“There’s something moving over there again,” he whispered, backing toward Valorous, where his sword lay tied to the saddle.
I followed his gaze out to the line of evergreens, blurred in the gray movement of water. Something was going on across there, but at that distance and in the rain-distorted light I could not tell.
“What is it, sir?”
Bayard remained quiet, eyes fixed on the distance.
“Goad said something about ‘philosophy in numbers.’ Do you suppose it’s the militia, back with more philosophy?”
“If it is, Galen, you’d better take your position in the vallenwood. I expect I’ll need a lookout as direly as I needed one the last time.” Bayard reached out, calmed his horse with the touch of a gloved hand.
The calming didn’t work for squires.
“You might try killing a couple of them this time, sir,” I offered. “Just a little something to swing the philosophical advantage in our direction.”
Now Bayard was reaching for his sword. I watched him, waited for him to turn for the weapon so I, in turn, could turn for the vallenwood.
But none of the turns came. For behind Bayard, behind Valorous, I could see four burly fellows, chest high in a small grove of dogwood. Over the rain I could hear the shuffle of hooves on the forest floor. They were no longer bothering with secrecy.
They were mounted, and we were not. Or so it seemed until they crashed through the dogwood branches toward us, when we could also see that they were horses from the waist down.
I thought of the Sign of the Horse as I toppled backwards and saw the trunk of the vallenwood. Then saw its branches only. Then saw not much of anything except grayness and faint light. Finally, I saw nothing at all.
CHAPTER 5
All of this commotion, and I had not yet traveled ten miles from home.
Scarcely ten miles east of the family moat house lay a swamp that extended forty or fifty miles north and south—I didn’t know how far for sure—and circled back upon our property until the moat house and almost all our holdings were bordered by marshlands. ’Warden Swamp was a lucky accident in the recent Pathwarden past, rising up quickly and unexplainably about a century ago, named for us, though the country folk shortened the name, as country folk will. Though we looked on it with mistrust and with fear, daunted by the rumors that things grew too quickly there, that strange, half-rotten things lurked in its heart, the swamp conveniently surrounded the Pathwarden estate and protected us from the hostility toward Solamnic Knights that had arisen in Ansalon following the Cataclysm.
You all know the story regarding the Fall from Favor. The people of Solamnia, of course, decided that the Knights had known the Cataclysm was coming for years but had been unwilling or unable to warn everyone. This popular sentiment became the excuse to waylay every Knight who passed through their particular part of the countryside.
Nonetheless, it could have been worse for our family during all the noise and persecution. First of all, we never lived in Solamnia proper, where most of the trouble was; we were slightly to the west in Coastlund, protected by our remoteness and, as it turned out, ringed by ’Warden Swamp. Although many men were eager for Knight-bashing, few wanted to go out of their way or cross dangerous terrain to get their bashes in. So the swamp had been our good fortune—my family’s and mine.
Which is not to say that you’d ever have caught me near the nasty place, with its snakes and crocodiles, and bandits only a little less cold-blooded and a little more human than the reptiles. Until now, I’d always done my best to avoid it.
I awoke on horseback, or so it seemed. For I was draped like a dirty blanket or a saddle, face-down over a broad, dappled back that smelled of sweat and horse. The ground rushed by below me, and the wet afternoon wind whipped across the side of my face.
I shifted my position and tried to sit up in the saddle. But there was no saddle to sit up in. Instead, a rope was bound tightly about my wrists and a strong hand pulled at my hair, restraining me. I twisted, tried to kick against restraints—against the hand, at least—but found no rider where I had every right to expect one.
Then I remembered the men-horses crashing toward us through the bushes and the undergrowth. I raised myself as far as I could and looked straight into the burly back and shoulders of one of the creatures.
I was draped across what appeared to be a centaur, headed for swamps and for torture most likely.
Where was Bayard?
Had they taken him prisoner? Or worse, had he simply backed away and given me over to them while I lay in a faint underneath the vallenwood? Draped across my captor, I sulked bitterly and awaited the trampling that surely would follow. I pictured the man-horses rising high upon their hind legs, brandishing weapons and pummeling me into fodder.
The one who carried me stepped lightly, smoothly for a creature of such size—more graceful, even, than a horse, perhaps because all of that muscle and speed and balance was guided by an intelligence at least equal to that of a human. It was a combination of that natural grace and evidently of knowing the territory, for we moved quickly and impressively toward our destination.
Whatever that destination was. It grows tiresome not knowing your whereabouts.
But maybe whereabouts was the least of my worries. Only minutes after I woke, my captor stopped on a rise in the swamp amidst cedar and juniper and aeterna and other evergreens I could not identify. He stood there, breathing only a little heavily, waiting for someone or something, while I tried to scramble into a more comfortable position.
I shuddered. The light in this clearing was shades of green. And menacing. With all those cedars surrounding us, it smelled like a good place to die. The smell of swamp, the faint smell of sweat, and the stronger smell of horse sank beneath the clean odor of evergreen, like when you put soiled clothes back in a cedar chest so the smell sinks into them, so the clothing doesn’t smell like you have to wash it—a boy’s trick that usually keeps you from having to bathe as well.
After a brief look around the clearing, my captor seated himself, sliding me down his back and onto the moss-covered ground. The moss was thick and soft; still, the tumble jarred me some, and I lay face-down for a moment, recovering my senses before I scrambled to my feet.
The centaur stood over me in a dodging green light, holding a scythe at least seven feet long and as big around as one of my legs. Escape was out of the question.
“We wait until thy master joins us, little one,” the man-horse rumbled. He offered no leverage—no margins for disagreement.
“Are you a centaur?” I asked finally, breath recovered and mud and evergreen needles brushed from my face.
“It is the name used by thy people,” the centaur replied distractedly, staring down a wide path of broken branches and underbrush, expecting arrivals, evidently. I followed his eyes briefly and watched the path cover itself. Watched the brush bend back, the standing water settle and calm on the path itself, watched—
The vines grow back? Reeds growing out of the water?
I marked it off to the tricky light in the clearing and the knock I received when I dismounted. Now the centaur was looking straight at me again. Escape was still out of the question.
His eyebrows bristled, dappled brown and white like his back. He was young—only a year or two older than I, if centaurs measured their years as we did. “I thought you were fables,” I murmured, and glanced about the rise, looking for passages small and narrow into the swamp and … Safety? Among crocodiles and quicksand and diseases?
Maybe I should take my chances with the big spotted fellow before me. After all, anyone who said his thees and thous sounded a little less like a murderer to me. If he was young, he might be stupid and easy to manipulate.
It’s a safe rule to go by, and Agion was no exception to it.
For that was his name, though at the time I couldn’t have cared less. Once he was sure that we were alone for a while, my new companion became talkative, almost breezy. Quickly I rece
ived his life story: he was no celebrity within the centaur ranks, but was young and considered a little slow and awkward by his company. “Indeed, watching over you is the first real duty my elders have given me in this war we’re in,” he stated proudly.
“War? Wait a minute, Agion. What’s this about a war?”
The big creature paused, blushed.
“I might have said too much. My companions will tell thee what thou needst to know, when the time is fitting and proper.” He trotted to a corner of the clearing, peered back into the leaves and mud and darkness. Behind him the moss and grass crushed beneath his hooves grew back readily, unnaturally. I couldn’t get used to it.
“Agion, you don’t dangle statements such as that in front of whoever’s listening, then drop the subject entirely. It’s just not done outside of a swamp somewhere. Civilized people don’t hint when it comes to disaster.”
Agion frowned. “I’m sorry I let fall such news, young sir, but that is my nature, I fear. The others tell me that I squeeze things so hard I drop them.” Suddenly he brightened. “Though they say I am good-hearted.”
Were all centaurs such simpletons? I dearly wished for cards, for seed money. This was another Alfric, without the malice and with two extra legs. I lay back on the grass, which had grown about an inch since I was deposited there.
Despite what Brithelm had said on our seemingly long-ago walks through the courtyard, apparently some of the rumors about this place were true. Something was strange about the vegetation that altered and grew underfoot. I sincerely hoped it was harmless. Meanwhile, I tried the first of my strategies—a simple and direct one, but who could say there would be time for long explanations?
“If you are good-hearted, Agion—and you seem to be—then maybe you should think of this. I don’t know anything about any war—where it’s taking place or what the sides are, or how not to run into it, even—and here you’ve dropped this torch on the tinder, as they say. I have been separated from my honorable master—by the way, where is he?—and isn’t it kind of your duty to put my troubled thoughts to rest—dismiss the suspense and all?”
Agion walked a few steps down a trail, ducking to avoid the low branches of a pine. He turned about, ducked the branches once more, and returned to the clearing, tracking mud and weeds across the dry ground. Though pulled from their roots, the weeds continued to grow.
“Well? I mean, you’re the one who brought the war up, Agion.”
“Nor should I have done so, little friend.” He squinted down still another pathway into the swamp, as I marveled that he could call me “little friend” after such brief acquaintance, and especially when I would have gladly sold his organs to the goblins for the information he was bent on not giving me. “Now where are they?” he asked impatiently, fidgeting with the enormous, wicked-looking scythe.
“Relax, Agion,” I offered. “You look like a painting of Equestrian Death wielding that thing. Sure you have the right clearing?”
“Passing sure,” Agion replied. “They said to meet at the second outpost if it had not overgrown since we met here this morning and … by the gods, I’ve betrayed even more secrets to thee!” He slapped his forehead with a blow that would have left me simple-minded. I had to gain his confidence quickly, before the others arrived. I stood up, walked slowly towards him, talking all the way.
“I don’t know where we are, what the second outpost is, or why they wanted to meet here in the first place. You’ve captured a real blank slate here: I know nothing about the war, what it’s all about, or what damn side the damn centaurs are on, if you’ll excuse my waxing profane and all, but it’s dreadfully frustrating to hear all of this talk about a major world event and not have the foggiest idea as to …”
“Th’art rattling, little friend,” Agion cautioned me, raising his scythe in a gesture I mistook for anger. “I think it might be of use for thee to rest thyself a moment, recover thy breath. I can tell thee nothing until suspicion is lifted from thy countenance.” Casually, he sliced branches from the pine tree beside him, so that he could pass under. The branches grew back.
“And what is my countenance guilty of, Agion?”
“Spying, little friend. Had thou been in Solamnic armor, like your friend, we’d have held thee as a prisoner of war—no more. But concealing thy colors is like to spying in wartime.
I stared woefully up at Agion, who looked down on me with not a little sympathy. A lark sang briefly in the bushes to my left, whether “left” was south or north or whatever. Though the rain was lifting, the situation looked glum and soggy.
“Ah … pardon me, Agion, but what’s the common punishment in these parts for spies?”
“My folk seldom wax dramatic, little friend,” the centaur smiled. Then his big face darkened, the spotted eyebrows bunching into one thick line of hair above the bridge of his nose. “For the most part, we drown the poor souls. Take them by their poor little ankles and dangle their poor little faces in pools or in brooks. Facing upstream, of course.
“We suspend them there ‘until they pay the full price for their intrigues,’ as the elders say.”
A pretty grim use of Coastlund’s waterways, if you asked me.
“Does that apply to the young ones, too?”
Agion nodded. “As far as I know. Mind, I’ve never seen a spy put to death, young or old.”
“Does it apply to those dragged unwillingly into espionage—say, those who really have nothing against centaurs, but become spies when it’s a choice between that and death?”
“As I said, little friend, I’ve never seen the putting to death. Nor have I seen any trial where such things are brought to counsel. Truly, I cannot answer thee.”
“Then perhaps you’ve heard things, Agion. Like what is done with someone who informs in a case such as this. Suppose someone were to reveal a network of spies—from mere lookouts and agents among the peasants who live nearby, on up to the ringleaders, some of whom you may already have taken prisoner? And suppose this very cooperative person does so for the promise that his head will not roll when heads roll, or drench when heads drench, if you understand me?”
“I am sure if thou hast such a promise from the elders, thou art safe from harm,” Agion proclaimed seriously. “But if thou were to uncover a network of spies, thou wouldst betray some of thy friends, no doubt?”
He paused, cocked his head, looked at me curiously.
“That is, of course, if the other two are friends of thine.”
The other two? Friends? I knelt, pretended to pick up something from the ground—a blade of grass, a rock perhaps. I was pretending not to care, though the curiosity was great and I was stringing out my nets blindly, hoping that somehow Agion would stumble in.
“So you caught us all, then? I mean, all three of us?”
The centaur’s mouth was off and running before his brain awoke.
“Only the two for the time being. Thee and the Knight thou servest, though he was much more difficult to bring to ground, judging from the fact that my companions are late in joining us here.
“As for the third, he escaped us up the road. He was the one we saw first, but on open plains too near that Solamnic moat house and at such a distance that we could not hope to capture him. So we found the two of thee, hoping that perhaps all three would be together when we overtook the Knight himself—that the lookout thou settest so cunningly a mile at thy rear would betray thy whereabouts in the hurried attempt to warn thee.”
Agion gave me a puzzled look. I nodded for him to continue. I was thunderstruck by the news of a third spy, but determined not to show it.
“Else the armor might well have been hidden,” he said, “for we had intended to watch thee only, until we heard the Solamnic talk with the militia. Then we had to close with thee, to search thee for what we suspected we would find—and did.”
For now I was sure someone was following us.
I remembered the dark recesses of the library, the movement of dark wings.
Who else could the third man of Agion’s story have been?
So what if I escaped these four-legged kidnappers? Who knew what other forms of mayhem awaited me?
Had Bayard not entered the clearing at that moment, escorted by half a dozen centaurs, I might have tried to strike a bargain with Agion, offering him money, land, half the moat house to escort me safely back to Father’s disfavor and a place of honor in his dungeon—damp and dark and infested with bullies, but safe from scorpions, at least.
Apparently Bayard had not come easily. One of the centaurs nursed an arm in a sling, another a bloodied nose. Nor did Bayard look much better himself—the right side of his face swollen and discolored, his left hand bleeding and clutched in his right, which had little else to do, the centaurs having tied his wrists together. His wrists were burned by the tightness of the ropes.
Without ceremony, the centaurs pitched him to the floor of the clearing, then encircled us both. Lying in a bruised heap on the ground, Bayard smiled ruefully up at me and staggered to his feet.
“It is here and now thou wilt answer for thy conduct, Solamnic,” one of the centaurs proclaimed—a burly specimen whose skin was dark and weathered like a cypress tree. His hair was white, also, but unlike Agion’s, white with age and if not with wisdom, at least with a certain badlands cleverness. Swamp-smart, you might call him.
Apparently the old fellow was the leader. He looked as though he were accustomed to being answered.
But Bayard had been jostled a little too much, it seemed. There were cracks showing in his courtesy as he rose to his full height and faced the old centaur.
“For my conduct it is easy to answer, sire. It is that of a Solamnic Knight when he and his squire are attacked without warning—and I might add, without reason—by seven folk who are supposed to be allies of the good and the just. That’s my answer, sire—quite simple and direct, I grant you, but when your men ambushed me, I assumed we had passed beyond formal introduction.”
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