“Never again, my father.”
As he finished, Bransen leaped high into the air and spun one leg flying out in a circular kick, muscles working in perfect harmony, joints moving smoothly and without pain. He heard the crack of wind at the end of that kick, so sharp and swift was its motion. He landed easily in a crouch, arms flowing side to side before him as if fending off enemies.
He stopped abruptly and looked back at the house. “Cadayle,” he whispered. He tried to imagine the look upon her face when he revealed himself to her, when he showed her that he was the Stork no more—or at least, not all of the time. “My love, my all.”
A sudden stab of fear stole his voice. He thought he would rush forward and profess his love to her, tell her that there was nothing in all the world more precious to him than her smile and her gentle touch, that there was nothing warmer to him than the feel of her breath.
He realized that she wouldn’t reciprocate. He knew in his heart, then and there, that she would never be able to see past the shit-covered Stork, wallowing in the mud. How could someone as beautiful and perfect as Cadayle ever hold any feelings other than compassion and pity for the wretched creature he had been all his life?
“How could I begin to think myself worthy of you?” he asked the empty night.
No, not empty, he only then realized, as his senses reached outward and caught the movements of several forms, distant laughter, and the crash of a bottle thrown to the road.
Bransen ducked into the shadows of a tree a dozen yards to the side of Cadayle’s house. He stared back to the east, back down the lane, and noted the approach of five dark forms. He couldn’t make out any details from this distance, but he knew at once that it was Tarkus Breen and his friends, come at last to make good on their threat. Bransen’s hands trembled so hard that his fingers tapped against the rough oak bark. His legs turned weak beneath him and his mouth went suddenly dry.
“This is why you came out here,” he reminded himself, but the words sounded hollow against the fear, the terror that was welling within him. He thought himself a fool, a pretend hero who kicked at the air and imagined he could do anything.
Anything at all.
For he was just the Stork, just a boy, who had never been to war, who had never fought back against anything other than pounding his dirty hand into the dirt after being thrown down.
A movement before him brought him from his thoughts, and he caught a flash, a reflection of glass in the starlight, as the bottle soared and smashed against Cadayle’s door.
The three walked right past, taking no notice of him.
“Cadayle,” Tarkus Breen called. “Come out and play, girl. I’ve a weapon too long sheathed!”
The others laughed.
The group strode right up to the house, one going left, another right, to ensure that no one got out.
Bransen wanted to shout. He wanted to charge at the group and demand they leave. He wanted to run back to town and call out the guard.
He couldn’t bring himself to move. Not an inch. He couldn’t bring himself to swallow, let alone cry out!
Everything seemed to move before him so slowly and yet very quickly as if his mind couldn’t properly take in the unfolding scene. He saw candlelight inside the house. He watched a large man walk up to the door and kick it hard, and then again, knocking it wide open.
He heard a protest—Cadayle’s mother.
And Tarkus Breen and two others went in.
He heard a scuffle, saw the two other men coming back around the house; and the sound of a slap jolted him straight.
Cadayle appeared in the door, wearing only a white nightshirt. She started to run out, but Tarkus himself caught her by her thick hair and tugged her back. She fell to her knees right there in the doorway.
Bransen shook violently. He silently cursed his cowardice. How could he watch this and not go to her? How could he stand here, ready to pee in his pants?
“Shut up, you old hag, and be glad that you’re too ugly to feel the sting of our weapons!” one of the brutes shouted from inside. And Bransen jumped at the sound of another slap.
Cadayle crawled out and started to rise, but Tarkus’s foot planted on her back and sent her sprawling to the ground.
In a moment, four of the five were around her, taunting her, while the fifth remained inside with her mother.
“You should know your place, girl,” Tarkus Breen said. “You interfere where you’re not wanted.”
Cadayle looked up at him. Even at this distance, Bransen could see her eyes full of hate and fear.
“You defend that creature,” Tarkus Breen said, and he spat upon her. “Do you not understand who we are and what we have done for you? We fight in the south and we die! We defend you, whore, and you side with that creature over us?”
Cadayle shook her head.
“You should welcome us with your legs wide,” Tarkus Breen said, and he kicked her and started to roll her over. “You should be honored that we think you worthy of our seed!”
“Take her!” one of the others eagerly prompted, and the other three laughed.
Bransen told himself to move, ordered his legs to take him out there and intervene. And yet, he stood huddled against the tree, hardly breathing.
He looked at Cadayle, offering a silent apology for his weakness.
She didn’t see him, but as if in response, she seemed to go suddenly weak, all defiance falling into hopelessness, and she began to cry.
Those tears, lines of wetness glistening in the starlight, crystallized Bransen’s thoughts. All his personal emotions fell aside in the face of that sight, of dear and wonderful Cadayle crying and broken, the surrender of the woman who had been one of the pillars of strength in his life.
Bransen was moving without even thinking. Bransen’s subconscious and muscles were falling into the martial lessons of the Book of Jhest. He hardly realized that he was approaching the group; he hardly even saw the closest man, the big one who had kicked in the door, turn and stare.
Bransen slid to one knee as he came up on that man, who was just beginning to cry out in surprise. Without breaking his momentum, Bransen drove the heel of his right hand hard into the big man’s groin, lifting him up to his toes.
Bransen sprang up, snapping his foot up to kick the man in the face. As the victim straightened, Bransen hit him a left, right-left-right combination, finishing with a left hook that had the man flying sideways. Bransen leaped forward going right past the reacting attacks of the two men at the sides of Cadayle and going right over her to land before Tarkus Breen.
Breen’s arm flashed out, a knife in his hand, but to Bransen he almost seemed to be moving under water. Bransen turned his fingers upward and pushed the striking arm harmlessly wide.
Reacting on instinct, he leaped straight in the air, tucked his legs beneath him, then kicked out on both sides, stopping the charges of both men beside him. He landed with his arms crossed over his chest, then flung his arms out, the backs of his hands smashing against the faces of his attackers. Bransen slipped to the right, bending his right arm, then lashing out once and again with his elbow. He felt the crunch of the man’s nose with the first blow.
He dropped as that man fell and snapped out his leg into the kneecap of the other attacker, stopping him short. The man stiffened and stumbled backward, and Bransen used the distance to begin a charge of his own, easily deflecting another stab from Tarkus Breen. Two short steps and he leaped and spun, turning nearly horizontal in the air, adding even more weight behind his kick to the man’s midsection.
As one leg flew out hard, Bransen lowered his other leg. He landed, absorbing the impact by letting his knee bend deeply and using the movement to regain his center of balance as he dropped nearly to the ground.
Then, with all his strength, he came up hard and threw all his strength and weight into the move to gain enough momentum to again lift him from the ground. Around he went as he rose, sending his free leg into a circle kick. It was too hi
gh, and cut the air above Tarkus Breen’s head as he ducked and charged ahead, arm extended.
But Bransen’s kick had been too high on purpose, in accordance with the movements taught in the Book of Jhest. As Breen ducked, Bransen launched his intended attack, his other foot snapping straight up into Breen’s face.
Bransen landed easily on both feet, Tarkus Breen staggering backward. To Bransen’s left, an attacker was rising but scrambling away, one leg broken. To his right, a man squirmed on the ground and clutched his broken face. Behind him, Cadayle cried; and beyond her, the big man lay very still.
“Who are you? What do you want?” Tarkus Breen said, the confidence long gone from his voice.
“I am…” Bransen paused, as if awakening from a dream, as if for the first time actually realizing what he had done. While his body had come in here, fighting perfectly, his thoughts were stalled back at the tree. Now he was waking up.
But what was he to say? He recalled some of the brothers at the chapel complaining that the roads were becoming unsafe again, with powries and highwaymen. He recalled pieces of their stories of older times and great deeds. He seized on that without even thinking.
“I am the Highwayman,” he said, hardly considering the implications.
Tarkus Breen wasn’t listening, Bransen then realized, but had used the pause only so that he could gather himself for another attack. He came forward hard, slashing his knife back and forth.
But Bransen, though he had regained his awareness of himself, was no longer afraid. There was no paralysis in him, and the lessons of the Book of Jhest flowed through him as easily and fully as if he were reading the book. His line of chi, formed so solidly by his discipline and by that soul stone set under his black mask, held tight and straight, relaying his thoughts to his muscles perfectly, and calling them to action.
Breen’s knife slashed, left to right, then back again, but Bransen retreated and veered, so as not to trip over Cadayle. Tarkus Breen followed, stabbing straight ahead. Bransen’s hand pushed the strike out wide, but then his attacker surprised him by breaking off and turning back to Cadayle.
Tarkus Breen stabbed the knife out toward her.
He never got close to connecting.
For Bransen rushed back to Cadayle, catching Breen’s wrist with his left hand. He lifted Breen’s arm and went under it, turning it and forcing the bully to come up straight. Bransen kept twisting as he stood up straight. He lifted his right arm and drove his elbow against Breen’s.
The snap of bone sounded like the breaking of a thick tree branch.
Bransen hardly heard it and hardly slowed, ducking under the shattered arm and turning to come face-to-face against the agonized man, the twisted and broken arm between them.
The look in Breen’s eye—somewhere beyond pain, somewhere in the realm of shock and horror—was the first indication of something serious to Bransen. He leaped back, letting go, and Tarkus Breen stood still, his right arm hanging at his side, his left hand coming in slowly, trembling every inch, approaching the hilt of his knife, which he had driven hard into his own diaphragm.
Shaking fingers moved around the hilt and started to close, but Tarkus Breen seemed to lose all strength then. He looked at Bransen. His arm fell to his side.
He fell over dead.
Cadayle screamed, but Bransen hardly heard it. He knew his enemy was dead. He knew that he had killed a man.
He searched through the Book of Jhest for an answer to this sudden realization. He tried to remember to breathe.
Another woman’s cry behind him took it all away, and Bransen spun and charged into the house.
A moment later, Callen staggered out, crying, one eye swollen. She caught the door with one hand as she passed and managed to pull it partially closed behind her. She stumbled to Cadayle, who rose to embrace her, and the two turned back to the house, to the sounds of fists connected repeatedly, to the sound of grunts.
The door slammed closed then exploded outward, the assailant flying through it backward. He hit the ground hard, groaned, and rolled over, giving the two women a view of his bloody face.
The Highwayman appeared at the door.
“Be gone, all of you!” he demanded of the beaten attackers. “Be gone and return to this place only on pain of death.”
They staggered and scrambled, hoisted their friend with the shattered kneecap, dragged Tarkus Breen’s body, and managed to move away.
“They’ll not return,” Bransen said to the two women.
“How can we ever thank you?” Cadayle said to him breathlessly as she continued to hug her crying mother.
Bransen went to her and helped both women to rise. “No need, of course,” he said, trying to show some measure of calm so that the two would follow that lead. “I consider it an honor to be able to help.”
Despite his cool demeanor, Bransen was churning inside. How he wanted to pull off his mask and proclaim his love for Cadayle! How he wanted to kiss her and hold her and tell her and her mother that everything was all right. How could he blend this moment of heroism into a moment of personal revelation?
The sound of a neighbor’s call defeated any hopes he might have. No doubt, the defeated gang were beginning to draw attention.
Bransen smiled and tapped his hand to his forehead in salute.
“Good evening to you, beautiful ladies,” he said. “Blessed am I to be granted the good fortune to aid you this night.”
“But—” Cadayle started.
“The look on your face is all the gratitude any man would ever need, and more than any man would ever deserve, milady,” he said, and he thought himself clever in sounding like the monks when they told their great tales of old heroes. Stealing a line directly from one of those overheard stories, Bransen added, “In all a man’s life, might he hope to see a single instance of such pure beauty as your face. I am the fortunate one this night.” He saluted again as both Cadayle and her mother looked to the road and the neighbors’ approach. When they looked back, he was already gone, melting into the night.
The road back to the chapel was a long one for Bransen. So many truths assailed him from every side, so many conflicting emotions. He had performed brilliantly. He had saved Cadayle and her mother, had beaten the bullies.
He had killed a man.
Out behind the castle, in the darker predawn shadows within a copse of trees, Bransen Garibond, the self-proclaimed Highwayman, fell to his knees and threw up.
27
Catching His Mother’s Spirit
The thrill of being out in the daytime had Bransen smiling widely, almost giddily, below his black mask all the way out to the small lake in the west. When he had heard—so soon after his return just before dawn—that all the monks had been summoned to the castle for the day, Bransen couldn’t resist the chance to finally go out to his dear father’s house. Now he could hardly contain his joy when Garibond’s house came into view. Gray lines of smoke rose from each chimney, which struck Bransen as unusual, since Garibond typically only kept one hearth burning.
He skipped from tree to tree, moving through the shadows and even up in the lower branches as he went. He had been spotted a couple of times on the way out, as indicated by the shouts of distant people, but he thought nothing of it. Now, though, as he neared, he saw several forms moving around the small island: a pair of children and a pair of women, one of about his age and the other older, possibly her mother.
Had Garibond taken a wife?
Bransen swallowed hard, not sure what to make of it all. Were these Garibond’s children running about his island? And who was the girl of his own age, for surely she couldn’t belong to his father? He moved even closer and rushed past the house to a pile of rocks on the shore, affording him a view of the southern side of the small island. Both women were heading that way, and now he saw why. A pair of men sat on the rocks down by the water, fishing.
Bransen had to consciously steady himself, for neither was Garibond. Where was Garibond? Who were these
strangers that had come to his house?
He started forward, thinking to go and ask them exactly that, but he paused, remembering his distinctive garments. It was one thing to be spotted running along the distant fields but quite another to go right up to someone. And if he asked about Garibond, wouldn’t he be implicating his father as an ally? He knew not what retribution might be in store for him for his actions at Cadayle’s house. Was he to be branded a hero or an outlaw?
He couldn’t risk it, for Garibond’s sake.
He stayed in place for some time longer, taking a look at each of the six people on the island, committing their faces to memory. If they came into town, he would find a way to ask, he decided, or he would come back out here dressed in his woolen tunic and walking in the awkward guise of the Stork. Yes, that might work. With the gemstone hidden, he could pretend to be the creature that everyone believed him to be.
It was all too surprising and all too confusing, and the sun was low in the western sky. The monks would be returning soon after dinner, so he had heard.
He sprinted back to the west.
“Do these problems never lessen?” Prydae said, and he threw down his gauntlets upon the desk, stamped his hands upon the wood to steady himself, then turned his angry look back at Bannagran. “One man?”
Bannagran shrugged.
“One man, unarmed, defeated five?” Prydae pressed. “Five who served with our warriors in the south and are not new to the ways of battle?”
Again, the big man shrugged.
“There were spearmen in the trees, perhaps?”
“There were no spear wounds, my liege,” said Bannagran. “Nor were any cut, except Tarkus Breen, who died on his own dagger.”
Laird Prydae rubbed his face. Powries were all around once more. Bandits had been seen on the roads to the south and to the west, and now this—a daring attack by a single man against five! Here Prydae was, trying to focus on the titanic events in the south, on the war between lairds Delaval and Ethelbert and the implications to his sovereignty, if not his very survival—and trying to discern how best to collect the heavy taxes Delaval was demanding—and these minor distractions would not lessen at all.