“Not the point,” he explained, “for Brithelm has told us that the satyrs do not exist, whether we see them or no. He is a holy man who is used to things unseen.”
“I understand. Perhaps one of you can tell me what has happened in my absence, then. If something that climbs on Bayard with a knife, that kills two of Agion’s friends, that I have seen with my own eyes doesn’t exist, then I’d like to know . . .”
Theirs was a tale brief and bitter and mysterious. As the story came to light, it resembled more and more one of the legendary gemstones from far-off Kharolis, which is a different color depending upon the angle from which you look at it, or resembling even more closely those old prophetic poems from the Age of Dreams, in which each reader finds his own catastrophes foretold.
Bayard began the telling.
“I looked for you, Galen,” he said calmly, “but found you nowhere.”
“And when we could not find thee,” Agion took up the story at once, “we broke cover and charged onto the road, where we engaged half a dozen satyrs.”
“Four,” corrected Bayard.
“None,” corrected Brithelm.
“None?” I asked, moving closer to the fire.
“Our stories part company almost from the outset,” Bayard explained, moving away from the fire. “I saw four of them, Agion six, and Brithelm saw four goats. The goats come later in my tale.”
Bayard broke off an aeterna branch and stirred the fire with the blue, fragrant stick. He began to speak again.
“Whatever our version, the struggle was over quickly. What struggle there was. Agion claims that two of the satyrs escaped unharmed and headed toward the center of the swamp.”
Toward the stockade, no doubt. It sounded reasonable.
“I, on the other hand, saw only four of them, as I told you,” Bayard claimed. “And all of them put up a fierce fight, wielding clubs, short spears, those swords with the curved blades . . .”
“Scimitars?” I suggested.
“I suppose that’s one name for them, Galen. You should know; you’ve read more of the old stories than I have. Whatever they’re called, the goat-men knew how to use them and it took Agion and me a brief but hard fight to dispatch them. In which your brother had no part. But fighting seems to be a trait that none of you inherited from your brave father.”
He glanced at Brithelm with exasperation. Brithelm smiled back serenely, nodding that he continue his story. Bayard smiled too, despite himself.
“Up until then, I could account for the differences in our stories as arising from the confusion of battle,”
Bayard explained. He leaned back on his heels, smiled dimly. “I recall my first engagement, a brief, nasty skirmish with the men of Neraka near the Throtyl Gap a dozen years back. There were seven of us there, all between the ages of seventeen and twenty.”
He laughed, shook his head.
“There were seven versions of that skirmish, where the enemy ranged in numbers from ten to two hundred. Only a week later did we find that we had outnumbered them.”
He paused, still smiling, then stared at each of us in turn, his gray eyes growing serious.
“But this was not a first battle,” he stated quietly, fixing his stare on the changing light of the fire. “I have lived thirty years and been blooded in clash, in skirmish, in battle, from here to Caergoth. Yet I am puzzled at what came to pass in the aftermath of the fight with the satyrs, when things were calm and when a seasoned man is not apt to illusion.
“For neither Agion nor your brother saw what happened next, as I bent above one of the dead satyrs for a closer look at our enemy. Agion claims that nothing happened next.”
“That nothing changed, Sir Bayard,” the centaur interrupted, folding his arms across his chest. “Nothing, that is, save the look upon thy countenance, which liked to frighten me, thou wert so taken in thy disbelief and horror.”
“Agion,” Bayard explained, “did not see the satyr turn into a goat.” The Knight sat, drew his knife, and ran his finger lightly over the blade.
“It was as if death had unmanned him,” he said finally, staring once more into the fire. “As though the dying had taken all humanness from its body, leaving only goatish, inhuman remains.”
“Which was all there was from the beginning, Sir Bayard,” Brithelm said, patiently but much too loudly for this dangerous terrain. “It has the makings of a proverb,” he added with a smile. “‘If you fight goats, expect to kill goats.’”
“Whichever,” said Bayard, his voice low and oddly troubled. “But of one thing there can be no doubt: things are passing strange in this forsaken swampland. I am anxious to leave, but first, I’ll fulfill my pledge to confront the satyrs, be they real or imagined, and then hasten on the way to my appointment.”
Bayard looked long and hard at the fire before rising. He stomped off to attend to Valorous and the pack mare. Something fluttered in the bushes to my left. I started, thought of ambush. Then I recalled it would not happen here, that it was my job to lead these folk to ruin—back to the house at the center of the swamp, where, if ambush was coming, it would come.
Meanwhile, Agion had busied himself with gathering bundles of reeds and leaves, which he fashioned into a makeshift mattress on the floor of the clearing. As the others set about their business, he caught my eye and motioned toward his handiwork with a big, ungainly hand.
“My lord Archala said seven days and seven nights among us will find thee out,” he observed, his face widening into a smile as kind as it was ugly. “But he never ordered thee to spend all that time in waking.”
I crawled onto the mattress gratefully and, with my enormous companion and captor standing watch, slept heavily through the morning and the afternoon.
I figured that Bayard had lost all patience with Pathwardens for the moment. Even the time I slept was time he had to make up on the road to Castle di Caela.
But there was good in this impatience, for while I was asleep, Sir Bayard seemed to have forgotten about pressing me for further details about my adventures of the night before. Or had let it pass on purpose. As he attended to the horses and Brithelm moved away from the fire to the far edge of the light, where he sat in what seemed to be meditation, I stirred sleepily on my bed of reeds, reached in my,pockets, and drew out the Calantina.
One and ten. Sign of the Adder.
Well, then. Best do what adders do.
I roused myself and walked over to Bayard, who leaned against the pack mare, his big hands on her saddle, intent on tightening what the swamp had loosened. He looked over his shoulder at my approach, then returned to his work.
“Bayard?” Again I called softly. “Bayard?”
He dragged his armor off the pack mare and began to put it on. He looked up at me, smiled, motioned me over. I felt more viperous by the minute.
“I hope you slept well, Galen, but we must be moving. I’m sure we can find the satyrs near that place you spoke of. How far would you say we are from that encampment? Help me with this.”
I stooped, tightened a greave, and answered.
“Not far, I expect, sir. It should be easy to find again.”
“Think, boy,” he urged. “You have no idea how serious this delay is to me.”
As I helped Bayard to his feet the phosfire began to shine above our heads, at first spangling the early evening air as though it had settled, like an army of fireflies, in the branches of a huge, mossy oak that overhung the clearing where we had camped. Shortly, the light arose from the branches and began to move, back in the direction from where I had come.
I pretended not to notice the phosfire at first, but soon I was aware that none of my companions had seen it. So I could follow the weaving light easily, stopping once in a while to pretend at pondering my whereabouts before pretending to recognize a tree, a standing pool of water, a bend in the path. Soon I had to pretend no longer, for my companions followed me unquestioningly, involved as they were with the swatting of midges, the breaking through underbrush, and the swearing at terrain and at each other.