The Dame

by R. A. Salvatore

  All of his knights had been slain within moments, the black-clothed southerners moving about them with deadly precision. He dared hope that maybe they had forgotten him or believed him already dead. He closed his eyes, tightened his neck muscles as much as possible to fight the choke, and tried to go very still.

  He knew their laughter was directed at him before he even opened his eyes again.

  The one who had caught him, the tall one with the shaved head and the strange weapon, moved to the low boughs right below him and pulled forth from them a silk rope—the other end of the one binding him, Dimitri understood, just a moment before the southerner tugged it and the clever knot unwound and the young general crashed and bounced to the ground in the midst of his laughing, victorious enemies.

  P

  rince Milwellis and Harcourt did not receive the greeting they had anticipated when they at last came to King Yeslnik’s encampment. Traveling through the tree-lined dells of the region, they had not seen the developments in the east along the shore until they crested the tall hill to stand beside Yeslnik and his commanders.

  Milwellis noted immediately that the king’s eye was not turned to the southeast and the city of Ethelbert dos Entel as he had expected, but to the northeast.

  “You are here?” Yeslnik blurted with surprise when the Prince of Palmaristown rode up beside him.

  “What is this about?” Milwellis demanded, sliding down from his mount and running to the edge of the hillock.

  “Your army is being routed,” one of Yeslnik’s commanders remarked.

  “And you are here!” Yeslnik added.

  “Routed? They should be at the gates of Ethelbert by now!” Milwellis declared, and he began stomping about like a caged beast.

  “They’ve lost a league of ground,” Yeslnik grumbled.

  “Did Ethelbert come at them with all his force? Even then, we should have routed—” Milwellis stopped when he noted Yeslnik’s generals shaking their head.

  “Our scouts saw no sizable force moving from the city gates,” one said. “Are you certain that your men simply did not retreat?”

  The scowl Milwellis gave him was all the answer he needed and more than enough to silence that notion.

  More scouts went out from Yeslnik’s camp soon after, and more came in, with reports of dead Palmaristown soldiers and the main force in fast retreat. Milwellis wanted to ride to them, but Yeslnik would hear none of that.

  “He’s more interested in making sure that he’s surrounded by strength,” Harcourt dared to mention to Milwellis as they wandered about the encampment.

  Milwellis looked at him incredulously but finally nodded, glad again that his father had thought to put this candid and seasoned warrior beside him.

  Long after the sun had set, the riddle of the retreat was finally solved, for some of Yeslnik’s scouts returned with a pair of Milwellis’s men, both wounded.

  “Demons!” one insisted. “They walked invisible through the trees!”

  “Demons?” Yeslnik and two of his commanders said in unison.

  “Not demons,” the other said. “Men, sure enough—and women! Southerners. Beasts of Behr. Ah, but they’re demons when they’re fighting, none should doubt!”

  “A sizable force?” Yeslnik asked.

  “A handful.”

  “Backed by?” Milwellis asked.

  “Just a handful,” answered the soldier. “And our knights’re all gone.”

  “Gone?” asked Yeslnik.

  “Dimitri Reatu?” asked Milwellis.

  “All gone,” the soldier answered grimly. “They went up the hill—”

  “And the demons came down,” the other soldier added.

  King Yeslnik lifted a hand to silence the plethora of questions the others started to ask. “You saw them? Up close?”

  The soldiers nodded.

  “What weapons did they wield?”

  “Strange ones for some, swords for a couple,” one answered.

  “And one used a half sword,” said the other.

  Yeslnik looked at him curiously.

  “Broken, maybe,” the man explained. “But half a sword and with a jagged tip.”

  King Yeslnik looked as if he might topple over. He turned to regard his commanders and Milwellis.

  “What is it, my king?” the Prince of Palmaristown asked when it appeared as if Yeslnik couldn’t find his voice.

  “The assassins who killed King Delaval,” one of the commanders explained.

  “Where are these enemies now?” Yeslnik demanded of the soldiers. Even in the dim light it was obvious that the blood had drained from the young king’s face.

  The two looked to each other and shrugged, then turned back sheepishly to the king. “The fighting has stopped, my king,” one of Yeslnik’s scouts said for them. “The enemy disappeared into the hills, likely exhausted.”

  King Yeslnik began glancing around, eyes darting nervously from shadow to distant shadow.

  “And so the war continues,” he said, his voice cracking and uneven. “Ethelbert has averted disaster—we cannot push him into the sea.”

  “A full attack, north and west, my king,” one of the commanders offered. “A few assassins will not stop the prepared lines of our army!” He looked to Milwellis accusingly as he spoke.

  “No, no, no,” Yeslnik replied, shaking his head and walking about in circles. “No, we should not remain here. Not now. Ethelbert has turned the tide against us. He is wounded and battered and will not come forth. And so we can go, quickly.”

  “Go?” the commander asked.

  “To lands more familiar and more to our liking,” Yeslnik explained. “Yes, that is the course. We will retreat to Pryd Town, or to Delaval.”

  “Delaval was no defense against the assassins before,” the commander dared to remind him.

  “But we will be more vigilant!” Yeslnik screamed. “We will back away—and parlay. Yes, parlay. Perhaps Ethelbert will stay in his city and we can go. We can take the rest of Honce. Yes, yes, I must consider our course. But not here. Not now. Break the camp, and be ready to depart.”

  He walked off as he spoke, and it did not escape Milwellis and Harcourt that more than one of King Yeslnik’s commanders rolled his eyes.

  “He is a man of great courage,” Harcourt whispered to Milwellis as they rode from the camp soon after, heading back to where the army of Palmaristown had regrouped.

  Milwellis didn’t bother to reply to the sarcasm. There was no answer.

  FOURTEEN

  Aimlessly Wandering

  A

  dejected Master Reandu walked into the small village of Eskald three days’ north of Pryd Town. An inconsequential place, Eskald had no chapel and only a tiny keep, barely more than a stone house atop a cleared hill, to serve as the castle for its laird.

  The day was young, and Reandu thought to travel right through Eskald and continue on his way home. There was another community, Chud, a cluster of huntsmen’s houses several hours farther to the south. As he passed along the main road through the bulk of the houses, though, the monk saw that the people were all astir, and he knew that their agitation was not on account of his arrival.

  He turned a questioning gaze on one young woman whose response was a chin nod toward the laird’s house on the hill. Following that look, Reandu noted a familiar sight: the chariot of Bannagran.

  With a sigh of relief—perhaps he could ride south with the man—Reandu moved up the hill. He didn’t even have to tell the lone guard to announce him to the laird, for Bannagran was coming out the door even as he approached.

  Reandu thought that a good thing, for the Laird of Eskald, a man of great mouth and little repute by the name of Mackwok Boln, was one of the most insufferable and self-absorbed men Reandu had ever met. A visit with him would involve hours of time, listening to the man recount the exploits of his long-lost youth, how he rode with Prydae in the powrie war (which wasn’t true, though the pompous laird had probably claimed as much to Bannagran, wh
o had led Prydae’s forces in that very conflict), and how Laird Ethelbert had not come to attack Eskald out of respect, nay fear, of the heroic Mackwok Boln. Reandu had heard it all before and on several occasions, including the first steps of his journey north to Chapel Abelle.

  The look on Bannagran’s face, like it was locked in a permanent sigh, told Reandu that his friend had not been spared the recounting.

  “Has he saved the world this day?” he greeted.

  Bannagran laughed at that. “Twice, methinks.”

  “I did not expect to see you here,” said Reandu. “I’ve been told that the fighting has moved south.”

  “All the way to Ethelbert dos Entel.”

  “And you are north of Pryd. On the hunt for the Highwayman?”

  “I’ve been tasked with that,” Bannagran reminded. “King Yeslnik has determined that his finest general should don the mantle of bounty hunter, and this at a time when his greatest enemy might soon be pushed into the sea.” His voice trailed off as he noted that Reandu was smirking at him. “What do you know?”

  “His finest general?” Reandu echoed with a wide grin.

  Bannagran snorted at him, waved his hand and walked past, heading for the chariot.

  “I am just unused to such aggrandizement from you, about you,” Reandu explained, hounding him every step.

  “Be at ease, monk,” said the warrior. “Else I will show you the truth of the claim.”

  Reandu laughed at the empty threat.

  “What news of our masked friend?” Bannagran asked.

  “He was seen on the road to Chapel Abelle,” said Reandu. “He passed through Palmaristown but did not arrive at Chapel Abelle.”

  “One of the villages to the west of that place, then? Or did he pass to the east by the chapel and move along Felidan Bay? If that is the case, then he is likely dead. Milwellis offered little quarter to the people of the holdings who joined with Laird Ethelbert’s cause.”

  Reandu blew a deep sigh, certain that Bannagran would not be pleased with his information. “The whispers claim that our friend Bransen went to Vanguard before the winter.”

  “The whispers are wrong, then,” Bannagran said, and he nodded his chin to the spear bucket set on the chariot, in which stood the broken half of the sword blade that had been taken from the chest of King Delaval.

  “Or that is not Bransen’s sword,” Reandu replied. “He went to Vanguard before the winter, they claim, and claim with some confidence. It is rumored that Bransen joined with Dame Gwydre in her struggles against the Samhaists. We both know that Bransen had no love for that cult.”

  Bannagran suddenly appeared more tired, and he rubbed his face.

  “You believe that King Yeslnik will send you there in pursuit?”

  “If the Highwayman is there, then he will,” Bannagran replied. “Without doubt. He wants our friend dead. More than anything in the world, he wants the Highwayman slaughtered.”

  “If Bransen is in Vanguard, then he couldn’t have killed King Delaval,” Reandu said plainly. “The distance is too great, and the seas and land impassible through the winter months. Surely King Yeslnik will understand this and will rethink the best course for his finest general.”

  Bannagran shook his head through every word. “It would hardly matter. Yeslnik’s hatred of this one was strong before the evidence of the Highwayman’s complicity in King Delaval’s death, before King Delaval had even been killed. Twice now has our little friend robbed him, and both times shaming him in front of his insuffera . . . his wife. To a man like Yeslnik, that is a more egregious crime than murder.”

  “A vain man like Yeslnik, you mean, and with an insufferable wife.”

  “Your words, not mine, and words to get you slain.”

  Reandu just shrugged. “King Yeslnik has invited great strife within the Order of Abelle. Father Artolivan cannot do what he has demanded of us.”

  Bannagran looked at him curiously.

  “To free all prisoners loyal to Delaval who were sent to the keeping of the brothers,” Reandu explained. Bannagran nodded as if he did not think that so egregious. Reandu let that notion sink in just a bit more before adding, “And to kill all loyal to Ethelbert.”

  Bannagran’s face screwed up for a moment, but then he just shook his head and snorted, as if hardly surprised, as if nothing Yeslnik did would ever surprise him.

  “He will send you to Vanguard?” Reandu asked, and Bannagran nodded.

  “To the edge of the world and over it,” he replied. “Our young king is not in good humor. He is wounded by the death of Delaval.”

  “And he is afraid,” Reandu dared to say, and again Bannagran nodded.

  “And he is frustrated by Ethelbert’s stubbornness and fight,” the warrior added. “Yeslnik is focusing all of those emotions on the Highwayman now, as if he is the source of all the prince’s ills. He will not rest until he has the head of Bransen Garibond.”

  “So you are certain and will head straightaway to Vanguard?”

  “No, and I hope that I am wrong!”

  “You are returning to Pryd, then?”

  Bannagran nodded. “Though I fear my rest will be short.”

  “And you will offer a brother a ride in your fine chariot?”

  “No, but I am sure that Reandu is so forward that he will take one anyway.” He moved up to his driver post. Grinning, Reandu stepped up behind him.

  They made Pryd Town the next day, just as the first advance scouts of King Yeslnik’s army were arriving with news of the stinging reversal at the gates of the southern city. The news that the war was still on in full, that Ethelbert had stayed the seemingly inevitable conclusion, was not as unwelcome to Bannagran as it was to Reandu. At least for Bannagran, it offered some hope that he wouldn’t be sent to the cold north of Vanguard.

  FIFTEEN

  That Which Is Right

  T

  hey’ll not be any quicker because of your pacing,” Cadayle said to Bransen later the very same day that Lady Dreamer brought them to Chapel Abelle. Sitting beside her on the long bench in the antechamber, Callen gave a laugh.

  “He’s blazing a fine trail across Father Artolivan’s rug,” she said.

  Bransen did stop his pacing momentarily to regard the women. They had been waiting in the antechamber to Father Artolivan’s audience hall for more than an hour, expecting to be called in to speak on behalf of Cormack, who was in front of the Court of Chapel Abelle facing the impassioned appeals of Father De Guilbe.

  “He’s got Father Premujon speaking for him, and Brother Giavno, even,” Cadayle reminded. “And Dame Gwydre herself. She had to preside neutrally over the court in Vanguard, but here she makes no secret of her support for Cormack and Milkeila.”

  “I’ve seen too much of the likes of men akin to Father De Guil—” Bransen started to say, but he stopped fast as the door swung open and Father De Guilbe stormed from the audience chamber. Brother Giavno came close behind the large and angry man and tried to speak.

  De Guilbe turned suddenly and snapped, “Do not follow me, Brother, else I will be spending my next days inside Chapel Abelle’s dungeon!”

  At first, Giavno looked as if he had been slapped, but as De Guilbe stormed from the antechamber and across the open courtyard the monk just sighed and shrugged at the three witnesses.

  “I’m guessing it went well for Cormack and Milkeila,” Cadayle said with a grin.

  “Beyond anything I could have hoped,” said Cormack from the door. Arm in arm, he and Milkeila moved from the audience hall.

  “Father Artolivan would like to sanction our marriage formally,” Cormack explained.

  “Then you are forgiven,” said Bransen.

  “And offered a return to the order,” Milkeila said.

  Bransen’s face twisted uncomfortably at that. “You’ll not go back,” he said.

  “I’ve made no decision,” said Cormack. “But it was good to be asked.”

  From inside the audience hall Dame Gwydre call
ed out, “Hurry along, then!”

  “They would see you now,” said Milkeila.

  Bransen and the two women exchanged surprised looks, for they thought they had been brought here solely to speak on Cormack’s behalf, which was apparently no longer required. With a shake of Cormack’s hand and a hug for Milkeila, Bransen entered the audience hall, his wife and Callen close behind.

  “I had thought to be speaking for Cormack,” he said as he walked to the center of the carpet. He faced a long table, behind which sat Father Artolivan and Father Premujon, Dame Gwydre, several other monks Bransen did not know, and, surprisingly, Jameston Sequin and Dawson McKeege. He couldn’t help but feel as if he were standing before some kind of inquisition, though he took faith in the friends seated at that table.

  “It was not necessary,” Father Artolivan replied. “Cormack’s character was well presented and represented.”

  “We have heard news of you, young man,” Artolivan continued before Bransen could ask why he had been summoned if not for Cormack. “Information regarding the Highwayman.”

  “It is good to be famous.” Bransen’s sarcasm didn’t brighten the grim faces staring back at him, which didn’t bother him so much concerning Artolivan, but Dame Gwydre seemed equally uneasy.

  “You are hunted, friend,” Artolivan said, “accused of a crime against the throne of Honce.”

  “I did not know that Honce had a throne,” Bransen replied, all glibness gone from his voice. “Just a bunch of petty lords with petty concerns and not a care at all of who they destroy to see their desires fulfilled.”

  Father Artolivan smiled and glanced at Dame Gwydre.

  “A notable exception to the rule,” Bransen quickly added, bowing deferentially to the Lady of Vanguard.