from the size and voice, a centaur.
Nonetheless, he peered at it curiously.
“Ah,” he said as if in recognition. “A draft human. Tell
me, how is life in harness?”
The centaur regarded him, as always, with the easy
contempt that the hooved and human show the merely
human or the merely hooved.
“We are not in harness but in service – as others should
be,” the centaur said heavily. He tossed his head restlessly.
“I have heard rumors and smelled scents this day, as well.
Are more strangers in Darken Wood?”
The stag would not look in the centaur’s large, dark
eyes. “Perhaps you smell the strangers from last night. Is
there any reason that their smell would cling to you?”
“We bore them on our backs,” he said with dignity.
“As all in this wood know. Are more strangers in Darken
Wood?” he repeated.
“Why ask me? Surely you think you know more than I;
your breed studies stars as well as any beast of burden
could.”
“Mockery. It’s all tha has.” He snorted, horselike. “Try
to hide the truth from us both, if tha wishes. I study little,
but I know stars. These past nights they tell of battle, and of
life and death for a stag. It’s a’ there – for them as looks
close.” He added, “Maybe tha has not seen these strangers –
but tha will.” He turned to go.
The stag watched him. “I have a retort,” he called,
“timed and well framed, laden with irony and literary
allusion – but I refuse to favor you with it. I have my
dignity.”
The centaur said nothing, and in the stag’s heart he
knew that was the best retort of all. The centaur waited a
moment longer, then went his way.
A moment later the lead draconian appeared, sword
ready, behind the stag. “He is gone?”
“He is.” The stag was looking where the centaur had
been, thinking hard. He tried to imagine the centaurs dead
and defeated, bleeding as the wood fell again to strangers.
He could not imagine that any centaurs would run, or
would turn traitor, or would think at all of themselves.
“Then we remain undiscovered.”
The stag thought over the centaur’s words. “Let us say
you remain unseen. Remain so a while longer, by moving
behind me again.”
The draconian looked at the stag without love and
withdrew. The stag moved slowly, thoughtfully, toward the
center of Darken Wood.
He caught himself humming. “It’s that damned song,”
he muttered. “Crude and folkish, but the tune sticks in the
mind.”
Actually, it was the words which stuck in his mind. He
found himself singing, half-unwillingly:
THE STAG LED ON FROM NIGHT TO DAWN,
FROM SUNRISE INTO MORN,
AND IN THE SHADE OF SHADOW GLADE
BETRAYED THE UNICORN.
SHE SPOKE TO HIM; HER VOICE WAS GRIM:
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR PRIDE?
YOU KNOW AND SEE YOUR DESTINY
AND YET YOU TURN ASIDE.
YOU WOULD BETRAY ME TO MY DEATH
AND QUITE FORSAKE YOUR VOW?
THEN SERVICE LENT WITHOUT CONSENT
IS ALL YOU DO ME NOW.”
SHE TOUCHED HIM ONCE, SHE TOUCHED HIM TWICE,
AND THREE TIMES WITH HER HORN;
AND THERE HE FELL, AND WHERE HE FELL,
HE ROSE A UNICORN.
He heard reptilian muttering behind him and stopped
singing. If those behind him were truly to kill the
Forestmaster, all music here – perhaps, eventually, all the
music in the world – would cease, and all for the stag’s petty
revenge.
A winged shadow drifted overhead. He ducked
automatically, but it was only one of the pegasi, cir cling
and diving above the wood.
The stag could picture something larger, something
with wings like the draconians’, stooping onto the pegasi.
He could hear them shrieking, flapping frantically,
tumbling from the sky –
“Not them,” he murmured. “Not by my doing, surely.
But what can I do against these invaders?”
And a moment later, he thought, startled, “And could
I give up my revenge, my vengeance for being scorned,
after treasuring it for so long? In this cycle of sorrow,
vengeance is all that sustains me.”
It was something to consider on a long walk.
At mid-day the stag entered the Central Glade alone,