The Ancient sotfk-2

by R. A. Salvatore

  Cormack hushed her again, and tried to kiss her, but she avoided him. “I know,” he said. “And you know how I feel about it.” She started to argue, but he wouldn’t let her get a word in at that point. “And you know what I just did. Have you forgotten so quickly?”

  “Of course I’ve not!”

  “Then kiss me!” Cormack said playfully, trying desperately to turn this conversation to a lighter place.

  Milkeila recognized that and smiled, and did indeed kiss Cormack, surrendering to him as they slid down together to the sandbar. As they fumbled with their clothing, Cormack paused and brought forth the gemstone necklace. Milkeila didn’t argue with him as he placed it over her head.

  Sitting idly and alone in a small boat out on the lake, Brother Giavno listened to their lovemaking as he had listened to their conversation, marveling at how well sound traveled across the dark waters on a night so clear.

  He wasn’t really surprised that Cormack had been the one to betray them, of course, but it stung him profoundly nonetheless. The young and handsome brother, so full of fire and potential, strong of arm and strong with the gemstones, simply did not understand the meaning of what it was to be an Abellican brother as they moved toward completion of the first century of their Church. Cormack’s way was the art of exhaustive compromise, and that in a world full of enemies who would accept such Abellican concessions only as a pretense for their continued road to dominance.

  For the Abellicans were at that time involved in a great struggle with the Samhaists, who would not forsake their old and brutal ways. Were it not for that ancient cult, Cormack’s overly abundant tolerance of others-even of powries-might itself be tolerated within the Church.

  But that was not the case. Not now. Not with all of Honce aflame as laird battled laird and both churches, Abellican and Samhaist, struggled mightily for supremacy. The other races, human and otherwise, had no choice but to pick sides. Neutrality was not an option.

  Nor was tolerance for barbarians who would not see the truth and beauty of Blessed Abelle.

  Brother Giavno had always liked Cormack, but hearing the man fornicating with a barbarian, a shaman no less, was more than his sensibilities could handle.

  Cormack glided his craft easily onto the sand, lightly scrambling out and dragging the boat the rest of the way out of the water. Another boat rested nearby, flipped over, and the two handlers, whose job it was to make sure that all the craft were properly stored and secured whenever they were not in use, rested aside the paddles of the first returned craft and hustled over to help Cormack.

  “Father De Guilbe wishes to speak with you,” one of them told the returning sailor monk. “And what did you catch for us this day?”

  Cormack held up a pair of trout strung on a line-fish that Milkeila had given to him, as was their custom whenever they met on the sandbar.

  “You always do better when you’re out alone,” the other boathandler said. “They should put you out there every day!”

  Cormack grinned and nodded, thinking that meeting Milkeila at their special place daily wouldn’t be so bad a thing. None of the three on the beach understood the prophetic nature of the remarks, however.

  With a noticeably lighter step, Cormack trotted back up from the beach to the chapel, and indeed all of Chapel Isle seemed as if a great weight had been lifted from it, as if perpetual storm clouds had at last parted. The three-week siege had taxed the brothers greatly, and though they were not all thrilled that their prisoners had escaped, and less thrilled that four of their ranks had been lost to battle and several others would be a long time in recovering, life got back to somewhat normal fairly quickly.

  It occurred to Cormack that the work on the walls hadn’t been this frenetic since the early days of construction. Frenetic and with true zeal, he realized, for the brothers were going at their labors with a renewed sense of purpose, as if they were finally, finally, doing much more than the simple tasks necessary for day-today survival. They had built the chapel for defense and as a celebration of Blessed Abelle. Now they had seen it through its former purpose firsthand. They had witnessed what had worked and what hadn’t; already many plans had been drawn up for strengthening the walls and giving the brothers more and better options for repelling any future attackers. Mingled in with those practical plans were the requisite glorious design features, the marks of pride and gratitude to their patron.

  “Purpose,” Cormack whispered as he crossed into the courtyard. He wondered then if that need to find meaning wasn’t in some twisted way responsible for the continuing warfare among the various peoples and powries of the Mithranidoon islands. Without the ever-present enemies, could the folk of the islands find meaning in their lives?

  It was a truly chilling thought for the gentlehearted man, but he didn’t let it weight the spring in his step.

  Brother Giavno’s look at him as he entered Father De Guilbe’s office did exactly that, however, a withering gaze that immediately sent Cormack’s thoughts back to the beach, to the second, overturned boat, which had obviously been recently returned.

  “Fa… Father De Guilbe, I was told that you wished to speak to me,” Cormack managed to stutter, though his eyes never left Giavno as he spoke.

  “Where have you been?” the leader of Chapel Isle replied, and Cormack couldn’t miss the undertone of his voice, so full of disappointment.

  He turned to regard the man, and paused just a few moments to collect his thoughts and to try and sort all this out before answering, “Fishing. I go often, and with Brother Giavno’s blessing. I landed two this day-one of good size-”

  “You fish from your boat or from another island?”

  “The boat, of course-”

  “Then why were you on an island?” Father De Guilbe demanded. “It was an island, was it not? Where you met with the barbarian woman?”

  Stunned, Cormack shook his head. “Father, I…”

  This time De Guilbe did not interrupt, but the stammering Cormack couldn’t find a response anyway.

  “You freed them,” Father De Guilbe accused. “During the frenzy of battle you slipped into the tunnels and freed our four prisoners.”

  “No, Father.”

  De Guilbe’s sigh profoundly wounded the young monk. “Do not compound your crime with lies, Brother.” He paused and sighed again, shaking his head, before finishing, simply, “Cormack.”

  “Four souls for Blessed Abelle released to pursue heathen ways that will surely damn them for eternity,” Brother Giavno put in harshly. “How will you reconcile your conscience with that, I wonder?”

  “No,” Cormack said, still shaking his head. “We thought they were not eating in protest, but it was an enchantment, perhaps. Or…”

  “Brother Giavno followed you out onto the lake, Cormack,” said Father De Guilbe, and again, his omission of Cormack’s Abellican title struck hard at the young monk’s sensibilities. “He heard you with the woman-all of it. And while your lust could be rather easily forgiven and atoned for-brothers often surrender to such urges-the action which precipitated your tryst is a different matter.”

  Cormack stared at him blankly, and indeed, that was exactly how he felt. He replayed his conversation with Milkeila in his head, and quickly recognized that an eavesdropping Giavno had heard more than enough to erase any doubt, or to defeat any protests coming forth from him. So he stood there and took Father De Guilbe’s stream of anger, and he felt an empty vessel through it all, though he would not let that venom fill him.

  “How could you betray us like that?” De Guilbe demanded. “Men died to protect that treasure: the souls of four Alpinadoran barbarians. Four of your brethren are dead, and a fifth might soon join them! What would you say to their families? Their parents? How would you explain to them that their sons died for nothing?”

  “Too many were dying,” Cormack said, his voice barely above a whisper, but the room went absolutely silent as he started to speak and all heard him well enough. “Too many were still to die
.”

  “We would have held them!” Brother Giavno insisted.

  “Then we would have murdered them all,” Cormack retorted. “Surely there is nothing holy in that action. Surely Blessed Abelle-”

  The name had barely escaped his lips when a bolt of lightning erupted from Father De Guilbe’s hand and threw Cormack back hard to slam into the doorjamb. He crumpled to the floor, disoriented and writhing in pain.

  “Strip him down and tie him in the open courtyard,” Father De Guilbe instructed, and Giavno waved a couple of monks over to collect the fallen man.

  As Cormack was dragged away, Brother Giavno faced Father De Guilbe directly. “Twenty hard lashes,” De Guilbe started to say, but he stopped and corrected himself. “Fifty. And with barbs.”

  “That will almost surely kill him.”

  “Then he will be dead. He betrayed us beyond redemption. Administer the beating without remorse or amelioration. Beat him until you are weary, then hand the whip off to the strongest brother in the chapel. Fifty-no less, though I care not if you exceed the mandate. If he is dead at forty, administer the last ten to his corpse.”

  Brother Giavno felt the deep remorse in Father De Guilbe’s voice, and he sympathized completely. This business was neither pleasant nor pleasurable, but it was certainly necessary. The fool Cormack had made his choice, and he had betrayed his brethren for the sake of barbarians-barbarians who were assailing Chapel Isle at the time of Cormack’s treachery.

  That could not stand.

  Brother Giavno nodded solemnly to his superior and turned to leave. Before he got to the door, De Guilbe said to him, “Should he somehow survive the beating, or should he not, put him in a small boat and tow him out onto the lake. Leave him for the trolls or the fish or the carrion birds. Brother Cormack is already dead to us.”

  More than two hours later, the semiconscious Cormack was unceremoniously dropped into the smallest and worst boat in Chapel Isle’s small fleet as it bobbed on the low surf at the island’s edge.

  “Is he already dead?” one of the monks asked to the group congregating around the craft.

  “Who’s to care?” another answered with a disgusted snort-which pretty well summed up the mood. Many of these men had been friends of Cormack’s, some had even looked up to him. But his betrayal was a raw wound to them all, and too fresh a revelation for any to take a step back and see any perspective on this other than the harsh sentence imposed by Father De Guilbe.

  For other friends of theirs, like Brother Moorkris, had died in protecting the prisoners and the chapel. Arguing about whether or not Father De Guilbe’s decision to keep their prisoners and accept the siege and battle was not their prerogative, nor had any found the time to do so. Their jobs had focused simply on survival, on beating back the enemy whatever the reasons for the enemy being there.

  On a logical level, some might come to understand and accept Cormack’s treacherous actions. On a visceral level, the fallen brother had gotten exactly what he had deserved.

  “If he’s still alive, he’s not long for it,” another brother said.

  Giavno stepped forward and tossed a red beret, Cormack’s powrie cap, into the boat atop the prostrate, bleeding man. “It is a wound to every heart on Chapel Isle,” he said. “Cast him out that the currents might take him to a cove where the beasts will feast, and when he is gone we will speak no more of fallen Brother Cormack.”

  Giavno turned and walked away and a group took hold of the small craft, guiding it toward the water. One man paused long enough to take the beret and set it upon Cormack’s head, and when he looked at the curious stares coming at him for the action, he merely shrugged. “Seems fitting.”

  They all laughed-it was either that or cry-and brought the boat out onto the lake, giving it a strong shove to get it away from the island far enough so that one or another of the many crisscrossing currents caused by the underground hot streams that fed the lake would catch it.

  “If it washes back in, I’ll tie it to another and tow it far out,” one brother volunteered, but that wasn’t necessary. As a brilliant orange sunset graced the western sky, the stark, low silhouette of Cormack’s funereal boat at last moved out of sight.

  EIGHTEEN

  Dame Gwydre’s Trump

  He walked with a sure and determined stride that mocked time itself, for he had seen seven decades of life and could pace men one-third his age. He stood tall and broad-shouldered, but his thick muscles had slackened, and his skin, so weathered in the northern sun, had sagged a bit. Still, no one doubted that the large fist of this man, Jameston Sequin, could flatten a nose and take both cheekbones with it!

  His hair was long and gray, his beard not so long and still showing hints of the darker colors of his earlier years, and his great and thick mustache stood out most of all. He wore a tri-cornered cap, one he had fashioned, one that had been considered unique when he had fashioned it. Long and narrow, it trailed back from a roundpointed front to a flattened back that was just a bit wider than his head, and he kept a black feather along its right side, bent low to follow the line of the hat.

  At one of Vanguard’s archery contests half a century before, one won by young Jameston, of course, the man had received more than a bit of teasing regarding his rather unusual cap-until, of course, he had explained that the pointed front allowed him to properly line up his shots. Within a few months, and to this day, the Jameston, as the hat was called, was quite common among Vanguard’s hunters, thereby adding to a legend that needed no enhancement.

  It was said that he was of Alpinadoran descent, or mixed blood at least, but his long nose and protruding brow spoke of ancestors along the southeastern coast of Honce. His eyes were green, and his smile, though a bit snaggletoothed now, was infectious and strangely disarming, given the man’s imposing stature and often withering glare.

  He was smiling now, as much out of curiosity as anything else. “This far north?” he asked himself (a not unusual occurrence) as he moved far enough down the side of one mountain to better view the combatants in the dell below, which included men, apparently Vanguardsmen.

  Now more interested in the fight, which he had presumed to be another skirmish between the various troll or goblin tribes, Jameston quick-stepped closer, but to a higher perch with a better view.

  His first instinct at that point was to charge right in, for a quick glance made him realize that the small group seemed sorely outnumbered and sure to be overwhelmed. Before he had taken a step, though, he understood that such impressions didn’t begin to tell this tale. The goblins, with a dozen lying dead already, were the ones in need of support.

  Jameston drew Banewarren from his shoulder and set an arrow on its resting string as he watched the play. One man in particular, dressed in black from bandanna to boot, had the old scout nodding with approval. The man raced the length of the line, leaping and spinning, his thin sword cutting graceful and precise lines through the air and through the goblins alike. Wherever that man passed, goblins fell dead, and though an Abellican monk stood back from the action, ready to heal this man or any others who needed his magical services, Jameston doubted he’d expend much of his healing energy on this one.

  A second, burlier figure crossed the black-clothed man’s wake as he rushed out to the far left of the human defensive formation, and Jameston smiled even wider. For this one, Vaughna por Lolone, he surely knew. “Crazy V,” he whispered, her nickname, and he laughed aloud as she lived up to it yet again, throwing herself with abandon into the midst of the goblins.

  Jameston moved to find a better vantage point, testing the pull of Banewarren with every long stride.

  Vaughna carried two iron hand axes as solidly as if they were extensions of her living arms. She punched out with her left, lifting the angle of the blow to clip a goblin forehead and jerk the creature’s head back. Her second hand came in fast at the exposed neck, but she had flipped her axe into the air, hitting the goblin’s exposed throat with her stiffened fingers instead. />
  As it staggered back gasping, Crazy V put her face right in front of the beast’s, opened wide her eyes and mouth, and screamed wildly. As she did, she blindly caught her descending axe, dropped her shoulders back, and delivered a chop into the goblin’s side, bending it over in pain.

  Crazy V drove across with her left but brought it up short, evading the wounded creature’s flimsy defense. For she stepped out with her left as she swung and pivoted on that foot, bringing a trailing right-hand backhand all the way about to chop the goblin almost exactly across from the first serious wound.

  Then she spun away as if to leave but turned about suddenly and unloaded a barrage of chops, left and right, on the creature, melting it into a pile of torn muck.

  Blood-spattered and unbothered, Crazy V twirled about and sought her next target, and even took a step that way before an unusual, red-feathered arrow whipped into the goblin and sent it flying into a tree, where the arrow drove through and pinned the dead thing upright.

  Crazy V’s face erupted in a gleeful look of recognition and she yelled again, just because. Only one man in this region was known for such fletching. She rushed off to find something to hit, because she knew that between this Highwayman and his sword and their newest arrival, there soon would be few remaining targets!

  Bransen was careful that his dance did not venture too close to the ferocious Vaughna; he always took pains to avoid that one. It had nothing to do with his personal feelings, though the crass and crude woman often left him shaking his head. Rather, it was because her fighting style was so unpredictable, so out-of-control, it could interrupt the flow of his own, meticulous motions.

  He stayed nearest to Brother Jond, both to ensure that the monk was free to continue his gemstone healing and the occasional magical offensive strike and because of the friendship they had forged in previous battles.