The Ancient

  “You seem to hear a lot.”

  “True enough,” Dawson said, and he bowed, turning the sarcasm into a compliment. “I regret my lie, and I humbly apologize. Without it you would be long dead by now, your beautiful wife widowed, but still the need to so lie left a sour taste in my mouth. But that lie is irrelevant now, for the deed is done.”

  “Just let us leave,” said Bransen.

  “To go where?”

  “Anywhere that is not here.”

  “Will you swim across the gulf, then? Or run west all the way around it, through wild lands where monsters and hungry hunting cats and bears are thicker than the trees? Be reasonable. There is no choice to be found.”

  “We will find a boat sailing south to Honce. Or to Behr, even.”

  “None will leave before the winter’s end.”

  “Then we will wai …”

  “Enough!” said Dawson, his visage suddenly hardening. He quickly mounted his steed. “Enough, Highwayman. You are fairly caught, and already convicted in the South, where the sentence would be death. I offer you this alternative. You will march with Dame Gwydre’s forces—many of the same men who shared your boat ride to Pireth Vanguard—in a goodly campaign. We are desperate here. I am not asking you for this service.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that if you refuse your life is forfeit.”

  Bransen narrowed his eyes and squared his shoulders.

  “And so are the lives of your companions.”

  If Dawson had spun his horse about and prompted it to kick Bransen in the face, the impact would have been no less staggering.

  “How dare you!” Bransen demanded, but Dawson tugged his horse around and began walking it away, and the mounted guards pressed in on Bransen and the two women in his wake.

  “Say your good-byes to them, Highwayman,” Dawson insisted. “We leave now. Serve us well through the winter campaign. If we fight back the Samhaist horde, you will be returned, and all crimes forgiven. I offer you passage anywhere in the world Lady Dreamer can take you.” He stopped his horse and turned about, locking stares with the fuming Bransen. “That is the best offer you will ever get, Highwayman. I can legally have my soldiers kill you, and them, right now, by order of Dame Gwydre herself. Now gather your things and say your farewells. We’ve a long ride this night, and a longer one tomorrow.”

  Not since he had learned of Garibond’s execution had Bransen felt such a profound emptiness within him. Lost opportunity, was the only thought he could hear. He didn’t know what to feel and then didn’t know what to make of that! That confusion brought guilt, and that guilt brought more confusion, and truly, Bransen seemed to be spiraling downward.

  Dawson McKeege had duped them so easily! The cage the clever man had built around them, both with soldiers and by simple location, seemed as unbreakable as any Bransen had ever known. He sat in the small house the trio had taken as their own, his back to the door, his soul stone strapped under his black silk bandanna about his forehead.

  “We could find our way out through the back window and over the wall,” Cadayle said to him as she tied the silk strap about his upper right arm—which was really just an ornament now that his identity was fully revealed. “We’d be gone into the thick forest before Dawson and his men ever knew we’d left.”

  Bransen shook his head slowly and deliberately. “Gone to where? That forest is without end. Even if you and I could make our way, your mother is not a young woman.”

  “Then you go out,” Cadayle said. “Be gone, Bransen, I beg. You are not for war; your heart is not the heart of a soldier. When you are fighting men—Alpinadorans—who have not wronged you, will you revel in the kill?”

  “No choice to be found,” Bransen said, echoing Dawson’s words.

  “Run!” Cadayle begged him.

  “And that will leave you and Callen to the mercy of Dame Gwydre. You heard Dawson’s warning.”

  “Dawson will not harm us.”

  “He will, milady,” came Dawson’s voice from the doorway. “Regrettably, but certainly.”

  Bransen narrowed his eyes as he stared at the man. He instinctively grasped the hilt of his fabulous sword at his side. But he could not deny the truth of Dawson’s logic, that the monks would have killed him to avoid the wrath of Laird Delaval.

  “You do not appreciate our desperation,” Dawson went on, walking into the room. “We are pushed to the gulf. Entire villages have been slaughtered by the Samhaist aggressors and their monstrous minions. Entire villages! Women and children and even the animals. I have no love of deceiving you: I feel not clever or happy with the act. But doubt not my words of warning, for your own sake.”

  He looked at Bransen. “Now,” he said. “We go,” he announced simply, walking through the door.

  Stunned with the sudden turn of events, Cadayle wrapped Bransen in a desperate hug. Callen came over and joined in, the shoulders of both women bobbing with sorrow.

  Bransen pushed them back just enough so that he could stand. He kissed Cadayle on the cheek and wiped away her tears, though more were sure to replace them in short order.

  “I will return to you,” he promised. “Never doubt.” With that, Bransen set her back firmly and followed Dawson through the door.

  FIFTEEN

  Echoes of Cordon Roe

  Concentration!” Brother Giavno warned above the tumult of the battle raging again about the chapel’s strong walls, which mostly involved crude spears (sharpened sticks) volleying against stones thrown from on high, coupled with a continual exchange of taunts and the incessant thumping of barbarians pounding on the fitted stones with heavy wooden mallets in an amazing attempt to weaken the integrity of the fortification. “It is most important, to your very survival.”

  The two younger monks looked at each other with obvious concern—and why should they not? For they were about to go into the middle of the barbarian attackers!

  “Brother Faldo, you must maintain the power of the serpentine,” Giavno repeated yet again. “At all costs! Accept a spear to your chest, but do not allow the magic of that gem to dissipate!”

  Faldo rested the huge and surprisingly lightweight shield on one shoulder and nodded sheepishly. Behind him, the other young volunteer, Brother Moorkris, moved closer and took his companion’s hand and together they shuffled for the secret door set in the wall, just to the side of the main fighting. Moorkris held out his open palm toward Giavno, as he had been instructed, and Giavno nodded for Faldo to enact the serpentine shield.

  A moment later, a blue-white glow encompassed both young monks, and Giavno gave promising Brother Moorkris a ruby, the stone of fire.

  “Charge into them,” he whispered, and he nodded to the pair working the door.

  It opened fast and Giavno shoved the two terrified young brothers out, then fell back through the door quickly and spun about, throwing his back against the stone. He knew they wouldn’t long hold their nerve.

  And he was right, for the pair had barely moved from the outside of the door before the barbarians took note of them. Faldo did well to keep low behind his shield and to keep his thoughts on the serpentine, maintaining the magical protection. A spear hit the shield, then a second, but this was of barbarian make, woven of thin wood into layers behind a leather front, and those weapons did not get through the clever tangle.

  But the Alpinadorans didn’t hesitate in the least and charged right in, and Faldo got rammed hard as a shoulder slammed against his shield, sending him lurching back and nearly upending him.

  To his credit, he maintained the serpentine barrier, but the jolt broke his grip with his companion just as Moorkris sent his energy through the ruby and conjured a tremendous fireball.

  With the connection to Faldo broken, Moorkris had no protection from his own blast, and like the poor barbarians caught in the area of conflagration, he was engulfed in his own flames.

  It was all screaming and burning and shouting then, and Brother Faldo, confused and dazed and havin
g no idea of where to turn next, stumbled back through the smoke toward the door. He felt someone punch him in the back, but he managed to stagger through, and Giavno and the others quickly shut and secured the portal behind him.

  “I held the barrier,” the devastated young brother started to explain, blubbering through his mounting guilt as he came to understand that his failure to hold on had immolated his friend Moorkris. He couldn’t finish the thought, though, as he just fell over, for that punch in the back was not a punch at all, but a spear that had driven deep into his kidney.

  “Get him to Father De Guilbe,” Giavno yelled at the other two, and he rushed for a ladder that would take him up to the parapets. When he got there, he found that his comrades were no longer raining stones on the attackers, and when he peered over the wall, he understood.

  For the Alpinadorans were running off, and just below Giavno no less than seven bodies—whether men or women, he could hardly tell—either lay very still or writhed on the ground in mortal agony, their clothing melted to their blistered and bubbling skin. He recognized the monk he had sent out there by the shape of the still-burning robes, and his instinct to run out and retrieve Brother Moorkris lasted only the heartbeat it took him to realize that the young and promising young Abellican was already dead.

  With a heavy heart and a heavy sigh, Brother Giavno started for Father De Guilbe’s quarters, praying that Brother Faldo, at least, would survive.

  He paused at a group of several brothers, all staring hard at the gruesome scene below. “Go out through the secret door and see if any of our enemies can be saved. Be quick about it, and return at first sign that their companions are coming after you.”

  He thought that an insignificant command, easily followed and without consequence—other than perhaps the notion one or two of their charred enemies might be pulled from the grip of death. But he could not have been more wrong, for as soon as the brothers moved out to the writhing wounded, the barbarian forces from across the way howled and charged with fury beyond anything Giavno could have anticipated. The monks made it safely back inside, with one grievously wounded Alpinadoran warrior in tow, but they had to secure the door fast, and calls for renewed support along the parapets rang out almost immediately thereafter.

  For the Alpinadorans came on with abandon, throwing themselves against the stone, smashing at it and seeming not to care about the rain of stones that came down upon them.

  “Bolster that portal!” Giavno cried, and nearly as many brothers had to work at piling stones behind the battered secret door as were up on the walls trying to repel the attackers.

  Of the three fights so far, that battle was the most lopsided, with another handful of barbarians dead, and several more badly wounded, and not a monk seriously injured.

  But for Giavno, that last battle was the most unnerving of all, the one that told him in his heart of hearts that these enemies who had come against Chapel Isle were willing to die to a man and woman to retrieve their brethren.

  He had never seen such ferocious dedication.

  Nor had Cormack, who had watched it all—the fireball, the retrieval, the second wave of wild assault—with horror. “We cannot win,” Cormack muttered many times during and after that second battle, for only then did he understand, truly understand, what “winning” might mean.

  He saw Brother Giavno hustling toward De Guilbe’s door shortly thereafter, and thought to follow and plead with them to abandon this madness.

  But his feet would not move to the commands of his brain. He had no heart for another round of verbal battle with those two.

  The three monks stood in a line, side by side, in De Guilbe’s office, facing the father and Brother Giavno, who stood before the first, demanding his report.

  “They are not eating,” the young monk sheepishly replied to Giavno’s question.

  At the other end of that short line, Brother Cormack winced at every word. He knew it to be true. Androosis and the others would not eat—not a morsel. The captured shaman had decreed that they would die before acceding to the wishes of their wretched captors.

  “Then make them eat,” Giavno said to the man, who retreated a step from the sheer intensity of the senior brother’s angry tone.

  “We have,” he stammered in reply. “We held them and forced food and water into their mouths. Most they spit back.”

  “But they got some,” Giavno reasoned. “That is good. Their bodies will likely outlast their determination.”

  “Likely,” Cormack mouthed under his breath.

  “When we returned to them the next day, they were covered in vomit,” the young monk explained.

  Giavno glanced back at Father De Guilbe and gave a disgusted sigh. “Bind them more tightly,” he ordered as he turned back to face the young monk. “That they cannot get their fingers down their throats.”

  “Yes, Brother,” the young monk answered, lowering his gaze.

  “The fourth has been placed with them?” Father De Guilbe asked, referring to the barbarian who had been caught in Brother Moorkris’s fireball. The man would carry horrible scars for the rest of his life, but through the miracle of the gemstone magic, his life had been saved.

  “Not yet, Father,” the monk replied. “Brother Mn’Ache fears that his wounds will fester if he is laid in the dirt.”

  “Then put a blanket under him,” Giavno intervened, and from Father De Guilbe’s nod, Cormack could see that the man was of like mind.

  “He recovers well, and should be ready for the dungeon in …” the young monk tried to explain, but Giavno cut him short.

  “He recovers in the dungeon or he recovers not at all. I will not have a dangerous enemy in our midst when again his people attack. Would you have him climb out of his cot and murder Brother Mn’Ache while he was distracted at tending one of us?”

  “He is bound.”

  “Now, Brother,” Giavno ordered. “To the dungeon with him. Be gone!”

  The young monk hesitated for just a moment, then whirled about and sprinted away.

  “It is an unpleasant business,” Father De Guilbe admitted. “Hold faith, all of you. Keep in mind that our Brother Mn’Ache was able to save two lives during the night, that of the burned barbarian and that of Brother Faldo.”

  “Brother Faldo is not yet awake,” Giavno replied. “Nor is Brother Mn’Ache certain that he will recover.”

  “He will,” said De Guilbe with a confident smile, and he motioned for Giavno to move along.

  The next monk in the line, the one standing right beside Cormack, offered details on the work at shoring up the walls and cutting stones and the like to hurl down at the barbarians. With confidence he assured, “They will not breach our defenses.”

  The assertion was ridiculous, of course, and spoken more as a cheer than a proper evaluation, but it seemed to satisfy the inquisitor brothers, for Giavno patted the monk on the shoulder and moved to stand before Brother Cormack.

  “The water supply is inexhaustible,” Cormack reported with a shrug before Gaivno could even inquire, as if to ask of Giavno why they bothered to bring him to these meetings. His only oversight was that of supplying water and fish, after all.

  “And the fish?”

  “The lake is full of them. They come to our hidden pond to feed, and are not so hard to catch.”

  “Triple the catch,” Father De Guilbe unexpectedly interjected.

  “Father?” Cormack asked.

  “Triple—at least,” the man answered. “Our barbarian enemies will not relent, but they will pay too heavy a price to continue throwing themselves at our wall, I am sure. They will look for other ways to strike at us, and if they come to understand that we have this inexhaustible resource at our disposal, they might try to interrupt it. That, we cannot have.”

  “Yes, Father,” Cormack said.

  “On your travels to the pond, do you look in on our guests?” De Guilbe asked.

  Cormack shrugged noncommittally.

  “You are not prohi
bited from doing so,” Father De Guilbe prompted.

  “Sometimes,” Cormack admitted.

  “And it is as was described here?”

  “They will not eat,” Cormack admitted, and the floodgates opened then. “They grow weak. There is no bend in them, Father. They will not recant their beliefs and embrace ours—not at the price of their very lives—”

  “Cordon Roe,” Father De Guilbe interrupted, aiming the remark at Brother Giavno, who nodded, and Cormack grimaced at the reference.

  If De Guilbe could see that apt analogy, then why would he insist on keeping the Alpinadorans as prisoners? For the end result would be their deaths or continued misery—how could it be otherwise?

  Cormack wanted to shout those questions at these two monks, but the door swung open and the same monk who had just left to fetch the burned Alpinadoran and bring him to the dungeon burst in.

  “A messenger!” he cried, clearly out of breath. “At the front gate. A messenger from our enemies approaches.”

  “Bring him in?” Brother Giavno asked of De Guilbe, who thought about it for a few heartbeats, then shook his head.

  “No, he will learn too much of our inner defenses,” the leader decided. “Let us go to him and greet him at the wall instead.”

  He started out immediately, Giavno beside him, and Cormack and the others, having not been ordered to stay behind, swept into their wake.

  As soon as he climbed the ladder to the parapet above the chapel’s gate, Cormack realized he was looking at one, if not the, leader of the barbarians of Yossunfier. The man was a shaman, obviously, for he wore the same ornamental necklaces as Milkeila, only grander by far, with his loose clothing decorated with shells and other trinkets, so that they rattled with his every step. He was old, well into his sixth decade of life, at least, and Milkeila had told Cormack enough about Alpinadoran society for him to understand that age was no small matter in the hierarchy of the tribes.