The Highwayman

by R. A. Salvatore

  She knew that a wondrous journey was before her, with the man she loved, on a road that would lead her farther from her home than she had ever imagined.

  Holding this sword, this tie to her past, this tangible reminder of all that she had learned, SenWi was not afraid.

  In a display of dazzling colors and sound, of snapping pennants and richly colored clothing, the entire body of Jhesta Tu mystics stood on the terraces, flying bridges, and walkways of their mountain monastery. They sang and played exotic instruments: carved flutes, harps small and large, and tinny, sharp, and strangely melodious four-stringed instruments the like of which Bran Dynard had never before seen.

  Sounds, smells, and colors everywhere greeted the couple as they made their way along the terraces. Propelled by the dance-inspiring music, Brother Dynard picked up the pace as they neared the end of that last terrace, the entrance to the long stone stairway that had been carved into the mountain wall eons ago. As they approached, SenWi paused, holding his hand and holding him back.

  The monk looked at his new wife and recognized the myriad emotions flowing through her. This was the home she had known for most of her adult life; how terrifying it must now be for her to walk down these steps, knowing that perhaps she would never again make that long and arduous climb.

  Dynard waited patiently as the moments slipped past, as the celebration continued around them. He noticed the great masters of the Jhesta Tu, standing in a line beside the stairway entrance, and he saw SenWi’s stare focusing that way.

  One by one, those masters nodded and smiled, offering both permission and encouragement; finally SenWi glanced over at Bran, smile widening, then pulled him along.

  Down the couple went, away from the Walk of Clouds.

  Neither of them would ever return.

  2

  My Dear Brothers

  My Dear Brothers of Blessed Abelle,

  I had no idea how wide the world really was. I thought that in my studies I had learned the truth of our lands, of God and of Man. I believed that within the tomes of the philosophers and the fathers, and within the writings of Blessed Abelle himself, I could find the entirety of human existence and purpose, and the hope of ascension beyond this physical experience.

  This is what we all hope, of course. This is our prayer and our faith and our reason. These truths shown us by Blessed Abelle have loosened the fear-inspired hold of the Samhaists, and rightly so!

  Knowing all of this prepared me for my Journey Proselyt, so I believed. With wisdom in hand, I could travel the world secure in my beliefs and in the notion that I could extend those truths to those I encountered. My confidence in the teachings of our faith lent me confidence in the validity of my mission. And, of course, such conviction of the ultimate truths of our faith also bolstered my own courage, for my understanding of what will ultimately befall me, of the existence my spirit will find when my physical being is no more, grants me freedom from fear of the specter of death. Faith led me out of Chapel Pryd. Faith allowed me to place one foot before the other, to travel through lands unknown and dangers unforeseen, though surely anticipated. Faith allowed me to meet peoples of other cultures and lands, and to tell them with confidence of the revelations of Blessed Abelle and the sacred gemstone gifts of God.

  With all that knowledge and all that confidence, I hardly expected to find, out there in the world so wide, cultures and ways beyond my expectations. With all the surety afforded by the supreme calm of blessed insight, I hardly expected that I would find my horizons widened even more!

  I pray to Blessed Abelle, as do we all, and to the God he showed us; and there is no tremor in my voice—not of doubt, at least!—unless it is the usual shakiness I feel when I attempt to communicate to those so far greater than I.

  And yet, my brothers, for all the beauty of Blessed Abelle and for all the completeness of serenity in his teachings, I found myself with eyes wide and heart opened once more. For I have discovered that we who follow the words of Blessed Abelle are not as alone in our faith as we assume. For I have traveled among the Jhesta Tu, generous in spirit and wise in nature. The Jhesta Tu, who understand the same sacred powers offered by our godly gemstone gifts. These mystics, ancient in their ways, are as akin to Blessed Abelle as any man might be. They, too, have found the strength of God, not from gemstones falling from heaven to the shores of holy Pimaninicuit Isle, but within themselves! With energy internal, they replicate the beauty of godly magic.

  Are these Jhesta Tu who we shall become?

  I do not know, and I do not elevate them above Blessed Abelle, surely. And yet I must insist that from these Jhesta Tu we will find a continuation of our own road to understanding. We must learn from them as they will learn from us—and they have already shown the willingness and the hope that such will occur.

  Thus I have copied the Book of Jhest, the foundation of understanding of the Jhesta Tu. In the final measure of my mission, this will prove the most fundamental and important accomplishment of all. Study the Book of Jhest, I beg each of you, with eyes wide and heart open. Infuse yourself with its wisdom and blend the revelations within with the truth we know from Blessed Abelle.

  I walked a road with sure strides, but I had no idea that the road would take my spirit to places it had not yet tread. I walked a road to enhance the lives of those pagans I encountered, but I had no idea that the road would brighten my own understanding. I am not afraid of these revelations and the greater scope of miracle, and neither should you be.

  Turn these pages with reverent hands. Bask in the words of wisdom of the Jhesta Tu, and find in them enough similarities to show us that the only falsities in our understanding of the truths of Blessed Abelle are the limitations that we naturally place upon those teachings. This was my wont, for never did I imagine the true width of faith’s horizon.

  Penned this day of Bafway, God’s Year 54

  Brother Bran Dynard, humble servant of Chapel Pryd

  3

  Prydae

  With backs stooped from hours and hours of heavy labor, the peasant workers building the road south of the holding of Pryd were most commonly seen with their hands placed firmly on their aching lower backs. They didn’t look behind them often as they dug and smoothed the ground between two forested hills, for if they did, they would see the stone tower of Castle Pryd, red pennant emblazoned with the black wolf waving in the brisk breeze above it: a poignant reminder of how short a distance they had actually gone in these weeks of brutal labor and how inconceivable—to the peasants, at least—a distance they had yet to go.

  Work had begun on the project in the summer of the previous year. The road itself was not an elaborate affair, merely a widening and smoothing of the existing southern cart paths, with the ground pounded flat and strategically reinforced with wide flagstones. Laird Pryd had been quite pleased with the progress made in the late summer weeks and those of autumn, but all those involved—particularly the peasants pressed into this hard labor—had been quite dismayed to find, when the snow had at last relinquished its grip on the land, that much of their work had been damaged by the frost heaves of the unusually harsh winter.

  “At least I won’t be needing to clean under me fingernails,” one man griped to another as they stood beside the road in a moment of respite, their heavy flagstones set on the ground before them, upright and leaning against their bare, badly bruised, and always scuffed shins.

  “That’s because ye got no fingernails,” the other replied, and he held up his own hand, filthy and battered. “By the time we make the mountain shadow, all of us’ll be missing more than that, I’m thinking.”

  “Bah, but you’re the fool, for we’re not to live long enough to ever cool in the shadows of them great mountains.”

  “Come on, then, the two of you,” came a call from up the road. The pair turned to see a soldier of Pryd, splendid astride his tall horse and in his shining breastplate of bronze. With each pace of the mount, the hard sheath of the short sword on the soldier’s
hip made a clapping sound against the iron studs of his leather skirt. “They’re needing stones up front. Now get about it.”

  Both peasants sucked in their breaths, bent their knobbly knees, and hooked their arms under the bottoms of the large stones, then hoisted them and began waddling away.

  “Weren’t that Doughbeard’s boy?” one gasped to the other when they had moved beyond the soldier’s range of hearing.

  “Aye, and ain’t he looking all pretty up there on his fine horse?”

  “So many o’ them young and strong ones do, while our old bones creak and crack.”

  “Creak and crack! And swim in the mud and horses’ shite.”

  “And work all the day and all o’ the night,” said the other, taking up the cadence and the nonsensical rhyme.

  “Until them soldiers be out o’ our sight!” the other went on, and he cackled with laughter between the grunts.

  His friend started to cackle as well, but broke off, feeling an impact and the sound of a sharp rap against the front of the stone he was carrying. He staggered back a step, managed a “what?” and then lost his words and his breath as he recognized what had struck his stone was a stone-headed throwing axe now lying on the ground before him.

  Had he not been carrying a flagstone against his chest like some unintended breastplate, that axe wouldn’t now be on the ground, he knew.

  “What are ye about?” his friend asked, staggering to a stop and turning. He followed the ashen-faced gaze of the stunned man to the weapon.

  “Bloody caps!” the man shouted, and he dropped his stone and ran back toward his friend, who still stood there, holding the stone that had saved his life, and staring slack-jawed at the axe.

  “Go, old fool! Go!” the fleeing man shouted, grabbing his friend’s shoulder as he raced past, turning him; but as he did, his friend lost his grip on the stone and it crashed to the ground, clipping his foot and bringing a great howl from him.

  The fleeing man didn’t wait, didn’t slow at all. He ran back up the road, toward that fluttering pennant, screaming “Bloody caps!” at the top of his lungs.

  “Your scouts were correct,” young Prince Prydae said to the guard captain standing beside him. They had moved secretly into place, under the cover of the brush and trees to the side of the road. A hundred yards or so farther down the road, all the workers were running and waving their arms frantically, the calls of “Powries!” and “Bloody caps!” filling the air.

  The nobleman slid his leather gauntlets onto his hands and stepped into his chariot—the most magnificent war cart in all the holding. It was bordered on three sides by waist-high walls of hard oak and leather, a running black wolf painted on either side, silver trim running the length of it. The wheels were heavy and sturdy, with spokes as thick as a strong man’s forearms, and hubs set with scythe blades that stuck out for more than a foot. The pulling team, a pair of Laird Pryd’s strongest horses, pawed the ground, eager to run.

  To any onlookers, young Prince Prydae did not appear out of place there. He stood strong and tall, his blue eyes set with determination in a face not unaccustomed to scowling. When he did so scowl, Prydae’s thick brow furrowed such that it formed a triangular chasm atop his long, thin nose; and people in all the region for many years had known to beware the “sharp shadows of anger” from the men of the line of Pryd!

  Prydae’s other features were no less powerful: a strong chin and high-boned cheeks that bespoke his noble heritage. His black hair was neatly trimmed about his ears; and thick sideburns ran down to touch the thin jawline beard, which blended in with a thin goatee and mustache, as was the fashion of the day. He wore a bronze breastplate, fitted perfectly to his muscular frame, leaving his arms bare. Many nobleman warriors had taken to wearing iron instead of the softer bronze, but Prydae preferred this piece precisely because the soft metal had allowed his craftsman to decorate it with grand designs. Right at the ridge below the breasts was a line of running wolves, three across and nose to tail. The back of the piece boasted clever swirls and geometric shapes, and even contained the “fisted P,” a letter formed from an upraised forearm and cocked and balled fist, the emblem of the line of Pryd.

  Prydae did use iron for his open-faced helmet and for the metal greaves overlaid onto thick leather breeches. His belt was leather, too, wrapped in a bright red sash of fine fabric; and complementing that, a red ribbon was tied about Prydae’s right upper arm, a black one tight about his left biceps, a sign of his station in the Holdings of Pryd. Only Prydae or his father, Pryd, could by law wear such distinctive armbands within the holding.

  “Well, my friend, shall we go and remind the peasants of the importance of the House of Pryd?” the young nobleman remarked, turning a sly smile at the garrison captain.

  “Indeed, my liege.”

  “Take care the powries, for they are no easy foe.”

  “Yes, my liege.”

  Prydae gave a nod to his trusted soldier, a man hand-picked by his father to watch over him, then cracked his whip. The horses burst from the brush, charging up the short incline to the road and thundering down onto it, the chariot bouncing wildly. Prydae held his stance securely, urging the galloping horses on even harder.

  He cracked the whip above his head and waved the peasants out of the way—and how they scrambled, diving from the road!

  Prydae soon came in sight of the one mounted soldier who had been at the forefront of the work area and was now bringing up the rear of the fleeing peasants, shouting at them to run for their lives. The man was lurching, one shoulder forward, and Prydae noted the flash of red behind him, the telltale shimmer of the blood-soaked berets.

  More peasants dove to the side; one was not quite fast enough and got clipped by Prydae’s team and sent flying from the road. Before the young nobleman, the wounded soldier seemed hardly in control of his mount anymore, but the well-trained horse veered out of the way just in time, leaving the racing chariot a straight line to the charging bloody-cap dwarves.

  Those powries were odd little creatures, each standing under five feet, with a broad, thick torso and shoulders at least as wide as those of a large man, but with spindly little limbs, whose size was exaggerated by the bulky, padded, and metal-stripped armor the dwarves wore around their barrel-like torsos and by the fact that the powries were almost always bearded, with bushy, wild-flying hair sticking out from under their caps. Prydae was seasoned enough not to underestimate the strength in those spindly limbs, though—as he was reminded now by a dwarf, near the front of their charging line, who carried an iron-headed axe so huge and bulky that few humans could have wielded it.

  With typical ferocity, the ten bloodthirsty dwarves didn’t turn from the sudden appearance and charge of the prince and his entourage.

  Prydae grasped one of the small iron-tipped spears set at the front of his chariot, and hoisted it high. Before him, the powries parted ranks, some scrambling wide, others barely sidestepping the charging horses, no doubt to try to strike at him as the chariot raced past. Prydae let the scythe blades of his wheels handle the immediate threat, the spinning weapons slicing deep into the surprised dwarves, taking a leg from one, disemboweling another, and hooking the leather tunic of a third, who was trying to scramble aside, pulling it along in a bone-crunching tumble. Then the prince threw his spear deep into the chest of a powrie at the side of the road.

  He had no time to grab another spear, for a dwarf at the left side of the road before him was already launching an axe his way. Prydae shifted his reins to his right hand and cracked his whip at the dwarf with his left. He felt the thump as the axe smacked against his breastplate and bounced aside, clipping his chin and drawing a line of blood.

  Prydae growled through the pain and pulled hard on the reins, wanting to slow his team, wanting to get back around in time to repay that particular dwarf before his soldiers killed them all.

  As the chariot slowed, Prydae let go of the reins altogether and grabbed his shield and leaped from the chariot back,
drawing his sword as he went.

  The powries were scattering now as the full force rolled over them; in those initial moments of combat, more than half were down. Prydae did not lose sight of the axe thrower in that turmoil, noting the dwarf scrambling toward the trees. Running full out, Prydae’s longer legs chewing up the ground, he caught up to the wretch in the shadows of the nearest boughs.

  The powrie spun to meet the charge, an axe in either hand. It wasted no time, but came forward wildly, slashing left and right.

  Prydae dodged back, avoiding one cut, and got his shield out in front to block the second. His arm went numb under the force of the heavy blow, and good luck alone prevented him from having his arm cloven, for the axe crunched right through his wood and leather shield, hooking in place.

  Prydae retracted the shield arm hard, tugging the axe along with it. The powrie started to tug back, but it saw the danger as Prydae stabbed ahead powerfully with his iron-bladed sword.

  Metal rang against metal as the powrie cunningly parried with its free axe. But the dwarf lost its grip on that second, trapped axe, with the prince spinning and tugging it free. Prydae threw his arm out behind him, dropping his shield and hardly interrupting his momentum as he charged forward, stabbing again and again.

  The powrie frantically slashed with its axe, clipping Prydae’s sword, though the prince was already retracting it anyway. The powrie managed to retreat enough so that the prince’s next strike fell short of the mark.

  More important to Prydae was that he saw his attacks were keeping the dwarf moving and dancing, preventing it from reaching for its third axe that Prydae saw strapped behind its left shoulder. Fortunately, since its left hand was the empty one, the dwarf could not both fight and retrieve the remaining weapon.