The Ancient

by R. A. Salvatore

  Bransen worked like a dancer, spinning, swinging his arm, changing the angle of his deadly blade with such skill and precision that Ancient Badden never once blocked or turned effectively enough to prevent the Highwayman from hitting him exactly where Bransen had wanted to.

  The sword slashed across Badden’s belly, came around and poked him hard in the biceps, and as he lurched, his arm lowering, slashed him across the chin, drawing a sizable line across half his throat in the process. Over and over, Bransen rolled the blade, diagonal down, left and right, and lines of bright blood erupted all across the Samhaist’s light green robes.

  Now Badden wore a mask of fear, and he stumbled backward, trying pitifully to get his arms up. Bransen kept hitting him, slashing him, even lifting a foot to kick him. Back went the Ancient, who suddenly seemed little more than an old man, to fall into an awkward sitting position against the wall. And Bransen was there, suddenly, sword edge against Badden’s already bleeding neck. Ancient Badden laughed at him, blood dripping out with every chortle.

  “You seem happy for a man about to die,” said Bransen. Behind him, Cormack cried out for Milkeila, and Bransen heard splashing.

  “We all die, fool,” Badden replied. “You will not likely see near the years I have known.”

  “Or the failure,” said Bransen.

  “Ah yes, the triumph of your Abellican Church,” Badden retorted, and indeed, Bransen’s face did crinkle at that.

  “My Church?” he asked incredulously.

  “You have thrown in with them!”

  Bransen snickered at the absurdity of the remark.

  “Do you think them any better?” Badden asked, his words becoming more labored. “Oh, they find their shining moment now, when their baubles so impress the young and strong lairds. But where will they be when those lairds are old and lie dying, and those baubles offer nothing?

  “We Samhaists know the truth, the inevitability,” he went on. “There is no escape from the darkness. Their promises are hollow!” He laughed, a bloody and bitter sound.

  “A truth you are about to realize intimately,” Bransen reminded him.

  But Badden’s laugh mocked him. “And as these Abellican fools rise ascendant, buoyed by their empty promises of forever, do you think they will be any better?”

  But now Bransen was back on level emotional ground. “Do you think that I care?” he chided right back, and that brought a curious look from the old man.

  “Then why are you here?”

  Bransen laughed at him and stood straight. “Because they paid me,” he said with a cold and casual tone, “and because I hate everything for which you stand.”

  His sword came across, and Badden’s puzzled expression remained on his face as his head rolled across the floor.

  EPILOGUE

  The six survivors and Brother Jond collected the rest of the prisoners and led them out of Ancient Badden’s ice castle.

  Outside, the battle had ended; with the dragon chased off, the troll lines had broken, and now both barbarian and dwarf lined the chasm, throwing stones and blocks of ice and spears down at the monster that prowled its depths. From the roars that rose, it seemed as if many were hitting the mark. For the great white worm would not flee into one of its burrows to escape the barrage. It would not back down from the threat, though it had no way of scaling the chasm wall to get at its attackers.

  Its mighty bulk and power could not protect it from its own lack of brains.

  Mcwigik and Bikelbrin rushed off to join in the fun, and even Pergwick, holding his cap against his head, and his cap holding his scalp in place, followed.

  “You are from Vanguard?” Brother Jond asked Cormack, who supported him as they moved across the ice.

  “Years ago,” Cormack explained. “And Chapel Abelle before that. I was a member of Father De Guilbe’s expedition.”

  That sparked recognition in Jond, and a great smile creased his face. “I had thought the feel of your clothing to be that of an Abellican robe!”

  “I am not Abellican anymore, Brother.”

  Jond stopped and faced Cormack, though of course he couldn’t actually see the man.

  “I was cast out,” Cormack admitted. “I questioned the limitations.”

  “Limitations?”

  “The Abellican Church’s refusal to explore those traditions and magic outside the domain of the Church and the gemstones,” Cormack honestly offered. “There is more beauty to be found in this world, a wider truth than that which we have come to represent.” Brother Jond gave a curious “hmm,” and Cormack had no idea if he was offending or intriguing the man. “The woman who accompanied us into the castle is a shaman of an Alpinadoran tribe,” Cormack explained.

  “I gathered as much.”

  “I love her.”

  “Hmm.”

  “And I see in her true and divine beauty—I see it in our other friend as well, this man named Bransen.”

  “Ah, the Highwayman, yes,” said Jond. “He is a unique one.”

  “And possessed of godly powers.”

  Brother Jond shook his head, unwilling to make that jump.

  “Powers akin to those of our gemstones,” Cormack clarified, and Jond now nodded.

  “I witnessed his healing hands,” Jond said. “And his grace is rather amazing. But he is no man of God. Not yet, though I suspect that his nature compels him to look that way. For all his life, our friend Bransen cared only for Bransen, and absent in him is a sense of community and greater good. No, not absent,” he quickly corrected.

  “Simply not yet developed. I hold out great hopes for that one, if he doesn’t get himself killed too soon.”

  As Jond put forth those observations, Cormack looked out at Bransen, who was paralleling the powries toward the chasm. The monk’s words, so very much like his own to Milkeila regarding the Highwayman, rang true indeed.

  “We will get you back to Chapel Pellinor and Dame Gwydre,” Cormack promised.

  “Perhaps I might put in a good word for Brother Cormack.”

  Cormack winced at the title Jond had used, both because he doubted that any good word would do any good, and because he wasn’t sure that he wanted it back.

  “They ran, you know,” he said. “Father De Guilbe and the others of Chapel Isle—our chapel here in Alpinador—did not join in the greater cause with the Alpinadorans and the powries. Instead, they fled south, bound for Vanguard.”

  Brother Jond started to reply—to offer some justification, Cormack knew. But instead he just sighed and shook his head, and Cormack realized that this wasn’t the first time this man had been disappointed by the actions of fellow Abellicans.

  Cormack didn’t press him on it, though. He hooked his arm under Jond’s shoulder to support the man, and led him away.

  Ye been wanting this for a long time, mate,” Mcwigik said.

  Pergwick, a thick white bandage running about his head, chin to top, and under his replaced beret, lowered his eyes and kicked a stone. “Ruggirs was me brother,” he said. “We slapped blood together that if either got killed to death, th’other would watch over the Sepulcher and care for the kid. It’ll be me brother, too, ye know.”

  “Aye, there’s that,” Mcwigik agreed. “But I’m not for waiting the years ye’re to need. The lake’s made me batzy already, I tell ye!”

  “Not asking ye to wait, and I’m thinking that yerself and Bik are to open things up for the rest,” Pergwick replied, looking up and seeming much more at ease. “Kriminig and the others’ve said as much—that we’ll all go south when word comes back from Mcwigik that there’s a place for us. I’m guessing that more’n ourselves have had too much o’ Mithranidoon.”

  Mcwigik nodded and clapped Pergwick on the shoulder. “Good enough, then, and I’ll be smiling when I see ye again.”

  Pergwick grinned and began to nod, but Mcwigik cautioned him with an upraised hand.

  “Don’t ye go shaking yer head too rough!” the dwarf said.

  “Aye, we’re no
t wanting yer brains to go flying out. Ye’re not for much to spare,” added Bikelbrin, walking over and carrying a large sack full of supplies.

  “What do ye know?” Mcwigik asked, and Bikelbrin motioned to the side, where Cormack, Bransen, Milkeila, and Brother Jond stood in a group, all carrying sacks.

  “Where’d they get the goods?” asked Mcwigik.

  “The barbarians,” Bikelbrin replied. “They ain’t too happy with the girl, but they know she just saved their homes.”

  “An easier road for us all, then,” Mcwigik reasoned.

  “More food to start, at least. As for the rest, we’ll be seein’.”

  They both patted Pergwick on the shoulder, then moved to join the others. The group of six was off the glacier that same night, moving determinedly south. The weather stayed warm over the next couple of days, and they encountered no trolls, and so they made great progress, despite the soreness from their fight with Badden and the more serious wounds, which Milkeila’s people had treated very well. Even Brother Jond, sightless though he was, walked with a spring in his step and took up hearty and spirited conversations with the two powries.

  “You will return to your wife?” Milkeila asked Bransen a couple of days out.

  “The moment I deliver this”—he jostled the small pack tied to the side of his pouch, one that contained the head of Ancient Badden—”and she grants me the passage, as promised.”

  “You will sail far away?”

  “As far as I can.”

  “To where?”

  That question seemed to startle Bransen.

  “Are you running to something or away from something?” Milkeila asked, as Cormack walked over.

  “The two are not mutually exclusive,” Bransen replied.

  “But the distinction is important.”

  Bransen shrugged as if he didn’t agree.

  “You are a man of marvelous skills—important skills in this trying time,” Cormack added.

  “All times are trying.”

  “Then all times call for heroes, else all will be lost,” Milkeila said.

  Bransen snorted. “The way of the world is the way of the world and beyond any one man.”

  “That seems a pointless outlook,” said Cormack.

  “It is one I have come by through bitter experience.”

  Milkeila quickly added, “You have been given a great gift and have never thought to turn it to the benefit of all?”

  Bransen considered his time in Pryd Holding, when he first earned the title of the Highwayman, when he spent his days stealing from the laird and distributing the booty to the unfortunate peasants, crushed under the weight of his heel, and he could not help but laugh. That laugh quickly soured, though, for he could not help but admit that even then, the good of the people was more a vehicle for his own ego than truly for the good of his people.

  “We just saved the people of Mithranidoon,” Milkeila reminded.

  “And with positive ramifications that will spread throughout the whole of Vanguard, no doubt,” Cormack added. “You cannot deny that we did indeed just changed the world for the better. The bloody head you hold in your belt pouch is no small matter—perhaps it is in the measure of the centuries, but it certainly is not a small matter to the people of this day and age and region.”

  Bransen snickered and waved them away. His road was to his beloved Cadayle and to Callen. His responsibilities were to them, and to himself. The idea that he owed anyone else anything seemed on its surface preposterous—how many people in the world had ever shown the young Stork compassion and service?

  As the two walked off, Bransen looked around at his fellow heroes and poor Brother Jond, the only other survivor of the band that had come north on the command of Dame Gwydre. He thought of Crait and Olconna and couldn’t help but grin as he considered Crazy V.

  He tried to deny it but could not. He had found a strange comfort and warmth in being a part of that lost group. And as much as Bransen told himself that he was only along on the mission for the sake of Cadayle and his family … He had hesitated at the bluff overlooking the glacier, yes, but in the end, he had gone down to do battle with Badden.

  And in the process, he had formed a new bond with this competent group. He couldn’t deny the warmth.

  He felt like he belonged.