“Given the circumstances, sir, I would have called upon any family connections I had myself,” I consoled, Agion nodding in agreement with me. “Your castle was yours, handed down through generations, and you simply used those friendships to drive out the rabble who had robbed you.”
“But there was no driving out to do against that so-called rabble,” Bayard explained. “For they had never taken up residence in the keep. They felt that if they lived in the luxury of those who had ‘oppressed’ them, as they called it, they might grow to be as ill-willed, as evil, as their oppressors.”
“Do you mean they preferred their straw-covered huts to the halls of Vingaard Keep?”
Bayard nodded.
It seemed impossible to believe.
“Then they deserved the driving out and whatever else befell them later, on grounds of sheer stupidity alone,”
I pronounced.
This time Agion was not as quick to agree, the prospect of thatched housing no doubt appealing more to his appetite than the prospect of stone walls. Nor did Bayard agree, shaking his head slowly, frowning, and squinting as he looked off to the eastern distances.
“Galen, I cannot answer that. What passes sometimes for sheer stupidity is principles in disguise.” He kept looking east, then nodded as though he had discovered something at the horizon’s edge, which indeed he had. He turned to me, spoke seriously and directly.
“I have just enough trouble with my own principles that I can’t pass judgement on someone else’s.” I sat back in the saddle, prepared for another pompous lecture, but instead Bayard nodded to the east and changed the subject.
“The Vingaard Mountains.”
“Sir?”
“The Vingaard Mountains. You’ll see them soon. You’d see them now if you knew how to look over distances.” He smiled, tugged on the pack mare’s reins and brought her abreast of Valorous. “We bear due east from here, and we should reach the mountains close to where the pass lies.”
They were black, those mountains, as the evening sky darkened to a deep blue. That night we camped under their shadows, the foliage around us just beginning to grow more sparse as the ground slanted upward and the soil became more rocky.
We slept heavily, or at least I did, and the morning found me no more fresh than when I bedded down the night before. Bayard shook me to wake me, and when shaking did little good, he nudged me with his foot. The side of the boot atop fresh saddle sores did not sit well, in a manner of speaking.
“Another brisk ride today, Galen,” he announced cheerfully—cheerfully and, indeed, energetically. “If we continue to ride briskly, and if the gods grant us a clear path and no obstacle upon the road, we can still be at the gates of Castle di Caela in five days, on the eve of the tournament.”
Chapter Ten
It is time for a story of my own.
This one takes place not long after Bayard told his story, and begins while we were clambering through the Vingaard Mountains on our way to Castle di Caela.
As Bayard had feared, the delays in the swamp had made us late, though not irretrievably late, for di Caela’s tournament. Still, the tournament waited for no one. Over two hundred Knights had gathered from all over Solamnia, all over Ansalon. The story is told that one Knight came from as far away as Balifor, wearing blue armor and an exotic array of yellow plumes, but he was long gone by the time we reached the castle, having been bested at once in the jousting lists so that he carried no lady back to those eastern mountains at the edge of the world, but a great bruise and a crack in his collarbone.
Yet the Blue Knight from Balifor was not the most unusual contestant to vie for the hand of the Lady Enid di Caela. When you draw contestants from all over the continent, you can rely on a number of them being a trifle . .
. outlandish.
There was Sir Orban of Kern, whose forked beard and eye patch made him look somewhat disreputable, almost piratical, though the story goes that no Knight carried within him a heart more innocent and noble. Perched on the shoulder of Sir Orban was a talking parrot, all orange and red and shifting in colors as the sunlight and the moonlight shifted. The parrot spoke constantly to Sir Orban, who answered him in kind, and indeed spoke little to anyone else.
There was Sir Prosper Inverno of Zeriak, the southernmost of the Solamnic Knights who had assembled there at Castle di Caela. His armor was thick and translucent like the Icewall Glacier that lay half a day’s journey from his holdings. Thick and translucent, and glittering like sapphires, so that those assembled wondered if it were made of ice or of precious stone. He wore the white skin of a bear around his shoulders, and there were stories that the air at his encampment was colder than that surrounding it, that even wine left in a cup by his tent was crusted with ice in the morning. But no matter the rumors, he was known as a lancer of surpassing skill and surpassing power, and no Knight wanted to draw his lot when the tournament began. Then there was Sir Ledyard of Southlund, who had spent, some said, too long on the seas. He had seen from a distance the Blood Sea of Istar and his eyes had turned red from the sight. Just as strange was the helmet he wore, with the swirl of conch shells fashioned in metal about the ears so that Sir Ledyard looked like something risen from the Blood Sea itself. Within that helmet, within the conch shells at the ears, it is rumored that the sea always sang, always called him back.
There was also Sir Ramiro of the Maw, a Knight more easterly than the Blue Knight of Balifor, and also more sizable: he must have weighed four hundred pounds, not counting his armor. He was constantly cheery, and fond of traveling songs—faintly obscene ones at that—and I am sure the Lady Enid breathed a sigh of relief when he fell to the Hooded Knight in the first day of the lists.
For the Hooded Knight was the one who set Castle di Caela most abuzz with rumor and speculation. He came on the last night before the tournament began, and he pitched camp a good two miles west of the castle walls, away from all other contestants. Many of the Knights, even the easygoing Sir Ramiro, shivered uneasily on the tournament eve when they looked westward unto the Hooded Knight’s encampment, black and silhouetted against the blood red setting sun.
Sir Robert di Caela himself was troubled at the presence, though he did not know why, and found himself looking westward beyond that farthest encampment, looking to the feet of the Vingaard Mountains for some sign of movement, some glint of last light off of the fabled armor of the approaching Bayard Brightblade—some sign that we were there at last. Then Sir Robert could commence the events with confidence, knowing that destiny was in the wings, that the Brightblade he had awaited had come at last.
But when darkness fell, Sir Robert turned from the battlements in disappointment, for the Brightblade had not come, was surely delayed on the road. Meanwhile, more rumors began to spread through the camp. The Hooded Knight was said to be the heir of a family outcast from Solamnic Orders, who had come to the tournament in the hopes that victory might reinstate his family and win back the honor they had lost generations back at the Cataclysm.
Or the Hooded Knight was an enchanter cursed to wander the earth until he could win a tournament such as this. Then, released from the curse and from his bondage to this sad earth, he would vanish, leaving nothing behind.
Or the Hooded Knight was Sir Bayard Brightblade in disguise, for he had come without attendants, and wasn’t it so that Bayard had been wandering through Coastlund in search of a squire?
These stories and more Sir Robert took in that night in the master bedroom of Castle di Caela. As he pondered all of these stories, there was a knocking at the gates and an outcry from the guards—brief and startled, but whether joyous or fearful Sir Robert could not tell.