Michael Williams - Weasel's Luck

I leaped quickly behind the approaching voice, piped, “Over here!” and leaped again. I heard the crab-brother turn, curse, and again leaped behind the sound of that movement. It was hide-and-seek for keeps, and I knew it.

“Over here!” I squealed again, and there was movement at my feet. I leaped backwards, away from the sound, and into the strong arms of my brother.

Now it was Alfric’s turn. I felt a strong blow to the back of my head, clumsy but certain fingers encircling my throat, and I was falling somewhere, out of the dark into a greater darkness.

I awoke to a lantern shone into my eyes, to Gileandos’s face. He crouched above me, holding the lantern at arm’s length, clutching in his other hand a plate of bread and cheese. Two guards stood behind him, the amused keepers of our cell. I knew them from the stables, knew they delighted in Alfric’s imprisonment and were no doubt indifferent to whatever befell me.

“My lad, you have been ‘pummeled and cudgeled passing well,’ as the old poem says,” Gileandos exclaimed. It hurt me to sit up, to breathe, much less to remember any old poem. My left eye would barely open, and the light from the lantern hurt it terribly. Yes, pummeled and cudgeled passing well was a pretty good description. But Gileandos was not satisfied, and continued.

“Such maladies are not unusual among the recently incarcerated. The combination of melancholy, darkness, and damp air is a painful one, but rarely deadly. There are stories of Santos Silverblade, Solamnic Knight and ancestor to Sir Bayard Brightblade, our visitor. They tell how Santos survived the Siege of Daltigoth, though imprisoned in the dungeons of that hateful city, how when Vinas Solamnus and his followers entered Daltigoth as conquerors, opening the prisons, Santos emerged, as the song says, ‘battered and bruised but by no means beaten’. . .”

“Galen run into a wall,” my brother interrupted from the corner of our cell. “It was a rat what scared him, caused him to jump untimely.”

“Come, come, Alfric,” Gileandos scoffed, turning the lantern to my brother’s face, which appeared hungry but otherwise none the worse for wear. “It seems quite apparent that what we have is the aforementioned prisoner’s malady, aggravated no doubt by the unseasonable coolness of the weather, which I have established conclusively to stem from the precipitous action of sunspots upon marsh vapors, all of which factors . . .”

“He run into a wall. That’s the way it happened. Isn’t it, brother dear?” Alfric never took his eyes from me. I chose my words carefully.

“My brother is right, Gileandos. It was a wall, of that I am sure. And it was a rat that startled me, made me take the unfortunate leap that caused the wreckage you see here.”

I lay back, trying to look even more beaten, even more pathetic.

“And what is more, I could have escaped injury had I only listened to Alfric, who had told me to stand still until he could light a small fire for us to see by—a remarkable talent of his, for he can start a fire in the most unusual places . . . from the most unlikely materials.”

Clumsy, and maybe a little obvious.

“What’s that?” Gileandos leaned forward, his attention mine at last. “What’s that you say about fires?”

“Oh, never mind. As I was saying, I was startled,” I whimpered, “and perhaps to a small degree prey to that very malady you have mentioned, but rest assured it was a rat—a large one, the largest of the litter, but a common rat nonetheless—that led me to this sorry state you see before you.”

Gileandos leaned over me, squinted intently, set the plate beside me.

“There is more to a rat than the cheese he fancies,” he proclaimed, a question in his voice. “Your breakfast. Before it gets cold.”

He turned, closed the door behind him, and left us in darkness.

As his footsteps faded down the corridor, I heard movement in the far corner of the cell. I dodged, felt the wind of something large moving quickly past me, heard something hit the wall and my brother curse. I crept to the center—what I thought was the center—of the room.

“I got that part about the rat,” Alfric growled from somewhere.

Good. Then Gileandos might, too. I stayed silent.

“And what was that about fire, anyway?”

Still I was silent.

And so I remained for what could have been hours, even a day, moving when I heard movement, standing completely still when there was nothing to hear.

I was trying to come to terms with the possibility that I would never sleep again when a key jostled in the lock. Light bathed the cell, and I discovered Alfric and I were standing back to back, scarcely a yard apart. He turned, grabbed for me, and before my brother could make purchase or I could even begin to dodge, Father was between us, clutching a torch in his left hand, the front of Alfric’s shirt in his right, holding my rather abundant brother a good foot or so off the ground.

I marveled at the old man’s quickness and strength, swore to myself I would be as devoted a son as was convenient.

At the door stood our two burly guardsmen, who stared at us, obviously trying to hide their smirks. At a nod from the old man, they busied themselves with fixing leg irons to the dungeon wall. Upon another nod from my father, Gileandos stepped into the room.

I counted only two chains in the hands of the servants.

Father, still dangling my eldest brother, nodded once more to Gileandos, who explained the new circumstances in his best lecturer’s voice.

“Never lie to your elders, Galen. You haven’t the subtlety nor the experience. For speech, my lad, is a text wherein the trained mind can discover wonders, and there was indeed no way that one of your age and . . . lack of sophistication . . . could have known that in lying, paradoxically, he was revealing the truth.”

It didn’t sound good for me. The old man continued in senile revery. I longed for coals, for phosfire, for Father’s torch. He was asking for yet another enkindlement.

“For every text, verbal or spoken,” he droned on, “has a subtext, and the subtext of your lie revealed quite clearly that Alfric was the rat of your little story, that your injury involved no rat in what we might call the literal sense, no wall beyond the simple—albeit violent—constraint of the aforementioned brother. Am I correct?”

“Yes, Gileandos.” Why confuse him with the full truth? I tried to appear awed, shaking my head, smiling stupidly. He smiled back condescendingly.

“And what is more, you unraveled a mystery the heart of which I have sought to penetrate these six months passing, since the initial, unfortunate conflagration? Am I correct?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come, come, lad. Did you think I was content to burst unexplainably into flame every now and then without getting to the heart of the matter? In seeking to cloak your brother’s bullying, you have indeed uncovered what we might call his . . . more dangerous tendencies. Now wouldn’t the truth have been more wise from the start?”

“I suppose so, Gileandos.”

As the servants placed a fuming, sputtering Alfric in the leg irons, Father glared at him, waving the torch like a mythical sword.

I knew better than to speak now. Gileandos continued.

“Your father and I have counseled over your punishment, Galen, and we have determined it would be most fitting for you to see your brother made an example for his misdeeds. You will continue your stay here in the dungeon until Sir Bayard recovers the armor. We trust you will be edified by the fate of your brother who, having grown to manhood, will be disciplined, no doubt, as befits a man.”

My father expressed puzzlement at how he could have fathered an arsonist, a mystic, and a liar, with no promising Knight in the whole bunch. The two servants were probably wondering if all wealthy families were like this.