The Bear

  “No word from Bransen,” he said to the laird.

  Bannagran didn’t look at him, but kept staring at the departing monks who were not monks at all.

  “They are fleeing?” Bannagran asked in a flat and even voice.

  “I cannot ask them to go to war with their brethren.”

  “So you allow them to fight beside their brethren against us?”

  “No, laird,” Reandu said, patting his hands in the air to calm the volatile man. “No, never that. The battle is ended for them. They will find a chapel. . . .”

  “I am to trust that?”

  “They joined the order.”

  Bannagran did turn on the monk then, scowling fiercely. “I allowed you to claim they had joined the order so that we did not have to follow King Yeslnik’s demand that all of Ethelbert’s prisoners be put to death,” he reminded. “You repay my mercy by betraying me?”

  “I did not betray—”

  “They will flee to Laird Ethelbert’s side at first opportunity. They will be given arms and will return to kill your fellow men of Pryd.”

  Reandu shook his head with every word. “I have their word. The war is over for them. All they want is to return to their families. Surely you cannot disagree with that!”

  “You try my patience, monk.”

  “I recognize your humanity.”

  Bannagran scowled at him even more fiercely, but then the tension broke and the large and muscular man looked at him more curiously. Reandu found that expression far more unsettling. “Or is it that Master Reandu, too, is thinking of deserting the cause of King Yeslnik?” he asked bluntly.

  Reandu rocked back on his heels, not blinking and not replying.

  “It is true,” Bannagran stated. “You chose to bring those three along and selected the other brothers among the flock of Chapel Pryd because these are the ones who wish to flee the cause of King Yeslnik. You would leave me—would leave your fellow men of Pryd Town—on the battlefield without gemstone healing?”

  “No,” the monk stated flatly. “No, we will stay throughout the fight to aid the men of Pryd and all the wounded who come to us.”

  “But you would deny King Yeslnik?”

  “I serve the Order of Blessed Abelle, whose masters reside at St. Mere Abelle in the north of Honce,” the monk dared to reply. “I have heard no good of this man, Father De Guilbe, whom King Yeslnik has determined to speak as the leader of this new Church of the Divine King. You cannot ask me to renounce my allegiance any more than Bannagran would have renounced his loyalty to Laird Prydae, were he still alive.”

  “A brave admission,” replied Bannagran. “I could tie you to four horses and send them running to the points of the compass for merely speaking those treasonous words.”

  “I would rather that than renounce Father Artolivan.”

  Bannagran looked at him as if he had lost his mind but only for a few moments before the large and muscular laird began laughing. He continued to shake his head, then simply turned and started away.

  “Laird Bannagran, not I or any of my brethren will desert you in the fight, should it come,” Reandu called after him, a promise he intended to keep.

  Bannagran didn’t stop walking but looked back over his shoulder and said, “And after the fight?”

  Master Reandu could only stare at him, letting the words hang empty in the air. He stood there for some time, watching Bannagran as the man receded among the tents and other soldiers. Strangely, Reandu found that he wasn’t surprised by the laird’s seeming indifference. Bannagran’s heart wasn’t in this campaign, wasn’t for King Yeslnik. Reandu was certain that Bannagran fairly hated the foppish pretender. Still, Reandu had all but admitted that he would defect to Artolivan, who was now openly opposing Yeslnik. Actually witnessing Bannagran’s nonchalance in the face of that was no small thing.

  Reandu closed his eyes and reconsidered his course, not for the first time, and he doubted for the last. His loyalty was to Artolivan and the Order of Blessed Abelle—the real one and not the shadow church King Yeslnik was trying to create. The monks at Chapel Pryd agreed with that decision almost to a man as they had applauded Master Reandu for cleverly dodging the king’s order to execute the prisoners held at Chapel Pryd.

  But Reandu’s heart was for Pryd Town most of all. Pryd was his home—his family had been there for as long as any could remember, many generations. And Reandu had grown to respect and admire Bannagran as well. How could he leave his home and his laird?

  But how could he not, if remaining there meant a declaration of fealty to that awful Father De Guilbe and this new made-up church whose name elevated the wretched Yeslnik to “divine”?

  “It will all work out,” he whispered to himself, nodding and silently reminding himself that the issue between King Yeslnik and Father Artolivan was far from settled. Likely they would come to an accord since no army could possibly topple the great fortress that was St. Mere Abelle and since, when at last the war between the lairds was over, it would be in no one’s best interest to continue a fight between church and state.

  The assurance found little hold in Reandu’s heart, though, for the master had more than enough personal experience with King Yeslnik to know that the man could not be trusted to do the right thing, particularly as far as the common folk were concerned.

  Still, the monk could hope, he supposed.

  He heard a call then for “Master!” and from the insistent tone, he realized that the younger brother had likely been shouting for him for some time. He glanced about, finally spotting the monk and others gathered on a knoll, pointing to the tree line. Reandu understood their excitement, and his own eyes widened indeed when he, too, spotted Bransen.

  The young warrior looked haggard, indeed, and though no wound was evident upon him, Reandu had to think that he had suffered some type of physical trauma, for he held one hand up to his forehead and walked shakily, not quite Stork-like, but certainly not with the agile and balanced strides of the Highwayman.

  Reandu rushed down to him, but Bransen didn’t stop or glance at or acknowledge him in any way.

  “What is it?” Reandu asked, and he noted that it was indeed a soul stone that Bransen was pressing against his forehead.

  “I . . . I . . . I . . .” Bransen stammered in reply. He shook his head, spittle flying, and staggered past.

  Master Reandu nearly gagged. The Stork had returned and persisted even though Bransen had a soul stone against his forehead! Reandu rushed to Bransen’s side and took him by the arm. He wouldn’t let the young warrior shake him away, though Bransen surely tried.

  “Bransen, what has happened?” Reandu asked. Other monks came rushing down to help.

  “I . . . I n . . . nee . . . need rest,” he managed at last as he tried to pull away. But another monk grabbed him by his other arm, and that brother and Reandu ushered Bransen quickly to a tent and a cot and eased him down.

  Bransen lay there for some time, staring off to the side, though he was surely looking at things within his own mind and not at Reandu or anything else in the tent. Reandu called to him repeatedly to try to get some explanation, but the young warrior wasn’t talking.

  Soon after, the exhausted Bransen fell fast asleep.

  “A strip of cloth,” Reandu instructed the other monk, who rushed from the tent and returned almost immediately with a small square of wool. Reandu rolled it up and tied it about Bransen’s forehead, setting the soul stone underneath it to hold it in place, much as Bransen had typically done before Father Artolivan had given him the lost star brooch.

  Reandu dismissed the other monks, but he didn’t depart with them. He sat beside Bransen throughout the rest of the day, occasionally using a second soul stone to infuse the weary young warrior with warm waves of healing magic. Finally, as the night deepened, Master Reandu stood to take his leave, to gather some dinner before retiring.

  “You were ri . . . right,” Bransen said as the monk turned away. Reandu spun back to see the young warrior op
en his eyes. “Does that fill you with pride?” Bransen asked, and his voice seemed steady once more, though surely not nearly as strong as it had been when he had gone out the previous night.

  “What do you mean?” Reandu asked, coming back and crouching low over the prone man.

  Bransen looked away.

  After a moment, Reandu understood. “You could not do it,” he said, and a smile widened on his face. “You could not kill them.”

  Bransen looked back, and he wasn’t returning that smile. With a great scowl he said, “Does that please you?”

  “More than you can imagine, my friend.”

  Bransen’s frown melted into a look of curiosity.

  “Did you think I would cheer your fall from morality?” Reandu asked him. “Did you believe that I would be glad to learn that you, a wonderful and generous soul I have known since your childhood, were as crass and callous as so many of these supposed leaders?”

  “Perhaps I am not as brave as I assumed.”

  “Brave?” Now Reandu couldn’t suppress his chuckle. “You are no assassin, Bransen Garibond, nor is this other image of you that you name the Highwayman. You have never been an assassin.”

  “Ancient Badden would not agree with your assessment.”

  “In killing Ancient Badden you saved hundreds of innocents,” Reandu answered without the slightest hesitation. “In that act you ended a war, and the man was deserving of his end. But this pact you forged with Bannagran . . . No, Bransen, that was not a just and moral agreement. You knew it, and in the moment of truth, when you could not continue your deception of your heart, when continuing would fundamentally and adversely change the man you are, you chose the correct road. I could not be happier.”

  Bransen stared at him hard. “I am afflicted once more,” he said, and his voice remained unsteady.

  “What happened? Did you suffer a wound?”

  “No.”

  “When did it occur? Did you engage in a fight?”

  “The fight was over, and I won and was not injured,” Bransen explained. He lifted his hands before him and stared at them as if they were covered in blood. “I had her,” he said, and he clenched his left hand. “Head back and helpless.”

  It wasn’t hard for Master Reandu to piece the rest of it together. The Stork had manifested itself to save Bransen from his worst instincts, the monk master believed, and he was very glad for it. He grabbed Bransen’s hands in his own and squeezed them gently.

  “And now I am crippled once more,” Bransen said, his voice barely a whisper.

  “Was it not this Jhesta Tu training that you claimed had freed you of the Stork and of the need to use the soul stone?” Reandu asked.

  Bransen looked at him, obviously intrigued and apparently unwilling to admit it.

  “What would that discipline say to Bransen in that situation? Are the Jhesta Tu assassins?”

  “No,” the weary young warrior whispered.

  “Is that not anathema to their beliefs?”

  “It’s all a lie,” Bransen muttered and looked away.

  He was ashamed of himself, Master Reandu knew. That, the monk believed, was a very good thing.

  Reandu said not another word that night and stayed with Bransen for a long while, until the emotionally battered young man fell asleep once more.

  Bransen burst from the tent the next morning with the soul stone strapped securely to his forehead and his black silk mask hanging loosely about his neck. He wasn’t solid on his feet, though certainly more balanced than he had seemed the previous day.

  “You slept well?” Master Reandu inquired, moving to join him.

  Bransen nodded.

  “That is good, because we have a long march before us by order of Laird Bannagran. If you intend to continue this road, I mean.”

  “I will retrieve my sword and the brooch Father Artolivan gave me,” Bransen replied. “And then I will be gone, far from this place, far from Yeslnik’s Honce.”

  Reandu cocked an eyebrow curiously at that. “You concede the land to him?”

  “It is a foregone conclusion.”

  “So where will you run? Alpinador?” he asked. “To Behr, perhaps, the home of the Jhesta Tu?”

  “Or to Vanguard,” Bransen replied. “To the wilds of the north beyond the reach of Yeslnik’s soldiers. I will gather Cadayle and Callen, and we will be gone across the gulf. To all the world the Highwayman will be dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is how you want it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And those who would benefit from the work of the Highwayman should be content with their miserable lot in life, because the Highwayman could not be bothered to champion them?”

  “I care not,” Bransen declared. “My road is my own to choose, and my responsibility is to myself and to my wife and family.”

  Reandu grinned just a bit, but did not let it widen to mock Bransen. But in truth, the monk didn’t believe Bransen at all here, though he expected that Bransen was sincere about his own blather. Despite his protests to the contrary, Bransen cared for the common men and women of Honce.

  Reandu saw no point to pressing the issue at that time, though. Bransen would have to work through this newest self-deception as he had the previous one.

  With a curt bow, Bransen walked off to get some breakfast, leaving Reandu to stand alone in the middle of the monk enclave, for though he, too, was hungry, the monk decided that it would be better to give Bransen distance at that time. The young man needed to sort out what was truly in his heart and mind, and only Bransen could provide his own answers.

  The army was on the march soon after, and it was a swift march indeed, as Reandu had promised. They continued east around the same ridgeline from which Bransen had levitated two nights previous, then turned southeast, a straight line for the still distant city of Ethelbert dos Entel. The sun disappearing in the west, they had just ended the march to settle in for the night when Bannagran’s chariot rumbled into the midst of the monks.

  Reandu rushed to greet him. Before the monk could even speak a word Bannagran told him to get into the chariot.

  “There will be a parlay,” the Laird of Pryd explained. “You will stand beside me.”

  “A parlay? With whom?”

  “Climb up,” Bannagran reiterated.

  Reandu motioned to direct Bannagran’s gaze to the side near a stretch of thick pines where Bransen loitered.

  Bannagran flicked the reins to get his team moving, eight other chariots sweeping in his wake. He didn’t continue through the monk enclave, nor did he turn back as Reandu had expected. Instead the chariot veered toward the young warrior standing alone by the pines.

  “A parlay with Laird Ethelbert’s representatives, perhaps including the ones you seek,” Bannagran explained to Bransen.

  Bransen rushed up, and Bannagran motioned to the next chariot in line, then set his team moving again, this time back the way he had come. Bransen had barely set his feet on the floorboards before the second chariot in line rumbled away.

  The remaining seven came behind in a line, the ground shaking under the pounding hooves and rolling wheels. Cheers from the soldiers went up wherever they passed, all splendid in their shining bronze, the world trembling beneath them. Though he was not driving, Bransen felt nearly giddy with power up here. He had never done battle from such a perch, nor had he fought extensively against charioteers, but suddenly he understood why so many footmen fled before such a sight as the armored carts.

  They crossed out of the vast encampment at its forward point, the intersection of the eastern and southern roads. To the south they went, Bannagran maintaining the lead.

  “He is the laird,” Bransen said to his driver, nearly shouting so that he could be overheard above the rumble of hoof and wheel. “Shouldn’t he be in the middle or near the rear of the procession?”

  “Not Laird Bannagran, nay!” the driver replied. “Never does he shield himself with his less
ers. Laird Bannagran is the first to the battle and the last to leave the field.”

  And so you love him, Bransen thought but did not say. Despite his sour mood and their unpleasant history, he had to admit his own respect for Bannagran. He compared this laird’s actions with those of the foppish Yeslnik, who no doubt would have sent others to parlay while he himself hid at the rear of his great army, surrounded by elite guards several ranks deep.

  And surely Bannagran knew that truth about the fool king as well, and yet, unbelievably, the man showed such loyalty to the crown!

  Bannagran pulled his chariot off the right-hand side of the road and onto a grassy lea shaded by the canopy of a line of large oak trees. Acorns of past seasons crackled under the press of the wheels, and dried leaves rustled and flew from the breeze. The three chariots immediately following with attendants turned with the laird, but with practiced precision the next three rumbled along the road right past the meeting point while the remaining two held far back to the north. As his chariot came to a stop, Bransen jumped down and moved out onto the road to watch the lead teams. They climbed a slight incline to the south to the highest point of the road, and there two pulled up while the third turned about to serve as relay for any information to the main encampment.

  “Keep them tethered and ready,” one of Bannagran’s charioteers told the two attendants who had ridden with the third and fourth team. “If Laird Ethelbert has treachery planned we will turn it back upon him in swift manner.”

  Bransen noted that the man lifted his voice with that last promise to make sure that Bannagran heard, no doubt.

  “Laird Ethelbert has no treachery planned,” the laird replied with certainty and an obvious bit of annoyance.

  The three charioteers began sorting out the proprieties of the planned meeting, while Master Reandu stayed near to Bannagran, who moved to the far side of the line of oaks and was staring off to the southwest. Bransen moved nearer to them, subtly hoping to overhear.

  “It will be his surrender,” Reandu was saying. “Ethelbert’s men have little fight left in them. They know they cannot win.”