Michael Williams - Weasel's Luck

“You think you have that prophecy figured as neat as a recipe, with no line left unexplained and unmanaged?”

I glanced at Bayard, who was looking at me, sword raised overhead.

Move, Bayard. Move quickly, like a striking snake. Let’s see a little Solamnic velocity in this nest of scorpions!

So I thought and hoped, but Bayard did not move. And the Scorpion’s dagger stayed poised above Enid as I spoke.

“What if you’re wrong, Benedict? After all, you’ve proven that Bayard misread the prophecy entirely. As did Sir Robert, evidently. So what if you did, too? What if that little piece of doggerel has squirmed away from all three of you—Bayard, Robert, and Benedict—and there’s another solution to all this rhyme and foreboding?

“After all, you kill the bride but the line doesn’t end. Sir Robert can father more children, more di Caelas to wrestle you down each time you trundle back to claim your inheritance.”

“Which is why I brought her here, fool!” the Scorpion proclaimed. “Now all the di Caelas are under my roof, and the line ends where they do!”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps not,” I answered triumphantly. Another invention had occured to me, and for all I knew it stood just as good a chance of being true as any story, poem, or prophecy I had heard so far. For as my thoughts raced, they had settled on lamplight in a window, on a pale arm waving.

“Have you heard of Dannelle di Caela, sir?”

The hand holding the dagger wavered. Bayard started for the platform, but the Scorpion wheeled and, clutching Enid to him, brought the dagger to her throat. Again the creatures at his feet began to chitter and mill.

“Stand back, Solamnic! Prophecy or no, if you come any nearer, I’ll send this girl to Hiddukel!”

“Regardless, ‘a girl succeeds to all,’ Benedict,” I urged. “For if you kill Enid, who will be Sir Robert’s heir but Dannelle di Caela?”

“No,” the Scorpion said quietly. He grasped Enid so tightly that she cried out, startling him. For a moment he lost his grip on the girl, and she wriggled free of his encircling arm.

Now, Enid di Caela was her father’s daughter—no helpless damsel in distress. She fetched the Scorpion a sound kick in the leg that sent him stumbling to the center of the platform, where he clutched the arm of his throne to regain his balance.

A moment’s stumble was all she needed. Enid slipped through the milling Nerakans and into her father’s arms, as Bayard stepped quickly between her and the Scorpion’s ghastly army.

“Kill her!” the Scorpion shrieked, pointing a bony finger at the escaping Enid, but it was too late. The girl had returned to the protection of Bayard Brightblade, who put four Nerakans to the sword with movements so quick that the blade even ceased to blur and became invisible, and only the swarm of bodies between him and the Scorpion allowed the scoundrel to rush toward the far door of the great hall, surrounded by his clattering black attendants.

I whooped and started down the curtain again, still slowly, testing the cloth for strength and for vermin in the folds.

For a moment it looked as though the Scorpion would escape. Bayard pushed one more Nerakan to the floor, ducked the slash of another’s scimitar, and beheaded a third with a quick, flashing movement of his sword arm. Sir Robert, after parrying a slow thrust from a Nerakan scimitar, severed the hand that held it. The undead soldier dropped to his knees and Alfric, who had been hiding behind Enid when the battle resumed, slipped in behind the half-fallen Nerakan and stabbed him in the back.

But even more quickly than the Knights moved through his undead protectors, the Scorpion made his way toward the door and freedom. His cloak wrapped around him, he moved with the silent grace of an enormous nocturnal bird, the door not ten feet in front of him now.

Then as though he had conjured them with a wave of that mysterious crystal, in that very doorway stood Ramiro and Brithelm.

Both were bedraggled and tattered—a little worse for wear from their struggle in the pass—but neither was about to give way to the thing they had come so far to hunt down. Sword drawn, Ramiro stepped through the door and approached old Benedict from one side, while Bayard cut a path toward him from another. The Scorpion raised his pendulum, and hundreds of small beasts, their sharp tails poised for the fatal sting, scurried toward Sir Ramiro.

A red light tumbled from Brithelm’s hands, and the floor of the room was awash with an unearthly fire that bathed the creatures and set them burning. There on the floor between my brother and their dark-hooded commander the scorpions twisted, contorted, and crackled.

Then they began to sting each other.

Slowly the red fire faded from about the charred, spidery remains of the scorpions. And I heard my brother speaking in quiet mourning.

“I am sorry. Even to such as you, I am sorry.”

The Scorpion backed away. Still, he remained undaunted. Cautiously he backed to a corner, his red eyes taking in the hall. Once again he raised his hands, and again the ground began to tremble and boil.

“Oh, but it is not over, fools and Solamnics and more fools,” he crowed. “We are gathered together—all of us beneath this roof of rock and cloud and fable—to bring an end to this prophecy, this wondering. No Dannelle di Caelas! The fate of the house is decided here! For remember the prophecy says that: ‘Generations from the grass/will rise and lay the curse aside.’ You have seen but the first generation. Now suffer the second!”

Slowly, more armed men clambered out of the swirling ground, leaving churned earth and moss and yellowed, tattered cloth behind them. The first arm bursting through the floor carried with it the shield of the House of Stormhold.

I stayed where I was, halfway down the dangling curtain.

“Yes, Bayard Brightblade!” Benedict shouted, his voice shrilling as the long-dead Solamnic Knights staggered to their feet, reaching into the swirl of cloud and earth below them to draw forth their weapons. “The men of Neraka join hands with these from your ancient order! Death is the leveler, all faction and race and country put aside in the long and abiding hatred for the living!”

The dead Solamnics righted themselves, more than a hundred strong. Clumsily, listlessly, they proffered their swords in the time-honored salute of the Order. By their gray and decaying hands it was scarcely recognizable—almost a mockery.

Bayard lowered his sword in dismay. All of the rest, even Sir Ramiro and Sir Robert, shrank from the earth-covered Knights, from the bandages and the smell.

Death may well be the leveler, but what was it that Brithelm said? Some things are stronger than death!

With a cry almost in unison, a dry, papery yell that despite its dryness, despite its fragility, shook the things in the Scorpion’s hall, the Solamnic dead raised their swords and charged.

Straight at the waiting men of Neraka.

Through all these decades of death and oblivion, they had awakened to defend against a Nerakan assault. Some things, indeed, were stronger than death, among them the ancient oath, Est Sularus oth Mithas —my honor is my life—in the breathless breathing of each dry-voiced Knight.

It was as though time, too, had held its breath for a generation, and with a sudden, terrible gasp breathed again.

“No!” cried the Scorpion as, despite his best plans and orders, the ancient armies again locked weapons.

“You are commanded—”

But there was no time to speak, for Bayard Brightblade was hurtling toward him through the dozens of skirmishes that had erupted in the hall. From his black robe the Scorpion drew a sword whose blade was a dark blue steel. It glittered as black as onyx in the yellowed light of the room, and no sooner had he raised it than Bayard’s great blade came crashing down upon it, driving Benedict to his knees. They locked blades there for a moment, Bayard resting all his muscle and weight on the sword beneath him, the Scorpion pushing up with the bristling strength of a dozen men, the pendulum swinging wildly from his left hand as he brought it, too, to the pommel of the sword in a frantic attempt to stop Bayard’s unyielding push downward. They poised at the far corner of the room in a violent balance, and for a moment the bright blade forced the dark one back, the silvery glint of Bayard’s hundred-year-old sword inching closer and closer to the face of the enemy.