At the moment I felt that to do either would be too showy. Instead, I sat and watched events unfold. Then a curious thing happened, as if somehow a truce had been arranged out of all of this bluster and threat. Instead of pouncing on Bayard as I was sure he would do, Goad stooped and hoisted his winded comrade to his shoulders. Meanwhile, Bayard had toppled Karrock with a strong punch to the ruddy jaw and was turning to guard his back. His eyes met Goad’s, and it was hard to tell what passed between them besides the nod that seemed to end it, as Goad backed into the stand of firs, as Karrock scrambled to his feet and scurried after his commander, none the worse for combat were it not for a bruise noticeable through the dark beard on the left side of his hamlike face.
Now I leaped down from the vallenwood, rolled a bit in the dust so I would look somewhat the worse for wear, bit my lip—not hard, but hard enough to draw convenient blood—then scrambled to my feet.
“Let that be a lesson to you, affronting a brave Knight of Solamnia,” I shouted. Bayard turned again, this time slowly, and fixed me with a withering gaze. “See to your horse,” he ordered coldly.
As you can guess, there wasn’t much seeing to do on that account. We said our farewells to Molasses, then transferred my belongings to the pack mare, who could hardly be said to be grateful for the additions, and I dreaded receiving the news as to how we would travel the rest of the way to Castle di Caela. I decided to postpone asking, perhaps letting Sir Bayard’s temper cool in the meantime.
The mood and our clothes had been dampened considerably. Bayard returned to the fire, silently insisting that if we were to have lunch, then by the gods, we would have that lunch at that very site. We ate abruptly. Bayard drew dried beef and dried fruit from one of the countless pockets and packs on the mare. The fire, unfortunately, was for warmth, not cooking. It was a dry and dismal meal we had there beside the road and under the vallenwoods, with the horse and the mare shivering beside us and the rain steadily falling. I cast the Calantina for comfort and received two and eight, the Sign of the Horse. As I mulled over this reading, tried to remember the verses that went with the sign, Bayard leaned over my shoulder and spoke.
“And what’s this?”
“Sign of the Horse,” I replied shortly. I wasn’t in the mood to exchange pleasantries with my judge, jury, and executioner.
“I mean . . .”
“The Calantina. Fortune-telling dice from Estwilde.” Maybe he would take that as an answer, go back to his side of the fire, and dry some perfectly edible food into something indistinguishable from the saddlebags you carry it in. After all, we might need our appetites killed once more before we reached the castle.
“Garbage is what it is,” Bayard said softly, drawing his knife and walking toward Valorous.
“I suppose,” I agreed absently.
“Then why do you do it?” he snapped, crouching beside Valorous and lifting the stallion’s front leg.
“Do what?”
“The Calantina, of course. Parlor game in Estwilde. That is, wherever they have parlors. They invented it and don’t take it seriously. Why should you?” He snorted.
“The Calantina provides me with insight on various occasions, Sir Bayard. As to my future, my place in the ever-changing relationship of things. As to my courses of action.”
“Garbage,” he spat again, beginning to clean mud from the hooves of his stallion.
“Garbage?”
“Garbage, Galen.” He smiled. “You know. Offal. Refuse. Ordure.”
Then he turned to me, no longer smiling.
“There are many kinds of magic in the world, boy. This is not one of them.”
“How can you be so sure?” I asked, leaning back against the vallenwood, my hand still in my pocket, clutching the dice tightly.
“All right,” Bayard said calmly as he reached under Valorous for the stallion’s other front hoof. “All right. What sign did you say you cast?”
“Sign of the Horse,” I muttered, glancing away from Bayard toward the stand of firs, still fancying that the militia might return for our heads at any moment.
“Just what does that mean?” my employer asked, beginning to clean the hoof.
“Could be the journey we’re on. Could be what happened to poor Molasses.”
“Not very definite, is it?” Bayard asked victoriously, moving to Valorous’s hind hooves and chuckling.
“Could mean many things, combined in a way we haven’t discovered yet.” I knew it was weak, but I thought he couldn’t argue with it. I was mistaken.
“Hindsight, Galen. I could litter this road with omens by hindsight. Magic is as rare as a struggle between honest men on this road.”
“But I’ve seen magic, Sir Bayard,” I blurted out, thinking of Brithelm.
“And I’ve seen honest men struggle on this road,” Sir Bayard conceded quietly, intent again on his work.
“Goad and Karrock and the rest of that militia think we are criminals—honestly think so—and that man back in your father’s dungeon hasn’t helped matters on that account.”
He paused, looked directly at me, then turned back to Valorous. He cleaned the fourth hoof, flung the dagger into the ground, where it stuck, then rose to his feet.
“All Goad was doing,” he stated flatly, “was protecting his village against what he imagined was a raiding knight. He hates the Order, probably thinks we’re all rogues and traitors. He has a lot to learn. You have a lot to learn, too, Galen,” he concluded, walking toward the pack mare. “Provided I stay alive long enough to teach it to you.”
I started to retort, to let Bayard know that, as I had it figured, he didn’t have all that much to teach me, and that I was more than willing to learn my lessons elsewhere if he would only escort me to a place free of rain and bullying militia. I started to tell him this, but he stopped in his tracks midway between horses and stared once again at the stand of firs, now almost hidden behind a wall of rain.
“There’s something moving over there again,” he whispered, backing toward Valorous, where his sword lay tied to the saddle.
I followed his gaze out to the line of evergreens, blurred in the gray movement of water. Something was going on across there, but at that distance and in the rain-distorted light I could not tell.
“What is it, sir?”
Bayard remained quiet, eyes fixed on the distance.
“Goad said something about ‘philosophy in numbers.’ Do you suppose it’s the militia, back with more philosophy?”
“If it is, Galen, you’d better take your position in the vallenwood. I expect I’ll need a lookout as direly as I needed one the last time.” Bayard reached out, calmed his horse with the touch of a gloved hand. The calming didn’t work for squires.
“You might try killing a couple of them this time, sir,” I offered. “Just a little something to swing the philosophical advantage in our direction.”
Now Bayard was reaching for his sword. I watched him, waited for him to turn for the weapon so I, in turn, could turn for the vallenwood.
But none of the turns came. For behind Bayard, behind Valorous, I could see four burly fellows, chest high in a small grove of dogwood. Over the rain I could hear the shuffle of hooves on the forest floor. They were no longer bothering with secrecy.
They were mounted, and we were not. Or so it seemed until they crashed through the dogwood branches toward us, when we could also see that they were horses from the waist down.
I thought of the Sign of the Horse as I toppled backwards and saw the trunk of the vallenwood. Then saw its branches only. Then saw not much of anything except grayness and faint light. Finally, I saw nothing at all.
Chapter Five
All of this commotion and I had not yet traveled ten miles from home.
Scarcely ten miles east of the family moat house lay a swamp that extended forty or fifty miles north and south—I didn’t know how far for sure—and circled back upon our property until the moat house and almost all our holdings were bordered by marshlands. Warden Swamp was a lucky accident in the recent Pathwarden past, rising up quickly and unexplainably about a century ago, named for us, though the country folk shortened the name, as country folk will. Though we looked on it with mistrust and with fear, daunted by the rumors that things grew too quickly there, that strange, half-rotten things lurked in its heart, the swamp conveniently surrounded the Pathwarden estate and protected us from the hostility toward Solamnic Knights that had arisen in Ansalon following the Cataclysm.