Michael Williams - Weasel's Luck

We had dismounted because of the steep climb, and we were leading our horses toward the castle gate. Then it opened, and two of the creatures issued forth, lumbering unsteadily, almost drunkenly toward us over the rocks and the incline. I wondered for a moment about the truth of the old proverbs about centaurs and wine. Then the smell that reached me stopped my wondering entirely. It was a smell of neither wine nor spirits, but of mold and dried vegetation and decay. The smell of a swamp—but the smell of a deeper decay beneath all that moss and mud and vallenwood and cedar—the smell when dead flesh, left exposed to the air and the moisture and the unseasonably warm autumn days, begins to rot.

“Walking dead!” Sir Robert exclaimed. “Spit into the sunlight by Chemosh!” He stepped toward them warily, followed by Bayard, then Ramiro.

I waved my knife as menacingly as I could, though I had no idea what earthly good a piece of cutlery would do against creatures of such size.

A whistling sound arose from their throats, as though they mocked the act of breathing or had forgotten how to breathe.

They were now close enough that I could see the wounds.

Who saw them fall, Kallites and Elemon . I remembered Agion’s story.

Riddled with arrows as though they had walked through a gathering of archers.

Who saw them fall.

Still in the side of the larger—Kallites or Elemon? I could not remember the details of the tale—arrows were imbedded to the nock, to the feathers. With the smaller it was as though the arrows—feather and shaft entirely—grew from his chest and shoulders.

My companions raised their swords as the centaurs stumbled blindly into their midst, flailing with their huge arms and the clubs they carried.

The larger centaur struck Sir Robert a heavy blow with its forearm. The old man was knocked off his feet and tumbled into a cursing heap at the side of the trail. At that moment Enid di Caela almost came into her inheritance, for the big creature reared, preparing to bring his front hooves crashing down on Sir Robert. I rushed toward Sir Robert, knife drawn.

Bayard, however, slipped behind the centaur before it noticed—indeed, before I had noticed—and hamstrung the creature with a blinding swipe of the sword. The big thing tottered and fell over on its side, struggled to right itself. It was only a second before Bayard’s sword flashed once again, and the big centaur’s head rolled several yards down the slanting trail.

Ramiro had that strange fat man’s grace—the quickness and agility you never expect in someone his size. He went for the smaller centaur and circled it like an immense and deadly fencing master, sword extended in front of him. His first serious lunge struck home on the stumbling, ungainly centaur. Which did not fall.

Which hissed, widened its dull black eyes, and climbed down the blade toward Ramiro. It climbed until the blade burst through its back and it had Ramiro in its fetid, crushing embrace. But its arms were not long enough to encircle the big Knight, much less crush him. Quickly Ramiro shrugged away his attacker and dislodged his sword with the sound of a knife drawn through a rotten melon. Then he spun quickly, putting all his considerable weight behind his sword.

The blow was so clean that the centaur’s head came down upon its shoulders and wobbled there for a moment before toppling off.

The air about us lay stilled and foul.

Sir Robert groaned and creaked as Brithelm helped him up from the roadside. Ramiro and Bayard sheathed their swords, standing over their fallen enemies. And something sniffled in the road behind us, curled into a dark heap.

“Alfric?” Bayard called.

“Alfric?”

But there was no answer. My brother lay clenched and shivering in a pile of gravel, covered by a blanket. Bayard looked back at me.

“Alfric?” I began, with no better results.

“Get control of yourself!” Sir Robert ordered, shaking himself from Brithelm’s grasp and striding toward my veiled brother. Robert di Caela was never one for charity.

“Maybe,” Alfric stated flatly, eyes still tightly shut, “this rescue business has got out of hand.”

“That’s absurd, Alfric,” Bayard said calmly.

“Absurd and treacherous,” Ramiro muttered, as he turned and lumbered toward Alfric.

“Come now, Alfric,” I joined in. “How do you think Enid would take this hysteria?” At which he burrowed even more deeply into the blanket, shivering even more fiercely, as if caught up in a strange and deadly fever. Brithelm rested his hand on Alfric’s shoulder.

Ramiro stepped forward, dealing a swift kick to the knot of blanket and brother. Alfric grunted, whimpered, and curled into a tighter ball.

Now it was Sir Robert’s turn, and we all dreaded it.

“Alfric. Son.”

No response. Sir Robert sighed.

“Alfric, if you don’t come out from hiding this minute, you’ll have to answer to this.”

If anything outweighed Alfric’s fear, it was his curiosity. He peered from beneath the blankets and saw Sir Robert holding a sword.

In no time, Alfric was out of the blanket quickly, and we all started toward the gates of the castle, Sir Robert whispering to Brithelm a judgment that the wind picked up and carried down to us as we followed them.

“It is a fortunate thing that your brother came when called. A few minutes more of this disobedience and I should have been forced to kill him.”

Sir Robert followed that with a threatening glance back at Alfric, who had begun to shiver a little once more. Sir Robert turned to face the castle ahead of him, and his shoulders shook in turn. But from where I walked, it looked like the shaking of laughter, a pleasant relief after a long afternoon of sorrow.

It was at that moment that Agion stumbled out through the gate. At first both Bayard and I cried out joyously, sure that we had somehow been mistaken during that sad time in the Vingaard Mountains, that the trident through his great heart and the humble little funeral had all taken place in a nightmare we now only dimly remembered as we saw our friend weave toward us.

We rejoiced until we saw the look in his eyes.

The dullness, the flatness. The look of the dead, beyond caring or recall.

Agion weaved slowly toward Bayard, club raised in his swollen, yellowed hand. Bayard stood his ground, drew his sword, and raised it.

Then lowered his weapon as the centaur drew near him.

“Bayard! It’s no longer Agion!” I shouted.

But my protector stood there motionless, his sword at his side. The centaur stopped in front of him and slowly, mechanically raised its heavy club.

I do not know how I got to Bayard’s side. Brithelm said later that he had never seen me move so quickly, and don’t forget he had seen me in flight many times about the moat house. Whatever the circumstances, the next thing I knew I was between Bayard and Agion, facing the dead centaur.

“No! Agion! It’s Bayard! It’s Galen!” I shouted, waving my arms.

For a moment the dull, flat eyes softened. But only for a moment, as the steely hardness of death returned, and the Agion-thing raised its club, hissed, and prepared to bring both of us into its darkened world. The moment of delay was enough. Sir Robert, battered and sore though he might be, was not entirely disabled—as we discovered when he rushed between me and the centaur, deflecting the downward stroke of the club with the flat of the ancient di Caela sword. Then, turning the sword above his head in a time-honored, brisk Solamnic fencing maneuver, he brought it up and over, slicing neatly through the bloated neck of Agion. Everything went away. I was deep in black nothingness, and though I may have dreamed while I lay unconscious on the ground in the Chaktamir Pass, I do not remember dreaming.