“Our hopes may prove correct and will aid us,” Father Artolivan warned. “But they alone will not turn the tide against the power of Delaval City and Palmaristown and Pryd and all the rest.”
“We sit and wait, and we fight if we must?” Dame Gwydre asked. She made it clear with her tone that she was not enamored of that passive course. “And we seek Ethelbert for alliance, though we know not what he has left to even continue in this war. Dawson might well arrive at Ethelbert dos Entel’s docks to find Yeslnik’s soldiers manning them. Or to find Laird Ethelbert helplessly trapped within his city, as we seem to be here.”
Her grim assessment was met by blank stares, until Father Artolivan offered, “We are seeking other routes of resistance and alliance.”
“Other routes? Surely any allies we could find would be welcomed.”
“There are two names being spoken across the breadth of Honce behind those of the warring lairds,” Artolivan explained. “Two men have distinguished themselves and have led Yeslnik to near-certain victory. Every prisoner in St. Mere Abelle, Ethelbert and Yeslnik man alike, knows of these generals: Bannagran of Pryd and Milwellis of Palmaristown.”
“You wish to find alliance with Yeslnik’s generals?” Dame Gwydre tried to keep the incredulity out of her tone. How desperate were they, truly?
“Not Milwellis, certainly,” said Artolivan. “He is a man of ill temperament and great hubris. He holds no love for St. Mere Abelle.”
“Particularly since we just sent his father scurrying away with lightning prodding his arse every step,” Gwydre added.
Artolivan conceded that point with a nod and just a hint of a much-needed grin.
“Master Reandu of Chapel Pryd is a good and temperate man, and he has the ear of Bannagran, whom he considers a friend. Perhaps…?”
“If Master Reandu still holds court in Chapel Pryd,” Dame Gwydre warned.
“He does,” said Giavno. “I went to him in spirit this morning, though I had not the strength to impart the message of Father Artolivan. Still, I sensed calm about that town.”
“I doubt that King Yeslnik would force Bannagran to move against his friend Reandu, but should Yeslnik do such a thing it is possible that Bannagran would take great exception.”
“It seems a desperate plan, but I see few other options,” Gwydre admitted. “If we could turn this General Bannagran to our cause, then it would bolster our hopes, of course. But to what do we ask him to pledge his fealty? To Vanguard? That seems unlikely, at best.”
The monks all glanced around at each other and Gwydre realized that she had touched upon the very heart of the debate into which she had intruded, the backdrop that had inspired the notion that they might “win.”
“Yeslnik and Ethelbert have torn Honce apart with their war of greed,” Father Artolivan began, his tone measured. “We have rejected Yeslnik and have little connection to Laird Ethelbert, though we seek him, not to serve him, but as an ally against our common foe. We will not serve King Ethelbert, Dame Gwydre. The Abellican Church will fight beside him, perhaps and if he is willing, but we will not serve him.”
“He is very tied to the ways of Behr,” Brother Pinower explained. “And to the religions of Behr. He is not hostile to our order, but neither is he a believer.”
“So if we gain ground, if we can hold against Laird Panlamaris and even begin to move against King Yeslnik, then to what end?” Gwydre asked. “Am I to declare autonomy of Vanguard from Honce? Will the Abellican Church then become the Church of Vanguard?”
“Suppose we show the people of Honce a third way, beyond Yeslnik and Ethelbert?” Father Artolivan asked.
“And that would be?” Gwydre asked. “Compromise?”
“A queen.”
“You are mad!”
“Perhaps,” Father Artolivan conceded. “It is a difficult proposition.”
“A desperate one, you mean,” said Gwydre.
“And are we not desperate?”
Gwydre sighed.
“You saved Vanguard, Dame Gwydre,” Father Artolivan said. “Can you save Honce as well? Two lairds hungry for power have driven the land to near ruin. Every family has been devastated now by a war that will not end.”
“Will it not?” asked Gwydre. “It seems that Laird Yeslnik has a strong upper hand, by all the reports and your own admission.”
“That result might prove the most disastrous one of all,” said Artolivan. “Yeslnik is a merciless, privileged beast of the highest order. He would have me murder all the prisoners he has sent while freeing all the men sent by Laird Ethelbert, and both by treaty for honorable recusal from the war!
“Nay, Dame Gwydre, that outcome cannot be allowed. The Samhaists have been driven from most of their groves, Blessed Abelle be thanked, and now King Yeslnik has declared war with the Abellican Church. Indeed, I expect him to declare Father De Guilbe as Father of the Order of Blessed Abelle and to enlist his phony interpretation of the teachings of our Blessed Abelle as his official religion. You wish to sue for peace and to declare autonomy, but you know that this man, Yeslnik, will not agree and will not relent.”
“Have you come to regret your words and actions against King Yeslnik and Laird Panlamaris, Father Artolivan?”
The old monk smiled more widely than ever before, and, for the first time in the meeting, serenity washed over his wrinkled face and his eyes twinkled with hope. “Not for a moment,” he replied. “Though I have come to realize the difficulty of the road such principles demand.”
“Cordon Roe,” said Brother Giavno, surprising them all with the reference to a most terrible incident that had occurred in Delaval City in the early days of the Order of Blessed Abelle. “Brother Fatuus,” he added, grinning, against the confused expressions. “We all will die, after all, be it now or in a decade or in several decades. Better to die contented. Better a life guided by principle, even a short one, than a century of misery wrought by the knowledge of personal cowardice.”
“Queen Gwydre of Honce,” remarked Father Premujon. “It rings of hope.”
“It rings of presumption and arrogance,” said Dame Gwydre.
“Perhaps it is the time for both, good lady,” said Father Artolivan. “Perhaps it is time for both.”
Dawson stood near Lady Dreamer’s prow, his favorite place when his ship found a good wind and threw her spray up high. She opened her sails now, leaving the docks of St. Mere Abelle far, far behind. The slight splash of salty water felt good to Dawson, made him feel alive and gave him a burst of that brine smell that seemed to define his life. He came up here to be alone with his thoughts, to reflect on his life and the point of it all.
And today, Dawson needed that contemplative energy more than ever. The night with Callen Duwornay had thrown his emotional balance into a delicious swirl, a jumble of possibility. Terrifying possibilities, since Dawson had stepped away from his typical course. But that was the way of the world right now, was it not? Honce was at war with itself in a struggle that would dramatically redefine the old feudal holdings, however this insanity ended. And the roads! Dawson had long been among the most worldly of people in parochial Honce and even more parochial Vanguard. Lady Dreamer was his freedom, his transport to exotic lands. Until these last few years, only the sailors and the marching armies typically saw any of the world beyond their own home villages. The average person in Honce would spend the entirety of his or her life knowing only a few square miles of land and a few score, perhaps a hundred, other people.
While that no doubt remained the truth of the land, the roads connecting all the major holdings of Honce proper were taming the land and making possible many more journeys to Delaval City or Pryd Town or St. Mere Abelle. The world was changing, and the tumult of those monumental shifts was a big part of the reason for the war.
Now Dawson’s world, too, was changing, had changed. He couldn’t believe that he had found the courage to be so forward with Callen, couldn’t believe his good fortune to find his feelings reciprocated. He cou
ld only hope now that he would be able to get to the city of Ethelbert dos Entel and back in time to realize the sweetness of his courage. Suddenly, he couldn’t imagine his life without Callen.
Dawson took a deep breath. If Callen went home to Pryd Town, then was he to abandon his life at sea? How could he give up Lady Dreamer? How could he give up Callen?
“I say, Captain!” said an insistent voice from behind, in such a tone that Dawson realized he must have been hailed several times already.
“What? What, then?” Dawson stammered. He focused on the situation at hand, noting that they were fast closing on Shelligan’s Run, the ship he had selected to deliver Dame Gwydre’s message back to Vanguard. At first all seemed as it should, but Dawson’s face crinkled a moment later when he noted the commotion on the deck of the other ship, with sailors running to the port rail and to the rigging.
“West, Captain,” Dawson’s crewman said.
Dawson looked that way and felt his heart sink.
Palmaristown warships, three of them, each twice as large as Lady Dreamer, sailed in tight formation. Their decks were full of crewmen, archers with their deadly longbows. Even from this distance Dawson could make out the distinctively high poop deck of a Palmaristown warship, for those craft had each been equipped with a large ballista, a gigantic crossbow set on a rotating platform.
Giant sails full of wind, the ships came on fast.
Dawson’s thoughts whirled. Could Lady Dreamer tack fast enough and fill her sails with the westerlies quickly enough to outrun them?
He shook his head doubtfully. Lady Dreamer could get up to speed and outmaneuver anything on the water, true, but she wasn’t even at full sail, and she couldn’t straight-line outrun Palmaristown warships, the greatest vessels in all of Honce.
Dawson glanced back the way they had come, thinking that maybe they could turn about and get into the protection of St. Mere Abelle’s harbor before the warships got in range and laid waste to his two ships.
And there, Dawson McKeege saw his doom, for he sighted two more Palmaristown warships running the coast.
He had sailed into a trap.
Five ships, fully manned and armed for battle, any one of which could probably defeat both Lady Dreamer and Shelligan’s Run.
Two of the ships in the west continued their straight charge, while the third had veered to the north to cut off any attempt to flee into the open waters of the gulf.
There was nowhere to run.
He thought of Dame Gwydre then and how he had failed his friend. He thought about Callen. Once the notion of the beautiful woman entered his mind a great despair washed over him. He knew that the beautiful possibilities had just flown away.
Would he take comfort in the memories of his last night when the Palmaristown fleet put him into the dark water? he wondered.
TWENTY-TWO
The Wake of War
Well, you know an army or two marched through here,” Jameston Sequin said somberly-the only tone appropriate for the images around them. They were nearing the Mirianic coast now, far to the southeast of Pryd. Torn roads, burned forests, and carrion birds, so many carrion birds, greeted them at every turn.
A ground fog covered the region this day, thick with the smell of death.
Bransen had fought in several battles, most notably in the large and wild fight outside Ancient Badden’s castle, so he was not unused to the aftermath of war. But this was different, darker and more sinister. For he knew that this time the smell of rotting bodies was not fully from, not even mostly from, the corpses of combatants, the soldiers of Ethelbert and Yeslnik who had fallen in their struggles. No, the air was thick with the smell of rotting, dead children and other innocents caught between the bloodlust of the warring lairds.
“You got no belly for it,” Jameston said, obviously seeing the sour expression on Bransen’s face.
Bransen looked at him hard. “You do?”
Jameston gave a helpless chuckle. “You’re starting to understand why I live in the woods.”
“And yet, here we are.”
“I already told you…”
“I know, a purpose bigger than your own life,” said Bransen. “Are you, am I, possessed of magic enough so that we can just lift a gemstone and utter a phrase and repair all of this?” As he finished, he swept his arm toward the south, where a trio of burned-out cottages stood. Even the animals on the small farms had been killed, and several cows lay on the field, covered with pecking birds.
“Not thinking that, and you’re not either,” said Jameston. “We’ll find ways to help. That’s something.”
Bransen nodded, his expression grim. They set off again, heading east, and Jameston’s words seemed prophetic soon after, when cries for help and of fear rent the heavy air.
The pair rushed through a stand of thick trees and around a rocky bluff, Jameston stringing his bow as they ran. With the sounds coming from over an old and crumbling stone wall-crumbling, but still taller than a tall man-Bransen reflexively called upon his brooch and his Jhesta Tu training, reaching into his concentration and the malachite stone simultaneously, instantly, instinctively. He leaped high. Too high. He felt weightless, the malachite working its magical levitation and amplified by his Jhesta Tu understanding. He had meant to grab a hold on the top of the wall and pull himself over, but he climbed into the air to the wall top and above, floating right over, almost as if he was swimming in the air.
He remained in control of his body and kept his wits about him as he crossed over the stone wall. From that bird’s-eye view, the Highwayman witnessed the chaos. Before and below him poor peasants scrambled among several small cottages, while armed men chased them and beat them down. Out of one house rushed a young warrior, his hands full of bread, a peasant woman charging after him, screaming for him to stop. One of his companions stepped up from the side and cracked her across the back of the neck with a heavy club, throwing her face down to the ground, where she lay still.
The Highwayman noticed a bow aimed his way. He reached into the gem again, to the smoky quartz stone. The archer let fly, and the arrow missed cleanly but the bowman cheered, thinking his shot dead center, for it had surely hit the decoy image the Highwayman had created of himself.
Below, the man who had clubbed the woman lifted his weapon to strike her again as she lay in the dirt.
The Highwayman dropped to the ground before him.
“Wha-” the man managed to gasp before he was hit with a series of short punches and flying elbows that sent him spinning away. The Highwayman turned as the stealer of bread spun back and dropped the loaf, sword in hand.
The Highwayman’s fabulous blade came forth, slashing across to cleanly intercept the warrior’s thrust, parrying the enemy blade, a second then a third time. Any unwitting onlooker might have thought the warrior deftly picking off the attacks of this strange, black-clothed warrior. But Bransen and the warrior knew the truth of it: The poor warrior had no idea of the fast-changing angle of the longer and stronger sword coming at him and the only reason his smaller iron weapon was parrying was because this far superior swordsman was aiming for that iron weapon!
“Affwin Wi!” the warrior cried desperately. “Ethelbert! Ethelbert!”
The Highwayman knew the first words as a name, so much like his mother’s own, but the stunning realization didn’t slow his assault. He hit the iron sword again and again, sending numbing jolts up the warrior’s arms, and finally he maneuvered the man where he wanted, at the same time using the noise of the fight to bring another pair of marauders charging at him.
His blade came across left to right, driving the iron sword out before it. The Highwayman stepped forward in a spin, elbow flying high to snap at the warrior’s throat as he came around, sending the man gasping to the ground but leaving the Highwayman perfectly balanced and squared up against the newest two attackers.
One attacker, Bransen mentally corrected, as one of the charging enemies lurched suddenly and went staggering aside, an ar
row deep in his hip.
The other man charged in, screaming, lifting an axe above his head for a powerful chop.
But in the blink of an eye the Highwayman was up against him and inside the angle of any strike. The sword slashed above the attacker, lopping the head off the high-raised axe even as Bransen’s free hand grasped the handle. With the weighted head suddenly gone the attacker lost all balance. Bransen twisted his arm that held the axe handle, repeatedly slamming it down against the man’s forehead.
The man stumbled, dazed. The Highwayman let go of the handle, grabbed the man by the front of his leather tunic, and again reached into the power of the Jhesta Tu and of the brooch, two properties together.
He used the malachite’s levitation powers to lessen the weight of the man and the jolting power of the graphite backing to add lightning into his throw.
The warrior went flying away up high, over the side of the small cottage, to land on the thatched roof. He lay twitching in violent spasms that made him bite the tip off his own tongue.
The Highwayman looked to the fallen woman, blood running from her ear. Rage gripped him. He charged the center courtyard of the house cluster where several warriors had gathered, some setting a defense against him, others lifting bows and firing off to the north-at Jameston, Bransen assumed.
They were ready for him and too many, but he didn’t care. The image of the peasant woman, her skull broken, haunted and drove him on. He lifted his sword, and the blade burst into flames.
An arrow shot out and struck him in his left shoulder.
Nearly blinded by rage and pain, the Highwayman yelled and charged all the faster. He grabbed at the power of serpentine, the fire shield, and then demanded more of the ruby firestone. Now flames covered not only his sword but his entire body!
Like a living bonfire, half-blinded by flames, and with agony biting him from the arrow deep in his shoulder, the Highwayman surged into their midst.
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