A Company of Heroes Book One: The Stonecutter

by Ron Miller

  Men are everywhere. In the snow and smoke, it is difficult to tell friend from foe. If what Piers surmised has taken place, that most of the men have remained loyal to the crown, rather than raise arms against the prince and put themselves in mortal jeopardy, then she is relatively safe in assuming that all around her are her enemies. She is glad of her uniform: at a distance she will be indistinguishable from any other soldier. Sporadic shots bang in every direction and more than one bullet sizzles past her head, buzzing like a live electric wire. But visibility is too bad to risk much shooting and the prevailing sound is the ringing clatter of sword upon sword.

  She dodges from tent to tent, trying to locate the perimeter of the camp. She quite suddenly finds herself on the tundra beyond the garrison. It looks as black as peat, with the round, bare, glacier-deposited rocks strewn upon it like grey mushrooms. The granular snow, blowing in clouds, has not yet been able to cover the ground. The hard pellets sting her cheeks.

  A voice behind her shouts “Halt!”

  Without thinking she leaps like a startled cat. But whoever has given the order has been close and she feels a hand clench her arm. She is spun around and finds herself facing a pair of Guards.

  “It’s her, all right,” says the one holding her. “Get the prince.”

  “Hang onto her, Boskid. I think she’ll be the making of our promotion!”

  “Just hurry it up, will you?” Then, turning to the girl, “All right, Princess, behave yourself and I mean you no harm. Ho! What’s this?”

  Bronwyn had drawn her remaining pistol with her free hand but the Guard named Boskid snatches it by the long barrel, twisting it from her grip so roughly that her wrist is wrenched painfully and she cries out a curse. He throws the gun into the darkening storm. Before the man can say another word, however, Bronwyn kicks him on his shin with all the force she can muster. As hard as her boots are, though, the boots worn by the Guard are equally tough. She does not cause him much pain, to her regret, but he does push her further away, at arm’s length, retaining his grip on her forearm. She immediately swings her foot up in a straight-legged kick into his crotch, burying the toe of her boot almost to her ankle. This time he gives an entirely satisfying shriek, doubling over with a hideous gurgle.

  With her arm released she draws her sword, backing several paces away from the man.

  “You damned little bitch!” he wheezes. “Reward or no reward, I’m going to...!”

  He stumbles toward her, eyes red with fury in his pale, sweat-streaked face, drawing his own revolver as he comes closer. Bronwyn, with neither premeditation nor warning, swings her saber over her head in a two-handed downward-slicing chop as though she were splitting wood with an ax. Instead she split the Guard. The heavy blade grazes his cheek, slicing it off and exposing the teeth behind. His ear flips through the air like a poker chip. The saber tip just nicks his collarbone, enters the chest below, cuts through cloth and nearly a foot of flesh.

  “Ah! Damn you!” he cries, as the sudden rush of blood spills over his uniform. Bronwyn doesn’t wait to find out what he plans to do; instead she hacks at the man once again, artlessly using the weapon as though it were a club. This time the Guard unfolds like the blossoming of a wet red flower.

  Saber in hand, Bronwyn runs from the firelit camp, which quickly becomes little more than a dull glow in the storm, still too frightened and overflowing with adrenaline to be sickened by what she has just done. No one appears to notice her flight, but she knew the Guard who had gone to fetch her brother would soon return to his companion and pursuit would be immediate. She hopes to lose herself in the confusion of low boulders and rocks that covers the surface of the tundra for miles around the camp. When she hears the sound of hoofbeats thudding behind her, she curses the luck that has brought pursuit so quickly.

  “Bronwyn! Stop!”

  It is a familiar voice, so she pauses and turns. Silhouetted against the snow-diffused glow from the burning camp, she sees the tall, lean figure of her cousin bringing his horse to a halt.

  “Bronwyn?”

  “Yes! Hello, Piers!”

  He drops from the saddle quickly and Bronwyn runs to meet him.

  “There’s not a minute to lose,” he says. “Take the horse. It’s the big red one, you know him, and there are a few provisions in the saddlebags, there’s also a blanket and a few other things you’ll need. Now you must take the horse and run, get away. They must not get you!”

  “But, Piers!”

  “Never mind me. The barons’ll never allow Ferenc and Payne to destroy the throne, but their task will be almost impossible without you. If you fail to return to Blavek try, if you can, to at least get to Londeac, to your uncle, Felix. He’ll surely help. You’re the rallying point, the nucleus. And it must be you who tells the story because you’ll be believed. So go, and quickly!”

  “What about Thud and Gyven?”

  “Alive at last sight, but captured, so who knows? Most of my militia are in the same dilemma. If I go back now and surrender it’ll save many lives, and buy a lot of time for you.”

  “But what can I do?”

  “Do what you can.”

  “May Musrum go with you, Cousin,” she says, climbing into the saddle. She bends down and the girl and the tall, weary man kiss.

  “And may Musrum protect you,” he replies, smacking the horse on its flank, sending it off into the swirling twilight. The sound of its hooves is quickly muffled by the dry, sponge-like moss, absorbed by the insulating billows of snow. Bronwyn has vanished abruptly, there is nothing more to see. The old man turns his back to the darkness, and begin walking to meet the horde of black figures that is approaching him.

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE ESCAPE

  Bronwyn strokes the closely knotted cord, causing the cylindrical bell from which it hung to sing hollowly. The bell and the cord depends from the interior apex of one of the pyramidal shrines that can be found anywhere in the North Country. She is doing something she has not done seriously in years: she is preparing to pray. The business with the bell is simply to alert Musrum that a prayer is soon to be made; it is necessary to get His attention since sudden prayers make Musrum jump ‘Musrum, page 7, verse 11).

  This is the beginning of Bronwyn’s great trek, where she travels the rough, uncertain territory between her old life and her new. She does not know this, of course, no more than she knows what lay a mile ahead of her. She knows what she wants, of course, just as she has always done, her goals remain unchanged. What she is unaware of is the degree to which she is having to alter herself, instead of those around her, as she has been long accustomed, in order for those goals to become reality. Just as a key must be of a particular shape before it will open a door, so too must the princess be of a special order before she can enter her own future. And if the key does not quite work, then it must be adjusted until it does. And no key has ever had any say as to what shape it must take; that is something that is dictated by the job it must do.

  She has been traveling for three days since the disastrous attack on Piers’s outpost. She has been heading east and a little south, as near as she can judge, the position of the sun is indicated only by a vague brightening in the overcast sky. She has, she is sure, crossed the divide that separates the watersheds of the Moltus River from the rivers and streams that run directly to the eastern sea. The camp had been high in the rugged western slopes in the first place, and the first hours of her headlong flight has carried her beyond the summits and into the range that binds the Zileheroum on the east. Now she finds herself wondering what to say to the little shrine. Praying does not come either naturally or easily to the princess, especially since she harbors heretically skeptical doubts not only about its efficacy but the very existence of Musrum Himself. With more selfconsciousness than is justified by her lonely presence in the wilderness, she gives the bell a tap and whispers, quickly, “I hope you can help me, Musrum. Just a little?”

  The hum of the bell is absorbed by the surroundi
ng trees. Then there is nothing but silence, which is, in truth, no more than she has expected. Annoyed with herself, an annoyance exacerbated by the realization that she feels disappointment, she slams the door shut and goes on her way.

  Where the mountains that bind the Zileheroum in the west become higher and more precipitous the further one penetrates them, the mountains to the east slope relatively gently from their summits to the coast, as though in some bygone epoch the land had been tilted up toward the center of the island ‘which is what in fact had happened). By following the general slope or any stream that runs down it, she would eventually reach the shore of the South Mostaza Sea; she could then merely turn to her right, which would be south, and follow the coast until it brings her to the plains that lay to the east of Blavek. By then the land would have flattened out, there would be numerous roads and the going would be relatively easy. She would also be assured, by following the coast, of meeting sympathetic and helpful countrymen from whom she has every reason to believe she could expect succor. However, the east coast of Guesclin is sawtoothed with deep fjords and embayments. To strictly follow this rambling coastline would add hundreds of miles and far too many days to her journey. It is now just over six days to the coronation. She has little enough hope of making it back to Blavek in time as things stand: alone and unsure of where she is, not at all certain whether or not she is being pursued, needing help but leery of the prospect of approaching anyone. The small amount of food that her cousin left in his saddlebags had run out that morning, and only the strictest rationing made it last as long as it did. An alternative plan to finding the coast and following it would be to try and determine the shortest line between where she is now, wherever that is, and Blavek, wherever it is, and to follow it.

  The sun is useless as an aid to direction-finding, and for the same reason the stars are even less so. And it is just as well they are invisible since she would not have had the slightest idea what to do with them. Therefore she is at least spared being both lost and feeling stupid. Nevertheless, the flow of the streams she has been crossing tells her which way the coast is: that is, the direction in which east lay, more or less; upstream is therefore west, also more or less. Facing east, south is at her right hand. Heading immediately in that direction seems to her to be the best thing to do: she feel as though she is actually heading home, as opposed to embarking on a meandering journey of unknown length going practically in the wrong direction just to reach the coast so then she can finally turn south toward Blavek.

  So she heads south as directly as she can. Three days later she begins to seriously doubt the wisdom of her decision. Her guiding streams have proven far more a hindrance than an assistance. The mountain slopes are more often steep than not and strewn with exposed boulders and rocks. The dozens of streams and rivulets tumbling from the heights foam over slippery, moss-covered rocks worn smooth on their faces but with edges as jagged as saw blades, all encrusted with ice.

  Since she is trying to navigate a course perpendicular to the direction the water is naturally taking, Bronwyn is forced again and again to negotiate a hazardous crossing, consuming valuable time by the hours’ worth, or to make frustrating detours upstream or downstream to find a safe ford. She finds herself leading her horse as often as she rides it. The only thing for which she can feel gratitude is the virgin condition of the forest. The foliage of the towering trees grows together in an almost opaque green canopy far overhead. The shady earth between the trees is therefore blessedly free of undergrowth and, although she is at some altitude, there are only a few inches of snow on the ground.

  Bronwyn finds herself now passing through a region of almost gothic perpendicularity, the floor of the forest broken only by the monster boles of trees so large in circumference that the surfaces of the nearest one looks flat. Nights, however, are bad.

  The princess has never in her life intentionally spent a night outdoors ‘the night she collapsed exhausted in the cirque of course cannot fairly be counted). She has neither fire nor the means to start one. It becomes very cold when the sun disappears behind the high ridges to her right. Brief flurries of hard, pellet-like snow accompanies the dusk. Wrapped into as small a sphere as possible within her woolen cape, she does her best to try and sleep, though she does little more than doze fitfully, worse than not sleeping at all. Hunger chews at her; her stomach is a hard, painful knot. She has improvidentially eaten too freely of the meager rations the Baron had given her and now there is little left, and that none too appetizing. There has been little enough grazing for the horse, beyond the wiry, pale lichens it scrapes from the rocks with its teeth. She has not seen another living thing after crossing over onto the eastern slope; all have already escaped or hidden from the coming winter. Yet at night the forest seems alive with sound: the mournful groaning of the trees as their tall trunks grind against one another in the wind, like the wringing of skeletal hands; the muttering of that thin, hard wind, whispering conspiratorially in the darkness; the stirring of the horse in its discomfort and hunger, its occasional worrisome nicker startling her into an hour of wakeful apprehension; and innumerable scurryings and cracklings that kept her high-strung imagination fully fueled.

  One night, an owl had destroyed a squirrel or rabbit not more than a few yards from where she lay huddled against the base of a tree. The sudden soft hiss of the big wings, the shriek of the doomed animal, the beat of the departing bird, like a heavy blanket being shaken, had left the girl as terrified as though the Weedking himself had materialized before her. She has no idea what had been going on beyond her woolen cocoon, but it had sounded absolutely terrible. Her brain, running like an ungoverned flywheel, refused to sleep.

  Perhaps spurred by morbid imaginings about her own fate, she found herself uncharacteristically concerned about the part she has played in the fates of an improbably large number of strangers. It is a problem that has never particularly bothered her a great deal before. She is after all, Bronwyn, Princess of Tamlaght, and naturally accustomed to having a large number of people at her beck and call. She has never given any thought to the trials and tribulations to which these less fortunate folk are put to make her own life easier and more comfortable. And why should she have? Isn’t that what they are there for? Isn’t it their delight and purpose to serve her? There are even those, such as the Royal Palace Guard, whose duty it is to die for her, if need be. And she knows perfectly well that they would do it gladly, should the necessity present itself. Why, then, this odd and unprecedented sense of guilt, or, if not guilt exactly, unease? It does seem, now that she thinks about it, that everyone who has attempts to help her in her present quest has come to some unpleasant fate. The problem with which she is wrestling is not why they had been willing to do so, but why it ought to be suddenly concerning her so strangely. Thud Mollockle had befriended her without question, long before he learned who she was, in fact, he had put himself at risk in her behalf. That was a most peculiar thing, she can see him lending whatever aid his princess required, but why would someone go to such great lengths for someone they thought a mere stranger? And now where is he? Dead, most likely.

  The strange being the Kobolds had entrusted to her, what of him? Probably dead, too. She hadn’t seen him even once during the skirmish, not having a clue as to what had been going on around him, he’d probably been mown down like a practice target.

  The family of gypsies that had helps her to escape from Blavek, what had they gained from helping the runaway princess? They could have easily asked for and received a substantial reward for turning her in to the Guards. Instead they earned, at the very least, arrest. Where are they now? Some horrible dungeon, no doubt.

  She has brought catastrophe to the lives of all who had tried to befriend her. And they had tried to befriend her, though she made little enough effort to befriend them in return. She knows there is a civic duty that requires the protection of the person of a royal, just as any loyal citizen would not hesitate to defend the flag. What bothers her, even
if she has not quite yet puzzled it out, is that these people had not been defending their princess, about whom, as such, she would be shocked to the core to learn of their indifference, they had simply been helping a girl in trouble. And nothing more.

  It is on the following morning that she is sending a prayer spinning toward the somnolent Musrum. By the sixth day she realizes that the horse is in distress. She knows it has not been fed well. Is there more she can be doing to relieve its discomfort? A better than fair horse-woman at home, she had of course left the care of the animals to the grooms. She can ride them well enough, but maintaining them is not a proper task for a princess. Has she neglected to do something necessary for her mount’s well-being? She has no way of knowing, though it seems so.

  Until this day she had given the horse very little thought, though her plans, she realizes too late, depended upon the beast. Without it, she will be stranded in the middle of thousands of square miles of hostile wilderness, with winter only days away. Urge, prod and cajole though she does, the horse refuses to proceed more than a score of paces before slowing gradually to a halt, its head drooping sadly, like a clockwork toy gradually winding down.

  The next morning, when Bronwyn rises from another sleepless night, she sees the horse lying on its side not far from her. She knows that horses do not normally lie down to sleep, and that all can not be well. It is true: this one had lain down to die.

  Seldom has Bronwyn experienced real despair; but now, hundreds of miles from a home that has become a hostile trap for her, without food, fire or the knowledge, skills and wherewithal for obtaining them, half lost and with her only friends and protectors either dead or prisoners, she feel a crushing hollowness, like an empty carton crumpled and tossed aside. Still curled within her cape, she sobs tearlessly for a few minutes. She looks over the edge of soggy black wool clutched to her face at the poor, motionless brown heap that had done its best for her. As have so many.