We walked slowly, in silence at first, away from Bayard, of course, or so I hoped. Far ahead of us, the swamp was alive with insects, with the bellowing of bull frogs, with the sound of awakening owls. Around us it was constantly quiet, except for occasional splashing or cries of alarm or fluttering of wings—sounds that were always moving away from us. Yet if we were making enough noise to silence or scare off the smaller animals, we were making enough to draw the larger ones.
If a larger animal drew near, it wouldn’t hurt for me to be more quiet—and for Alfric to be louder. All the better to focus the attention of that larger animal.
“How did you do it?” I began, not whispering but keeping my voice low.
“Do what?” my brother asked, his voice like a foghorn in the darkness of the swamp. Something directly ahead of me skittered away in panic, leaving behind it a trail of shrill noises. Good. My brother was loud.
Bring on the carnivores.
“Why, how did you escape, Alfric? It’s no mean trick to slip out of the moat house under Father’s attentions. I’d like to know how you managed it.”
“Only in hour or so after you left,” Alfric began his story serenely, his large hand digging uncomfortably into my shoulder, “I take stock of the situation and realize that it is time to call in a few debts owed me. For you see, little brother, you are not the only one who has debts to collect.”
He laughed, laughed with what the old stories call a rising hysterical laughter. Believe me, it is as disturbing as it sounds, especially when you are alone in a swamp with someone who is doing it. Again I was sure I was about to be portioned. I kept walking, carefully testing the ground in front of me. Then Alfric’s laughter faded, as suddenly and as disturbingly as it began. He said nothing more for a while. We walked farther, the only sounds around us the shrill winding noise of the crickets, which grew slower and slower as the damp night air grew colder.
“It was scarcely an hour after you left that I just walked over the drawbridge and out across the grounds. You see, Father was feeling a mite sorry for me on account of losing my squirehood and all, so he wasn’t as watchful as he usually is. So I was off after you almost before you was out of sight, following the tracks of the horses until I noticed them tracks was crossed by the tracks of others . . .”
“Centaurs,” I interrupted, and received a box on my ears for the information.
“I know that, Weasel! How come you think I stayed so far behind you when old Molasses dropped over? I could of caught up then, but I wanted to catch you alone and I couldn’t be sure what was going to happen.
“So when they took you off to that clearing and judged you I was not that far behind, and when you was ambushed and my saintly middle brother came through to save the day and complicate things, I was where I could see that, too.
“Oh, yes, I been watching all along,” he said ominously, and pushed me from behind. But at the moment I wasn’t moving.
“Alfric, there is something in front of us that might be dangerous.”
I stopped completely. Alfric did not. The heavy breastplate jarred against the back of my head. The metal on the breastplate rang. So did my ears.
“What is it?”
“I hear something moving up there. Something bubbling, the gods help us!”
“Go on, Galen.”
“No, it’s true.”
“I mean, go on!” And he pushed me in the direction of the noise. I paused uncertainly, took one step, then took it back.
My loving brother pushed again. Toward quicksand, lava, a pit of adders—it was all the same to him.
“You heard me. Go on. Don’t worry. I’ll protect you. At least until we find Bayard.”
It was scarcely reassuring, like being one of those legendary sparrows the dwarves take down with them into the mines. When the bird drops dead in its cage, the dwarves know that the air in their tunnel is too thin, too unhealthy, and beat a quick exit.
I stood fast, resisting the push of the armor behind me, until the push of the breastplate was joined by the push of a knife blade.
“Very well, Alfric. I’m moving. I’m going forth into uncertainty and very possibly death. You are responsible for this, of course. For whatever happens to me.”
My brother chuckled in the dark behind me.
“Well, Galen,” he drawled, “I expect I can live with that.”
I expect it was a quagmire—a pool very much like the ones we had passed over and around in the daylight, more dangerous in the darkness simply because you could not see where it began, where it left off. The first step into it was enough to confirm my fears: the bubbling sound, the feel of something sucking and dragging at the bottom of my boots. It was dangerous—could take you under to the ankles, to the waist, take you under entirely, depending on how deep it was.
Quickly I ducked, slipped my shoulder out from under Alfric’s hand, and rushed across the mud, trusting that it was only a larger version of what I had seen before.
So it was. Only larger than I had figured. After a while of running, I felt myself sinking. Frantically I tried to recall what I knew about quagmires.
Do not move. Movement gets you in deeper trouble.
Hold still, completely still, and wait for help.
Help from a dim-witted oaf wearing a hundred pounds of armor?
My legs churned even more quickly. I windmilled my arms, hoping devoutly that I could outrun the present terrain.
Twice I sank to my knees, once to mid-thigh, but each time I managed to scramble out of where I had been mired. All the while Alfric called behind me—his voice not quite clear above the bubbling noises of the pool—shouting names, commands, threats.
It would make for a good story to say that my feet found dry and solid ground just as I was about to give up. But it was long after giving up, I suppose, that I discovered I was no longer sinking—that knee-deep in mud I had found a bottom to the quagmire. My body had kept moving out of reflex, out of sheer panic, even after my spirit had failed completely.
It had failed embarrassingly. By that time I was shouting for help from anyone—Bayard, Agion, Brithelm, the satyrs, the Scorpion, Alfric, and whoever else might be within earshot. I prayed to the gods, then bargained with them, promising to spend the rest of my life in an obscure priesthood, after having surrendered all my possessions to one of the temples of Paladine in Solamnia. My next thoughts had been scarcely as profound, as I peeled the bark from the nearby cedars, with language that would have made stable hands blush. I had tried weeping, blubbering, even rising hysterical laughter.
I am grateful for whatever prayers or promises or cries or curses got me to the other side of the quagmire. For I do not know how I covered the last few yards to safety except that it involved pulling myself out by a long, thin vine that lay atop the pool, a vine I had entangled around my waist, my shoulders and neck, until I had stood a great chance of being hanged by my own lifeline.
Whatever happened, I lay on solid ground at last, wrapped almost completely in leaves like some sort of elf dinner, gasping for air and listening, as the rest of my senses recovered from the strains and the shocks, to the sound of something behind me in the dark—a noise rising above the churning sounds of the pool I had just passed over and through.
The sound of cries for help. Which were pretty familiar by now. But this time they weren’t mine. Alfric’s cries—pitiful, yes, but music to my ears.
“Galen, are you out there? Galen? Help me!”
I sat on the wonderfully dry earth and disentangled the wonderfully strong vine from around my elbow.
“Help me! I know you’re there! Father’s armor is heavy, and I’m going down!”