The Bear

  Affwin Wi came across with a mighty cut, but the Highwayman’s sword was there, vertically blocking.

  But the Highwayman was barely holding it!

  A look of confusion on her always confident face, Affwin Wi tried to reverse her cut as the blades connected, sending Bransen spinning end over end. Not to fly away, though, but to loop in place in the air, for the Highwayman had cleverly kept exerted just enough counterpressure on the hilt. He stepped his left foot out to the right before him, half turning, and caught the hilt of the spinning sword with a reverse grip in his left hand. Without hesitating, thinking he had won the day, he stabbed a backhand at the woman.

  To his amazement, she was out of reach. Recognizing his vulnerability, the Highwayman did well to hide and dismiss his surprise that his clever move had scored him nothing. Not even aware of the action, he fell into the magic of the malachite and sprang up into the air, tumbling sidelong, tucking not at all, and still easily clearing not only Affwin Wi but also the reach of her overhead stab.

  As he landed, shifting to face Affwin Wi directly, he found her in a similar spring and twist, now going above and beyond him, her downturned head a dozen feet from the ground.

  “The brooch,” Bransen heard himself whisper. He was not pleased to learn that Affwin Wi had so mastered the gemstones already!

  He leaped again, so did she, and as they passed in midair, higher than a tall man’s head, they brought their weapons crashing together, the force of the blow sending both of them spinning sidelong through their descent. But neither stayed on the ground for long, springing away, for now the fight had taken an extra dimension in its deadly dance.

  They leaped and somersaulted, spun and lay out horizontally, floating past each other at various angles, striking out at each other each time to the ring of metal and with enough force to turn the combatants.

  On one such pass, Bransen, flat out and facing downward after the twist from Affwin Wi’s parry, tucked and flipped as he neared the ground. He plated his feet strongly and leaped backward as fast as he could manage, thinking to catch the woman before she could get fully into her subsequent launch.

  But Affwin Wi hadn’t jumped. As if she had, yet again, been one step ahead of Bransen, the woman landed and released the magic of the malachite in her brooch, grounding herself and coming about, perfectly positioned to catch him in his next flight.

  The Highwayman noted it at the very last moment and released the malachite magic, dropping him short of the mark. He managed to lift his sword before him to block another mighty swing, but that, again, was exactly what Affwin Wi wanted. For she wasn’t swinging at Bransen but at his blade.

  The Jhesta Tu sword hummed as it came across, a thing of beauty, of delicate and powerful silverel metal, wrapped a thousand times over itself so that it only sharpened as it wore down. The Highwayman had no choice but to attempt a powerful block, and the rigid posture and powerful stance worked against him as Affwin Wi cut across with all her considerable strength. He heard the crash of metal; he saw a spark as the blades collided and instinctively blinked and recoiled. He opened his eyes to find himself holding a stub of a blade, two-thirds of its length spinning through the air to the side.

  Affwin Wi presented her sword before him, claiming victory. Bransen heard laughter; he glanced sideways to see Merwal Yahna standing there, hands on hips.

  Bransen retreated but quickly ran out of room as he came to the backside of the ridge, a sheer drop of twenty feet or more behind him.

  “Yes, you can leap away,” Affwin Wi said to him as she slowly approached. “But know that I will catch you and kill you!” As she finished, the woman came on with frightening speed, lifting the sword high for a strike that Bransen couldn’t hope to dodge or block.

  But neither did he retreat. He lifted his hand from his pouch, drawing forth the power of the gemstone as he went. Stronger and stronger, he coaxed that magic forth, charging the stone powerfully by the time his hand was up before him. And then he let it loose. The lodestone, magnetite, snapped from his grasp, propelled by its attraction to the target, the hilt of Affwin Wi’s sword. As it struck, the sword went flying, spinning end over end, and three of Affwin Wi’s fingers went flying as well. Shock on her fair face, the woman staggered backward. Merwal Yahna cried out but was too far away to help her.

  Bransen started forward but stopped short, for Affwin Wi dismissed her shock and pain in an instant, throwing it all out in a primal keen of outrage. She was glowing, too, in a serpentine shield, reversing her footing and charging ahead once more.

  Bransen understood her intent and ran away. With the malachite, the Highwayman leaped from the ridge, landing lightly on the nearest branch of a large tree. He caught his balance and turned to see Affwin Wi charging, blazing with the flames of a ruby gemstone! She seemed a living fireball, and elemental creature of searing flames. There could be no escape . . . certainly none in the flammable branches of a summer tree!

  Bransen used his soul stone to stab at her consciousness, to try to distract her in her concentration. At the same time he sent forth a burst, a pulse, like a magical dart, from the antimagic sunstone. But Affwin Wi was still a living fireball, still leaping high in the throes of the malachite, and still screaming. All Bransen could do was drop from the branch in desperation.

  Even as he collided with the next lowest branch, not so gracefully twisting about to avoid any serious injury, he came to understand that the pitch of her scream had changed. Only after he negotiated the branch to fall clear of the others and land on his feet beneath the tree did he come to recognize the true source of her new yell.

  Agony.

  The fiery woman sailed past where Bransen had been standing, collided with the tangle of the tree farther on, and thrashed about insanely as she crashed through that tangle to land at last hard on her back on the ground below.

  Bransen’s desperate strike with the sunstone had stolen only one bit of magic, the serpentine shield, and now the fires of the brooch’s ruby chewed at her furiously. She rolled about on the ground, screaming in agony.

  Horrified, Bransen ran to her, desperately patting at the last stubborn flames. He fell into his soul stone and tried to impart waves of healing magic, but when he placed his hands upon the shivering woman, her skin just slipped away.

  Bransen fell back in horror and disgust.

  A scream so outrageous, so primal, so feral, shocked Bransen back to his sensibilities just in time to see Merwal Yahna charging at him, nun’chu’ku lifted high above his head, its deadly strike bar spinning furiously.

  There was no reason to be found on the man’s face, no pause and no sanity. In the split second he looked up at Merwal Yahna, Bransen knew that the man, overcome with rage and anguish, meant only to kill him, to smash him dead where he knelt beside the shivering and dying Affwin Wi.

  Bransen spotted his brooch and snatched it up from her bubbling skin even as he fell into his own malachite and launched himself away, leaping backward and up into the air, spinning a somersault and landing on a branch some fifteen feet from the ground.

  Merwal Yahna ran right to the base of the tree, sputtering curses with every step. Like a crazed animal, he began lashing at the large trunk with his exotic weapon, back and forth, chipping bark with every strike.

  “Come down! I kill you! Come down! You die!” he roared.

  “Enough!” Bransen shouted back at him after a few moments, during which he placed the brooch against his forehead and felt its magic connecting with him once more. Hardly shifting his hand, he pinned it in place, and he felt its magic coursing through him, energizing him. “This is ended, Merwal Yahna. It is time for us to place our differences behind us and work for the good of our respective lairds and for the good of Honce—”

  “Come down!” the bald man shouted, and he rapped the tree repeatedly, his ire showing no sign of relenting. “I kill you!” He kept shouting and swinging. Bransen tried to reason with him, but to no avail.

  Finally Merwa
l Yahna started to climb, and Bransen knew that he would have to fight the man. He shook his head and watched Merwal Yahna’s progress. As soon as the warrior reached the base of the branch upon which Bransen stood, Bransen sprinted the other way along it, lifting himself with malachite as he went so that the branch did not bend. Nearing the ridge upon which he had first joined in battle, the Highwayman leaped with all his strength. If he could only get over that ridge, he thought, and back to his sword . . .

  He didn’t make it. Despite his great leap, despite his concentration in the gemstone, the distance was too far. Bransen collided with the side of the cliff facing, held on and tried to climb, but the jolt had him dazed a bit; he slid down near to the ground before he finally caught himself.

  Too late, he knew, when he heard Merwal Yahna’s roar close behind him.

  Bransen’s focus went to the brooch set on his forehead, focusing on the backing that held the six gems in place. As he turned, Merwal Yahna barely two strides away, the moment of his death surely upon him, Bransen lashed out with all of his magical energy, a complete orgasm of magical release.

  The lightning bolt blinded and shocked him as surely as it must have shocked Merwal Yahna. The screams of rage disappeared in the blink of an astonished eye and in the thunderous explosion of power that reverberated for what seemed like seconds. As his vision returned, Bransen saw that the man was no longer before him.

  Other than his silken shoes, which lay upon the ground exactly where they had been when Bransen brought forth the stroke. Bransen’s eyes scanned back, and there lay Merwal Yahna to the side of the tree trunk, some thirty feet away, smoking and twitching wildly.

  Overwhelmed, Bransen staggered to the man’s side, and knelt over him, determined not to let this one die. Merwal Yahna would go with him to Laird Ethelbert’s Court, Bransen decided, as a witness to the attacks on Cormack and Milkeila, as the murderer of Jameston Sequin.

  Yes, he nodded, but even as he did, Merwal Yahna snapped his left hand up and across, cracking Bransen’s jaw and throwing him back to the ground. The Highwayman struggled to catch himself and get back to his feet, knowing Merwal Yahna was surely coming on. His right hand grabbed something solid and smooth . . . a wooden pole, Merwal Yahna’s fallen weapon. He rose to a sitting position and jumped to his feet as Merwal Yahna stood on unsteady, trembling legs . . . but legs steady enough for the raging man to launch himself at Bransen.

  Bransen leaped, too, higher and somersaulting and twisting as he went. As he lifted from the ground, he flicked his wrist and sent the nun’chu’ku spinning. He caught the free pole in his left hand, both hands down low as he spun over the stumbling Merwal Yahna. Passing over the man, Bransen crossed his hands violently and powerfully and threw his right shoulder under as he came around, speeding his spin as he fell straight to the ground, taking Merwal Yahna over backward behind him.

  For a moment, Bransen thought that a thick branch had broken nearby. Only when Merwal Yahna’s heavy, lifeless body fell atop him did he realize that cracking sound was the man’s neck breaking under the momentum of Bransen’s descent and in the twist of the exotic weapon.

  Bransen wearily pulled himself out from under the man and climbed to his feet. He surveyed the two fallen warriors for a long while, deep regret washing over him. How much good might these two have accomplished? Such grace in battle, such skill. He thought that perhaps he should bury them side by side.

  Bransen’s expression went cold a moment later, though, when he thought of Jameston Sequin. Merwal Yahna had killed his friend and in a most dishonorable way. Not in a duel, and not even face-to-face. Merwal Yahna had punched his nun’chu’ku through a wall and through the back of Jameston Sequin.

  Bransen looked down at that exotic weapon now, swinging at the end of his right arm. He slipped one side under his rope belt and put his hands on his hips, again looking from Merwal Yahna to the charred corpse of Affwin Wi.

  He remembered Jameston Sequin.

  He left them for the vultures.

  Using the powers of levitation, the Highwayman went up the cliff facing, back to the field. He found his sword easily enough, but when he bent to pick it up, he stopped fast. For there, too, was the lodestone, set into the weapon’s hilt, locking a crushed and torn finger in place. Bransen found a stick and managed to pry both gemstone and finger loose. He held the sword up before his eyes, staring at the marvelous hilt, an intricate design of ivory and silver fashioned into the likeness of a hooded serpent.

  It was marred now by the impact of the lodestone, a deep blemish on one side of the serpent’s tapering neck. Pangs of loss flooded Bransen, to think that he had damaged his mother’s perfect sword, this devoted and loving work of art.

  He grasped the blade as he would in battle and moved it through a series of thrusts and defensive parries, blowing a great sigh of relief to realize that the balance remained perfect. He could feel the indentation, but it was a smooth dent, one that cradled his middle finger perfectly as he swung the blade about.

  He had put his mark on his mother’s sword.

  Bransen looked back toward the city of Ethelbert dos Entel. Now it was time to put his mark on Dame Gwydre’s budding kingdom.

  Thank you for seeing me, but I would speak with Laird Ethelbert directly,” Bransen said as he stood before the general, two younger commanders flanking him and a phalanx of sentries ready to swarm on his word.

  “You claim to have knowledge of the war’s events and to speak for Dame Gwydre,” Kirren Howen replied. “Why would we not entertain you?”

  “I left your fair city under less than perfect circumstances.”

  “You were chased out,” said Myrick, one of the younger generals, and Kirren Howen and the other general, Tyne, flashed scowls his way, pointedly reminding him to remember his place here.

  “And now I have returned to you,” Bransen replied, staring at Myrick through every word. He turned back to Kirren Howen. “To Laird Ethelbert. You have heard of Dame Gwydre’s many victories in the north?”

  “I have heard that she manages to stay one stride ahead of Milwellis of Palmaristown. I have heard of no decisive victories other than her defeat of Laird Panlamaris.”

  “A series of minor wins, since then,” Bransen admitted, “but accumulating into something more profound. The name of Dame Gwydre is whispered from the lips of every villager in the north of Honce now and always with joy and reverence. Milwellis of Palmaristown grows more frustrated every day, his army more weary and homesick. But not so for Dame Gwydre’s army, for they believe in their cause, in her cause.”

  The generals absorbed the information, but all three seemed strangely detached to Bransen.

  “She will win,” he said confidently.

  “Laird Bannagran refused our offer of alliance,” said Kirren Howen. “You were there, as I recall, among his ranks.”

  Myrick and Tyne crossed their arms over their chests at that remark, and for a brief moment, Bransen almost expected the three to charge at him.

  “And so I was surprised to hear that you had returned to our city, speaking for Dame Gwydre,” said Kirren Howen. “Do you fight for both sides, then?”

  “I am Gwydre’s man, fully,” Bransen asserted. He didn’t know it then, of course, but that proclamation had just saved his life that dark day in Ethelbert dos Entel. “The situation with Laird Bannagran remains unclear,” Bransen went on.

  “Yet you marched with him, coming toward our city.” There was no missing the accusatory tone.

  “I marched for reasons personal and surely not for King Yeslnik, whom I despise.”

  “And we are to trust you?”

  Bransen smiled and bowed. “The situation in Honce has changed. I came to inform you of those changes, for know that Dame Gwydre will win this war. Where will Laird Ethelbert and your city fit in when that occurs, I wonder? But of course, that is for him to decide.”

  “Where is Bannagran?”

  “In Pryd Town with his thousands. He does not march
forth.”

  “Where is Gwydre?”

  Bransen had to hide his grin, for he almost blurted out (simply to see the looks on the faces of the younger generals) that she, too, was in Pryd at that time. “Laird Milwellis would ask that same question, for she is everywhere and nowhere all at once.”

  “You will answer his question!” Myrick demanded.

  “I have delivered my message to you, though I wished to speak directly with Laird Ethelbert,” Bransen said.

  “That we cannot allow,” Kirren Howen insisted.

  “Then relay my message, and, with your permission, I would take my leave.”

  “Your message?” the general echoed skeptically. “You came to tell us that Milwellis was chasing Gwydre all about the northland, and that we already knew.”

  “I came to tell you that the war is turning in Dame Gwydre’s favor. You should know and understand that. She offered you friendship and alliance, and you accepted. Such a bargain demands reciprocity.”

  “What? She would have us come forth while Bannagran sits in Pryd Town with a force thrice our garrison?”

  Bransen shrugged. “I have delivered my message. I will go.” Before anyone could respond, the Highwayman bowed and quickly took his leave, and though a couple of the sentries near to the door bristled as if to impede him, Kirren Howen waved them to stillness.

  Bransen was glad to be out of there, and very glad that he had left the sword and brooch hidden beyond Ethelbert dos Entel’s walls. All he had wanted to do was to put a whisper into Laird Ethelbert’s ear to entice him to look more closely at the war, perhaps even to entice him forth that he could bring more pressure on King Yeslnik’s forces.

  That’s what Bransen tried to tell himself as he crossed through the city. He couldn’t help but grin, for the cryptic reference to personal reasons for his march with Bannagran was not by accident.