mileage. Dannelle complained as though she carried all our belongings, horses included, on her own back. Dannelle di Caela was no trooper, as we were learning to our discomfort and chagrin.

  As the path ahead of us wandered through country long favored by troll and bandit, my traveling companions were also rapidly growing tired of my hand at the helm of things. As if all of that weren't ominous enough, there were the visitors that Oliver saw in the distance, pacing northward parallel to us far down in the waterlogged lowlands. We did not think they were following us at first. At least such thoughts did not occur to Shardos or Ramiro, and since it is a bad Solamnic habit that Knights seldom consult with squires or women, nobody knew or even cared what Dannelle and Oliver thought.

  So when we first sighted the Plainsmen a mile or so east of us, wading through ankle-deep water at the edge of the foothills, most of us were alarmed. After all, our history with Plainsmen had not been good of late.

  They outnumbered us at least three to one. And they moved like specters or wraiths, gliding smoothly across the rough and forbidding landscape east and below us.

  "How do they keep going at that speed, Ramiro?" I asked. "I beg-oh, the Plainsmen. Where are they now?" The big man looked behind us and far to the right of us, squinting. "Not there. Look parallel to us, Ramiro." He shifted in the saddle. The horse grunted and staggered a bit before recovering its pace.

  "By the gods, you're right! I don't like the looks of this at all, Galen!"

  Of course, Ramiro was ready to move upon them full tilt, regardless of odds. He had his sword drawn, his shield raised defiantly, and would have been galloping out of the foothills heedlessly had Shardos not laid a deft old hand on the stallion's reins.

  "Look to the south of them, son," the juggler whispered.

  "Then consider the… arithmetic of this whole adventure."

  We were sighted and had not known it, but the old man was right. Another dozen or so Plainsmen were rushing to join the others.

  The numbers involved cooled even the most Solamnic ardor. Ramiro sheathed his sword and drew instead a cheese. He gnawed on it uneasily as we took to the road again. As we all had expected, the Plainsmen pitched camp when we did. From our vantage point, we could see them, shadowy and tall, milling about in the business of building a fire. It was Shardos who suggested that we establish contact to see who they were and what they wanted.

  Ramiro had tired of the monotony of riding and waiting, and had started pulling at the wine flask. Given a man of his size, wine took a terribly long time to splice the main, as they say in Kalaman. Nonetheless, he was remembering songs by the time the juggler suggested negotiations, and by the time our fires were blazing, he felt somewhat belligerent and otherwise invulnerable. In full bluster, his sidelong glance on Dannelle, he volunteered himself as our ambassador of peace. "Or worse," he said ominously, "if it comes to that." "I'm not so sure that's altogether wise, Sir Ramiro," I cautioned. "You're much too… valuable a member of this party to lose if the lot of them-and remember, there are a lot of them-decide on mayhem."

  "Then you will go with me, sir," Ramiro commanded merrily. Then, remembering Bayard's sickbed orders, he changed his tone and bowed comically in the saddle, his horse grunting and rolling its eyes.

  "That is, if such embassage is to your liking, Sir Galen." Well, it was not. I had seen enough of Plainsmen in the last week to take me through several years of knighthood and whatever journeys came with those years. Nonetheless, I had cornered myself in leadership. Now I could not back out of the little jaunt he had in mind without saying to him, to Shardos, to the world attendant, and especially to Dannelle that the threat of Plainsmen was a bit too much for my liking.

  I sat back, scooting to the edge of the saddle, almost on Lily's haunches, as though backing up on the horse would get me out of what I had to do anyway.

  "These are day travelers," Shardos said quietly. "Not the bun
ch that carried off your brother Brithelm or… or killed your brother Alfric."

  "And what tells you such things, grandfather?" Ramiro asked with an icy smile.

  "The whiff of 'em, boy," Shardos replied calmly. "Aloft on an easterly wind, can't you smell it, boy? Why, the horses i can, I'll wager you."

  I looked closely at the old man, who cocked his head like an enormous owl, listening down in the lowlands for movement. Could he know what he claimed to know? I had always heard, of course, that a blind man's other senses intensify.

  If Shardos was right, and these were a different lot of Plainsmen entirely, I might learn something. As Ramiro said, most Plainsmen generally meant no harm to the likes of us, and I was eager to find out what had brought these so far north and why they kept to the plains alongside us. If they were friendly, at worst I would return to an easier night's sleep.

  If they were unfriendly… well, the odds were that they would find a way to close with us after nightfall anyway. Then it would be on their terms and in their choice of terrain, and with companions like Ramiro, the outcome could be disastrous.

  "Do you speak their language, Shardos?" I asked. "I beg your pardon?" "Do you speak Plainsman?"

  "Well, young fellow, that's a tall order, for many's the kind of Plainsman to speak-Que-Shu, Que-Teh, what have you. What you call your dialects."

  "But with all of those, there's a sort of common Plainsmen, isn't there? Else one tribe couldn't talk to the other, and-"

  "Yes, yes," Shardos interrupted, waving his hand. "And I speak it passing well."

  "I see. Well, Ramiro, if there is no other recourse, things should take place the way the leader of our party suggests, and he suggests as follows: You stay in the foothills with Dannelle and Oliver, while Shardos and I descend to dialogues."

  "If you say so, Sir Galen," Ramiro said ambivalently, no doubt relieved to be off the hook but sorry for the missed chance of braving it before the lovely Dannelle di Caela.

  As we left the trail for points downward and east, seeing the look of concern on her face was a prize worth having.

  Worth having, but not worth dying for. I shuddered as I handled the reins of Shardos's pony and made for the low fires east of us.

  One of the Plainsmen ahead of us-a young man not quite my age-watched us from the time we broke from our companions. I saw him crouched in a cluster of rocks above his fellows but still a great distance below us. He was dressed in a loincloth, armed only with a sling. As we approached, he moved off into the open, amid low brambles and downed ferns, as if he did not care at all whether we saw him.

  Shardos nodded and pointed toward the boy and the rocks.

  "How do you know?" I asked.

  "I can feel his breath on the east wind," the juggler avowed, blank eyes on the ground ahead of us. It made me uneasy, as if in that sightless world of sense and guesswork Shardos could reach into you and draw out your dreams.

  The Plainsman watched calmly from his outpost amid the rocks as we rode by on our uncertain way to talk with his comrades.

  I thought of Alfric, wondering if I could find peace with the boy and his people.

  "You have the command here, Galen," Shardos whispered behind me. "The command you secured from Ramiro, when he challenged your ways and your going, is yours alone. From this point in our journey, you are the strategist, the tactician. I shall step in only if you bring us to the brink of massacre-which, of course, you will not do."

  He grinned spaciously.

  "From this point on, Sir Galen Pathwarden-Brightblade, yours is the leader's voice."

  The tallest of the Plainsmen was my counterpart, evidently-the tribal spokesman. The rest of them gathered casually behind him, each holding his weapon, but with the spears pointed earthward, the bows unnocked, the slings unloaded.

  Nonetheless, I did not fancy a long engagement.

  As we reined in our horses in front of him, the tall Plainsman set down his weapons and gestured to a dry spot amid the surrounding rocks.

  "Dismount, commander," Shardos muttered to me. "It's an insult to them if we talk centaur."

  "Centaur?"

  "What they call talking downward to them while you're on horseback."

  "How, Shardos?" I asked in exasperation, turning to stare at him across Lily's rump. "How do you see silent gestures, having no eyes?"

  The juggler chuckled.

  "Lore, my lad," he replied. "Simple Plainsman lore. For the story makes up for the eyes and the senses. It is their way. It is how they have greeted visitors since the Age of Might."

  "If you know so almighty much about Plainsman protocol," I snapped, "why don't you conduct this meeting?"

  Shardos smiled merrily. "You might want to dismount, Sir Galen. That is, unless you have another strategy."

  What could I answer? I dismounted and followed the big Plainsman toward the dry spot, where his followers had spread skins for our comfort.

  Longwalker-for that was the Plainsman's name-cut an impressive figure. Que-Nara he was, which you could tell, supposedly, by the robe's design, by the feathers of raptors and eagles woven into the tough horsehide.

  Not that I knew him from Que-Shu, or Que-Teh, or Que-anything, not until I had asked his tribe and received the answer-in surprisingly fluent Solamnic. I knew only that he was a Plainsman and far north of his customary country. Even with the sudden change in the weather wrought by the rainstorm, Longwalker was dressed too warmly for our balmy country. The smell of horsehide garments unsettled our horses, and as a result, they were leery of the Plainsmen, so Shardos had to tether them to a half-rotten oak that had sprouted, grown, and died unexplainably, all in this hard and merciless terrain.

  Then the two of us joined Longwalker on the dry campsite, where his followers moved about quietly and gracefully, building a fire in our midst. The lookout boy came down from the high ground and began to help in the gathering of kindling. A lone woman produced dry grass from nowhere and, striking flint, ignited wood I thought too wet to burn.

  For a long time, 1 watched her. It seemed… unusual, a woman in the midst of all this hardship and endurance. I had heard that the Plainsmen were like bandits in this, making no difference between men and women in the tasks and duties and adversity. I thought of Dannelle at Plainswomen's business and for some reason found it hard not to smile.

  Then I felt Longwalker's eyes on me, and I looked into the green, unreadable stare of the Plainsmen leader.

  He was older than he had seemed from a distance-on the edge of sixty years-but as dark-haired and straight-backed as a man half his age. Angular and lean, he was, as though years of travel and fasting had burned all softness and leisure from him, leaving only what was necessary.

  I could imagine him looking through rock and darkness.

  Around his neck, he wore animal teeth and claws, the feathers of hawk and falcon and raptor, not to mention some I had trouble naming. About him was the smell of woodsmoke and endless grasslands, and something beyond that-of memory and dream and deep imagining.

  What was more, a blue light, almost like corposant fire on the masts of ships at sea, lingered about his shoulders and face, upon the leather pentagons and circles tied to the braids in his hair. It was like an aura, that light, and he looked like a damaged god in an old painting.

  All of which made our meeting even more eccentric, more unsettling. I had heard that some of these Plainsmen had one foot in the spirit world to begin with, especially the Que-Nara, and chances were that anyone appointed to lead such a visionary band would be downright at home in the ether.

  A faint smile flickered across the face of the Plainsman, then lost itself again in the strange, impassive gaze, which grew suddenly focused and intent, as if Longwalker had been searching for something on the horizon and at last had found it, faint and maybe undefined, but present nonetheless.

  I shifted cautiously as his stare settled upon me and softened.

  "We met in a night of stones," he declared quietly, and at once I kne
w that he was speaking of the opals and the visions. Longwalker's eyes appraised me as though he were sighting me down the long shaft of a nocked arrow.

  I glanced at Shardos, who was suddenly poised and alert.

  If Longwalker meant what I was sure he meant, if somehow he was friends with those who, pale and unsubstantial, walked through the walls of Castle di Caela and those who had killed Alfric, then the danger was most certainly mine. If I was right, we knew the same ghosts. But he evidently was on first-name basis with the lot of them.

  "The stones," he urged, leaning toward me, his largeness menacing in the deceptive firelight. Instinctively my hand went to my throat, covering the brooch. I had not come this far and lost my eldest brother only to hand these stones to the first Plainsman that reached for them. I saw no Brithelm in this camp, and my price for the stones was my remaining brother's safe return.

  Quickly I moved away from Longwalker and stood up, my hand moving rapidly toward my sword. In an instant, the rocks were alive with a dozen Plainsmen, who stood silently about me, bows and slings at the ready, like hunters when the quarry is brought to ground.

  "Let him see the stones, Sir Galen," Shardos advised from his seat by the fire. For a moment, I thought that the worst had happened, that the amiable blind man who had followed me into the camp had turned traitor or coward, siding with the same fiery brigand who had kidnapped my brother in a cruel attempt to gain these very jewels.

  "Nonsense, boy!" the juggler snapped, as if he had heard my thoughts. "Look about you! Do you think that if the man wants your jewelry that a single sword will stop him?

  Let him see the stones, I urge you. They will return to you made more powerful by your trust."

  "I've no fondness for mystery at the moment, Shardos," I replied. "Especially if I'm about to be stripped of my wherewithal. No, if Longwalker intends to take these stones, he'll have me to reckon with, because the death of one brother and the life of the other are wrapped up in that reckoning."