Belynda smiled wryly. “They’d have to believe me because I’d be telling the truth, old friend. You know that. So I can’t make up a story about something I didn’t really see.”
Nistel sighed. Before he could come up with a suitable reply, they were startled by a rustle in the woods.
“Boo!” The voice was youthful, more enthusiastic than forceful. Judging from the sounds of breaking branches, someone with a very large body pushed forward, but Belynda was startled to look up into a boyish face, currently locked in a petulant frown.
“I said ‘Boo!’ Aren’t you frightened?” The mystery of the tall youth was solved when he stepped all the way out, his equine body emerging from the bushes that had concealed his hooves and broad chest. The young centaur pawed the ground and snorted, then crossed his arms over his human torso. “You should be frightened.”
“But why?” Belynda asked. “Surely you don’t intend us any harm!”
The young centaur sniffed. “Maybe I do. What if I did?”
“Why, then, of course we’d be frightened,” Belynda said. “After all, you’re quite large… and, I should say, there’s a rather fearsome aspect to you.”
“There is?” The centaur smiled broadly. “Well, that’s better.”
“I am Belynda Wysterian, and my companion is Nistel, called Blinker.”
“Hello Belynda, and Nistelblinker. I am Gallupper, of Clan Blacktail.”
“Does your clan dwell in this part of the Greens?” Belynda asked.
Gallupper looked sad. “They did,” the centaur said, and he seemed to be on the verge of tears. “But they’ve gone, now… they went with the Crusaders.”
“The Crusaders?” Belynda was immediately alert. “Tell me about them.”
“They’re not at all friendly… they know how to frighten you, for sure. It was them that I tried to learn from… but they wouldn’t teach me how. They-” Abruptly Gallupper was crying, and Belynda reached out to pat his shoulder.
“You don’t have to talk about it,” she said. “Not unless you want to. But would you like to come along with us?”
“Yes!”
They started along the trail, the young centaur sniffling, then brightening as he fell into step between his new companions. Belynda noticed that the sun had begun its Darken Hour ascent, and she looked with apprehension at the shadows thickening in the woods.
“I have heard of these Crusaders,” Belynda noted after a few miles had passed under their feet. “Do you know where they live? Where they can be found?”
“They live everywhere!” Gallupper said grimly. “But you can’t find ’em.”
“Why not?”
“They hide! They’ll find you, soon enough. But when they want to. Like they came and found my Blacktails.”
“Well,” Nistel said hopefully, “maybe we should just find a nice inn-let them find us there! It would be more comfortable than marching up-”
The gnome never finished, as two large figures burst from the woods to either side of the road. They swaggered forward brandishing large clubs, completely blocking the path.
“Giants!” squeaked Nistel.
“Crusaders!” gasped Gallupper. The centaur whirled on his rear hooves and dashed back along the track, so fast that his black tail streamed straight behind him.
“Who dares to enter the realm of the Holy Cross?” demanded one of the giants, raising his club.
Belynda was stunned into speechlessness. Nistel, meanwhile, turned and sprinted away after the young centaur, and the sage-ambassador belatedly decided to join them. She, too, whirled about, but before she could take a step, another great figure burst from the woods, blocking the gnome’s retreat. This was a full-grown centaur, the great horse-body bashing aside small trees as one of his human hands wielded a large club. That weapon came down sharply on Nistel’s forehead.
Belynda gasped as her companion tumbled to the ground, blood spurting from a deep gash in his scalp.
“Here, now, witch.” The centaur’s face was screwed into a ferocious grin that was somehow more frightening for all its apparent good humor. “Let’s say you’re going to come wi’ me, all quiet.”
Before Belynda could reply, she felt strong arms wrap around her, knew she had been seized by a giant. Without ceremony, the big creature threw her across the centaur’s broad back. Ropes quickly lashed her wrists and ankles, and then they were on the move, pushing into the underbush, leaving the still and pathetic form of the gnome lying in a spreading pool of blood.
“M ore witches, lord,” declared the centaur Sir Christopher had named Sir Gawain. The messenger paused in the doorway of the tent to bow respectfully to Sir Christopher.
“This hellish place is crawling with them-they’re like lice!” declared the knight, rising out of his camp chair with a groan. For a week now his army had been on the march, and he was forced to make do with rudimentary comforts such as his folding chair and small campaign tent. “How many this time?”
“Two of the humans, ones that call themselves druids, captured together. And an elfwoman, lord, caught on the Ferngarden trail,” replied the centaur. “She’s got that gold hair, that stiff look, of a real witch, she does, lord.”
“Prepare them for burning. I shall inspect them, and they will be consumed.”
The two druids were, not surprisingly, young and handsome humans who had come to dwell together in the Greens. The knight took little note of the third captive, the elf held off to the side, as he allowed Gawain to fill him in about the humans. They were male and female, each forced to stand upright, suspended by hair held in the firm grasp of a giant. Blood streaked down the chins and chests of each-standard procedure required that their tongues be cut out to prevent the casting of magic.
“They was taken from a house over that last stream we crossed,” the centaur explained. “After they came out to find us when we killed their cow in the pasture.”
The two humans, battered and barely conscious, gaped at Sir Christopher with haunted eyes and those bloody, cruelly gashed mouths.
“Your cow will be the feast tonight-and your deaths the entertainment,” the knight informed them.
The man tried to flail against the grip of the giant, but Sir Christopher merely laughed and cuffed the insolent wretch.
At that, the female screeched at him, opening the gory well of her mouth, and the knight’s eyes crinkled in disgust. He dropped his staff at her feet. Gawain stepped back as the shaft of wood suddenly twisted and coiled. It became a serpent, hood spread wide as the head lifted from the ground. The snake struck, burying sharp fangs deep into the thigh of the female prisoner.
She screamed and thrashed futilely at the serpent. Sir Christopher watched impassively as she gasped for breath. The man’s eyes blazed with unspeakable pain as the woman twisted and moaned, kicking reflexively with her visibly swelling leg.
“Throw her on a fire,” Christopher decided. “Right now, before the venom has a chance to kill her.”
In many respects a dead witch was a dead witch, but insofar as possible the knight preferred to have them slain by fire. It was his strong belief that even the black magic of this satanic cult could be broken by the crackling purity of flame.
“Make him watch her end,” he added.
The male druid watched in numb horror as his wife was dragged out of the tent and he was pushed roughly after. Nodding contentedly, Sir Christopher touched the snake, which again hardened into a straight shaft of wood.
“And the elf?” he asked, only then noticing Belynda standing near the tent flap.
“She is over here, lord,” said Gawain. “We left her tongue in, in case you wished to interrogate her.”
“Yes, perhaps,” the knight said. He wasn’t worried about a little elf magic-save for the enchantresses, they knew only feeble and showy spells. It was the druids, with their raising of earth, their command of wind and waves, whose powers frightened him.
Now he didn’t have the heart for a long conversation with one of these ignorant elves. The routine was becoming predictable: No matter how patiently he explained the nature of Purgatory to them, they persistently refused to understand. The myth of Nayve was nothing if not pervasive.