“This time we’ll do things right, Weasel,” my brother whispered hatefully. In the dark I couldn’t see what he was about to do, but I was sure that it wouldn’t seem all that right to me.
“None of your talking. None of your wheeling or dealing or bargaining. Not this time. You left me back in the moat house. Left me there so’s you could go parading off in glory around the countryside as a squire—the squire I would of been, had politics and brothers not kept me from it.”
I heard the sound of a knife being drawn from its sheath. Alfric was ready to clean what he had trapped, evidently.
“I beg you, Big Brother, to reconsider what you’re doing here.”
“I’m not listening to you. Remember, I said no talking.”
I felt the edge of a blade at my throat.
“Look, while we are struggling here in this swamp . . .”
“Oh, I don’t see us struggling all that much, Galen. The way I see it, you’re pinned down, waiting for something you can’t escape.”
I could see him grin in the dark.
“You see, little brother, I been watching this swamp ever since I got here. It sure grows quickly, don’t it? Why, it may well be years before anyone finds your bones, and by that time they won’t know who you are. Even if they do, who’s going to suspect me?
“I’ll probably be head Pathwarden by the time your leavings surface up. I’ll own the moat house and all lands pertaining. Nobody rich ever murders.
“I’ll be just as sorry as I can about the remains of my long lost brother who disappeared many years past when he followed Sir Bayard Brightblade of Vingaard, trying to become the squire he really didn’t have il in him to become.
“Do you like my story so far, Weasel?”
Hardly. At best, it promised to be a long gloat.
Still, I didn’t want to rush him towards the conclusion he had in mind. So I stayed silent, yielding, but above all listening. Far more than whatever foolishness my brother had to say, I was interested in the sound of someone—anyone—approaching.
I had guessed by now that the man the centaurs had seen following us was not Brithelm, but Alfric. But it no longer made any difference.
After all those years of throttling me, of strangling me until I almost blacked out and he remembered that Father frowned on fratricide, Alfric was out of the moat house, far from the long arm of the old man’s discipline. He seemed prepared to go through with it.
I saw his knife glint in the moonlight.
“Alfric.”
“Shut up, Weasel. I will do whatever I please from this point on. And whatever I please is . . . to become squire to Sir Bayard Brightblade of Vingaard, Knight of Solamnia.”
“Oh, that can be arranged, Brother,” I exclaimed, bargaining frantically for anything that would stop the blade from menacing my throat, listening desperately for any approaching footsteps, any hoof beats, any reason to cry out. “You can take my place polishing his armor at the tournament.”
“Tournament?” The pressure of the knife blade slackened. “What tournament?”
“Indeed. At Castle di Caela, over in southern Solamnia. All the bullies and thugs will be there, vying for the hand of Enid di Caela and the deed to her father’s holdings. It’s a place to make connections, I assure you. In fact, I’ll help arrange your squirehood. I’d be more than delighted to . . .”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort, Galen. You see, Sir Bayard’s going to be short a squire when his pet weasel submerges somewhere in this swamp. That makes me an obvious candidate for the vacancy. I won’t need introductions or letters of reference from you. I’ll be all that’s left.
“From there, it’s but a little maneuvering and some tournament folderol and, who knows, in the end perhaps they will consider me for the hand of this Lady Enid di Caela. I can sit a horse as well as the next man. I can handle a lance.”
“But, Brother,” I improvised, the edge of the blade now tight once again on my gullet, as my brother followed phantasms of glory. “Let’s start with your first obstacle before we make you head di Caela and all. Surely you realize that you’re going to arouse some suspicion, crawling out from under some rock the instant the job of Bayard’s squire is open.”
“So we do it my way. And here is the way I have it figured,” he proclaimed, lifting the knife. I took a deep breath, pretended to listen respectfully as Alfric gleefully, almost rapturously, explained his foolish plan. He paused for a long time. I could almost hear him figuring the angles, hear those rusty wheels turning in the great gap of his head.
“Here it is,” he began tentatively. “I shall tell Bayard that . . . Father . . . found some evidence that you, not me, was the negligent one.”
“And that evidence was?” It was uncomfortable, lying here draped over the heavy arm of my brother. Again a long pause.
“Well?”
“Shut up, Weasel. I’m contriving.
“Something about . . .” he drawled, then shook me with excitement—until my head ached. “Something about your naming ring! That was what sprung you in the first place, Bayard finding it on his mantle, of all the dumb Weasel luck!”
“What about the ring?”
Another long pause, during which the knife withdrew. Then my brother lifted me, setting me down roughly on the cypress tree, and turned me to face him.
“Uh . . . what do you figure, Galen?”
I figured he was mine now.
“Oh, that’s easy,” I began, scrambling for a reasonable story. “How about . . . that Father looked more closely at the rings . . . and discovered that the man in black had the real naming ring, and that the one Bayard found was a forgery, planted to make him do precisely what he did do, which was pass over you and take on your ‘wronged’ younger brother as a squire. Then Father sent you with the news to Sir Bayard so he could set the whole squire business straight at once.”
Alfric nodded joyously and eagerly. He was the only one stupid enough to believe a story so close to the actual truth.
“You know, I just think Sir Bayard will believe that one,” he said, hopping up and down until he tottered in the heavy armor.
I nodded innocently in agreement.
“Oh, by the way, Galen. The man in black? Well, he’s dead.”
“Dead?” The news gave me a shudder.
“It was the strangest thing, Father says. An hour after you leave, he sends the guards down with food for the culprit and finds him dead. The door is still locked and the bars on the windows was intact—so nobody got in to do him in. He was wrapped in his black cloak, and the smell, the guards said, was just horrible.
“What’s most peculiar about this, Galen, is Father says the body was all decrepit and mummified, as if the prisoner was a good year or more dead.”
“But . . .” Double shudder.
Alfric nodded.
Suddenly I didn’t want to be still in any spot, especially in this raven-infested swamp. I moved toward one of the trails that branched from the clearing—any trail. I was no longer particular. But Alfric stepped in front of me.
“Just where do you think you’re going?” demanded Alfric, gripping his knife threateningly.
“Why, to find Sir Bayard,” I said, as convincingly as I could, “and confess.”
“How’re we going to find Sir Bayard?” he asked suspiciously.
“Follow me. I know where he is,” I lied.
I had not taken two steps when Alfric’s hand came crashing down upon my shoulder, holding me in place.
“Don’t try to go nowhere without me, Weasel,” he muttered ominously. It was back to the old brotherly ties. So we began to walk in a random direction, Alfric’s left hand resting heavily on my shoulder, his right at his belt, on the handle of the sheathed knife. Or at least that’s where I suppose his right hand was. By now, it was really too dark to tell.