He landed unsteadily, but instinctively sprang away again, veering to the side, trying to get away from the biting arrows, for another volley was in the air. He landed and leaped into a copse of trees.
Confused and with his line of ki-chi-kree wavering, trying hard to fall fully into the soul stone and enact healing magic upon himself, Bransen slammed hard into a tree trunk. He managed to grab on and hold his place some twenty feet from the ground, but the only fires burning then were those in the trees behind him, lit by his flaming wake.
He tried to fall more fully into the one stone that could save him, for now he felt, most profoundly of all, the serious wound from impaling himself. His gut was torn, his line of life energy shivering, breaking. The pain threatened his concentration.
He thought of Cadayle.
Behind him he heard the horns of Gwydre's countering charge. He hoped he had done enough. Break off!" Bannagran commanded his forces repeatedly. He led his chariot group along the lines, pulling back his men.
For the rout was in full now, with King Yeslnik fleeing the field. His army crumbled behind him, men throwing down their weapons and running away, or falling to their knees and begging for mercy.
Mercy that Bannagran was determined to show, for that was what Gwydre had taught him and that was what filled his awakening heart.
As his orders multiplied throughout his forces, warriors and commanders echoing the call for quarter, Bannagran swung back to the east and lashed his team into a full gallop.
"Relent! The day is won!" he shouted as he neared Kirren Howen's legion, and it was strange, indeed, to hear these men of that eastern city cheering for him as he passed among their ranks. He pulled up fast before the three generals.
"All quarter given," he told Kirren Howen.
"You ask much," the new Laird of Ethelbert dos Entel replied. "The day is won, and my men, so long at war, will have their revenge."
"No, laird!" Bannagran demanded. "This is for Honce. All of it."
Kirren Howen and his two generals stared at Bannagran as if he had reached over and slapped the laird across the face.
"Yeslnik is through," Bannagran explained. "He cannot survive this day. It is time to heal the land of Honce."
"Is this mighty and merciless Bannagran I hear before me?" Laird Kirren Howen asked.
The great warrior, the Bear of Honce, smiled and shook his head. "Perhaps it is Dame Gwydre," he admitted. "But it is right, and it is for the best for what will follow this day."
Kirren Howen straightened in his saddle as his generals and his men looked at him curiously. "You will be king, yes?" he asked.
Bannagran didn't flinch.
"And Gwydre your queen?"
Again, the Bear didn't respond.
"What for Ethelbert dos Entel, then?" the laird asked.
"A shining and wondrous city on the Mirianic Coast, with the full support of Delaval and Pryd and Vanguard and the Order of Blessed Abelle," Bannagran promised.
Kirren Howen paused and considered the words for a long while. "My trusted generals and friends," he said at length, and both Myrick and Tyne leaned toward him. "Do spread the word that all quarter is to be given."
For what seemed like a thousand heartbeats, not a sound could be heard about Laird Kirren Howen and the stunning proclamation.
"And tend the wounded," he continued, and he looked at Bannagran as he finished, "of both sides."
Bannagran walked his chariot beside Kirren Howen's horse and held forth his hand. "I have not forgotten our alliance in the east against the powries," he said.
"Nor have I," Kirren Howen replied, and he took Bannagran's hand. As if from very far away, Bransen heard the cheers around Milwellis, heard the laird himself calling for more volleys into the copse.
Bransen held on tightly and concentrated on his soul stone, holding steady his life energy. He managed to glance about, the branches crackling with flames behind him and skipping arrows all about him. He noted the carnage he had wrought this ugly day.
He had killed hundreds and wounded hundreds more.
He held to Gwydre's words, her promise, and the thought of the world his child would come to know. He had to believe that the price was worth the gain. He winced as another arrow invaded his body, driving deep into his shoulder, but the soul stone magic was there, keeping him alive.
He heard one voice above all others, though, and the message that it carried wounded Bransen more profoundly than any dart ever could. For it was Milwellis, rallying his force.
"The demon is dead," Milwellis proclaimed. "And now comes the witch in folly!"
Bransen couldn't see much of the battlefield through the pain and the tears and the smoke and the tumble of smoking leaves, but he quickly came to understand that Laird Milwellis had somehow held his force together. He managed to glance back behind him, toward the western slope, toward the horns of Gwydre. Down the hill she came, he knew, and knew, too, that he had weakened Milwellis's line enough for her to drive hard through those first ranks.
But as he swung his gaze back, Bransen realized that it wouldn't be enough. Not hardly. For those thousands around Milwellis stood firm, and the laird himself sat tall above them, forming them into a countercharge and heartening them with every word.
Bransen's shaking hand reached into his pouch, and he brought forth his fist, clutching a gem.
The soul stone protested as he turned his focus, and he knew then that to relinquish his concentration from the healing magic was surely to die.
He knew it, but he knew that Gwydre was doomed.
The price. The gain. And now she is ours!" Laird Milwellis insisted. He lifted his mailed fist before him in a punch of victory, and all the men began to cheer.
The sharp crack of air interrupted that, though, and just as he started to shout the command to charge, Laird Milwellis felt his own fist, his own gauntlet, smash into his face with tremendous force.
And from that gauntlet, through that gauntlet and through his hand, came a screeching projectile, crushing through bone, tearing through brain, and blowing the back of Milwellis's skull and helm away.
The laird flipped backward from his horse, falling facedown to the mud, quite dead before he ever landed.
"Laird!" Harcourt cried after the moment of shock. "Father, tend him!" he started to yell at De Guilbe, but when he looked at the monk, his words failed.
For De Guilbe sat on his horse behind Milwellis, a strange look in his eye, a weird chuckle escaping his lips. He looked down at his own chest, where blood widened under his brown robes and streamed out the hole made by the lodestone.
He looked at Harcourt curiously.
"I am dead," he said.
And he was. In the tree, Bransen could not see his handiwork, for his sight had turned inward. He pictured Cadayle, beautiful Cadayle, reaching down to him as he lay in the mud, the poor Stork who had been bullied to the ground yet again. He felt her warmth, her kiss… her love. He felt the brush of her brown hair on his face, a gentle place to hide from the pain.
He heard Gwydre's promise.
And he knew, somehow he knew-perhaps it was the cries around him, the calls of Abelle or the old ones themselves come to Dame Gwydre's call.
Somehow he knew that his sacrifice had not been in vain.
He left the battlefield with hope.
TWENTY-NINE
The Royal Procession
Yeslnik stared out from the high window of his keep, beyond the walls of Delaval City to a field blackened by a great and combined army. He had less than two legions, no more, for in the rout many had died, many more had fled, and many, so said the rumors, had turned against him, joining the ranks of the Bear of Honce.
"Milwellis," he whispered, he begged to the wind, praying for the Laird of Palmaristown to come forth and crush the army before his gates. He looked to the river, where an armada of his warships and those of Palmaristown had gathered, but they remained far out in the river, out of range of Bannagran's archers.
"He will come," Olym assured him when he turned around. "Harcourt will tell us."
She referred to the news that had come to Yeslnik's chambers only a few moments before, an announcement that General Harcourt of Palmaristown, Laird Milwellis's second, had somehow managed to bypass Bannagran and Gwydre's tens of thousands and enter Delaval City.
"When will Milwellis attack?" Yeslnik demanded of Harcourt as the man was escorted through his door.
The general stopped his march and cast a curious look Yeslnik's way. "Laird Milwellis is dead," he replied. "And his army scattered before the rage of Dame Gwydre and some demon dactyl known as the Highwayman."
"What?" Yeslnik screamed, coming out of his throne and trembling. "I lent you legions!"
"The carrion birds feast well in Blenden Coe," Harcourt replied. "The army was broken and the battle ended, even before Laird Bannagran arrived with thousands more to bolster Dame Gwydre's cause and with the warriors of Ethelbert dos Entel beside him to bolster the cause of both."
"But surely you have something left?" Yeslnik pleaded. "I see the armada in the river!"
"Crewed thinly," said Harcourt, "and by no force that might do battle with the Bear of Honce."
"But you got in here, and so we can escape," Yeslnik said, grasping at any hope he could find.
Harcourt laughed at him. "Laird Bannagran, who has my sword in surrender, sent me in," he explained, and Yeslnik fell back into his throne. "He demands that you yield. Delaval City, all of Honce, is his, is King Bannagran's." He paused and drew a deep sigh. "And Queen Gwydre's, curse her name."
"No!" Yeslnik screamed, slamming his fist on the arm of his oaken throne. "No! We must kill them! You must kill them!"
Harcourt looked at him with an expression of pity… not pity for feeble King Yeslnik but for all of Honce, it seemed. "All is lost," he said somberly, and he bowed and exited the room.
Yeslnik sat as if frozen for many heartbeats, then finally leaped from his throne and rushed out of the room, to the top of the long stair.
"You cannot leave me!" he screamed at the man now far below. "You cannot! I command that you kill them!"
Yeslnik felt a strong grip on his shoulder, and he swung about to see Olym before him. "You do it!" she screamed at him, pounding on him frantically. "Strengthen your army! Hold strong the walls until they are gone! You feeble fool! You should have stayed on the field as your generals demanded, to defeat Bannagran out there!"
"While you fled?" Yeslnik screamed back.
"I am your queen! You must protect me!"
She hit him, but now, for the first time in his life, Yeslnik was having no more. He balled his fist and slugged Olym hard in the face, then repeatedly slapped and punched her, and, when that did not suffice to satisfy his rage, he grabbed her by the hair and tugged hard, taking out not only a handful of strands but a hairpin as well.
He struck with it, stabbing it into Olym's chest. Again and again, Yeslnik pumped his arm, all of his fury playing out with every invasion of his wife's flesh.
She screamed, she begged, she threw herself against him.
But Yeslnik merely growled, glad that he had mortally wounded her.
He kept growling until he realized that he couldn't support her great bulk against him and that his heels were against the top step of a long staircase. Cormack and Milkeila had not marched that afternoon with Gwydre and Bannagran back to Delaval City. As soon as the battle had ended, Bannagran and Gwydre had swung about in pursuit of Yeslnik, to be done with this all. But they had left many behind to tend the wounded, to pile and burn the dead. So Cormack and Milkeila remained about Blenden Coe, with so many wounded to tend and so many questions still unanswered.
It wasn't until two days later, the same morning that Harcourt arrived in Delaval City, that the pair at last discovered some credible witnesses who led them to a burned and scarred copse of trees. The couple made their way among the many trunks and roots, and, of all the treasures that would be looted from the carnage of Blenden Coe in the aftermath of that battle, none shone more precious than the sword Milkeila found on the ground in the leaves beneath one tall maple.
The woman paused a long while, steadying herself, before she dared look up.
To the tree-borne grave of the Highwayman. "He's dead," the young and pretty woman said to Harcourt when he rushed back to the stairs to view the broken body of King Yeslnik. "They're both dead!"
"What do we do?" another attendant asked in despair, and, indeed, the gloom spread wide and far and fast.
"We open the gates," Harcourt said, and all eyes looked upon him. "And pray that our conquerors are beneficent."
The gates of Delaval City were opened that day, as the sun sank low in the western sky, as, in a field far away, Cormack and Milkeila knelt and cried and kissed the hero who had won the day in Blenden Coe.
Harcourt of Palmaristown met the royal procession at the gates as they marched. He presented King Yeslnik's sword to Laird Bannagran… nay, to King Bannagran.
Bannagran took it and looked to Queen Gwydre at his side. Then he glanced at Master Reandu and at Laird Ethelbert, following right behind, who nodded his agreement.
Bannagran accepted Yeslnik's sword but in turn gave Harcourt back the sword the general had surrendered in Blenden Coe.
And in that moment, the horns of Pryd began to blow, and the horns of Delaval City replied, and the horns of Vanguard resounded, and the horns of Ethelbert dos Entel joined in, and from the ships in the river came the horns of Palmaristown, and in that moment of confusion and fear, there came to Delaval City, hope. Unlike so many who had left Blenden Coe, traveling straight to Delaval City to attend the formal wedding and coronation of Bannagran and Gwydre, Cormack and Milkeila took a more roundabout route, moving north and west to the bank of the Masur Delaval not far south from Palmaristown.
It seemed a fool's chase, even to Cormack, who had insisted upon it, but he was determined to at least try. He owed his unlikely friends that much.
Whether it was some magic in the powrie beret he wore or a matter of good information gleaned from some of Milwellis's soldiers or simply dumb luck or some combination of the three, Cormack did not know, but walking along the river, the monk recognized the familiar face immediately, though it was bloated in death and well along in rot.
But he knew this dwarf, without doubt.
"And Bikelbrin's up here," Milkeila called a few moments later from the rise just off the river. "I cannot believe that we found them!"
Cormack stood hands on hips, looking down at the powrie who had befriended him. The weight of all the world fell on his shoulders in that one moment, and tears escaped his eyes. Tears for Mcwigik and Bikelbrin, tears for Bransen, tears for Jameston Sequin, tears for all the dead and all the maimed and all the grieving.
"Bury them?" Milkeila asked, for she was not sure why Cormack had insisted on this expedition.
The monk shook his head. He drew a knife from his belt and crouched down over his dead powrie friend.
"Cormack!" Milkeila yelled at him when he started cutting, but he did not stop, and by the time the woman arrived at his side, he stood up and showed her Mcwigik's heart. Methodically, the monk went to Bikelbrin and similarly cut out his heart.
"What are you doing?" Milkeila asked repeatedly as Cormack found a clear spot in from the river, a place suitable for his needs. He placed the hearts down gently and began to dig with his knife.
"Help me," he said.
"You bury their hearts?"
"And then we sing," Cormack said. Milkeila paused and stared at him suspiciously.
She went to her work, though, and they finished the hole and placed the hearts of Mcwigik and Bikelbrin within.
Cormack tapped down the replaced earth, then grabbed Milkeila by the shoulders and bent low in a huddle. He began the cadence of the song he had learned long ago in a place far away, and Milkeila dutifully chanted along, though she did not know the words.
> It didn't matter, Cormack thought, for what did he know of this ritual anyway? Would two new dwarves, offspring of his friends, actually come forth?
"That is Sepulcher?" Milkeila asked when they were done.
Cormack nodded.
"Why?" the woman asked.
"I don't know," Cormack answered honestly. "A debt repaid?"
The couple stood holding hands above the graves, the womb of Mcwigik and Bikelbrin, for a long, long while.
And there they put the past behind them and turned south toward Delaval City, toward the future.
EPILOGUE
Bransen Garibond, Prince of Pryd, cast his line into the still waters of the lake and rested back against the stone. This was his favorite fishing spot in all of Pryd Town, a small outcrop that jutted into the water beside the old house, the childhood home of his father and namesake. From the window of that house, his house now, his father had often watched his adoptive father, Garibond Womak, similarly casting.
At least, so claimed his mother and grandmother, and Bransen could well imagine it. He felt connected to this place, which, along with Castle Pryd, had been his home for all his thirty-five years. Here he was at peace. Here the world was as it should be in the kingdom known as Honce-the-Bear in God's Year 111.
"Father!" he heard a call from his teenaged son, and Dynard came into view, sprinting past the house toward Bransen. On the porch, Callen McKeege stood up curiously, but old Dawson, well into his nineties now, hardly seemed to notice the disturbance.
"Word from Ursal!" Dynard exclaimed, referring to the throne of Honce-the-Bear, a city once known as Delaval.
Bransen knew what was coming before Dynard even spoke it.
"To the castle," he instructed his son, and Callen and even old Dawson followed.
They found Cadayle, the longtime Dame of Pryd, tending one of her many gardens. Her smile had not diminished with age, though the sparkle in her eyes had never quite returned after the loss of her beloved husband.
"The king is dead," Bransen told his mother.
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