“That lifts my spirits, sir. Perhaps we should regroup? I could ride Agion back to the centaur lines. My leg would bother me less upon horseback. The odds will not change in our favor if we stay here.”
“Retreat is simply not an option,” Bayard said doggedly, leaning his forehead against the oak, closing his eyes.
“Then what are we to do?”
Bayard opened his eyes, frowned at me, then rose to a crouch.
Again something whistled from the opposite side of the trail—this time more loudly, more urgently.
“Something’s brewing over there,” Bayard concluded. “No doubt Agion has spotted them.”
He rose to leave, and I to follow, but he turned and motioned me back to the spot where he had found me.
“Things are about to be nasty.”
He glanced briefly, humorously at my sword.
“I suspect you’re not . . . accomplished with weaponry. But you can shout a warning if a warning is needed.
“So watch this ground in case they come in behind us.”
With those encouraging words he was off, slipping quietly into the green tangle behind me, and I set myself to the job of staying put.
Which is not the easiest of jobs, considering you are tempted to do anything but wait. The day moved on into late afternoon, and for a while the sounds seemed close. Within the calls back and forth, within the braying, the bleats, the occasional whistles and shrieks, I could hear traces of words, but never enough to make out even a sentence, a statement. It was as though what the satyrs were saying was made of marsh fire, always a step or two beyond earshot.
I sat for what must have been an hour, swatting insects and dreading everything imaginable and some things beyond imagining. The noises rose and faded, rose and faded, until finally the swamp lay quiet. I began to wonder just where Bayard was—why I had heard nothing from him. I was tempted to stand and break cover, then thought better of it. I knew how a turtle must feel in his shell, playing the complex guessing game of when it was safe enough to expose your neck.
Then something shrieked, harsh and terrible, somewhere far off to my right. It was as if a raven’s wing had brushed by my face, bringing the cold scent of night and death.
This was no place to be when the darkness came. I rose to my feet and began to walk, wandered in a nightmarish circle for what must have been the longest few minutes of my life, then crashed out of the undergrowth onto the path, which I knelt and kissed in an ecstasy of relief.
I began to walk in the direction Bayard had gone—or the direction I thought Bayard had gone. Slowly, more familiar sounds resumed as the green of the leaves darkened and blurred with approaching dusk. Somewhere behind me a brace of frogs called one to another; an owl awakened. Eventually, the swamp became loud, almost lively. I was tempted to seek cover, to leave the trail for good. To shelter myself while there was still enough light to take shelter by.
But as I deliberated, as I looked as far as I could into the swamp at my right, all the sound stopped off to my left. I picked up my sword again, watched as the reeds and evergreens parted in that direction, and waited for them to bubble and spin and boil as they had right before the ambush. I was relieved when they did not. Agion thought there were three of us. Someone else had crossed into this mire. I thought of the Scorpion and of how this place was quiet and out of the way.
Or perhaps Archala had changed his mind. Perhaps we were confirmed spies now. Perhaps we were already sentenced.
Indeed, of all those I suspected or expected, the last was Brithelm.
But it was Brithelm, indeed, my elder brother who sat in the air above a mattress, eyes closed and dog whistle clutched tightly in his hand. His face lit up as he saw me and he shouted “Galen!” so it could be heard throughout the swamp, even back at the moat house, perhaps, reaching the ears of the satyrs who were not far away, no doubt seeking my whereabouts while slowly, lovingly sharpening their weapons. Brithelm walked toward me, unaware of satyrs and of ambush, unaware of even darker dangers and of the sad fate that befell Kallites and Elemon. From across the pathway, from somewhere safe under cover, I heard Bayard (who was pathetically nearby, as it turned out) shout, “Stay down!” And hearing the shout, Brithelm brightened even more.
“My little brother. Happy in the service of Sir Bayard of Vingaard. Allow me first to greet the Knight, as is only proper and customary. Then we shall have a brotherly talk.”
With that, Brithelm was past me, striding quickly across the path, Sir Bayard and Agion shouting at him from somewhere in front of him and I shouting from behind him. But he didn’t listen to a thing we shouted, intent as he was on greeting the Knight “as is only proper and customary.” I started to run after him and grab him but, hearing movement in the underbrush to my right, thought better of it and slid quickly off the path. Thinking better of it and sliding probably saved my life.
Two satyrs, armed with small but wicked-looking hatchets, leaped out of the underbrush and bore down upon Brithelm.
Who had not seen them. Who was still walking casually down the path.
I was paralyzed, as though I were watching one of those huge, hypnotic snakes brimming with poison, which the men of Neraka mail in baskets to one another during times of political upheaval. I saw movement across from me; saw Bayard for a second as he began to rise, to go to my brother’s rescue; saw a strong arm—probably Agion’s—drag him back.
Saw Brithelm pass through the satyrs unharmed. Saw the weapons wave ineffectively through the air. Saw the satyrs blend back into hiding so quickly that it seemed they had vanished from the spot. Brithelm had noticed nothing.
He continued walking casually down the path, then turned, parted the reeds with his arms, and shook hands with a thunderstruck Bayard, then with an equally thunderstruck Agion. Then Bayard stepped into the clearing, the centaur behind him, neither of them taking his eyes off my brother.
Since the satyrs had temporarily dispersed, I came out, too.
We stood around Brithelm, agape. Brithelm looked from one of us to the next, smiling, nodding—you almost hated to break the news to him that he had been assaulted.
I finally broke the silence, addressing my commander, the supposed brains of this rapidly unraveling operation.
“You figure this one, sir.”
“First, we should get back off the path,” Bayard insisted. “The satyrs may return at any moment.”
“If they do, we can always hide behind Brithelm,” I offered.
Bayard shot me an annoyed glance as he led us back to where he and Agion had been hiding—a little clearing made larger because it is hard for tall grass and reed to stand up to the weight of a centaur. Already, though, the foliage was righting itself and even growing again, and we stood chest high in the rushes—well, flank high for Agion and waist high for the other two men. Agion cleared the place of reed and vine, swinging the scythe he had recovered where it lay in the road, untouched by satyr hand. It reassured me, somehow, that Brithelm’s account of how and why he was here was familiar, even soothing. My brother was every bit as harebrained as ever.
It seems that Brithelm had wakened from a trance on the morning I left, and found me gone. That much, he admitted, he had expected—that his younger brother would be gone, off on his “knightly calling,” as Brithelm put it so generously. Bayard was generous not to laugh.
“But I also awoke to the unexpected, little brother, more unexpected than you could even imagine or dream. For accustomed as I am to receiving signs and visions, never have I received one so . . . manifest, so tangible as this.”
Brithelm fumbled in the pockets of his robe and brought out the dog whistle.