The Bear

  Moving along the coast long after the sun had dipped below the western horizon, Bransen spotted a dark but definite encampment to the south. At first he thought to simply pass by and continue on his way, for St. Mere Abelle loomed in the west, high in the distance against the starry sky, but not so far away. With the assistance of the cat’s-eye agate, he would arrive this night, even if he allowed himself this small detour.

  He quickly discerned that it was a military camp, and he glanced often at the distant chapel, guessing that these were enemies intent of that place—that place where Cadayle and Callen slept. He still wanted no part of the war, but certainly he would not allow his stubbornness to endanger his beloved wife and his unborn child.

  He decided that he would return to the chapel with much information of this force in the east. He even pulled his mask up, assuming once more that alter ego he had known in Pryd Town. Slipping past the outer guards proved no difficult task for the stealthy Highwayman. Along the ground or in the trees, Bransen’s line of ki-chi-kree held strong, as did his command of the gemstones. He noted many monks among the soldiers and feared that the wretch De Guilbe had garnered a strong following in short order. He spotted only one fire, small and obviously shielded from distant eyes.

  He crept along in the branches, nearing the close perimeter of the few seated about the low-burning flames. And then he lost his breath, as among the few near the fire he recognized Brother Pinower of St. Mere Abelle, Brother Giavno, and none other than Dame Gwydre herself!

  Dumbstruck and suddenly afraid that St. Mere Abelle might have fallen, Bransen blurted out an indecipherable sound and, without even realizing the movement, dropped from the branches to the ground. All in the camp stirred at that, reaching for weapons and gemstones, and behind him Bransen heard a pair of guards call out, “Stand or die!”

  He held his hands out in a nonthreatening manner. “I am Bransen Garibond,” he managed to sputter as the soldiers came up to him, spear tips gleaming in the moonlight.

  “Bransen!” Pinower and Giavno said together.

  Giavno rushed up beside the Highwayman and clapped him on the shoulder. “A fine night it is, then,” he cheered, ushering Bransen through the line of nodding soldiers and monks to join Gwydre and Pinower by the fire.

  “And a fine meeting,” said Dame Gwydre.

  “Blessed Abelle is shining on us this night!” Pinower exclaimed.

  “Aye and the old ones are looking to our cause,” Gwydre added, just to draw a smirk from both monks, and when those expected looks came, the Dame of Vanguard grinned from ear to ear.

  “The chapel?” Bransen asked. “Cadayle and Callen?”

  “Faring well behind thick walls Yeslnik cannot breach,” Dame Gwydre assured him.

  “But you are out here in the open night.”

  “The alliance has been sealed with Laird Ethelbert,” Gwydre explained. “I am out to further our needs. . . .”

  “I came from the encampment of Laird Bannagran of Pryd and from a parlay with Laird Ethelbert and Cormack and Milkeila,” Bransen explained.

  “Fine news!” said Brother Pinower. “It is our hope that Bannagran will turn to our cause.”

  “What said he?” Dame Gwydre pressed.

  “He told Laird Ethelbert to go home,” Bransen replied dryly. “And better for your cause if you had never allied with that murderous old fool.”

  All three exchanged glances, then turned their eyes upon Bransen.

  “Ethelbert’s assassins murdered Jameston Sequin,” Bransen reported. Gwydre gasped and put a hand over her mouth, and Giavno called upon the gods by making the sign of the evergreen. Whispers erupted all about the camp and much of the joy at discovering the Highwayman returned washed away in the blink of an astonished eye.

  “Jameston Sequin? Murdered? On Laird Ethelbert’s command?” Dame Gwydre asked after the few moments it took her to compose herself.

  “I know not and I care not if Ethelbert was involved,” said Bransen. “I found Jameston dead in an abandoned cottage, and I have no doubt as to whose weapon struck him down. That man, a warrior of Behr, serves Ethelbert as a mercenary, and he accompanied a fellow assassin from Behr, a woman named Affwin Wi, to murder King Delaval, as well.”

  “How do you know this?” Brother Pinower demanded.

  “I was there in their court,” Bransen replied. “The broken sword found in King Delaval’s chest was the blade of Affwin Wi, Laird Ethelbert’s prime assassin.”

  Again, Pinower, Giavno, and Gwydre looked to each other blankly, surprised by the news, and out of that stupor came Brother Pinower, eyeing Bransen more closely.

  “You wear a headband above your mask,” the monk said in a leading manner.

  “To hold a soul stone to my forehead.”

  “But the brooch Father Artolivan gave to you—”

  “Was torn from my head by Ethelbert’s assassin. She carries it now, and my sword.”

  Fittingly, considering the mood shift descending upon the encampment, a log shifted in the fire then and rolled away, the already low firelight diminishing greatly.

  “I barely escaped with my life,” Bransen added. “Affwin Wi is trained as a Jhesta Tu and is surrounded by other formidable warriors.”

  “Laird Ethelbert meant to kill you?” Dame Gwydre managed to say past the lump in her throat.

  “I doubt he knew anything of it,” Bransen replied. “It was personal with Affwin Wi.”

  “This happened at Laird Bannagran’s camp?” Dame Gwydre asked.

  Bransen chuckled and kicked the fallen log back to the fire, then took a seat beside it. Staring into the flames, he recounted his journey to Pryd Town and to the coast beside Jameston, then detailed the time he had spent with Affwin Wi in the court of Ethelbert. He saw no reason to hide anything from this group.

  He told them of his fight and escape and of the journey along the devastated southland that had taken him again to Pryd and to the march with Bannagran and Reandu and fifteen thousand warriors back to the east.

  “And so I left them,” he finished some time later. “For their fight is not my fight, and I no longer care which side prevails.”

  “You say that to Dame Gwydre’s face?” Brother Giavno scolded. “You have no shame, then?”

  “Shame?” Bransen echoed with a mocking laugh. “You who march to war would speak to me of shame?”

  “Bransen, what has happened to you?” Dame Gwydre asked. She stood up and motioned for the others to remain silent, then moved beside the young man. “Walk with me,” she bade him softly. “Your troubled soul wounds me.”

  Bransen looked at her doubtfully, but he did stand and walk off arm-in-arm (for he did not resist when she took his arm with great familiarity) with the Lady of Vanguard.

  “Laird Ethelbert has joined us in alliance,” she said as they moved to the edge of the firelight, the forest thick about them. “It is necessary, for both of us to hold any hope of turning back the scourge that is Yeslnik. I will see to it that your sword is returned to you.”

  Bransen sighed at her, for she simply did not understand.

  “And the brooch,” she said. “Surely you wish those items returned.”

  “I do not deny that,” Bransen said. “But I care hardly as much as you believe.”

  “What is it, Bransen?” Gwydre pressed. “What has happened to you? You are not the same man who departed St. Mere Abelle. Indeed, you seem more akin to—”

  “The man you first encountered, tricked into your service by your man Dawson?”

  “Yes,” Gwydre admitted.

  Bransen thought long and hard on that observation, for he knew that it was true enough. What had happened to him?

  He had dared to care. He had dared to let optimism creep into his vision.

  “I am no mercenary,” he said, and he chuckled again, sadly, pathetically, recounting his night hunt from Bannagran’s camp to collect trophy ears for gold.

  “Of course you aren’t,” said Gwydre.

&
nbsp; “Yet you used me as one, did you not?” the young warrior asked. “I served as Dame Gwydre’s mercenary, her assassin, to go and slay Ancient Badden.”

  “You know the truth of Ancient Badden,” Gwydre protested. “You know that it was right and good and necessary that he be slain.”

  “I went for reasons of personal gain,” Bransen argued. “As a mercenary.”

  “And you admitted to me that, had you understood the greater truth of the war in Vanguard, you would have gone of your own volition without need for such reward,” Gwydre reminded him. True enough, it sent a jolt through Bransen’s dour mood.

  “Nor did you go as a profiteer even before you understood the greater good,” Gwydre persisted. “You went for the sake of your freedom and for the good of your family, and that is a noble cause, not the crass gold-hunting of a mercenary. Surely, Bransen, your mood cannot be of any fears that you are no better than those who do murder for Laird Ethelbert’s gold.”

  “It does not matter,” Bransen replied without hesitation.

  “Truly it does!”

  “No!” Bransen shouted right back at her. He looked away and pulled away and gritted his teeth, and it was all he could manage to hold back a scream of ultimate frustration. “It does not matter, because none of it matters. The way of the world is war, and the unscrupulous will ever rise to rule.”

  He kept walking slowly, but Dame Gwydre stopped. When he turned back to regard her, he found her standing straight, hands on hips, scowling after him.

  “Not you,” he stammered in apology. “I know that you rule Vanguard wisely, and I doubt not that you would serve as a wonderful Queen of Honce and that the lives of your peasants would be bettered by your actions.”

  “You just said that it matters not.”

  “Because you are a mortal woman, after all, and so fleeting is life. The cycle of misery can be interrupted, but it cannot be stopped.”

  “I do not believe that.”

  Bransen shrugged. He did not care. How could this war—how could any war—be worth the cost for such a temporary gain?

  “Our great and glorious cause is a fool’s errand,” he said quietly, and that defeated tone made it all the more profound and powerful. “Even should Bannagran turncoat against Yeslnik, even should we march to Delaval and seat you as Queen of Honce, there will always be another Ancient Badden or King Yeslnik or Laird Prydae or Father De Guilbe to take it back. I understand now why the Jhesta Tu dwell in a remote mountain fortress far from the politics of men. With their strength and knowledge, they could likely shape the world, but they, too, recognize the futility of it all. Jameston Sequin should have stayed in the northern woods.”

  “His cause was just,” Dame Gwydre insisted.

  “Just and hopeless. One good soul against a castle wall topped with unjust enemies.”

  “We can win the day for Honce,” Gwydre said. “I believe that young Yeslnik has erred in his decree to the Order of Blessed Abelle. He has pushed the goodly brothers too far with his demands of execution and betrayal, and they . . .” She paused when she looked upon Bransen, shaking his head as if none of it mattered.

  “What road for Bransen, then?” she asked. “I cannot force you to march with me, of course, and trust that you’ll never support Yeslnik.”

  “That you can trust, yes,” the young warrior assured her. “I am bound for St. Mere Abelle and the arms of my wife. By our agreement, you will sail me wherever I choose, and I choose Vanguard.”

  Gwydre started to respond, but Bransen cut her short. “Not to serve you,” he explained. “To find a place where I and my family can live in peace, away from the stupidity of the wider world.”

  “You will run and hide in a forest?”

  “It was good enough for Jameston Sequin.”

  “Cadayle’s mother might now consider Dawson McKeege part of that family,” Gwydre warned. “For they have fallen in love.”

  The news caught Bransen by surprise, obviously, but he merely gave his signature helpless chuckle yet again and moved on.

  “I cannot get you to Vanguard,” Dame Gwydre admitted. “And surely not with a pregnant Cadayle beside you!”

  “I have your word.”

  “You have the Gulf of Corona swarming with Palmaristown and Delaval City warships,” Gwydre explained. “There is no safe passage.”

  Bransen chewed his lip.

  “So what then for Bransen?”

  “To remain with Cadayle in St. Mere Abelle as long as Father Artolivan allows,” he said quickly, not bothering to think it through, for all that he cared about at that moment was making it clear to Dame Gwydre that he had no intention of going to war.

  “Father Artolivan is dead,” Gwydre informed him, and he winced. “Peacefully and of natural cause. Father Premujon is seated at the head of the Order of Blessed Abelle now, a worthy successor to a fine man.”

  “And when that successor is not so worthy?” the unrelenting Bransen asked.

  “You are running and hiding,” Dame Gwydre dared remark, but in a light tone.

  “You should be glad that I am and that I am not continuing my bargain with Bannagran to aid in his fight with Ethelbert.”

  “That is a fight we hope to avert.”

  Bransen shook his head and hardly cared—or made it seem as if he didn’t care, at least. “When I learned of your alliance with Laird Ethelbert, out of deference to you I rescinded my agreement with Bannagran and departed,” he lied, and Gwydre’s smile showed that she saw right through him.

  “And now you are again the same Bransen who first came to Vanguard,” Gwydre said. “Full of cynicism.”

  “Accepting of reality,” he corrected.

  It was Dame Gwydre’s turn to shake her head. “You had grown so much,” she said. “Tell me, Highwayman, if we could go back to that time you first came into Vanguard but with all the knowledge you have gained these last months, would you join with me and go after Ancient Badden?”

  The old question, Bransen realized. Dame Gwydre’s measuring stick for Bransen Garibond’s character. “No,” he answered, flooding his voice with strength and not bothering to internally sort whether it was the strength of conviction or of simple stubbornness. He didn’t blink when Dame Gwydre argued with him, telling him that she did not believe him. This was not the same conversation he had shared with the woman in Pellinor those months ago, when he had then proclaimed that he would have, indeed, enlisted in her cause against the Samhaists, and for the sake of his own peace of mind he could not allow her to believe that this was a replay of that discussion.

  “Do you even care that Ethelbert murdered Jameston?” he asked bluntly.

  “You do not know that to be true. You, yourself, said it was likely personal with Affwin Wi.” Gwydre looked into his stubborn face with great sadness. “Of course I care. The death of Master Sequin wounds me profoundly. He was a great and accomplished man, and I was proud to call him a friend.”

  “But you would look past it for the sake of this alliance you so desperately need even if you discovered Ethelbert knew of his assassins’ work?”

  Dame Gwydre blew a weary and pained sigh, and Bransen knew that he was getting to her, wounding her, though to what end or for what purpose, he did not know. She started to respond several times, trying futilely to explain that the circumstances surrounding Jameston’s death would indeed have consequence but, finally, admitting that the situation was much larger than the question of Jameston Sequin.

  “I am responsible for the people of Vanguard, some fifty thousand souls, all weary of war,” she said. “King Yeslnik has already begun his assault on my shores. Would you have me throw away Vanguard’s only hope?”

  “If Laird Ethelbert is your only hope, then you have already lost,” Bransen said dryly.

  “The alliance between Vanguard and Ethelbert and St. Mere Abelle purchases leverage,” she explained, “to bring more lairds to our cause. Few would follow King Yeslnik if they came to believe in an alternative ruler w
ho might defeat him on the field.”

  “If you wish to lessen the misery of all, then just surrender to Yeslnik,” said Bransen. “Let the war end, let him go back to Delaval as you go home to Vanguard.”

  “And allow him to claim all of Honce as his domain?”

  “Why would you care, if not for foolish pride? Do you believe that Yeslnik the idiot will know enough about the goings-on in your far-distant holding to truly interfere?”

  “The people of Honce proper cry out in despair. I cannot ignore that plea!”

  “Only those who crave their own power cry out,” Bransen argued. “For the rest, be it Yeslnik or Ethelbert, Gwydre or Premujon now, they care not. They only want the war to end.”

  “And when King Yeslnik, secure in Honce, decides that Honce is not enough?” Gwydre asked. “When he sails an armada to Behr to wage a wider war? When he marches through Vanguard on his way to conquer the Alpinadoran tribes?”

  “You do not know he will do that.”

  “I know that he is without mercy and that he is full of treachery. He would have the monks execute all the prisoners taken from Ethelbert’s ranks.”

  “And all of your own actions are for the cause of the common man?” Bransen asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “None of this is for the gain of Dame Gwydre?”

  The woman looked at him as if he had struck her.

  “A pox on all your houses,” Bransen snapped at her, but his voice quickly broke into a stutter as he continued, “If I cared at all which of you won the worthless throne, then perhaps I would fight, but since I do not . . .” It took every ounce of his concentration to even get the sentence out, dragging some syllables along painfully and biting off others as his jaw involuntarily clenched.

  “You can lie to me, Bransen Garibond, but you cannot lie to yourself. Listen to your own words, for they speak not to the truth in your heart. That is the source of your malady. That is why you again need the gemstone tied tightly to your forehead. When your heart is not right, so, too, will go astray your body and mind.”