“There is a third course open to you,” Jilseponie said to Braumin.
The bishop glanced at Viscenti, who quieted at once, and both turned to Jilseponie, eager for her counsel.
“Defy Aydrian with a soft wall of resistance,” Jilseponie explained. “Make a stand here if you must, but do not include all of your resources in that stand. Allow your line to bend, all the way to Vanguard.”
Bishop Braumin looked even more intrigued.
“Only the unified opposition of the folk of Honce-the-Bear holds any hope of defeating Aydrian now,” Jilseponie went on. “He holds the Kingsmen army of Ursal at his disposal, the Allheart Knights among them, and many thousands more in reserve, gathered from the lands about Entel. The people do not know enough to deny his claim as their king, particularly when that claim is made at the end of an Allheart lance. Such a common denial of Aydrian, if it is to grow, cannot begin until Prince Midalis publicly makes his claim to the throne.”
It all made sense, of course, except …
“You ask me to surrender the city,” Braumin remarked.
“I ask you to save the garrison for Prince Midalis,” Jilseponie corrected. “For he will need every ally he can find before this is ended.”
“You will go to him?”
Jilseponie stepped back and offered no reply, for in truth, she hadn’t thought that far ahead. A moment later, she just shook her head. “I’m going home,” she said softly. “At this time, I need to go home.”
Master Viscenti started to argue that course, but the perceptive Braumin understood clearly that nothing more could be said here, and so he held up his hand to silence Viscenti. He reached out and took Jilseponie by the shoulders, looking her right in the eye.
“Forgive my … forgive our callousness,” he said softly. “You have been through so very much. You owe the people of Honce-the-Bear nothing, my friend. Go home and heal, Jilseponie.”
“Bishop!” Viscenti started to say, but again Braumin stopped him with an upraised hand. He walked away from Jilseponie then, moving quickly to his desk, and from the top drawer, he produced a small pouch.
“Take these with you,” he offered, handing the bag of gemstones to Jilseponie. She motioned as if to resist taking them, but Braumin only pushed them toward her more forcefully. “Use them as you see fit, or use them not at all. But you must have them.” He looked deeply into her eyes, the caring look of a dear friend, and nodded. “Just in case.”
Jilseponie took the pouch, and the two monks moved for the door.
“A soft wall of resistance?” Bishop Braumin asked.
Jilseponie merely shrugged and walked out of the room and the abbey, the two monks in tow.
“It is my fervent hope that you will find your heart and your strength and join us in this battle,” Bishop Braumin said to her. “We have fought so hard to win the Abellican Church to Avelyn’s vision, to bring the common man more fully into our protective fold. Marcalo De’Unnero would destroy all that we have accomplished in short order, I am sure.”
“Avelyn’s vision?” Jilseponie echoed softly and skeptically, for she wasn’t even sure of what “Avelyn’s vision” might truly be. She thought of the “mad friar” then, the drunken brawler she had met in a tavern not far from Pireth Tulme when she had been serving in the Coastpoint Guards. This man who had defeated Bestesbulzibar in the bowels of Mount Aida at the cost of his own life. This man who had taught her the gemstone use. What might Avelyn think of all of this? Would he, perhaps, be as weary of it all as was she?
A wagon pulled up then, unexpectedly, and all three turned to regard the driver, a diminutive man.
“Come along,” Roger said to his friend. “We’ve a long road ahead and I intend to make a good start this day.”
Despite her glum mood and true despair, Jilseponie Wyndon Ursal could not deny her smile at the sight of Roger and Dainsey sitting in a wagon laden for the road.
The long road that would take her home.
Chapter 8
The Lesser of Two Evils
“THEY WEAR THE COLORS OF A JACINTHA LEGION,” THE TALL AND LEAN PAROUD informed Pagonel, his accent, like his name, telling the mystic that he was from the southweastern corner of Behren, the Cosinnida region. Pagonel had been surprised, when Yatol Wadon’s assistant had introduced him to the three Jacintha ambassadors, to find a Cosinnida man among them. Cosinnida was the province of Yatol Peridan, after all, who was causing dire troubles for Jacintha by pressing the war against Yatol De Hamman. It merely illustrated to the mystic how tumultuous the situation in Behren truly was at that time, with no real battle lines delineated.
The two men, along with the other two emissaries from Yatol Wadon, stood on a rocky bluff to the north of Dahdah Oasis, looking down at the sanctuary. They had marched out of Jacintha a few days before, bound for Dharyan-Dharielle to strengthen the alliance between the great cities. Tipped off on the road by some merchants, the foursome had veered to the north and the higher ground.
Sure enough, a legion had entered Dahdah, nearly three hundred soldiers, and wearing the colors of one of the Jacintha garrisons.
“Perhaps they are merely tardy on their return, and have at last found their way home,” remarked Pechter Dan Turk, the oldest of the ambassadors. He was a short man with thick gray hair hanging to his shoulders and a great gray moustache. His skin was ruddy and, like those of so many of the open desert people, his eyes seemed locked in a perpetual squint.
“They have wandered for months?” the third of the Jacintha contingent, a strong-jawed and heavily muscled man named Moripicus, asked doubtfully. “Even the stupidest of soldiers understands that the sun rises in the east, yes? And since Jacintha lies on the eastern coast, finding their way home should not have presented much of a challenge, yes?”
“They are not returning to Jacintha,” Pagonel observed, and the other three looked at him curiously.
“Not directly, at least,” the mystic clarified. “They are loading their wagons with supplies—more than an entire army would need for the march from here to Jacintha, especially if that walk was to be along the open and easy road.”
That was true enough, all of them realized as they looked more closely. The group had come in to Dahdah to resupply for an extended march, it seemed, and likely a march into the barren desert.
“Bardoh?” Moripicus asked.
“That is what we must discern,” said Pagonel.
Pechter Dan Turk laughed aloud. “If they are allied with Yatol Bardoh, then they will be less than welcoming to the emissaries of Yatol Mado Wadon!”
“And even less welcoming to a Jhesta Tu mystic, one might suppose,” added Paroud.
Pagonel nodded but didn’t respond. A moment later, he started walking toward the oasis.
“Where are you going?” Moripicus demanded.
“To get some answers,” replied Pagonel. “You three can go in if you choose, but move to the road back in the east a bit, and enter openly along it. We have no affiliation, and no knowledge of each other. I will rejoin you to the west of the oasis this same night.”
“What are we to do now, then?” Paroud asked, as soon as Pagonel moved out of sight.
“We might just move around the oasis from the north and await the mystic on the western road,” Pechter Dan Turk offered.
“With our skins empty of water?” Moripicus asked.
“With our skins still on our bodies!” Pechter Dan Turk replied.
“Information is our ally here,” Moripicus scolded him. “We go to grovel at the feet of the smelly To-gai-ru and we do not even know for certain that Yatol Bardoh is assembling any force against Yatol Mado Wadon. There lie our answers.”
“We can walk right in,” Paroud agreed. “Greetings, possible traitors! We are ambassadors from Yatol Wadon, whom you wish to kill!”
Moripicus narrowed his eyes as he stared at the sarcastic man from Cosinnida.
“We are no such thing,” Pechter Dan Turk put in. “We are … merchants. Y
es, merchants! Traveling the road about Jacintha.”
“Without wares?” Moripicus said dryly.
“In search of wares!” Pechter Dan Turk insisted.
“Without money?” said Paroud, before Moripicus could point out that obvious shortcoming in the disguise.
“We … we,” Pechter Dan Turk stammered over a few possibilities, then just shook his head and blurted, “We buried our money in the desert nearby! One cannot be too careful about thieves, after all!”
“Yes, and when we tell that to hungry renegade warriors, they will take us into the desert at spearpoint, and when we cannot give them any money, they will run us through and leave us for the vultures to pick clean!”
“But …” Pechter Dan Turk started to argue, but he was cut short by Moripicus.
“We are scholars.”
The other two looked at him doubtfully.
“Is not the Library of Pruda now reassembled in Dharyan-Dharielle?” Moripicus asked. “So we will become scholars, walking the road to the Library of Pruda, and if any of the soldiers down there take exception to that library now being in the city of the Dragon of To-gai, we will simply agree. Tell them that we despise the thought of our great scholarly works being in the hands of dirty Ru dogs.”
“Yes, we are going merely to ensure that the precious works survive,” Paroud added, catching on to the possibilities.
“Scholars, scholars from Pruda, and without political aspirations or affiliations, except that we all hate the To-gai-ru,” said Moripicus.
“An easy enough mask to carry,” agreed Paroud, who did indeed hate the To-gai-ru.
“Then why go to Dharyan-Dharielle?” asked the oblivious Pechter Dan Turk. “The place is crawling with Ru!”
The other two just looked at each other and rolled their eyes, then started back to the southeast, to strike the road far out of sight of Dahdah.
Several merchant caravans were in the oasis, as usual, but the place was dominated by the presence of the soldiers. They were everywhere, at the water’s edge and mingling about every caravan with impunity. They inspected wares, and simply took what they wanted.
Pagonel felt the eyes upon him as soon as he walked into the oasis area. He was not wearing his Jhesta Tu robes for this dangerous return trip, but he certainly did not seem to fit in among the dirty rabble and loud merchants. He took care not to make eye contact with any of the warriors, so as not to begin any confrontation. He was here to gather information, not start a war.
He moved quietly across the shade of a line of date trees nearer to a merchant wagon, whose owner was apparently confronting a soldier.
“You cannot just take what you wish to take!” the merchant cried, and he reached for a silken swatch the soldier held.
The soldier pulled his hand back and blocked the advancing merchant with his free hand. “I have a sword,” he warned, flashing a toothy smile.
The merchant backed off a step and waved his fist in the air. “I have a sword, too!” he insisted.
“Ah yes, but I have three hundred swords,” the soldier retorted, and he nodded. Three other men descended on the poor merchant, herding him back toward his wagon, slapping and kicking him repeatedly, and laughing all the while.
“The authorities in Jacintha will hear of this!” the man cried. “I have friends in Chom Deiru!”
That was all the soldiers needed to hear, but not to any effect the merchant had hoped. He was still waving his fist in the air when the nearest soldier drew out a dagger and plunged it into his side. He wailed and fell away—or tried to, for the other two similarly drew out knives.
The three fell over him, stabbing him repeatedly even as he slumped down to the ground.
Pagonel had to fight every instinct within him not to intervene, reminding himself repeatedly that to do so might hold greater consequences than the unfortunate murder of this one man.
“Are you a friend of this man?” the soldier with the clean hands and silk swatch demanded when he turned to see Pagonel standing there watching.
“I am a simple traveler,” the Jhesta Tu mystic replied.
“To where? To Jacintha?”
“I have come from Jacintha,” Pagonel answered. “My road is west.”
“He’s got Ru blood in him,” said one of the men who had finished with the dead merchant.
“Yeah, he’s got the stink of Ru all about him,” agreed a second, and all three moved to join their companion, who was holding the stolen silk. Two even fanned out a bit, somewhat hemming in the mystic.
“You know what we do to Ru in Behren, eh?” remarked one of the bloody knife-wielders, and he brandished his blade threateningly.
Pagonel kept a proper amount of attention on the blustering man, but he noticed the arrival of his three companions, then, wandering into the oasis area down the eastern road. They nodded and bowed to every soldier they passed, trying to be diplomatic, even submissive, but in truth doing nothing more than drawing attention to themselves.
They made their way quickly past the various groups of soldiers, walking swiftly, but then Paroud noticed Pagonel, the soldiers moving in closer, and he stopped short, all three gawking in the mystic’s direction.
“I desire no trouble, friends,” Pagonel said quietly. “I have come from the southland, following rumors of turmoil. My masters wish to help, if they may, in healing Behren’s wounds.”
“Wounds?” asked the soldier with the silk. He looked to his friends and they all laughed. “All that is wounded are the coffers of the imposter Chezru! They have been torn asunder, their gems and jewels spilling out.”
“Spilling out to our waiting hands!” another added.
“You march to Jacintha?” Pagonel asked.
“You ask too many questions,” one of the men retorted. “Who is your master?”
“Yes, tell us where we must send your headless body,” another added. The two men who had fanned out to each side moved in closer then, brandishing their knives dangerously close to the seemingly unarmed mystic.
Pagonel glanced to the side, to see another group of soldiers closing fast on his three traveling companions. Those three noticed it as well.
Paroud broke left, screaming as he ran back toward the east. He would have been captured almost immediately, and likely gutted, but then Moripicus pointed at Pagonel, and shouted, “Jhesta Tu!”
Every soldier in the area froze in place, and all eyes turned toward Pagonel.
The mystic felt the soldiers at his sides move in a bit closer, felt them tense up, as if preparing to strike.
He moved first, snapping his hands up suddenly, smashing the back of his fists into their faces. The man directly before him struck out hard with his knife, a slash aimed for Pagonel’s face.
But the mystic was far below the strike as the blade cut past, having dropped into a sudden low crouch.
Pagonel punched across with his right hand, smashing the inside of the soldier’s right knee and buckling his leg out. A quick reversal had Pagonel’s elbow smashing the inside of the man’s left knee, similarly widening his stance, and then the mystic brought his hand back to center and turned his arm to the vertical and delivered the coup de grace by punching straight up between the stunned man’s widespread legs.
He lifted the soldier right off the ground with the weight of the blow, and given its location, all fight went out of the soldier. The man sucked in his breath, clutched at his groin, and slowly tumbled down to the side.
Pagonel wasn’t watching, though. As soon as he delivered the crippling blow, the mystic brought his hand back in close and leaped a sideways somersault to the right, landing lightly on his feet in perfect balance and coming up suddenly and ferociously before the knife-wielding soldier. He led with his forearm as he rose, pushing aside the man’s feeble attempt to stab at him, then driving his arm across the man’s face, knocking him backward.
As Pagonel retracted, the soldier was still stumbling, his head still up from the blow, offering a fine openin
g at his throat.
Pagonel’s stiffened left hand took that opening, though the mystic held back enough so that he did not actually kill the man.
The soldier gasped and fell away and Pagonel swung back the other way to meet the charge of the third.
More to dodge it than to meet it, actually, for the mystic fell suddenly again, spinning as he dropped and swinging one foot out wide to trip up the advancing soldier.
Up came Pagonel as the man flailed and stumbled in a turning descent. The mystic’s fists hit him, left, right, left, on the chest as he went down, and Pagonel leaped away.
It had all happened in the blink of an eye, it seemed, and so the soldier holding the stolen silk swatch was still not even ready with any kind of defense. He flailed his arms wildly before him to fend off the mystic, but Pagonel wasn’t really engaging him anyway, but rather, was using him as a springboard to the top of the merchant’s wagon. A great leap brought the mystic up high and he planted his foot on the flailing man’s shoulder and leaped away from there, easily gaining the wagon roof and rushing across to the other side.
Paroud heard Moripicus’ cry, and though he felt sorry that his friend had betrayed Pagonel, he was certainly glad for the personal reprieve! For those soldiers who had begun to take up the chase on him stopped suddenly and swung back the other way.
The frightened man mingled into a group of merchants, scrambling through their ranks and out the back side of their wagons, making his way to the lower ground by the water’s edge. Then he ran along that edge, using the distraction to get all the way out of the oasis. He ran flat out down the eastern road, back the way he had come, back toward the safety of Jacintha.
Across the way, Pechter Dan Turk similarly used the distraction to move away, but he, unlike his companion, headed for the west.
Moripicus hesitated at his spot for a short while, watching Pagonel’s furious escape attempt, and even whispered, “Forgive me, mystic,” then turned to follow Pechter Dan Turk.
He turned right into the blocking chest of a soldier, though, and one who had obviously heard his soft plea for forgiveness.
DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) Page 185
