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.
I remember only the waking, Bayard shaking me back into light and cold and pain, and into a sadness I did not recognize for a moment—a sadness I could not place until I saw the centaur bodies and remembered.
“As you said,” Bayard soothed, helping me to my feet, “it was no longer Agion.”
“And yet. . . for a moment there, I thought it was Agion, thought that despite death and what the Scorpion had wrought, our old friend stayed his hand,” I murmured.
“Perhaps he did, lad,” Sir Robert replied softly. “And let it encourage us, for it shows that the Scorpion’s power does not go on forever.”
“That some things,” Brithelm added softly, “are stronger than death.”
We paused in silence for a moment. Sir Robert pointed toward the open gate. And two by two we walked toward its menacing arch.
Through a curtain of driving snow, through the hovering mist, they appeared—the shadows of men, crouched, shambling, almost apelike in their movements. Though the forms were dim behind us and beside us, I could tell they were carrying weapons; the slim shadows of curved Nerakan swords lay in their shadowy hands. The cold air around us drummed with groans and inhuman cries.
It was as though someone were smothering an army.
Bayard drew his sword and started for the heart of the shadows, but Brithelm grabbed his arm.
“Sir Bayard, your duty lies in the castle—a task none but you can perform. For who knows but that the Lady Enid faces horrors that make ours seem light?”
“B-but . . . ,” Bayard began.
“Into the castle, sir, and may the gods speed you.” Brithelm smiled serenely, confidently. An arrow flew out of the mist and clattered on the stony ground beside him.
“By Paladine, you’ll not stand against an army alone, lad!” bellowed Sir Ramiro. “Give me an armed enemy any day, rather than the cloudy hocus-pocus you’ll find in that house of mirrors there. Bring ’em on, dead or alive! I’ll be watching your back, Brithelm!”