Michael Williams - Galen Beknighted

"But six months will be too late, sir!" I protested, standing up and knocking the chair out from under me. By instinct, Ramiro's hand went to his sword. Brandon, however, regarded me calmly from his seat by the fire.

"Too late?" Bayard asked. "Why 'too late?"

The possibilities made me reel: Brithelm, ravaged by fire, injured in the earthquake, or lost in some underground darkness, at the cruel whim of a bunch of pallid Plainsmen. Whatever the situation, my brother was alone, at the knife's edge, and unschooled in survival.

"Who said anything about postponing the journey, Galen?" Bayard snapped, and my thoughts skittered and plunged.

What else could those words and this assemblage mean but that Bayard had decided to send out a party of Knights to the Vingaards, fully intending to leave me behind in Castle di Caela along with the disabled, the women, and the old men?

I would not have it.

"'Too late,'" I announced coldly, "because I have had a vision that tells me 'too late,' damn it! And I know you've changed your mind, Bayard, and no doubt you will be sending Ramiro and whoever else has volunteered since your accident-anyone as long as it isn't the shifty, irresponsible Weasel! You've no idea how mistaken and foolish that is, for the opals have told me-"

"I beg your pardon?" Ramiro interrupted. "The opals told you?"

Now there was no turning back. My task was the simple and dreadful one of telling my brothers in the knighthood what had come to pass in the depth of the opals. I told it briefly, without ornament (I really have changed), told it all to an immense silence, to four pairs of widening eyes.

"So that is why I must go to the Vingaards, Bayard," I concluded. "Despite your good intentions of raising this party in my absence, it's an insult to me and to your belief in me and…"

Ramiro glanced at Bayard skeptically. Bayard winced as pain coursed up his damaged leg. For a moment, my heart went out to him-a man in the prime of his considerable powers, now bedfast and idle. Then I thought of what he was doing-shipping off virtual strangers to the Vingaards on a search for my brother, when I was the only one who knew of the danger. It was plain he did not trust me-had never trusted me-not as a squire and certainly not as a Knight.

At that moment, I devoutly wished the same condition for his other leg.

"I am sorry, Ramiro, that you, too, discount my visions," I said.

"No more, I am afraid, than I discount other things about you, Weasel. Still, you did show passable mettle in the mountains at Chaktamir, back when the Scorpion's Nest was crashing all about us…"

"I thank you for that memory, sir," I said, and stared ironically at Bayard. In the silence that followed, it struck me how shrill and peevish I sounded, like a schoolmaster badgering a whispering student to "share your secret with the other scholars."

It was what they wanted, evidently. Each one of them, looking at Sir Galen, no doubt saw only the Weasel in ill-fitting armor.

"Hold your tongue, Galen," Bayard said softly. "You would do your brother Brithelm a service to befriend these men assembled here, especially Ramiro, rather than doing your best to stir up discord and foolishness. Indeed, you would do yourself a service.

"Galen, your responsibility is a hard one to shoulder- greater than my own, than that of the men you see before you, greater even than the formidable duties of Sir Ramiro of the Maw, who will act as your second and confidante in the coming days."

"My second!"

Ramiro and I both gaped wildly, as though another earthquake had come, opening the floor beneath us and dropping us halfway into the center of the planet.

Bayard nodded, a strange half-smile on his face.

"Your second, Sir Galen. For in my absence, you are appointed to lead this expedition."

Even as Bayard spoke those words, the rain began, driving in thick sheets through the open window, which Raphael rushed to close, leaving the room in darkness.

It was as though the world wept at my leadership. For hours it poured, and where the Cataclysm had come before in fire and explosion, eruption and ruin, it threatened to come now as flood, as a deluge that would drown us all, given time and enough water in the heavens.

Behind the closed shutters of the infirmary, at a candlelit conference of Solamnic Knights, I learned what everyone thought of an expedition with Galen Pathwarden at the helm.

Ramiro belabored my failings at length. Brandon continued in tandem with him for about an hour, and soon I found myself nodding agreement to even the worst things they had to say about me, for after a while listening to such talk, you tend to believe the talkers and forget the specifics.

That the talk is about you, for instance.

There in the presence of bickering Solamnics, I unraveled a string from my tunic and settled down for another philosophers' duel, made only a little more interesting by the fact that I was the central subject in it all. The rain beat in waves against the shutters, and you could even hear it spatter the stone walls of the infirmary, it came down so hard.

Bayard was in full voice now, I discovered when I listened now and then, and the talk was of honor and obligation and staying the course. Of how much I could learn from this as regards responsibility and command, even though the chances were that Brithelm was untouched by the strange disturbances to our west. As the rain came down, so rose my sense of hope, for it became dimly possible that Bayard was winning them over, that by the time he was finished with them, Ramiro would follow me into the gaping maw of the Cataclysm or neck deep into the Blood Sea, for the pure and simple reason that he had promised Bayard some days back that he would follow someone somewhere.

In the midst of my musings, I saw Ramiro stand, saw that the big fellow was speaking.

Something about preparations.

"… tomorrow. We shall take the Plains Road due west, then ford the Vingaard and ride due north, keeping the mountains to our left. That way, if I recall, we can make steady progress without tiring… anyone unduly."

He glanced tellingly at me.

"Of course," he added, "this all depends on how… our leader figures it. I mean, if he has some little path of his own that he is all that bent on following…"

I could see I was completely accepted by my subordinates.

"Of course not. Sir Ramiro," I replied smoothly, also standing. "Indeed, I consider you an expert in terrain and travel, and it is a foolish leader who discounts the advice of his experts, now, isn't it?"

I was shameless, I know.

"And what is more, Sir Ramiro, if a lad must lead his first expedition as a Knight, must pass into unknown lands at the head of a party who become, tragically, his heavy responsibility, then I thank the gods that it is my lot to be thrown in with the most daring, resourceful, and formidable Knight Solamnia has to offer, in this time or any other."

Bayard blushed, and Raphael after him. The air in the room felt so laden with oil that I feared the candles would ignite us all. And yet I continued, crafting in the most indecent recesses of my imagination a way to compare my two companions favorably with Huma, while at the same time not comparing either favorably to the other.

But Ramiro raised his hands and cut short my groveling.

"Never mind, lad, never mind. It seems to me, Bayard, that the boy's intentions are good, and that perhaps his judgment… promises a likely future."

Bayard looked at me in disbelief.

"Thank you, Sir Ramiro," I replied. 'Tour kind words are an honor second only to my knighthood."

My protector winced as if I had broken his other leg, as Ramiro basked in my flattery like a walrus in warm water.