Bayard mounted, drew his sword, and spurred Valorous off in a canter toward Sir Enormity, who stood waiting calmly, clutching his trident with both hands.
Disaster drew closer when Valorous broke to a full gallop and Bayard raised his sword. Instead of lunging with the trident, our huge enemy backed away from Sir Bayard’s charge and, as casually as if he were beating a rug, swung the trident at the passing figure, catching Bayard with the flat side of the tines and sending him over backwards onto the rocky ground, where he lay as still as the stones around him. It was a long time before Bayard stirred from that place.
Meanwhile, his opponent rode up the trail some distance, stopping where it narrowed and cut through a granite escarpment, where the stone that bordered the trail rose well above his shoulders. It was impossible to travel around the ogre as he sat on horseback, wedged into the pass like a boulder, Agion had moved to Bayard’s side at once, had knelt by him—not an easy thing to do for a centaur—and was treating him, trying to revive him with various strong-smelling herbs.
I, on the other hand, stood there. I watched the enormous creature sit on his horse like so much inert baggage. He did not move. He did not menace.
But I felt as though he was regarding me. And I had been regarded in that manner before. I heard Bayard sputter behind me, heard the armor rattle as he rose to his feet.
“What is that you waved under my nose, centaur?”
“Goldwort, designed to . . .”
“I know, I know, to steal the breath and kill the patient. Now if you’re done trying to poison me, perhaps you’d . . .”
It took Bayard a moment to remember where he was. He stopped suddenly and looked up the path, to where the ogre sat astride his horse, waiting like a huge metal barricade. I stood where I was, in no hurry to rejoin my companions. But as I watched Bayard stagger a little on the rocky incline, raise his sword in the Solamnic salute, motion to Agion to help him back onto Valorous, I felt something a little like shame. Shame for not lending a hand.
Not that I let that bother me for long. After all, a fellow could get killed up here among the ogres and centaurs. I crouched by a stump downhill from the conflict and awaited the outcome, all set to run if the conflict turned against my protector.
Mounted now, Bayard wheeled Valorous about, and shouted out a challenge to the monster who loomed over the path ahead of him.
“Who are you who so rudely stands between us and our peaceful way across these mountains?”
No answer.
Bayard continued. “If you have aught of peace or justice in your spirit, stand aside and let us pass without quarrel or conflict. But if it is quarrel and conflict you desire, rest assured you will receive it at the hand of Bayard Brightblade of the Vingaard Keep, Knight of the Sword and defender of the three Solamnic Orders.”
It sounded pretty, indeed, but the guardian of the pass stood where he stood, a darker form against the dark eastern sky.
Sword raised, Bayard charged at the ogre again.
This time it was over almost as quickly as it began. The creature flicked his net casually, entangling Bayard’s sword and sending it clattering into some rocks south of the pathway. Then, he brought the flat side of his trident thundering down on Bayard’s helmet, and again our champion toppled to the ground, where he lay still. The victor sat on his horse and watched as Agion galloped forward, lifted Sir Bayard in his arms, and carried him awkwardly back down the trail and out of immediate danger.
It was a brave move and a foolish one for the centaur, for who could say when that trident would descend with stabbing quickness?
Out of trident-reach, Agion passed me at a trot, and I turned to follow him, dragging a reluctant pack mare behind me.
A hundred yards or so from the waiting ogre, we settled in a small clearing of stones just off the road. Agion knelt again and passed the goldwort under Bayard’s nose once more.
This time it did not work.
“Is he . . .”
“Just battered senseless,” Agion assured me. “Sir Bayard is liable to be past recall for some time.” He looked up the trail ahead of us. “And it seems our adversary has vanished.”
I followed his glance. Indeed, the narrow pass was now clear of behemoths.
“Can you carry him, Agion? Maybe we can slip through there while Sir Largeness is away. Or maybe we can go back west, into Coastlund.”
The centaur shook his head.
“We are here, my little friend, for the duration. The Knight is injured. He cannot be moved safely. So until he wakes . . . we keep a fire, keep a vigil, keep a watch for ogres.”
I looked around us. It was scarcely a promising landscape. Bayard had-led us higher and higher into the Vingaard Mountains, past the tree line and into a forbidding, rocky country of gravel and ice and solid rock. Around us the world had fallen into a pensive, uncomfortable silence.
The next day was possibly the worst so far. Bayard did not respond to goldwort, to mimseng, or to switchweed. I know because Agion had me scouring the rocks for those herbs and for any others I could find. Once I had rooted around the clearing as far up the trail as my courage would take me, I returned to our campsite, where Agion knelt above a still unconscious Bayard.
“Did I ever tell thee what Megaera had to say about switchweed?” Agion asked.
“Look, Agion, I don’t think this is the time—”
“‘Good for what ails thee, Agion,’ she would say, ‘as long as thou’rt willing to wait a year for it to work.’”
He tossed the switchweed aside indifferently.
“Agion—”
“Thou must keep watch for the return of the mysterious ogre. Between the weather’s sudden turnings and the hidden properties of these foul-smelling plants, I have enough to worry about. As for me, I plan to make us comfortable for the night, for today the odds do not look good for Bayard’s waking and our departure.”
It looked even worse as the night approached. The air thinned and the temperature dropped even further. It was as though the season had suddenly changed to winter. The landscape around us was bathed in the bloody orange light of the setting sun, and our shadows grew taller and taller as the darkness rose out of the east in front of us. Soon our only light, our only heat, came from the meager flame Agion had managed to kindle from the sparse dried branches and leaves.
I drew my tooled leather gloves from my pocket—the expensive ones I had bought with the servants’ money and hidden all of our long, swamp-infested journey in order to avoid suspicion. It was too cold for me to care what anyone thought of my accessories.
“Don’t you think Sir Bayard is taking these games down in Solamnia too seriously?” I whispered to Agion.
“After all, it isn’t his life alone he’s risking on this harebrained jaunt through the mountains, though he has done a good job at risking that.”
“I know not,” Agion replied. “Is it not written so in his Code somewhere—that the tournament is life and death?”
“I grew up among Solamnics, Agion, and I trust I would have heard such foolishness had such foolishness been around. What’s life and death is this depth of winter we’re about to plumb. Look at him there.”
Bayard lay on a blanket beside us, bundled against the cold, descending wind. He showed no signs of waking, and it was twelve hours since he had moved.
“What wouldst thou have me do?” Agion snapped. “It is not the onset of death by cold, nor even the onset of frostbite. What thou sufferest is mere discomfort, Master Galen—the aches of a nobleman’s son who finds the fireplace ready when the frost first touches the ground. Th’art soft, Master Galen, and though ’tis not my place to tell thee such things, th’art in need of the telling.”