The Dame sotfk-3

by R. A. Salvatore

  Suddenly, thrusting his blade, turning it over so that its razor edge pointed skyward Bransen poked toward the warrior’s face but pulled up short and slashed the sword for the sky, thinking to sever the leather tie of the nun’chu’ku. The warrior didn’t try to pull the exotic weapon away; the Highwayman thought he had scored a clean hit.

  But the man from Behr lifted his hands as the sword came up, absorbing most of the strike’s energy. As the blade connected with the leather but without any momentum to cut through, the warrior crossed his hands before his chest then thrust upward with his right and pulled downward with his left, the resulting turn of leather and wood nearly tearing the sword from the Highwayman’s grasp!

  The warrior drove the weapons higher and stepped through, turning right-to-left suddenly as he went, his trailing left foot snapping out to kick the Highwayman squarely in the gut. Bransen had to grab his sword with both hands to prevent it from being torn from his grasp.

  The Highwayman threw his hips back, absorbing the brunt of the sharp blow. As the warrior turned about before him, now driving the sword’s blade back down, Bransen went forward a short step and leaped into a twisting somersault, still holding fast with both hands and now tucking his elbows in tight to try to gain control of the movements of the weapons. He thought he could tear his sword free with the momentum of the twist and take the leather tie apart in the process, but the Behrenese warrior, again one step ahead of him, simply disengaged as Bransen tumbled past. The sudden freedom of his blade nearly toppled Bransen as he came around to his feet.

  The Highwayman moved instinctively, knowing that his opponent would expect an overbalance. Taking his sword in his left hand alone, he pivoted onto the ball of his right foot, spinning around and dropping a downward backhand parry perfectly in line with the flying end of the nun’chu’ku. The metal rang out in vibration from the heavy hit as Bransen came up square with his opponent, falling immediately into a defensive crouch, hands joining on the hilt of his sword before him.

  Not an instant too soon. The Behrenese warrior, offering no opportunity for Bransen to move to an offensive posture, launched a sudden and furious routine, the nun’chu’ku whipping before him in a sidelong swipe, then going into a spin above his head, where he cleverly changed hands and came in from the other side.

  Bransen barely blocked.

  Again and again and again the wooden poles hummed through the air up high, down low, behind the warrior’s back. He came in left and down, right across, right and down from on high.

  The Highwayman was purely reacting, trying hard to follow the man’s dizzying movements to get his sword out to block. Somehow he kept up, but he felt as if he were drowning, as if the water were rising too fast for him to stay above it.

  He tried to block another swing from the right, but the warrior shortened the strike and the nun’chu’ku whipped past. The Highwayman understood as the man dropped low before him, still rotating. Instinct alone had Bransen leaping and tucking his legs, narrowly avoiding a cunning leg sweep that would have put him to the ground.

  He couldn’t leap fast enough, though, and he had to put all his weight to his right leg and lift his left, turning it to absorb the blow as the nun’chu’ku came around and smashed him hard against the side of his shin.

  Bransen gritted through the hit and stabbed down hard. With no momentum left in the nun’chu’ku, the warrior let it go and caught it quickly with a reverse grip, then slapped the pole against the descending sword blade. Again he loosened his grip and shoved, pushing Bransen’s sword away, turning his hand over as he went, using that sword as a fulcrum to throw the bulk of the nun’chu’ku beneath it. His left hand crossed under his thrusting right elbow, catching the free pole as he sprang from the crouch before Bransen. Momentum regained as he lifted his left hand up high and over then down and back across, the descending warrior got past Bransen’s desperate defensive turn enough to send the flying nun’chu’ku pole hard against Bransen’s right shoulder.

  The Highwayman gasped at the explosion of pain and stumbled to his left, stunned by the sheer weight of the blow.

  Jameston had seen more than enough. He had long ago taken a measure of the Highwayman as the finest young warrior he had ever seen, but he already knew that Bransen was ill-prepared to battle this fierce warrior. In a single fluid movement, Jameston’s right hand snapped up and grasped an arrow, pulling it from the quiver, drawing it down over his right shoulder, and setting it expertly to the bow. Still moving in the same beautiful line, the scout drew back and lifted the bow, string coming against the side of his nose. He didn’t have much space between Bransen and the strange warrior, but he didn’t need much.

  A form, a leaping and spinning, black-clothed warrior, flew in from the side and behind, just above Jameston. His bowstring lost all tension, the top of his bow snapping forward suddenly and awkwardly, arrow falling to the ground.

  The scout cried out in surprise but kept his wits enough to grab his bow in both hands like a stave and swing to his left where the assailant had gone.

  Had gone and was now coming back ferociously. Jameston turned that way. Smaller than the other opponent, a woman warrior came at him with clenched fists. She opened her left as she thrust it forward. Instinct alone prompted Jameston to pull his bow in close defensively. The small knife she had used to cut his bowstring stabbed into the bow and stuck fast.

  At the last moment Jameston leveled his bow like a spear to fend the charging warrior. She did stop but slapped at the bow left and right, grabbing at the wood.

  Jameston retracted and stabbed ahead repeatedly, trying to keep her at bay. He began rotating the staff’s end in small, fast circles; when he had her attention there he cleverly charged and thrust forward. He thought he had her, would have scored a solid hit, but a second stave entered the fray, chopping hard from the side, turning down Jameston’s bow-staff.

  “What?” he cried, noting another black-clothed warrior to his left. He let go of his bow with his right hand and lifted it to block. Too late, for the warrior ran the staff up the angled wood above his lifting hand.

  Jameston managed to turn so that he only took a glancing blow across his jaw, but when he looked back he saw the woman flying through the air at him, spinning a forward somersault. She straightened as she came over, her legs snapping forward, her black silk slippers poking from under the wide cut of her silken pants.

  That’s going to hurt, Jameston thought, as one foot crunched against his cheek and nose; the other slammed him hard in the collarbone. He went flying backward, arms and legs akimbo, and landed on his back, his breath blasted away. Before he could begin to even think about rising, the other warrior was above him, the tip of a staff in tight against the bottom of his chin, ready to drive through his throat.

  Jameston lifted his hands in surrender.

  The Highwayman tried to block out Jameston’s troubles. He couldn’t afford even to glance at his friend’s precarious position while battling a man of such talent and speed. He was still reminding himself of that when the Behrenese warrior faked high and swept low with his legs, sending Bransen tumbling to the ground.

  Even as he fell Bransen sought the malachite, lessening his weight. He landed lightly on his back, turned his legs under him and tightened his stomach, hoisting his shoulders with such force that he propelled himself right back to his feet with a suddenness that took his opponent by surprise.

  The Highwayman went for the win, thinking to wound this warrior fast and spring away to help his fallen friend. He thrust out, a certain hit on the warrior’s hip, but he shortened the strike, both because he had no desire to kill this man and because he was anxious, too anxious, to get to Jameston. And because the Highwayman simply wasn’t used to fighting someone this quick and trained in the Jhesta Tu manner.

  So when he expected his blade to penetrate flesh, he found instead a nun’chu’ku spinning an underhand block, pushing the angle of the cut wide. Worse, the exotic weapon wrapped up and around
and the warrior grabbed both ends, locking the sword in place. The Highwayman reacted in time to prevent the sudden twist from snapping his blade in half by turning with the angle change, but the movement had him and his opponent in an awkward alignment, slightly askew of each other and both leaning away.

  The warrior from Behr fell even lower, dropping his back, left leg into a deep crouch. Then he began kicking with his right leg, hitting the Highwayman in the shin and side of his knee, and then again in rapid succession.

  The Highwayman fell into a similar crouch and responded with his own kicks, but his opponent had the advantage, the momentum, and the initiative. Feet circled and kicked forward and back, slapping and bruising as the two held tight to their entangled weapons.

  For a few heartbeats, the Highwayman took two blows for every one he delivered. He gradually moved to more even footing and even managed a solid hit against the back of his opponent’s outstretched thigh, his toes jabbing hard into the man’s hamstring.

  But that leg came up higher suddenly and clipped Bransen’s chin, nearly sending him tumbling away. He moved in closer, and kicks became jabbing knees. Again the Highwayman took the worst of it. He knew the style of fighting well from his readings, but he had never engaged in it, had never even sparred with this technique, and he was up against a master.

  A knee came in hard against the side of his thigh, bruising him sorely. He shifted away from the assault. The warrior from Behr promptly straightened his leg in a snap kick that left Bransen’s left arm numb.

  He wanted to retreat and regroup, but he couldn’t pull his sword free, and he surely couldn’t surrender it.

  So the Highwayman went the other way, crouch-walking even closer to his opponent. He let go of his sword with his left hand, punching at the warrior, who easily shifted back enough so that, even if the punch landed, it could do no real harm.

  But the Highwayman wasn’t trying to punch the warrior. Instead, he grabbed the man by the front of his silken shirt and with a yell, threw himself forward so that they were tight together.

  The warrior from Behr laughed-exactly the response Bransen had hoped to elicit, for it told him that the warrior had believed his move to be a desperate attempt to drive the trapped sword in for the kill. The warrior then snapped his head backward and forward viciously, his forehead crunching against the Highwayman’s nose.

  Bransen accepted the powerful hit, for he was already deep into the graphite of his brooch, bringing forth its powers. As the warrior from Behr snapped his head back again for another butt, the mighty jolt of lightning power kept him moving backward, had him flying backward, arms and legs flailing. He hit the ground and jerked about wildly.

  The Highwayman stood and with a flip of his wrist sent the nun’chu’ku into the air where he caught it with his free hand. He hid well his grimace of pain as he straightened, for his knee, thigh, and hip were beyond bruised.

  “Drop the weapons!” the woman shouted.

  Bransen glanced to the side, where the man holding the stave on Jameston retracted it just an inch and popped it down hard against the underside of Jameston’s chin, drawing a pitiful gurgle from the prostrate man.

  In front of the Highwayman, the fallen warrior finally managed to stand-or tried to, at least, but his legs wobbled uncontrollably and he staggered back down to one knee. He cried out through chattering teeth in the tongue of the southern kingdom. Bransen understood enough of the words to recognize that he was calling for his friends to back away from Jameston.

  In the common tongue of Honce, the Behr warrior added, “This one is worthy to wield that sword!”

  Sweeter words Bransen Garibond had never heard.

  TWENTY-SIX

  A Shiver of Sharks

  He’s a madman!” Laird Panlamaris roared, storming about and crushing the parchment in his powerful hand.

  The courier from Delaval City shrank back from the wild man, eyeing the door of the tavern’s common room as if searching for an escape route. He wasn’t the only one; of the thirty men and women in the room, all seemed more than a bit unsettled by the powerful man’s outburst. All save one dressed in monk’s robes and sitting calmly at the same table Panlamaris had occupied when he had been handed the note-before he had leaped up, fuming.

  “A madman!” Panlamaris said again and he kicked a chair across the room.

  “He is the King of Honce,” Father De Guilbe remarked. When the Laird of Palmaristown fixed him with a severe glare, he merely shrugged.

  “Read it!” Panlamaris said, throwing the parchment De Guilbe’s way.

  De Guilbe didn’t catch it, but rather, deflected it to the floor. “He demands that you attack Chapel Abelle,” he said.

  “Yes,” Panlamaris replied. “He wants me to throw all that I have against those walls, with the monks hurling fire and lightning at us from on high.”

  “And with your finest warriors off rampaging in the far east,” said De Guilbe.

  “It is madness!” Panlamaris declared.

  “Foolishness, at least,” De Guilbe agreed. “King Yeslnik is a man who does not yet understand battle.”

  “Am I to write his lesson in the blood of Palmaristown’s garrison?”

  “Are you?”

  “No!” Laird Panlamaris yelled. He took a deep breath and seemed to relax a bit. He even managed to grab a chair from a nearby table and take his seat across from De Guilbe. “We cannot go against such a fortress as Chapel Abelle. Not with their magical powers and with my ships getting sunk by powries behind them. Powries! Of all the ill times to have powries in the gulf!”

  “A remarkable coincidence, you believe?” asked De Guilbe, and in a tone that suggested that he thought it no such thing.

  “Is it not?”

  “Among those who did battle against Ancient Badden were a pair of powries,” De Guilbe explained.

  Laird Panlamaris and many others looked at the monk incredulously.

  “It is true,” De Guilbe insisted. “When the Highwayman dropped Ancient Badden’s head at Dame Gwydre’s feet, he was accompanied by the man Cormack, who betrayed me, by a barbarian woman, and by a pair of bloody-cap dwarves. He introduced those powries to Dame Gwydre as friends, and the powries wintered in Castle Pellinor.”

  “This cannot be,” said Panlamaris, giving voice to what almost everyone in the room was thinking.

  “But it is, I tell you,” said De Guilbe. “They wintered in Castle Pellinor and were given free passage from the city as soon as the snows had calmed.”

  “Powries?”

  “Ugliest little creatures I have ever seen.”

  Laird Panlamaris stroked his beard and stared through the tavern door and up the hill to the distant outline of Chapel Abelle. “You believe Dame Gwydre enlisted the little beasts?”

  “I know that Dame Gwydre did not kill the two who came to Pellinor,” De Guilbe replied. “I know that she released them, and that the one called the Highwayman named them as friends. Friends help friends, do they not?”

  Laird Panlamaris stared off into nothingness for a long while, his eyes narrow, his nostrils flared. His defeat at the wall of Chapel Abelle had stung him profoundly, but the loss of three warships had positively infuriated him. Panlamaris had been a sailor throughout his youth, when his father had ruled the port city, and he had traced the Honce coast from Delaval City to Ethelbert dos Entel and from the Vanguard coast all the way to southern Alpinador. He had battled powries before, as well, out on the open Mirianic and in fact had been instrumental in devising ways to cripple the dreaded barrel boats, using ballista-launched weighted nets to drag the low-riding craft under the waves.

  As with almost every sailor in Honce, Laird Panlamaris hated powries most of all.

  And now-was it possible? The notion that these wretched little beasts had joined in with his enemies boiled his blood.

  He slammed his fist down on the table so hard that the nearest leg creaked in protest, cracked, and nearly buckled.

  “We attack, my
laird?” one commander standing nearby asked with great enthusiasm.

  “Shut up,” Panlamaris said, then to De Guilbe added, “I will confront Dame Gwydre in parlay. If she is in league with these beasts, then one day soon Vanguard will bow to the rule of Laird Panlamaris.”

  He stood up powerfully, his chair flying behind him, and called for a scribe. “Soon,” he repeated grimly to De Guilbe.

  Pedal faster, ye mutts, or we’re to miss all the dippin’!” Shiknickel cried out to his crew. Up in the squat tower, the powrie watched as a pair of barrel boats closed fast on a warship, another flying the colors of Palmaristown.

  Below and behind him, the tough dwarves picked up their pace, the barrel boat leaping away across the dark waters. Shiknickel grinned but didn’t openly applaud their efforts, preferring instead the inspiring, “Yah, but ye call that fast? Ye mutts, me dead mum could swim past ye!”

  He was smiling wider as he finished, but his grin disappeared a moment later when the Palmaristown warship attacked. Deck-mounted ballistae, giant spear throwers, let fly at the nearest barrel boat, launching thick, weighted netting. Their shots weren’t true but didn’t have to be, for just putting the spears near to the boat, which was no more than twenty yards from the warship’s broadside, sent the net over its tower, hooking fast and draping over the back half of the boat. The drag slowed the craft immediately, and, worse, the netting hooked the barrel boat’s single propeller. Instead of charging in now at high speed to ram the warship, the barrel boat was suddenly adrift and tilting as the heavy weights pulled at her.

  Spotters ran along the warship’s deck, pointing out the second approaching barrel boat while the ballista crews reloaded. A host of archers appeared at the rail and began raking the trapped barrel boat even as some of her crew tried to climb to cut the netting free.

  “They was ready for us,” Shiknickel whispered. “Bah! Stop yer pedaling!” he shouted down to the dwarves. “Stop, I’m tellin’ ye!”