He put his hand on the rail, and Milkeila put hers atop his. The lovers stared out at the aurora for a long while, then turned their eyes to each other and sealed the promise of the magic of God with a long and gentle kiss.
FOUR
Stark
He let the wind be his guide as he meandered across the lands devastated by war, paralleling the roads that had been viewed as a sign of hope and progress by the people of Honce. Those networks had been built to open trade, it was said, and to allow the lairds to move their armies to rid the land of powries. Few foresaw that those same roads would carry the engines of war to holding after holding as the two most prominent lairds, Delaval and Ethelbert, laid claim to a unified kingdom of Honce as their dominion.
Bransen avoided one battered village after another, having little desire to repeat the dialogue he had suffered with the widow from Hooplin Downs. Truly, after his encounter with the folk there, he didn’t wish to speak with anyone, other than his wife, who remained so far, far away.
He did sneak into the clusters of farmhouses when he found them, though. In the dark of night the Highwayman made his way about the communities, pilfering food and drink where he could. With his great skill he was never seen or heard and was always well on his way long before the sun lightened the eastern sky. He tried to leave behind firewood or anything he could find to repay his unwitting hosts.
Each morning seemed to dawn a bit warmer as summer came on in full to this southernmost region of Honce. Still moving due west, Bransen kept expecting the road to turn north or to bend that way at least. But the towering mountains remained in clear view to his left, day after day. He was in lands unknown, for this was not the route that he and Jameston had taken from Pryd Town to Ethelbert dos Entel. In those first hours after fleeing the city, after his defeat at the hands of Affwin Wi, Bransen must have veered farther south than he had intended. Many times the battered young man considered backtracking to the coast and running due north until the coastline curved eastward, taking him to Chapel Abelle and Cadayle.
But Bransen found himself strangely transfixed by the scenes opening before him. He didn’t know it, but he was following the route Yeslnik’s army had taken when they had departed the field outside Ethelbert dos Entel’s walls, the would-be king running from fear of Laird Ethelbert’s strange Behr assassins. The same assassins who had murdered Laird Delaval and taken Bransen’s sword and brooch. The same assassins who had taken from Bransen his hopes of a better Honce.
His travel became more difficult over the next few days, for there were no more farmhouses from which he could steal food—no standing ones, at least. And there were no chickens in any barnyard nor any living sheep or cattle or . . . anything. The crops had been burned and trampled, the ground torn and ruined. Bransen noted thousands of footprints and hoofprints and deep ruts caused by many passing chariots and wagons.
Bransen bent low to inspect the ground. Utterly, intentionally ruined, he realized to his horror. Most of it was simply black and red dirt common to the region, but Bransen also found white specks, as if someone had scattered something atop the trampled areas. He tapped his finger to one such speck and brought it up to sniff, then tasted it. Bransen’s face crinkled, and he spat out the powerfully salty substance.
Some army had purposely done this. This was far more than the result of a march. One of the lairds—Ethelbert or Yeslnik—had devastated this region, had ruined the villages and the livelihood of the folk of southernmost Honce. Yeslnik, he figured, since the most recent tracks led to the west and since Ethelbert’s army remained in his city on the eastern coast.
So Laird Yeslnik had crossed here in his retreat to Delaval City and had destroyed the farmland behind him. But where had all the residents gone?
Bransen’s gaze went out to the north, toward where he approximated Pryd Town to be, and he imagined his former home overrun by bedraggled refugees, dirty and hungry and desperate. He sighed deeply at that probability but just shook his head and moved along.
Soon after, he came to a fork in the road, where one branch turned decidedly north and a broken signpost indicated it to be the road to Pryd. The other branch, continuing to the west, was marked for Delaval City. The army’s passage, still due west, was clear enough to see, but the north road showed no fresh signs of any substantial passage.
Bransen went north for the rest of that day, moving near to the road, left and right, and searching for wagon marks or hoofprints of the slow, scraping boot marks of refugees. He found nothing recent.
The next morning he intended to continue north, knowing he would still have several days of walking before he reached Pryd Town, but he kept turning his curious gaze to the south. Without ever really understanding why, without questioning his urge, Bransen reversed course and headed that way, his pace swift all the way back to the signpost on the east-west road. He went right across the path, jogging across the despoiled fields and past the husks of burned-out houses. He happened upon one sizable community, or what had been, and found the scene of a ferocious battle. A small ruined keep sat on a hill at the southernmost point of the former town, its walls battered and torn down in many places, gray smoke still wafting out of its hollowed-out walls.
Bransen had to turn away when he moved up to the keep, or he would have vomitted the meager food he had scavenged over the last few days. For unlike the many deserted communities he had crossed, this larger one revealed to him the fate of its inhabitants. Their bodies covered the ground inside those keep walls, dead of arrows, hacked down by swords, charred by flames. A flock of crows lifted away when Bransen stepped inside, and a stench of death more powerful than anything the young warrior had ever imagined washed over him. This time he could not resist the urge to throw up.
They were all in there, men and women, old and young—very young. In one corner, Bransen found a dozen children, the largest among them surely not more than eight years, huddled together. Even at this state of great decay, with the crows having taken much, Bransen could see that their innocent bodies had been violated by many brutal chops of sword and axe.
How could any man bring himself to such depravity? What savagery had years of warfare brought to the participants, robbing them of their very humanity? He thought of the fop Yeslnik, for surely this was his doing. Bransen tried, unsuccessfully, to place this reality within the knowledge he had gained of the man during their previous encounters.
Was that weakling Yeslnik really capable of this?
The answer lay starkly before him.
Anxious thoughts crept around him like the black wings of the many cawing crows. He had to get to Cadayle and, with her and Callen, flee to Vanguard. They needed to be as far from this wretched and despoiled land as possible.
Bransen started to leave the ruined keep when he heard the distinctive whistling of an arrow cutting the air. Crouching low in the shadows, he scanned the area, using his skill and his magic, his inner ki-chi-kree, to propel himself up the rubble of the keep’s southwestern corner. The roof in this section was fully gone, allowing Bransen to peer over the wall top. Spying three archers down a hill and across a field, he realized that the arrow had not been aimed his way. The men had a woman in tow, and one was pulling her along by the hair while the others took turns kicking at and spitting on her.
Bransen felt the blood running thick in his veins, felt his heart pumping strongly. His fingers tingled with anticipation.
“It’s not my fight,” he told himself determinedly, conjuring images of Cadayle, reminding himself that she was pregnant with his child. He had gone to Pryd Town to deliver his message and to Ethelbert dos Entel in search of a greater truth.
And he had failed. He had lost everything—everything except for Cadayle and their child and her mother. They were his responsibility now. That alone, and not some unknown woman being dragged away by ruffians in a land he did not know.
The stench of death continued to waft up about him, a pungent reminder of the awfulness of this place,
a reminder that he could not stay here. Instinctively he looked west where the sun was low in the sky. He went back down the wall, exited the keep, and moved swiftly away to the north. He had almost made the road again, stubbornly telling himself with every step that this was not his fight and not his business.
But Bransen could not bring himself to cross that road. He turned about, to the south, in pursuit of the men and the captured woman. He turned his back to the north and to the responsibility he had proclaimed as his lone care and to the lie of dispassion.
As the miles rolled out beneath his feet he was surprised to find that those he pursued had not stopped with the setting sun but had continued on long into the night. Finally he spotted their campfire on a distant hill to the south. The ground was more broken now, for he had entered the foothills of the Belt-and-Buckle. Exhausted and hungry, Bransen still did not stop until he had drawn very near, almost to the base of the rounded hillock.
He heard the woman crying and screaming for someone to stop.
“Ye belong to me now, wench!” a man yelled back. “I’ll take ye as I want ye!”
“Me husband,” she pleaded.
“Dead and pecked by the crows!” the man shouted back. And she began screaming again.
Bransen crept up the side of the hill as fast as he dared, trying to remain silent and unnoticed. For there were others up there, he realized, and the top of the hill was bare of trees or any other cover he could discern.
Flat on his belly he crawled along, serenaded by the woman’s soft cries and the grunts of her attacker. He peered over the hill and spotted them off to the side behind the two burning campfires where they lay behind a log, the man atop the woman, having finished his deed. But Bransen could hardly look that way, more surprised to see other women and children all about the place, some curled on the ground and sleeping, others milling about, their eyes vacant, their faces and hair filthy with soot and mud.
A pair of young boys began to fight, one quickly gaining the advantage. He knocked his opponent down and dropped atop him, straddling him and pummeling him mercilessly.
Those nearest adults seemed not to notice, and several other children just giggled as the beating continued.
The boy continued to rain blows on his victim, then, to Bransen’s horror, reached out and picked up a small stone and smashed it down hard on his opponent’s face again and again.
“Don’t ye kill him,” a man instructed. “Just hurt him.”
Bransen found it hard to breathe. Across the way, the rapist stood and brushed himself off, then kicked the prone woman and spat upon her.
“Here now, don’t ye do that,” the man who had just spoken to the vicious lad called out. “My turn with her.”
He headed over toward the log, opening his belt as he went, and no one seemed to pay him any heed at all.
“And if ye try to run again we’ll do worse, don’t ye doubt,” said the man who had already had his way with the woman. He kicked her again for good measure and moved back to the main camp. One younger girl watched him with wide eyes, and he shouted at her, “Get me some food!” How she scrambled to obey!
Bransen couldn’t comprehend the scene before him. He tried hard to keep his wits about him, to take a measure of the opposing force. He noted only three men—the ones he had seen from the keep wall—then he spotted a fourth coming up over the back crest of the hillock with an armload of wood.
This is not your fight, Bransen stubbornly reminded himself. You can’t save the world, fool. It’s all beyond you. There is no point!
He almost convinced himself to walk away. So despondent was Bransen that he nearly surrendered, there and then, to the darkness. Before he had even finished that internal battle, fate mercifully intervened, for a girl spotted him and let out a shriek, pointing and hopping.
Bransen probably could have melted into the forest at the base of the hill before any of them got a weapon drawn, but the sudden tumult shattered Bransen’s pathetic justifications for leaving. He stood up and took a few steps toward the encampment, in full view then of more than twenty sets of eyes.
He noted the man behind the log scramble up from the beaten woman, hiking his pants as he went. He noted the previous attacker reaching down to grab a short bronze sword as the man with the armload of wood dropped it all except for two sturdy little clubs, one of which he tossed to the fourth man.
Bransen walked in. They obviously didn’t recognize him as the Highwayman; he wasn’t wearing his distinctive, one-sleeved shirt or telltale mask. Had he thought about it, he would have donned those clothes, using his reputation to his advantage. Too late now.
“Leave her alone,” he said to the man still behind the log.
“What clan are ye?” the man with the sword demanded. “And what foolishness is in ye to think ye can walk into Clan Huwaerd? Get ye gone!”
“Clan?” Bransen replied skeptically. “I see four ruffians and a score of helpless prisoners.”
Some of his bluster was lost as he spoke the words, though, as the young girl who had spotted him ran over to the man with the sword and hid behind him, calling him “father” as she went.
“What is this?” Bransen asked. He pointed back to the north, toward the distant, burned-out town and keep. “Was that your village?”
“He telled ye to leave,” said one of the men with the clubs, who, along with his partner, advanced menacingly.
“No, but he ain’t going nowhere,” said the other man, slapping his club into his open palm repeatedly. “He’ll just come back for us with his friends.”
The man with the sword moved toward Bransen’s left flank. Of more concern, though, was the man who had just started with the woman reached down and produced a bow and arrow.
“Look to the trees for others!” the man with the sword ordered. All the women, save the one on the ground, and all the children rushed to different points along the hilltop and peered down into the darkness.
“Now ye tell us who ye are,” the swordsman demanded of Bransen.
“And if I do tell you, will it matter?”
The man looked at him curiously.
“I am Bransen Garibond of Pryd Town, son of Bran Dynard of the Order of Abelle and of Sen Wi, who was Jhesta Tu. None of that means anything to you, I am sure, except that you know of Pryd Town—”
“You fight for King Yeslnik!” yelled one of the club wielders.
Bransen laughed at the absurd notion, but he bit it short as he added, “I fight for no one.”
“I’m not thinking that’s true,” said the swordsman. He gave a slight nod at the archer, a movement Bransen caught clearly so that he was not surprised when the archer let fly an arrow. It came in true and fast, center of mass, but just before it stabbed into the center of Bransen’s chest he snapped his left forearm straight up and ducked, deflecting the arrow high, where it flew away into the darkness.
Nothing happened for a few heartbeats, the four men gawking at him. But all at once the archer reached for another arrow and the other three charged.
The swordsman was closest, blade leading. As soon as Bransen turned toward him he cowardly skidded to a stop and fell back a step.
Bransen turned back to meet the two others, who were swinging their clubs with abandon and shouting wildly as if they meant to simply run him over. Bransen started to retreat, as seemed the obvious route, but he noted the pattern, side to side, of the respective clubs, and marked his opening.
The swordsman to the side slipped around to keep up with Bransen’s retreat and started in again. Across the way, the archer leveled his bow.
Bransen darted forward, twisting and bending as he went to avoid the backhand from the man to his left and the forehand from the one to his right. He slipped in between those clubs, the men frantically trying to realign with him, punching out with their free hands, bringing the clubs back to bear.
Bransen stopped short and spun fast, then threw himself around backward and to his right, turning into the backhande
d reverse of the club. He crashed into the attacker’s leading elbow, hooking the man’s forearm and jerking it out straight. Understanding the movement of the man who was now behind him, Bransen dropped down diagonally, turning and tugging as he went, throwing out his foot to trip up the man he had caught. That thug rolled down over his leg just in time to catch the swinging club of his companion.
The other man, to his credit, managed to pull his strength from his swing and didn’t hit his companion very hard, but still the jolt shocked them both enough for Bransen to continue through with his move. He jammed his left hand against the man’s elbow and yanked back hard with his right, painfully straightening the arm. He tugged right through it with his leverage and his deceptive strength, pulling the club from the man’s grasp as he flipped him right over to the ground at the feet of his companion.
Bransen straightened, spun, and swung, smashing his club hard against the club of his opponent but down low enough to catch the man’s gripping fingers in the process. How he howled! His weapon flew, and he grabbed at his shattered hand, stumbling backward.
Bransen turned fast to meet the charge of the swordsman. He heard the bow fire behind him and instinctively dove diagonally down and to the right, guessing rightly that the archer was aiming left, away from the approaching leader. Bransen went right through a roll and back to his feet, barely two strides from his enemy. Instead of lifting the club to block he tossed it up into the air, calmly saying, “Here.”
The swordsman’s eyes reflexively followed the ascent, and he looked back just in time to see Bransen lunging forward, close enough for him to stab certainly, except that he hadn’t the time to react. Bransen rolled his shoulders, his right arm coming forward in a devastating, driving punch that hit the man in the face, just under the nose, and drove through, sliding up past the nose as the man’s head snapped backward.
The swordsman’s feet came right out from under him, and he dropped hard to his back. Even before the man tumbled Bransen retracted, shoving off his front foot to straighten quickly, gaining momentum as he powerfully reversed his spin so that as the next attacker—the man he had flipped to the ground—leaped in at him, Bransen’s elbow shot out behind, smashing him in the face.