Free Before The Mask by Michael Williams Page A

the beast had reached out across half the canyon
     and across a thousand years, embracing his thoughts and beginning a long and cold
     instruction. And yet he was not sure what it meant. The look had been cloudy, elusive, as
     indecipherable finally as the runes he tried vainly to read.
    I shall charge it, he thought. I shall drive it into precious Aglaca.
    His thoughts wrenched back to the moment, and he spurred his stallion. The beast turned
     and fled him, rumbling through the rough, gravelly stretch toward the other wall of the
     canyon where Aglaca waited, his lance leveled, his horse calm and steady.
    Now! Verminaard thought, goading his horse after the barreling centicore. Now, while the
     thing is intent on Aglaca!
    It would be a tough kill for an untried lad. The centicore lumbered toward Aglaca, its
     mouth agape, its horns swiveling like scythes. Aglaca blinked nervously and steadied his
     trembling lance, drawing again on his extraordinary courage as the monster closed the
     distance by half, the plodding strides gaining fluidity until the beast moved surprisingly
     fast over the gravelly edges of the cul-de-sac.
    Then, unexpectedly, Osman rode between the lad and the charging animal. The older man had
     seen disaster unfolding from his post at the mouth of the cul-de-sac, and he realized at
     once that the post he had taken, chosen
    because it was the most likely place the beast would charge, was barely close enough to
     rescue the imperiled Solamnic youth. He spurred his horse over the gravel, shouting and
     whistling to distract the monster, and he reached Aglaca not a moment too soon, turning to
     face the centicore and raising his lance to receive its charge. The soft flesh at its
     breast lay exposed by the centicore's reckless assault, and all the veteran huntsman had
     to do was hold the lance as the creature drove itself upon the tapered shaft, then return
     with his seventh kill. His deeds would be sung in Castle Nidus, in the villages among the
     foothills, and by huntsmen as far away as Sanction and Zhakar.
    So the hunt would have ended, had not Verminaard's pursuit distracted the beast.
    Wheeling awkwardly on its forelegs, scattering gravel and earth as it turned, the
     centicore stumbled toward the charging youth. Alarmed, seeing the danger to his master's
     son, Osman spurred his horse forward, riding beside the centicore, seeking a soft spot, a
     vulnerable place in the filthy array of scales along the monster's back.
    Suddenly the beast lashed out with its thick, macelike tail. The barb whistled through the
     air and crashed into the side of Osman's helmet with a ring that Robert's pursuing column
     heard a hundred yards from the mouth of the canyon.
    Osman toppled from the saddle and fell heavily to the ground. For a moment, he tried to
     rise, his arms extended weakly above his lolling head, but then he shivered and lay still
     just as Verminaard's lance drove deeply, with a crackling of gristle and bone, into the
     breast of the centicore.
    The impact of lance against the monster thrusted the young man back into the bracings of
     his saddle, and the breath fled from him as the air spangled with red light. He remembered
     only falling and being caught by the cords.
    Then he remembered nothing at all.
    Aglaca was kneeling beside him when Verminaard came to his senses. The huge hulk of the
     centicore lay not ten yards away, the broken lance embedded deep in its vitals. The
     shadows of horsemen surrounded him, and as he tried to stand, the seneschal Robert grabbed
     him under the arms, lifting him and bracing him.
    “What happened here?” Daeghrefn's sharp voice asked, like a distant humming in his ears.
    “The centicore is dead, sir,” Aglaca volunteered. “And it was Verminaard's brave charge
     that killed it.”
    “And not only the centicore,” Daeghrefn declared icily. “Osman has fallen to the same rash
     assault. Attend to his body and leave the