“Oh, but you are insufferable, Bransen Garibond!” she said. “You owe me nothing, of course. I did not demand that you return to Castle Pellinor, did I? Nay, Dawson explained Cormack’s time of need. We trusted that you would do the right thing.”
“Perhaps I am growing tired of doing the right thing.”
“You say that because you suspect that I brought you out here for something other than a friendly conversation.”
Bransen shrugged, not denying it.
The dance went out of Dame Gwydre’s step, and she said in all seriousness, “I wanted to tell you what is happening in the world, the good news and the bad. You, above many, should know.”
“I, above many, hardly care.”
“I don’t believe that,” Gwydre replied. “But even if true you should be told, and I owe it to you to tell you myself.”
“I do care about Cormack,” Bransen admitted.
“That is part of it,” said Gwydre. “Part of the good news, I am happy to say. Brother Giavno’s outburst at the trial has caused a great furor in the Order of Abelle. Father De Guilbe is outraged to this day, of course, but he finds few allies. He is a friend of Father Artolivan, so it is said, but still, Father Premujon, at the urging of our friend Brother Jond, has decided that he will travel beside Father De Guilbe to Chapel Abelle in the spring on Cormack’s behalf. There is even talk that Father Premujon—who is a good man, I assure you—will ask that Father Artolivan overrule Father De Guilbe and offer Cormack reinstatement in the order. This is a fight that will grow within the ranks of the monks, and it is a fight long overdue, I think.”
“Anything to alter their smug faces would be a good thing and, yes, is long overdue,” Bransen agreed.
“Worth witnessing, you believe?”
That brought a suspicious, even knowing scowl to Bransen’s face, and Gwydre laughed all the more.
“Jameston Sequin assures me that our war here in Vanguard is over,” she said. “My plan was borne in desperation, I admit, and yet, because of you and your companions, it appears to have worked. The Samhaists have no stomach for continuing the fight, and without Badden guiding the monsters from the north, they have not been seen in weeks.”
“What would you have me say?”
“That this news pleases you,” Gwydre replied. “That you care, at least.”
Bransen’s pause was telling. “I do,” he admitted. “Do you think I feel no pain when I see others torn and broken? Do you think me so selfish that I care not at all for the people who are mere victims in the plays of those who seek power above all?”
“You wanted no part of this fight, or of the fight in Honce.”
“Because it is a fool’s errand,” Bransen replied. “Do I kill for Delaval or for Ethelbert? For Prydae, who ruled my home holding and who brutalized his own people? Do I kill for the sake of the Order of Abelle, who would hold a man as flawed and vicious and ultimately wrongheaded as Father De Guilbe in such high standing?”
“So we are all alike, we laird and ladies and fathers and priests?”
“I have seen little to convince me otherwise.”
“You wound me to my heart.”
Clearly uncomfortable, Bransen shifted and reached toward Dame Gwydre as if to pat her on the shoulder. But even in that, he failed and flailed, so at a loss.
“I understand!” Gwydre said with a good-natured chuckle. “I, my man at least, deceived you and sent you off to a war of which you wanted no part. You do not offend me with your honesty, Highwayman. Far from it. I find you refreshing. Only one other man would speak to me in such a manner, and he, Dawson, I consider my closest friend.”
“You humble me and shame me for my harsh words,” Bransen said, dipping a slight and awkward bow.
“I appreciate you,” Dame Gwydre clarified. “For what you did and for who you are.”
“Then accept this as an apology of sorts,” said Bransen. “Were you to wind back the days to my arrival in Vanguard and offer me a choice to go after Badden or to leave, a choice and not a bribe conditioned on your writ, I would fight for you. Of my own volition. I would go to Alpinador and again deliver the head of that foul creature.”
Dame Gwydre’s smile widened, genuine and nearly taking in her ears. “You have no idea how happy I am to hear those words from the rogue known as the Highwayman.”
“Don’t take it as an invitation to press me back into service of your court,” Bransen quipped, and Gwydre laughed again.
“The war is over—do keep your blade in its sheath. I ask nothing more of you, but I wish to make you an offer. Father Premujon and the others, including Cormack and Milkeila, will sail to Chapel Abelle as soon as Dawson deems the gulf safe for passage.”
“Cormack should not do that.”
“He is safe—his trial is ended and cannot be redone,” Gwydre assured him. “And I intend to go with them, so long as the peace holds up here and I am not urgently needed in my court. I would like you to sail with me—you and your family, I mean. I don’t know that I will be needed at Father Artolivan’s chapel. I expect not, truly, but there are other matters in the southland I wish to discern, not the least of which the disposition of my Writ of Passage for Bransen Garibond, Cadayle, and Callen.
“Laird Delaval is dead, Bransen,” she added as the man mulled over her offer. “But Laird Ethelbert cannot claim victory, since he and his army are being pushed back to his holding in the most furious fighting of all. I do not know what will transpire across Honce, but the situation is obviously dangerous.”
“Dangerous and none of my business,” said Bransen.
“You say that now, as you said it when first you came to Vanguard,” Gwydre reminded.
“Would you have me save the world?” Bransen answered with obvious sarcasm. “Is there another Badden to slay?”
“I know not what needs to be done, nor do you. I go to learn and to see if there is any way in which I might use my standing to help the people who suffer because of the prideful fighting between two powerful lairds. Do you not wish to learn the same? Do you not wish to learn if you are truly free to walk the lands of Honce? You owe that much to your wife, I would expect.”
Bransen sighed as if cornered.
“And to Cormack, as your friend, if there is anything you can contribute to his argument against Father De Guilbe.”
“I will go,” Bransen said suddenly, silencing her further comments. “I know not how long I will stay, and I intend to hold you to your promise that I will be delivered to a location of my choosing.”
“Our agreement holds,” Gwydre assured him.
Bransen looked at her with a sly smile. “You believe that I will wish to entwine myself in this fight,” he accused.
With a light laugh Dame Gwydre turned away. Bransen watched her dance off through the continuing snowfall. Was she asking too much of him?
Or, he wondered, was he demanding too little of himself?
The world, his world, was on fire. How far could the Highwayman run?
PART TWO
THE WIDER WORLD
T
he woman has shaken me to my core, has taken my expectations and twisted them into unrecognizable knots.
I am not unused to such unsettling realizations of the true nature of the powers of Honce. From Father Jerak and the brothers of Chapel Pryd to that horrid Prydae who so disfigured Garibond, my father, I came to understand that many of the qualities that put a man in power in the first place seemed also to disqualify him from properly tending the flock in practice. So much had this axiom become a mantra for me that I was hardly surprised by the idiocy of Prince Yeslnik, who is truly an exaggerated collection of every flaw I had ever seen in those who had attained power. Yeslnik, so much a caricature, did not surprise me in the least and did not shake me (other than to make me shake my head in resignation).
I had known minor exceptions, of course—Brother Reandu comes to mind, and even Brother Bathelais had moments of great decency. But truly, Yeslnik the
liar, the fool, the pretend hero, the hapless lover (judging from his wife’s desperation), and, ultimately, the coward, embodied the extremes of my expectations of a laird. How appropriate, it seemed, that he who would stand above the lairds would be even more the fool than they.
But now I have come to know Dame Gwydre. I hardly know how to speak to her, to view her; I have to admit that she frightens me. I don’t believe her to be secretly sinister and conniving. Quite the opposite! The idea that there is no underlying deception and selfish intent about the woman is a notion foreign, one that mocks me in my certitude and endless petulance.
Nay, she doesn’t frighten me, except that she makes me afraid that she will shame me. For if this perception of goodness I believe of Gwydre is indeed the truth of Gwydre, then who am I? No hero, certainly.
When the snow fell deep this cold winter in Vanguard, the people of Pellinor struggled to retrieve enough wood to keep warm. With the drifts piled high, the forest was not safe for individuals or small groups to venture. So Gwydre, as she has apparently done many times before, held a grand ball in Castle Pellinor, with all invited. All! Every person about the town of Pellinor. And with the great celebration came a feast that lasted for days. And during that time, at Gwydre’s behest, Dawson and her soldiers ventured often into the forest and retrieved piles of wood for the folk of Pellinor to take with them as they at last departed the castle.
And Gwydre ate with them and danced with them and led them in song. I looked upon her and wished that she were not so atypical a laird, that all the people of Honce, of all the world indeed, could be so blessed to live under the care of such a ruler.
She shames the callous heart of the Highwayman. She frightens me because she did something to me. Dame Gwydre made me, at long last and against all expectation, hope.
Hope. She made me hope. She made me believe that the world could change. But hope is not as easy an emotion as is surrender. For that is what I have done, Dame Gwydre has shown me to my great discomfort. When the Stork became the Highwayman, the Stork surrendered.
I care not for the war in the south, so I declare. I cared not for Gwydre’s war, so I declared. I fought only because of Gwydre’s deception and blackmail. Beyond Cadayle and Callen and my own needs, I declared myself removed, uncaring, not responsible.
She shames me, and the hope I feel when I look upon her scares me.
Who would I be had I been raised in Pellinor instead of Pryd? I doubt that the Highwayman would exist, and that is a notion that bothers me profoundly. But how might that persona of the Highwayman have grown in such a climate as Pellinor? Would Father Premujon have treated me as the brothers in Chapel Pryd treated the Stork? Would Gwydre have allowed it?
No. Not up here. Up here, even the relationship between Castle Pellinor and Chapel Pellinor is a very different one than that I experienced in Pryd Town. Back home, the brothers were terrified of the laird and would not go against him even when they knew he was wrong. But here Premujon and Gwydre are friends, and she supports him in his work most of all when his work is benefiting the people, the common folk. Both Gwydre and Premujon act as if they serve the folk and not as if the people were put here as pawns for their pleasure.
Perhaps it is the harsh climate of Vanguard and the simple pragmatism the difficult environment demands. Up here, the folk stand as one, or die alone. Would the common folk suffer the selfishness so typical in the southern lairds and nobles? Would they sit idly by, freezing and dying, while their leaders of castle and chapel hoarded the winter supplies?
I doubt they would . . . but as I reflect on this matter, I realize that I am applying a pragmatism to my observations of character that is unfair to Dame Gwydre. I so clearly see her heart in the way she dances in a snowstorm or sings to the people of Pellinor.
She would be a good leader of good heart wherever her holding. And had he grown among the pines of Pellinor, the Highwayman would not exist.
And Garibond Womak would still be alive. Alive and friend to Bran Dynard and Sen Wi.
So it is not Gwydre I fear in the end but the hope she lights in my heart and soul, in the way she forces me to feel responsibility beyond the boundaries of my own needs.
Had I known the light that is Gwydre before, I wonder what I might have answered when she came to me with no threat or deception and asked me, for no reason other than the good of the folk of Vanguard, to go north and do battle with Ancient Badden.
She has shaken my beliefs to the core.
—BRANSEN GARIBOND
ELEVEN
Just As the King Had Planned
W
e’re driving them hard,” shouted Erolis, a nobleman from Pryd who had so distinguished himself in the fighting that Bannagran had given him one of the ten chariots in his elite team.
Bannagran could only nod as others chimed in above the din of pounding hooves and rolling wheels. They had started to the north on the hunt for the Highwayman, as Yeslnik had demanded. That alone had bothered Bannagran more than a bit, given the Highwayman’s reputation among the commoners. Indeed, Bannagran had let Bransen go after the death of Prydae for just that reason, a potential revolt among the people of Pryd Holding.
Word had caught up to them after their departure, though, that King Yeslnik was soon to be engaging the forces of Laird Ethelbert far to the east of Pryd, along the western banks of Felidan Bay, the long inlet that separated Honce proper from the large peninsula of the easternmost regions known as the Mantis Arm. Yeslnik had recalled Bannagran with all speed.
And so the good general had followed his orders, wheeling his group of ten back to the south and then east, rumbling to the limit of the horses’ strength along the cobblestone roads. They were getting close, Bannagran knew, and that was a good thing, for more than a few of the twenty horses drawing the war chariots would need to be replaced.
“Smoke in the northeast,” Erolis called as they neared an intersection in the road.
“Stay east,” Bannagran replied. He knew this land—he and Prydae had battled powries throughout this region, driving them to the sea, years before.
“Some town is burning,” one of the others said.
“Good enough for them,” another added.
Within a half hour, they came upon the stragglers of Yeslnik’s rearguard and, they learned, southern flank.
“Ah, but never have me eyes looked upon a more blessed sight!” cried one man—a man from Pryd, Bannagran knew.
Bannagran pulled his chariot up beside the beleaguered footman. “You are Farmer Grees?”
“Ah, Laird Bannagran,” the man replied with a low bow.
Bannagran scowled at him from the chariot for using that title, one not yet officially proclaimed. “Where is King Yeslnik?”
Grees halfheartedly waved generally north.
“The town and smoke?”
“Nay,” Grees answered. “That’d be Milwellis, we’re hearing. The king’s due north of us—might even be back to the west a bit.”
Bannagran didn’t have to probe further to get the hidden meaning there, that Yeslnik, as usual, was safely to the rear of the fighting.
“Can ye go to him?” the man asked suddenly. Bannagran looked at him with surprise.
“Might I be speaking without getting yer spear in me chest?” Grees asked, his voice low.
“What are you about?”
“About to die, I’m guessing,” Grees answered.
Bannagran scowled; behind Grees several other footmen shifted nervously.
“Go and tell King Yeslnik, I beg ye,” Grees pressed.
“Tell him what?”
“He’s got us spearheading straight east,” Grees explained. “And the front groups’re making great gains. The enemy’re falling back before them.” He sighed and lowered his voice as he added, “None to the south of us. None of us, I mean, guarding our flank. But there’s a road there.”
Bannagran looked to the east, then the south, trying to get a feel for the situation. Farmer Grees was
a veteran of many battles, as were most of the men of Pryd. His tone spoke volumes more than his actual words.
“Mighty spearmen are the folk o’ the Mantis Arm,” Grees added. “Who spend their days harpooning the fishes.”
“They’ve crossed the bay?”
“Aye, Prince Milwellis hit them hard in the north and cut them off from the mainland—he’s built a fortress at the north tip o’ Felidan to keep the men o’ the peninsula on the peninsula. But aye, they’ve got boats a’plenty.”
“You’re being flanked to the south,” Bannagran reasoned. “While the Felidan Bay villagers retreat, their allies from across the bay are sliding in beside and behind you.”
Grees didn’t have to answer.
“How many? How far west have they pushed? And how far east are the front runners of your surge?”
“I can’t be knowing, but they’re there. They’re falling too fast afore us, letting us push east and stretch thin. These folk are no strangers to the way of battle—they’ve been fighting powries all their lives.”
“Why are you men back here?” Erolis interjected, accusation heavy in his tone. “If your line advances with all speed, then why are you so far behind?”
Farmer Grees pointed down at his foot, which was heavily bandaged, but showing blood through the wrap. “All of us here been taking hits and can’t keep up.”
“And when you heard of the southern flank, you hesitated more,” Bannagran remarked, and Grees and many others shifted uncomfortably.
“Good fortune that you did,” Bannagran said even as Erolis started to launch another accusation. “And good fortune that you are rested.” He turned to his charioteers. “We go south, and these men will run behind us. We’ll cut the enemy off along the road.” Turning back to Farmer Grees, he instructed, “Your men come in behind us and turn fast to the east. Our enemies will be in rout and retreating, so run among them and kill them.”