“I will see them dressed as such, and this very day,” Bannagran warned. “Else they will face the wrath of King Yeslnik.”
Master Reandu, who looked quite pleased with his cleverness, bowed. Bannagran and his soldiers left the chapel.
Do not hesitate,” Yeslnik said to his brutish guard. “It is imperative that you react as soon as I indicate, true and fast.”
“Me pleasure, me king,” said Brawnwin, a three-hundred-pound behemoth of a man. He carried his great axe casually on one shoulder and could wield it with one hand as easily as most men could wave a short sword. Brawnwin’s head was shaven and looked as if it had been melted on atop his massive shoulders, large rolls of skin falling down the back of that neck and great jowls that seemed to grow out of his collarbones in the front.
“They may come to his defense,” Yeslnik warned. “Their magic is potent.”
“One cut, me king,” Brawnwin assured him.
Drawing power from the imposing brute so readily at his command, Yeslnik stepped a little more lightly as they ascended the long stairs of Chapel Delaval. Until recently, this church of the Order of Abelle had been known as the Chapel of Weeping Brothers, a name dating to the slaughter of the first monks in the city, who took their own lives rather than denounce Abelle in the great tragedy of Cordon Roe. Many of the brothers currently in Chapel Delaval still referred to the place by its older name, a more fitting title this dark day.
Yeslnik and his entourage of a dozen armed and armored guards shoved past the brothers who answered their knock on the heavy wooden doors.
“Father Pendigrast, immediately,” Yeslnik commanded. “And bring forth all the prisoners delivered to you who have not yet been ushered north to Chapel Abelle.”
“The prisoners, King Yeslnik?” a young monk asked.
“At once! All of them, and in chains!” He waved the young monk away emphatically, giving him a shove with his foot when the monk didn’t move quickly enough. The hapless monk flew several feet before he stumbled and crashed into the side wall.
In moments, Father Pendigrast appeared with three of the higher-ranking brothers. He was one of the younger fathers in the order, not yet forty, promoted because of the untimely death of the father before him and the man’s two expected successors, all taken by the same bout of the grippe that had swept through Delaval City. There was no missing the trepidation on Pendigrast’s face as he moved into the nave and walked along the worn fabric of the carpet that led between the chapel’s center pews. Pendigrast had obviously expected this visit. How could he not, given that Father Artolivan’s edict of disobedience had reached Delaval City that very morning?
“I sent one of your young brothers to fetch Ethelbert’s men,” Yeslnik said as the man approached. “To save you the trouble, of course.”
Pendigrast glanced to his monk companions, closed his eyes briefly, and breathed deeply to steady his obviously frayed nerves. “You have seen the edict of Father Artolivan of Chapel Abelle, who rules my order,” he said quietly.
“Of course,” said Yeslnik. “A meritless writ I will ignore, as will you. Where are the prisoners?”
Pendigrast swallowed hard. “King Yeslnik, Chapel Delaval serves at your pleasure, as it served at the pleasure of Laird Delaval before you.”
“King Delaval,” Yeslnik sharply corrected.
“Yes, of course. King Delaval. But we serve Father Artolivan above all.”
“Get the prisoners,” Yeslnik interrupted.
“My king, I cannot,” said Father Pendigrast.
Yeslnik gave a bored glance at the giant Brawnwin, who came forward suddenly and with a single chop of his axe cut Father Pendigrast apart from shoulder to hip. The man’s legs crumbled beneath him, blood spewing for just a few heartbeats before Pendigrast fell sideways, quite dead. Monks cried out, but Yeslnik’s guards were among the most fierce and violent in all the city. Brandishing their weapons they formed a defensive ring about the king, spear tips thrusting to keep Pendigrast’s entourage back.
Yeslnik looked up. “Who is the new Father of Chapel Delaval?” he calmly asked. The monks all stammered and stuttered until finally one pointed to a man about the same age of Pendigrast.
“Congratulations, Father,” Yeslnik said to him. “Now send your minions to retrieve the prisoners.” Never taking his withering gaze from poor, frightened, newly appointed Father Dennigan, Yeslnik watched as a dozen ragged men were led into the nave in chains.
Yeslnik smiled widely, a most wicked and pleasing idea coming to him. He reached to Brawnwin’s belt and pulled the man’s bronze short sword from its sheath, then tossed it on the ground before Dennigan.
“You kill the first one,” he instructed. “Then hand the blade to the next most superior brother and on down the line.”
“I am no warrior, King Yeslnik,” Dennigan stammered.
“Kill him. Now,” said Yeslnik. “Or explain your failing to Father Pendigrast.”
Hands trembling, Dennigan picked up the sword and moved on shaky legs to the nearest of the prisoners, a young man barely out of his teens. The boy pleaded with his superior to be spared.
“Do it!” King Yeslnik cried.
Dennigan leveled the blade at the prisoner’s throat and whispered that he would try to make it clean. The boy began to cry. Dennigan dropped the blade to the floor and vomited.
“Pathetic,” Yeslnik said. “All of you!” With a flick of his white hand he motioned to two guards, who rushed to the chapel doors and flung them wide. More soldiers charged into the chapel.
“Arrest the brothers and drag those miserable wretches from Ethelbert into the streets,” Yeslnik commanded. He turned to Brawnwin. “I trust that you will find ways to execute them that will amuse me.”
He led Brawnwin’s gaze over to Dennigan, on his knees now, shoulders bobbing violently with great sobs. Yeslnik gave a derisive snort. “Wound him,” he whispered to the brute. “But leave him with enough to make the journey to Chapel Abelle bearing my response to Father Artolivan.”
“And yer answer will be?” Brawnwin asked eagerly.
“The brother who delivered Artolivan’s treasonous writ,” said Yeslnik. “Put his head in a sack.”
Brawnwin’s grin nearly took in his ears.
The next morning, Brother Dennigan felt a heavy boot kick against his back, shoving him from Delaval City’s north gate on the eastern side of the great river. In his hand he held a sack that bore the severed head of Brother Piastafan, the courier from Father Artolivan, his mouth locked wide open in a final, horrified scream. As Dennigan pulled himself from the mud to a kneeling position, a wagon rolled out of the gate and splashed beside him. Brawnwin came forth and grabbed him by the collar. With tremendous strength the brute lifted Dennigan over the side of the wagon and unceremoniously dumped him in.
“With all haste to Chapel Abelle,” instructed King Yeslnik, sitting astride his mare just inside the gate. “And you, monk, tell your Father Artolivan that when I am soon finished with Ethelbert, the Order of Abelle will be held accountable for his treason. This is our time of great need, the moment of triumph for the line of Delaval, and I will never forget that Artolivan and your church did not stand with me.”
Dennigan managed to shift to a sitting position and looked back vacantly at the young tyrant.
“Oh, about that boy you were too weak to kill,” Yeslnik said to him. “We stripped him naked, bound his hands, and put him in a sack with some poisonous snakes this morning. Perhaps you heard his screams. They lasted a pleasingly long time.”
Dennigan closed his eyes and shook with silent sobs.
I knew that Yeslnik was an impulsive child, but this surprises me,” Bransen said to Jameston when they regrouped in the woods behind Chapel Pryd after both had witnessed the conversation between Reandu and Bannagran from opposite windows high on the side of the nave.
“You knew he had done as much,” said Jameston. “We heard this at the other chapel, and you said then that Yeslnik’s mu
rderous mind didn’t surprise you.”
“Not Yeslnik,” Bransen corrected. “Nothing bad that comes from him would surprise me. The reactions of Brother Reandu and Bannagran, however… I never thought them so possessed of moral boundaries,” Bransen explained and Jameston nodded. “Especially not Bannagran.”
“Is that the reason?” asked the scout. “Or are the both of them weary already of King Yeslnik?”
It was Bransen’s turn to nod. “Could it be that King Yeslnik is so far beyond the moral boundaries that even the always callous lairds will be put off by his demands?”
“Or it might be that these callous lairds you speak of have a bit of sense and know that they can only ask so much of those they dominate before they find the tines of a pitchfork aimed their way. It didn’t take much convincing by Gwydre to get the people of Vanguard to turn and fight against Ancient Badden.”
“Yeslnik is an idiot.”
“An impetulant one, for sure,” said Jameston.
Bransen nodded, for the word sounded right. After a moment’s reflection, though, Bransen screwed up his face curiously and echoed, “Impetulant?”
“Aye.”
“I don’t know that word,” said Bransen.
“But you know what it means.”
“Impatient? Impetuous? Petulant?”
“Yes.”
Bransen gave a helpless laugh.
“It’s from an old hunter’s song,” Jameston explained. “ ‘The Herstory of History.’ ”
“Herstory?”
“You can figure that part out.”
“True, but why?”
“When you live alone in the forest you learn to speak little and listen a lot,” Jameston explained. “Putting words together to make a quicker point saves you breath.”
“Crazy V would have had a herstory,” said Bransen.
Jameston laughed. “And a good one! And more than a few who knew her would be embarredassed by the tales told of V.”
“Embarred…” Bransen started to echo, then he could only chuckle. “Red-assed? What did you call him?”
“Who? Yeslnik?”
“Impetulant?” asked Bransen.
“Fits him, don’t it?”
“Better than any. King Yeslnik the Impetulant. We should put it on his headstone. Soon.”
“Then let us start the carving of king and stone.”
Jameston paused and let the moment slip aside, watching Bransen as the young man glanced back toward Pryd, the town that had been his home for so many years.
“You are proud of the laird and the monks,” Jameston remarked. “Their actions in dodging Yeslnik’s verdict give you hope.”
Bransen considered that for a few heartbeats. “I cannot deny that. My relationship with Brother Reandu is… complicated.”
“He’s the closest thing you’ve got to family after your wife and mother,” said Jameston. Bransen didn’t argue with that assessment. “Is it time for us to go see him?”
Bransen nodded but did not move. Jameston stepped aside and motioned him to lead the way, but Bransen still made no move.
“You think it harder to test that Writ of Passage now,” Jameston reasoned. “Now you’re hoping they might honor it, and now, with such hopes, you’re more afraid of how you’ll feel if they don’t.”
Bransen took a deep breath.
“Put your mask down over your eyes and walk openly through the town,” Jameston advised. “The people here will remember you. They saved you once. Maybe once again?”
Bransen took off his farmer’s hat and his mask and shook his hair out, which parted it in the middle and showed the star-shaped brooch set on his forehead. His deerskin coat fell to the ground with the hat, and he tied the mask on securely. He looked different from the Highwayman who had left Pryd Town months before. His dark hair was longer, and, of course, he now wore the brooch. His bandanna, once a mask and hood, was now rolled so that it was just a thin strip across his eyes. But the black silk outfit was unmistakable, with one sleeve long, the other torn off at the shoulder, and with a black strip tied about his otherwise bare upper bicep.
The gasps of recognition and whispers of “The Highwayman!” began as soon as Jameston led him from the forest and onto the main road far across the way from Chapel Pryd. The pair moved toward Chapel Pryd, with many people following in their wake.
They knew the Highwayman here in Pryd Town. And they loved him.
Chapel Pryd was close to Castle Pryd, and as the monks obviously heard the approach of the Highwayman and his considerable entourage, for their courtyard gates opened before Bransen even approached, so too, he figured, had some in the castle heard.
He didn’t think about that as he walked through the chapel’s outer wall, a flood of memories greeting him the moment he stepped again onto Chapel Pryd’s courtyard. Up the white stone path, the doors to the chapel proper were also opened, brothers peering with obvious apprehension.
Bransen moved into the large foyer, Jameston beside him, and before he could even ask the astonished young brothers standing there to see the leaders, Master Reandu appeared flanked by several others.
“Bransen!” Master Reandu blurted. “What are you doing here? Are you mad? You left under condition of a strict penalty.”
“Good to meet you, too,” Jameston muttered so that only Bransen and a couple of nearby monks could hear.
“And I return to insist that the condition be revoked,” Bransen said.
“Are you a madman?” Reandu repeated, apprehension growing on his face.
Bransen reached over his shoulder and produced Dame Gwydre’s Writ of Passage from the scroll tube he had tied diagonally across his back. “On the contrary, Brother Reandu,” he said, handing it over.
“Master Reandu,” one of the monks behind corrected sharply.
“I find this to be a most glorious day,” Bransen announced. He offered a smile before finishing, “Master Reandu.”
Before the monk could respond, a shout came from the courtyard. “You!” came the resonating voice of Laird Bannagran.
“The Bear of Honce!” the monk behind Reandu breathed with obvious terror.
“It would have to be, would it not?” Bransen asked as he turned. But any intention he had of parlaying here, of letting Dame Gwydre’s writ carry any weight for him, disappeared as he swung about.
Great axe in hand, a look of sheer outrage on his face, Bannagran didn’t seem to be in any mood for talking. The laird charged with a roar, his axe upright before him, not tipping his hand about the intended angle of his initial cut.
Jameston moved for his bow, but Bransen, drawing his sword with his right hand, pushed Jameston to the side with his left. His sword came out in the blink of an eye, which seemed to surprise Bannagran. He kept coming, though, his axe head slipped over his left shoulder. He turned his foot in with his closing step at the Highwayman, also to the left.
A lesser fighter would have cringed and braced, and thus been cut in half, but the Highwayman anticipated every movement. When Bannagran went into his sudden spin, axe flying to arm’s length, Bransen was already moving. He shifted to his left, dancing past the retreating Jameston. When Bannagran came around, axe slashing powerfully, he hit nothing but air. Too fine a warrior to leave himself open despite the daring move, Bannagran recovered almost immediately, stopping short his swing as soon as he realized the Highwayman’s dodge. Reorienting himself, he squared up with his opponent.
“Are we to do this dance again?” the Highwayman asked. “And who will die this time when you throw your weapon at me in frustration?”
That last question made Bannagran narrow his eyes with anger. He stepped forward fast, chopping down left to right, right to left, and back to the first strike. The Highwayman swayed to his left, to his right, and to his left again, causing three near but complete misses. He countered with a sudden stab of his sword, but Bannagran threw his hips behind him, less gracefully than the Highwayman had dodged the axe swings but effective n
onetheless.
The Highwayman thrust again. Bannagran, his hands wide on the handle of his great axe, drove his weapon down to deflect the blade low, then stepped ahead and threw forward his right hand, the lower on his axe, punching the handle at the Highwayman’s face.
Bransen dropped under it and came on lower this time. Bannagran had to throw his feet out behind him wildly to save his shins. He staggered and scrambled as the Highwayman pressed the attack, stabbing at one leg, then the other.
“Read it!” the Highwayman shouted to Master Reandu, the Writ of Passage still rolled in his hand.
The Highwayman duckwalked in a crouch, his sword prodding faster and faster to keep the retreating Bannagran off balance, to keep him working furiously with his feet and his weapon so that the great warrior of Pryd Town could not begin a counterattack.
“I did not return to Pryd to fight you,” the Highwayman said to him.
“I told you to stay away,” Bannagran growled in response. “Forevermore!”
“Things have changed,” the Highwayman insisted.
“The worse for you!” Bannagran shouted as he leaped up and forward, clearing the Highwayman. The warrior landed in a forward roll and came up and around with a great sidelong slash designed to keep the Highwayman far away.
But Bransen was right beside him as he turned. The sword blade hit the axe handle before Bannagran could build any momentum. The Highwayman slid it right up to slam hard at the crook between axe handle and head.
The Highwayman grabbed Bannagran’s chest with his free hand. “I don’t want to fight you!” he yelled in Bannagran’s face.
“Hold, Laird Bannagran!” cried Reandu, who had finally recovered his wits enough to read the scroll.
Bannagran pulled his left hand free of his trapped axe, retracted immediately, and moved to slug the Highwayman, a heavy and powerful punch that would have surely crushed the young warrior’s face. But Bannagran flew backward before he had barely begun the swing, jolted by a blast of lightning-like energy. He landed on his heels but stumbled down to a seated position on the floor some ten feet away, his long black hair flying wildly.
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