The Dame

by R. A. Salvatore

  “Aye, might well be, but we’ll sting the Palmaristown dogs, don’t you doubt. And we won’t be sailing the seas the rest of our days remembering them we let die!”

  That last statement had the crewmen gathered about pumping their fists with determination.

  “Signal Shelligan’s,” Dawson ordered. “Fill the sails and start east and just a bit north. We’ll split them wider as they try to box us, then turn back to fight two on two to start it up.”

  “Two on four, ye mean, since they’re twice our size,” the helmsman grumbled, but the man beside him slapped the back of his head and bid him shut his mouth.

  Lady Dreamer signaled her sister ship and waited patiently as she readied her sails. All the while the five Palmaristown ships continued weaving their net, two to the south, one to the north, and two more coming straight in at the prey from the west.

  “Go then!” Dawson called when Shelligan’s Run signaled she was ready and began to tack, turning her prow east. “And don’t outrun Shelligan’s!”

  The chase was on, seven ships crashing through the swells at full sails, oak beams creaking and groaning in protest, crewmen pulling hard on the ropes to try to keep the sails angled perfectly to make the most of the strong spring breeze. As the ships leaped away, it seemed like they were holding their own against the two in pursuit. Dawson briefly wondered if they might just try to keep running.

  But the Palmaristown caravel in the north was too fast and would soon enough be able to turn south to cut them off and slow them enough for the two behind to catch and rake their decks with volleys of arrows and giant ballista bolts.

  Dawson moved to the taffrail, Cormack and Milkeila beside him, watching the run, gauging the progress of the chasing warships and the one in the north. He had to make his dramatic turn before that one started south, or it would catch them before they could get in a straight run again.

  He’d wait until the last moment, for that northern ship was outdistancing the two chasers, and the two by the coast were making no move to close, instead ensuring no escape to the coast and freedom.

  “Did you see that?” Milkeila asked suddenly, pointing. Both Cormack and Dawson turned to her, following her finger to the north, to the Palmaristown ship. Angled strangely, her prow suddenly too much pointed northward, her sails slack, her momentum stolen.

  “She hit a rock!” Cormack exclaimed, for indeed it appeared as if the ship had struck something, and hard.

  “No rocks, no reefs this far out,” Dawson muttered with certainty. He knew every bit of the gulf waters better than any man alive.

  But the other ship was stopped. She shuddered again as they watched, her masts trembling violently, her sails whipping back and forth. They were too far away to make out any distinct movements on her deck, but they saw commotion there, sailors running about.

  “What is it?” Cormack asked.

  “I’m not knowing,” said Dawson. “Break north!” he shouted to his crew. “And signal Shelligan’s to the same!”

  Heartbeats later Lady Dreamer leaned low to port, Shelligan’s Run in her wake.

  Y

  ach, but they got her!” Shiknickel cried to his crew, a score of bandy-legged powries pedaling hard to turn the screw on their deadly, ram-headed barrel boat. “Cracked her wood and told the sea to come aboard!” The powries gave a cheer.

  “Well, turn us to her, then, so’s I can wet me cap in human blood!” one cried to the agreement of all.

  “What ho now?” Shiknickel asked, glancing to the side out the one conning tower on the cylindrical, mostly submerged boat. “Two more coming to play.”

  “Two o’ her friends, or the two they were chasing?” asked one of the crew.

  “The runners. They’re thinking the way clear, they are. Yach, but we’ll show them the bottom!”

  Others cheered, but two dwarves near the back of the barrel boat glanced at each other and stopped their leg pumping. One hopped up and made his way forward.

  “What’re ye about?” Shiknickel demanded as he came to the side of the sturdy captain.

  “About seeing the flag on them new-coming boats,” answered the dwarf, a recent addition to Shiknickel’s crew.

  “Well what’re ye knowin’, Mcwigik?” Shiknickel asked, showing great deference for this one, who had been hailed as the savior of a lost powrie band that had been missing for one hundred years.

  Shiknickel stepped aside as Mcwigik moved to the small top port to climb the three-step ladder and poke his head out, staring to the south.

  “Dame Gwydre’s flag?” called Bikelbrin from the back.

  Mcwigik strained to make out the pennant. “Aye!” he said at length. “Flying the flag we seen over Castle Pellinor.”

  “The Vanguard queen who sent ye back to fetch our lost kin?” Shiknickel asked.

  “That don’t matter!” one of the bloodthirsty crew protested.

  “Shut yer mouth, or I’ll be fillin’ it with me fist!” Shiknickel barked at him, for indeed, three of the dwarves who had been retrieved from Mithranidoon, including gray-beard Kriminig, were of Shiknickel’s own clan. Kriminig, whose beret glowed as brightly as any dwarf’s in all the Julianthes, had long been regarded as a (missing) hero of the dwarf captain’s clan.

  “Aye, it’s Gwydre’s boat,” Mcwigik replied when the captain looked his way.

  “And ye don’t want us to hit it?”

  “Not with bigger boats chasing it,” Mcwigik reasoned, assured that he had hit a good note when Shiknickel’s face brightened. The captain pulled out a small, reflective device to signal the other barrel boats in the water, moving past Mcwigik to the top. Shiknickel stopped Mcwigik when he started back for his seat.

  “Stay beside me a bit,” he ordered. “We’ll be going close by them littler ones, and if they’re not what ye’re thinking they’ll be the first to drown.”

  M

  ore than one set of eyes focused on Dawson when the screaming started from the Palmaristown ship to the north. Something terrible was happening there, and Lady Dreamer was sailing right toward it.

  The warship shuddered again and her mainmast lurched over to port, and, even from this distance, the crew of Lady Dreamer could discern that it had cracked down by its base. The ship was taking on water, evidenced by a pronounced list.

  “What’s hitting her?” more than one crewman asked, voices tinged with fear.

  Dawson, too, was more than a little afraid of this course that would bring them so close to Whatever was destroying a great warship so efficiently, but when he glanced behind, he saw the two Palmaristown ships in full pursuit. To stop or even turn was to fight them; to fight them was surely to die.

  “Powries.” The almost breathless call came from a crewman working hard at the rigging at the bow.

  “Powries?” Cormack echoed beside Dawson. Cormack and Milkeila chased him to the rail.

  In the distance they saw the rounded wood and the small conning tower of a strange craft, her barrellike shape and terrible ram smashing through a swell before settling into the dark water.

  Blood drained from Dawson’s face, and a million thoughts swirled in his mind as he finally came upon a desperate plan: Join with the Palmaristown ships against the even more ruthless powrie enemy.

  ______

  Y

  ach, but we’re takin’ her down, Gwydre’s boat or no!” Captain Shiknickel cried. “ ’E’s wearing a powrie cap, he is! Double-time left!”

  As calls for the righthand turn echoed the length, Mcwigik’s eyes opened wide. “A powrie cap?” he mouthed. Gulping hard, he shoved his way back to the short tower to stand beside Shiknickel.

  Below, the dwarves shouted and sang of getting to ramming speed, of dipping their berets in the blood of men.

  Shiknickel’s call of “Hold yer feet!” stopped them cold.

  S

  hoot it dead!” one man cried, but Dawson held his hand to belay that order and to keep everyone calm as they stared at the powrie barrel boat, nearly
stopped and splashing in the rough waters barely thirty yards off Lady Dreamer’s starboard bow. A red-bearded dwarf crawled from the conning tower, holding it fast as he settled his feet on the concave deck, waves rolling over the wood.

  “Mcwigik,” Cormack and Milkeila said in unison before Dawson could mutter the same.

  “Yach, ye dogs, and know yer good deed’s not been forgotten,” the dwarf hailed them as Lady Dreamer fast closed on the barrel boat. “Ye keep on running with yer partner there, and we’ll be giving a good poke to them two that’re chasing ye, not to worry.”

  Dawson swallowed hard and looked to his companions.

  “Good Mcwigik, and the best to yer kin!” Cormack yelled, taking the cue and moving up beside Dawson.

  “Aye, and Bikelbrin’s below!” the dwarf replied.

  “How many boats have you?” Cormack called.

  “More than a few, and good ones. Ye wanting them’s wearing that flag as them’s chasing ye put to the bottom? Hope ye do, because that’s where they’re going, don’t ye doubt!”

  “You will let the ships under the flag of Dame Gwydre pass?” Milkeila dared to ask.

  “Aye, a debt repaid, and fun repaying!”

  Mcwigik gave a great laugh then as Lady Dreamer glided past, a chuckle filled with such wickedness that Dawson, Cormack, and Milkeila were glad to have him on their side.

  “We should tell them to be gone from the gulf,” Cormack said quietly to Dawson.

  “Aye, but that’s giving the waters to Panlamaris, now ain’t it?” the older Vanguard sailor replied.

  Ahead, the Palmaristown ship keeled over, dropping sailors into the cold waters. Like sharks, a trio of powrie boats rushed the scene, dwarves scrambling on the decks, serrated knives in hand. Dawson and the others on Lady Dreamer watched in revulsion as one poor woman was hauled up by the hair onto the side of the powrie boat, her throat quickly slashed open. Powries swarmed over her, slapping with their berets.

  The three on Lady Dreamer glanced back to the boat carrying Mcwigik, already pedaling fast to the south to intercept the Palmaristown ships.

  “Weren’t a thing we could do to stop them, anyway,” Dawson mumbled. Given the carnage just ahead, his justification rang hollow even to him.

  “Every choice we make, every battle we fight, takes a piece of my soul,” Cormack said and leaned heavily on the rail.

  Lady Dreamer and Shelligan’s Run continued to the northeast under full sail for a long time, long after the two ships giving chase broke apart under powrie rams, long after the screams of more Palmaristown men and women rent the early spring air, long after the remaining Palmaristown ships, hugging the coast, turned and fled west.

  Finally, the two Vanguard ships dared to separate, Shelligan’s Run turning north to deliver Gwydre’s message to Vanguard, Lady Dreamer turning straight east on their critical mission to ally with Laird Ethelbert.

  There was no cheering on either boat for their improbable escape. Nearly every sailor on both of the ships more than once uttered the justification that “the Palmaristown crews would’ve shown us no mercy.”

  They had to say that, and had to believe it, given the sight of powries with knives slaughtering helpless crewmen as they splashed about in the dark and cold waters. They had to say that, because they had left fellow men of Honce to the merciless, brutal dwarves.

  They had to say that, and so they did, and like Cormack, every one of them lost a little bit of his soul.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The Center, the Flank

  P

  rince Milwellis grabbed the man by the front of his threadbare tunic with one hand and hoisted him up to tiptoes. “And where did you find this food?” he demanded.

  The man’s eyes darted all about as if he was searching for an escape route. But the whimpering sounds that came from him showed that he realized there was no way and nowhere to run. A former soldier in Milwellis’s ranks, he and a pair of his companions had been caught in the forest, settled around a substantial stash of food they had procured from area villages. Caught so completely by surprise, the poor fellow’s companions were still sitting, soldiers towering over them.

  “We didn’t . . . we didn’t know what we was to do,” he finally blurted.

  “You are a soldier of Palmaristown. I am your prince. What more do you need to know?”

  “Please, lord,” the man gasped as Milwellis pulled the tunic up a bit more, tight against the bottom of his chin. “When the demons came north—”

  “The demons?”

  “Ethelbert’s demon warriors!” one of the other two blurted. The soldier standing over him kicked him hard in the ribs for daring to interrupt.

  “Aye, them demons,” the man in Milwellis’s grasp quickly added. “We saw them come down from the hill. They killed the knights, and we were next. And we tried to fight—” His response was cut off into indecipherable garbles as Milwellis, outraged by the reminder of the loss of his elite warriors, tugged him up even harder, and growled as he did.

  “Please, lord!” he gasped.

  “You battled them?”

  “Tried, lord.”

  “Tried?”

  The man whimpered and Milwellis threw him to the ground, turning on the other two, particularly the one who had interrupted earlier.

  “We couldn’t fight them,” the man stammered. “We couldn’t see them. Just men dying. Screaming and then dying. And they were above us in the trees! All about us—as if there were ten thousand of them!”

  “Ten thousand? How many were there?”

  “Just a few,” the man he had thrown to the ground squeaked in response. Milwellis turned back on him, hands out in confusion.

  “Demon warriors,” the other one added.

  Prince Milwellis took a deep breath. “Pull the lines in tight and strengthen the flanks,” he instructed his commanders.

  “Back to the north?” Harcourt asked quietly, moving by his leader’s side.

  Milwellis shook his head. “Back to Ethelbert dos Entel,” he said. “Back to Ethelbert’s lair.”

  “We’ve no support from King Yeslnik,” Harcourt reminded. “He has left the field.”

  “More the glory for us, then.”

  “You don’t fear Ethelbert’s demon warriors?”

  Prince Milwellis looked at him hard, and Harcourt chuckled.

  “Do you disagree?” Milwellis asked honestly.

  “Keep the lines tight,” Harcourt recommended. “Laird Ethelbert has a few tricks, but in the end, the weight of the army will win out. It’d be a great thing for your father to put our enemy back in his box.”

  “And better for Palmaristown since Yeslnik fled the field,” said Milwellis.

  “King Yeslnik, my prince,” Harcourt teased, and both men laughed.

  Strong Prince Milwellis stroked the growing beard on his face and looked to the south where lay, five days’ march away, Ethelbert dos Entel.

  N

  othing,” Bannagran assured Reandu one warm morning in Pryd Town. “Not an Ethelbert soldier to be found.”

  “And not a Yeslnik one, either,” Master Reandu replied.

  Bannagran gave him a look of mock anger.

  “And that is a good thing,” Reandu pressed on anyway. “The folk of Pryd have time to get their gardens and fields in, perhaps. It would do my heart good to see an easier summer this year than last.”

  “You’re glad to have your young brothers home at Chapel Pryd,” Bannagran said.

  “And our laird, who is needed at this troubling time,” Reandu replied.

  Bannagran nodded, knowing well that Reandu’s compliment was heartfelt.

  “King Yeslnik was truly unsettled by the Behr assassins and their efforts against Milwellis’s force?” Reandu asked.

  “Terrified. And I’m not certain that I blame him.”

  “You said the field was won.”

  Bannagran shrugged. “It seemed as if the sides were closing in on Ethelbert. The outlaw laird had no escap
e, save the sea at his back. I believe that if we had come to his walls, both forces, Yeslnik and Milwellis, Ethelbert would have boarded his private ship and fled his city, leaving it an easy victory and an end to the war.”

  “And how much better that would have been for everyone,” Reandu remarked, watching Bannagran closely as he did, suspecting a rather curious undertone here.

  “Yes,” the Bear of Honce replied more than a little unconvincingly.

  “Would you measure King Yeslnik against your old friend, Laird Prydae?” Reandu asked. “Or against Prydae’s father, Laird Pryd before him?”

  Bannagran’s expression became an open scowl then, and Reandu was quick to back off the explosive question. He knew that Bannagran was not enamored of young King Yeslnik, of course, particularly since Bannagran had offered Chapel Pryd a dodge to avoid Yeslnik’s awful order that all Ethelbert men and women held prisoner were to be put to death.

  “Compared with King Delaval, then?” Reandu pressed.

  Bannagran’s face remained very tight.

  “What will Honce be like when King Yeslnik takes full control?” Reandu asked. “What will life in Pryd be like?”

  Again Bannagran shrugged. “I cannot predict what will someday be, other than to tell you that I believe the war nears its end and that the forces of Delaval will prevail. You, too, have heard the news from Chapel Abelle . . .”

  “The edict said St. Mere Abelle,” Reandu corrected.

  Bannagran nodded. “They have thrown in with Dame Gwydre, who, I am told, opposes Laird Panlamaris of Palmaristown and King Yeslnik.”

  “Will Bannagran lead the folk of Pryd on a campaign through the wilds of Vanguard, then?”

  The question made the big man visibly shrink. The Laird of Pryd did not say that he would do as his king asked, as would be appropriate. “Let us hope for a peaceful summer, that the folk of Pryd Town can heal their wounds,” was all he said.