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 abound 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 received 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?”