The Bear

  “You know nothing of me,” he shot right back.

  Dame Gwydre looked at him carefully for a few heartbeats. “Perhaps I do not. Perhaps I was wrong to think so highly of Bransen Garibond.”

  “Perhaps you were. Would you rescind your Writ of Passage, then, Queen of Honce?”

  Dame Gwydre wore a sour expression. She shook her head, though in response to his question or simply to show her disgust Bransen could not fathom.

  Bransen didn’t even follow her back to the camp to rejoin the monks. He just walked off to the north and the coast, then to the west, chewing his lip with rage every step of the way.

  He began to see signs of the besieging force as St. Mere Abelle came into clear sight, sitting up on the high and rocky cliff, unscalable from the ocean and a fairly steep ascent from all three other directions. Bransen climbed a tree to gain a better view of the field and the situation. Directly down the hill from the front gates, he saw the line of catapults, and even as he watched, one let fly a large stone. It arced through the air to hit the turf directly before the wall, skipping up to crack against the wall itself. It bounced harmlessly back to the grass, where it lay among dozens and dozens of other boulders.

  They were halfway between midnight and dawn, and still Ethelbert’s catapults were throwing?

  The sight alarmed Bransen, for Cadayle was within those walls.

  Another rock went into the air, and he grimaced, imagining her huddled with terror, hugging Callen, as it slammed in hard, shaking the foundation of the chapel complex. A third stone went up shortly after, and this one cleared the wall. Bransen nearly cried out in fear.

  A moment later, he was glad that he had not, for movement below him and not far from the tree in which he was perched caught his attention. He froze in place, staring down, sorting out the movement as a small group of soldiers, obviously Palmaristown, patrolled the region. He thought to wait them out, but the report of another stone slamming into the stone of the complex startled him. He had to get to Cadayle!

  The Highwayman came down from the tree in a rush, using the malachite to ease and control his fall. He got to the lowest branch before being spotted by a leather-clad soldier some ten strides away—ten strides or one great, gemstone-enhanced leap for the Highwayman. He soared toward the shouting man, who lifted a battle-axe at the sight. The man took his weapon in both hands as he realized to his horror that the Highwayman flew toward him from on high, a leap that no man should have been able to make. Awkwardly, he turned the blade and swiped it upward as his attacker descended.

  The Highwayman easily kicked it aside with one foot, landing heavily on the other onto the shoulder of the man, who groaned and lurched and flew to the side. The Highwayman didn’t fight the momentum, just threw himself over sidelong, settling in a deep crouch. The man he had landed upon didn’t fare as well, though. He stumbled and staggered off balance, grabbing at his wounded shoulder before tripping over a root and tumbling to the ground.

  The Highwayman was over him in an instant, but he didn’t land a finishing blow. He didn’t have to, for in the tangle of his fall the poor soldier had fallen on his axe blade. He writhed in pain, a long but superficial gash running the length of his ribs.

  Bransen stood straight and swung about to face another soldier coming in hard, spear extended. Up into the air the Highwayman leaped, higher than any man should, and when he tucked his legs, his feet were up higher than the newest opponent’s head. She lifted her spear to try to fend, but the Highwayman went right over her. He landed lightly and sprang up again, lifting above her as she turned and spinning a tight circuit as he went so that he could launch a heavy circle kick that met her squarely at the top of her ribs and the base of her throat as she came around. She flew back as if she, too, had been launched from one of Milwellis’s catapults, her spear flying harmlessly aside.

  Shouts erupted from the brush as more soldiers closed in on the Highwayman, but he thought of Cadayle and was having none of it. He sprinted off for the distant chapel, his strides lengthening as his fell into the malachite, great bounds like that of a hunting cat or a fleeing deer. He easily outdistanced the pursuit, even outrunning the volley of spears that were thrown his way.

  With Cadayle in his thoughts, the Highwayman would not slow, and when he reached the base of the high wall of St. Mere Abelle, the malachite’s power flowing through his limbs, he seemed, to those watching from the distant trees and to those monks cheering him on from the parapets, to simply run up the wall.

  He shrugged off their shoulder clapping and well-intentioned hugs and leaped down to the courtyard, sprinting across the way to the room he had shared with Cadayle.

  His relief at seeing her, eyes and smile wide with surprise and pure joy, was matched only by the sincere sense of calm that came over him when she wrapped him in a great hug. They fell asleep in each other’s arms, all tears and giggles, and Bransen felt as if he could stay there, could hide there, forevermore.

  It proved a short respite, for barely a couple of hours later, Callen Duwornay burst into the room, calling out and waving her arms frantically.

  “It’s begun!” she cried. “Oh, it’s begun, and a beautiful thing it is!”

  Bransen snapped into a sitting position. “What?”

  “Gwydre’s fight, don’t ya know? Sweeping the field, she is! Oh, come and look!”

  Bransen and Cadayle scrambled out of bed and dressed quickly, then rushed out of the keep and across the courtyard, to join all of those remaining inside St. Mere Abelle atop the front wall.

  Bransen’s pulse pounded in his veins, for he heard the shouts of battle before he ever got up the ladder. Horns blew and magical lightning bolts crackled in the early-morning air. By the time he reached the parapet, slowing only to help Cadayle up the last couple of steps, several lines of thick black smoke rose into the dawn’s light.

  “They’re burning the catapults!” said one of the monks on the wall, a young brother who seemed as if he was yet to reach puberty and whose high-pitched voice confirmed his youthful appearance.

  The brother kept talking, but Bransen wasn’t listening. He moved right up to the wall and peered over intently. The rout was on before him, and, truly, it was a lopsided affair. Gwydre and her force had charged in from the east, from in front of the rising sun; Bransen could picture the spectacle of that, and could imagine the horror of Panlamaris’s men as they tried to sort out the enemy assault with the blinding glare behind. He felt a tinge of regret and tried hard to suppress it.

  “We’ve suffered their rocks every day and every night,” Cadayle reminded.

  Bransen nodded. A large group of Panlamaris’s men broke away to the west, in full panic and retreat, and Bransen spied the large man—the laird himself—screaming at them and waving his great sword.

  All along the wall the monks and others began cheering wildly, even more so when a group of the Palmaristown garrison rushed their way, scrambling up the hill, all crying and begging for mercy.

  “All quarter offered!” several brothers began to shout. “These misled warriors are our brothers and sisters!”

  Bransen felt as if the slightest breeze might knock him from his feet.

  “Get out there,” Cadayle said in his ear, through the tumult rising all around them.

  Bransen turned to stare at her incredulously.

  “This is your fight,” she said. “This is our fight, as surely as any we have ever known.”

  “I am done with fighting!” he shouted back, and many around them quieted at that, several monks gasping in shock and obvious dismay. This was the Highwayman standing among them, after all, one of the great champions of their desperate cause.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Bransen said. “None of it matters.”

  “Ye cannot be thinking that Queen Gwydre’ll be as ill-tempered as King Yeslnik,” remarked Callen, coming over and sounding every bit the peasant woman from Pryd Town. “What fool’s got ye, boy?”

  “Don’t you see?” Br
ansen asked, pulling away from Cadayle and addressing all of those around him, most of whom were staring at him with open shock, and some with open contempt. “Even should we seat Gwydre on Delaval’s own throne, it would be but a temporary reprieve, a short pause of misery.”

  “Bransen!” Cadayle pleaded.

  “It’s the truth,” he said to her, coming close again and taking her hands in his own. “I’ve come to know that, and it pains me greatly. The road men walk is a roundabout. There is no better way to be found.”

  “How can you say such things?”

  “Too many who believed otherwise have died in vain. My father and mother . . .”

  “In vain, ye say, but yer ma saved that girl ye hold,” Callen reminded from behind him.

  “Garibond and Jameston,” Bransen went on, trying to ignore her. “All dead, and to what end?”

  “And what would you have us do?” Cadayle asked.

  “Run away to the north. To the forest, once home to Jameston Sequin, and far from this madness.”

  “To live as hermits in the woods, then?”

  “Free of lairds, free of church, free of war,” Bransen insisted.

  Cadayle stepped back and pulled her hands free, one of them coming up to cover her mouth.

  “Dame Gwydre will honor the terms, and will sail us to . . .” Bransen started to say, but he stopped abruptly when Cadayle hit him with a stinging slap across the face.

  “You would do that to our child?”

  “Cadayle,” Bransen whispered.

  “Hit him again,” said Callen dryly.

  Cadayle glanced at her mother for that comment, but only briefly. “Why did you ever get up?” she asked Bransen.

  He looked at her perplexed.

  “When they knocked the Stork into the mud,” Cadayle explained. “Why did you get back up?”

  “What nonsense—”

  “No nonsense,” Cadayle interrupted. “If it all means nothing, then why’d the Stork ever climb out of the mud? If there’s nothing to be gained, then why didn’t you just lay there and die in the soft black muck of nothing?”

  Bransen looked at her dumbfounded and glanced around to meet the hard stares of everyone in the area.

  “It’s a roundabout!” he declared. “A walk in a circle to the same awful places again and again.”

  “More of an egg,” said Callen, and all eyes turned to her. “And a rolling one, at that. Oh, the road’s going back sometimes—too oftentimes—but it’s rolling forward so long as men and women of heart and cause are moving it so. The world’s a better place than it was when Callen went into the Samhaist’s sack o’ snakes, don’t ya doubt! And ’twas a better place then than when Callen’s ma was a girl and half o’ Pryd starved to death.”

  Cadayle grabbed Bransen by the front of his shirt and pulled him to face her directly. “We’ve a chance now, right now, and it’s one worth taking. You go push the road, the roundabout, whatever you may call it, forward! For me and for our baby that’s in my womb. And for yourself, my love.” She tenderly stroked his face, and though he initially tried to pull away, he didn’t fight her touch for long.

  “You’ll not forgive yourself if you run away.”

  “Or you’ll not forgive me,” he said dryly.

  Cadayle took pause at that and looked at him with clear love and sympathy and gently stroked his face once more. “I could never not love you, my Stork,” she said. “But don’t you wallow there in the mud. You get up. This is our fight, all of us, and I only wish I could go with you, weapon in hand and a song on my lips. Dame Gwydre deserves your sword.”

  “I have no sword,” Bransen reminded.

  “Get the Highwayman a sword, ye damn fools!” Callen shouted, and several men on the wall rushed away.

  Bransen looked at his mother-in-law, and Callen shrugged. Bransen couldn’t help but chuckle against the unrelenting woman.

  “Father Artolivan’s church stood against Yeslnik,” Cadayle went on. “They stood for mercy and justice and at great cost. Would you abandon them now?”

  The young monk rushed up and thrust a sword into Bransen’s hand, nodding hopefully. Bransen turned from the eager young man to Cadayle, who reached up, holding a thin black strip of cloth.

  She tied his mask on his face and whispered, “Go.” And then she offered him her hand, as she had when he had lain in the mud on that long-ago day.

  Bransen took her hand and kissed it softly. Then he nodded to the others, offered a self-deprecating snort, and jumped over the wall.

  Many gasped at that, but not Cadayle. She moved to the crenellation and looked at her husband, the Highwayman, as he descended the high wall with spiderlike speed. All about her, the cheering began anew.

  Get up, ye damned child!” Laird Panlamaris said, his voice uneven. He tried to kick at the soldier, who huddled upon the ground, but the desperate laird staggered as he did and nearly fell.

  The soldier scrambled away, crying and begging for mercy.

  Panlamaris spat at him, though that, too, fell far short. The large, old laird spun about, inadvertently drawing a circle in the bloody dirt with his low-hanging sword. He looked for his men, he called for his men, but, alas, there were none about—none who would answer that call, at least.

  He had been routed, his army driven from the field around him. Old Ethelbert knew the truth of it. So many times he had seen his enemies in this very predicament.

  Not far to the east, the sun now raised above them, Dame Gwydre and her line re-formed. Grim-faced, their banners high, to a man and woman they stared at the Laird of Palmaristown.

  “Come on, then!” Panlamaris howled, lifting his sword awkwardly, the movement nearly throwing him from his feet. The blood on the ground about him was his own. Garish wounds crisscrossed his arms and chest, and so bloody was one side of his face that he couldn’t see out of that eye. The stump of a broken spear stuck out from his side, waving with his every breath.

  “You are defeated, Laird Panlamaris,” the Dame of Vanguard replied, and she and those around her advanced to within a few strides of the man. Flanking her left and right, brothers Pinower and Giavno each lifted a hand, presenting graphite—the stone of lightning—Panlamaris’s way.

  “Ah, ye witch!” the old laird roared, and he reached back his sword arm as if to throw.

  Twin bolts of lightning shot out from Gwydre’s escort, jolting him, slamming him, knocking him back several strides.

  The stubborn old man did not fall over, though. He held his balance, spat some more blood. He looked hatefully at Gwydre and lifted his sword arm yet again.

  A black form rushed across in front of him before the monks could even loose their second volley, and the Laird of Palmaristown staggered back again, a look of sheer surprise on his weathered face—surprise rooted more in the realization that he was dead than by the appearance of the Highwayman on the field.

  For in his passing, the Highwayman had spun a tight circle, his elbow flying high behind him to score a perfect strike against the threatening old laird’s windpipe.

  Panlamaris looked at him curiously for a few moments, his arm dropping, his sword falling free of his grasp.

  He fell facedown in the bloody dirt, dead at last.

  “Welcome home, Highwayman,” Dame Gwydre said.

  Bransen glanced back at the distant St. Mere Abelle, where Cadayle, he knew, was watching. He was on Jameston Sequin’s third road now, the path that had led Jameston to his death.

  His wife demanded this of him; his unborn child demanded this of him; the Stork demanded this of him.

  PART THREE

  THE FORWARD CRAWL OF HUMANITY

  I knew from the moment I opened my eyes—or rather, from the instant my eyes popped wide—that some deep and unexplored thought had forced itself upon me. It took me a few moments to even recall where I was, there in the quiet room in the dark night. What great comfort was Cadayle’s steady breathing in the bed beside me.

  We were in our room at St.
Mere Abelle the night after the rout of Laird Panlamaris. The next day promised to be full of carrion birds and large graves and the awful smell that had become all too common across the breadth of the land.

  And then what?

  There was talk of a fleet sailing in, full of Vanguard warriors, ready to march beside Dame Gwydre. There was talk of marching in pursuit of Prince Milwellis and, oh, if another such victory as the one of this morning could be achieved, then wouldn’t King Yeslnik run and hide in Castle Delaval?

  There was talk of war. It was all the talk, brothers and commoners alike, and despite my report regarding the happenings in the south and Pryd Town, Gwydre and Premujon, Pinower, and all the others still held hope that Bannagran would turn to their side. If he did not, given his skill and the fifteen thousand warriors he commanded, he could likely sweep the field of Gwydre and the force from Honce and of Ethelbert, as well, should that laird come forth.

  That terrible truth was the catalyst that had led to the epiphany that had so thrown me from my slumber.

  Bannagran of Pryd. He seemed such a simple man, strong of arm and straightforward of intent. He was the consummate general, or the consummate footman; it mattered not what role was thrust upon him.

  But did it matter, I wondered, which enemy he was asked to slay?

  That was my epiphany: that Bannagran of Pryd was not akin to Affwin Wi. They were greatly similar, of course, for both had spent their lives in training for battle and both served their masters ferociously. But while Affwin Wi did so for personal gain, for gold even, the same could not be said of Bannagran.

  For Bannagran, serving Laird Prydae or King Yeslnik or any other is a response to a sense of duty, a belief that such was his place in the world, his purpose in the world.

  The Hou-lei tradition is that of the pure mercenary and, thus, strictly amoral by definition. The true incarnation of a Hou-lei warrior is the perfection of the physical and the denial of the emotional. Could Bannagran be said to be a Honce version of Behr’s Hou-lei?