R. Salvatore - The Ancient

The woman glanced at her crewman, who, throughout this entire ordeal, hadn’t even moved. Nor did he notice his captain’s look, fixated as he was on the marvelous and surprising intruder.

“You would be wise to keep them hidden while you remain on the river, or even in the gulf,” the Highwayman said. “Delaval has sent word far and wide to find these, no doubt.”

“Ye mean to push the burden o’ them onto me?”

“If you do not want them, lady…”

“I said no such thing.”

The Highwayman smiled wider.

“And what’re ye asking in return for this… gift?”

“Nothing,” he replied. “They are indeed a burden to me, as I remain in Delaval’s lands.”

“You would have us sail you to the reaches of Laird Ethelbert?”

The Highwayman paused, and almost agreed to that, thinking that he could then get around the spurs of the Belt-and-Buckle and into the famed city of Jacintha, in Behr, which would allow him an open road to the Walk of Clouds. Black wings of doubt fluttered up all about him, though, forcing him to admit to himself, yet again, that he was not ready for that ultimate journey.

“At another time, perhaps,” he said. “I have business remaining here, though I do hope to reach Entel and beyond, all the way to Behr, in the near future. Should we meet again when my business is complete, I would beg of you to consider providing such passage.”

“And for now?” the woman asked, looking down at the open satchel.

“I would beg you to hoist your sails and be gone from this place.”

The woman looked at him suspiciously. “Ye be an agent of Ethelbert indeed, then.”

“Independent,” the Highwayman reiterated. “Truly so. I care for neither of the feuding lairds, nor for any of their lackey lessers. If all the nobles of all of Honce are murdered in their sleep tomorrow, I will raise a glass in celebration. But of now, it is Laird Delaval who has most aggravated me, and it does me pleasure indeed to stick pins into his sides, first by robbing his treasury, and then…”

“By buying off three ships he has employed for his efforts,” the privateer reasoned.

The Highwayman shrugged. “The treasure is an offer of truce from another independent. Perhaps a prepayment for services needed some time hence. But I hold you to nothing at all. I come in salute-better that one such as you possess the coins and jewels than have me bury them in a hole. How should I ever live with myself if these treasures find their way into the hands of an innocent and oblivious peasant, who is then hanged by Delaval’s people for possessing them? Here, I know, they are in competent hands of men and women wise enough to keep them safe and secret. So yes, I beg you to relieve me of my burden.”

The privateer looked down at the bags again, licking her lips as she imagined the treasures within. If the hints showing on the open edge were any indication, she knew that this might well be the most profitable day of her life. With a sigh, she slid her weapons away and lifted her eyes to regard the Highwayman.

But he was already gone from her cabin.

It is an amazing transformation,” Callen said early the next morning. Bransen had just awakened and was still rubbing the sleep from his eyes when Callen walked through the door of their rented room. Beside him on the small bed Cadayle hardly stirred other than to bury her face in her pillow against the intrusion of daylight.

“I did not know that you had been here before,” Bransen replied, his voice steady, for he had slept with the soul stone firmly strapped in place on his forehead.

“Of course I have not,” said Callen. “I’m only echoing the words of the townsfolk. Palmaristown has seen a great shift in the last few months. No Samhaists remain in the city, and there are few in the surrounding countryside by all accounts. And even the people here fast abandon the ways of the Ancient Ones.”

“The Abellicans have the gemstones and the favor of the lairds across all of Honce,” Bransen said.

“But the change is coming more quickly here than elsewhere-even than in Delaval itself from what I could see. I had no such expectation, since Palmaristown is on the border of the wilderness. Across the river is land untouched by the Abellicans by all accounts.”

“And land unwanted by the Samhaists, likely,” Bransen reasoned.

“Or perhaps the Samhaists are out there, just across the river, watching and biding their time.”

Bransen shrugged, as he hardly cared. As he studied Callen more carefully, though, he recognized that she was more than a little unsettled by the sweeping changes, which surprised him given her unpleasant history with the brutal Samhaists.

“Perhaps the world will become a better place as the Samhaists recede into the shadows,” he offered. “Not that I expect much better from the Abellicans.”

“If they’re not killing people it will be an improvement,” Callen said, and Bransen smiled at her, glad that his words had apparently eased her troubled soul. He sympathized, and understood her inner turmoil, for indeed the changes sweeping the land were vast and profound, and Bransen recognized that few of the people had come to terms with them as of yet. Looking at it all from a removed point of view, it was more amusing than unsettling. He figured he really couldn’t lose, for anything would be better than the present state!

“Did your tryst go well?” Callen asked.

“I believe it did.”

“Those ships are from Bergenbel, the one holding south of the gulf that hasn’t thrown in for either Ethelbert or Delaval. Both sides value that port, I am told, and so they pay dearly for the services of the privateers who have taken up the mercenary cause.”

“Each believes that to be the path toward securing the holding, likely.”

Callen nodded her agreement with the assessment.

“Then my visit with the flagship captain last night might prove more irritating to Delaval than I intended,” Bransen said, his smile wide.

That smile grew all the wider later in the day when the trio started out of town. On a hill on the northeastern section they watched the Bergenbel privateers raise their sails and glide away from Palmaristown, heading north toward the open waters of the Gulf of Corona. At a nearby smithy, where they sold old Doully (for they could not bear to force the aching donkey to continue the journey), they found confirmation that the departure of the ships was the talk of the town, with many whispering that it would prove a harbinger for disaster.

“Ethelbert’s bought them,” explained the blacksmith, a hulking giant of a man with a red face and hair black and matted. “Word’s out that they might have been spies from the dog, come here to survey Palmaristown’s defenses.”

“You are expecting an attack?” Cadayle asked.

“Preparing for it,” the smith replied. “Who’s to know what the dog Ethelbert will do? King Delaval’s got him squeezed to the Mirianic.”

They let it go at that, with Cadayle handing Bransen, in Stork guise, over to Callen and saying her farewells to Doully. They were some distance from the smithy, on an open stretch of ground reserved for visiting caravans, before any of them dared broach the subject.

“Just as you had hoped,” Cadayle said.

Bransen grabbed the soul stone in his pouch and clutched it tightly. “If there were only a way for me to let Delaval know that it was the idiot Yeslnik’s coin that bought off his privateers, my satisfaction would be complete.”

“It’s early in the day,” said Callen. “You will think of something.”

That brought a shared laugh from the three, but Bransen cut his short, and stuttered it and twisted it around, when he noted the approach of a city guardsman. With help from his two companions, the Stork staggered out through Palmaristown’s northeastern gate, and down the open road toward Chapel Abelle, the seat of Abellican power.