R. Salvatore - The Ancient

“Should I choose?” Bransen quipped. “What prisoner would willingly remain in his dungeon?”

“A bit of respect!” Dawson warned, but Gwydre motioned for him to be quiet.

“Vanguard is no dungeon, Bransen Garibond,” Dame Gwydre said. “She is home. Home to many, many good people. You are free to view it in any manner you choose, of course-never would I deign to take that choice from any man.”

“Yet I must fight for her, whatever my feelings.”

“Fight for yourself, then,” Dame Gwydre retorted. “For your freedom, such as it may be, and for the benefit of your young and beautiful wife, who does not deserve to see her husband put in a sack with venomous snakes. I care not why you fight, but I insist that you do. And while you may not see the good your fine blade is doing, we surely do. And while you may not care for those families given a chance to live in peace and security because of your actions against the Samhaist-inspired hordes, we surely do.”

With that, she turned her roan mare and walked it away.

Dawson wore a pitying smirk as he shook his head, regarding Bransen. “One day you’ll lose that stubborn pride,” he predicted. “And you’ll see the truth of Dame Gwydre, the truth of all of this, and you’ll be shamed to have spoken to her such.”

Then Dawson, too, walked away.

Bransen stared at him as he left, unblinking, his eyes boring holes into the man’s back.

“You fought brilliantly today,” Brother Jond said to him. “I had thought the line lost and expected that we would be the ones driven from the field.”

Bransen looked at Jond, a man he had found it difficult to hate, despite his anger and his general feelings for Abellicans.

“That may mean little to you,” Jond went on. “What field is worth the effort, of course, and you care not if Gwydre wins or Gwydre falls.” He looked at the man lying before him. “But had we been driven from the field, this man would not have survived his wounds, and a woman not so unlike your wife would grieve forever.”

“Dame Gwydre does not care why I fight,” Bransen answered him, holding stubbornly to his anger. “Why would you?”

“Dame Gwydre has bigger things to care about than a single man’s heart and soul, perhaps.”

“And Brother Jond does not?”

The monk shrugged. “My victories are smaller, no doubt, but no less consequential, and no less satisfying.”

Bransen started to snipe back, but held his tongue and just waved his free hand in defeat, then walked off to be alone.

Brother Jond watched him go with a knowing smile. Bransen’s anger was real, but so was his compassion.

And in the end, Jond held faith that the compassion would prevail, because he had seen more than Bransen the warrior, this Sworddancer or Highwayman, as he was alternately known. After the previous battles, Bransen had helped Brother Jond and the others in tending the wounded, and his prowess in such matters was no less than his fighting ability.

Indeed, later that very night, Bransen and Jond worked side by side on the wounded.

“You hate them,” Jond remarked.

“Them?”

“McKeege and Dame Gwydre, for a start,” Jond explained. “My brethren in the South, as well. You are a young man too full of anger.”

Bransen regarded him curiously, in no small part because this wizened monk wasn’t much his elder, and to hear Jond calling him a “young man” seemed a bit strange.

“I am not as angry as you believe.”

“It pleases me to hear that,” Jond said, sincerely.

“But I have seen more dishonesty and evil than I ever expected,” Bransen went on. He paused and bent low over a severely wounded woman, placing his hand on her belly and closing his eyes. He felt his hand grow warm, and the woman’s soft moan told him that his effort was having some effect-though he couldn’t begin to guess whether it would be sufficient balm to get her through the tearing and twisting a spear had caused in her bowels.

After a short while, Bransen opened his eyes and leaned back to see Brother Jond staring at him.

“What do you do?” Jond asked. “To heal them, I mean. You have no gemstones, and yet I cannot deny what my eyes show to me. Your work has a positive effect on their wounds, almost as much so as a skilled brother with a soul stone.”

“My mother was Jhesta Tu,” said Bransen, and Brother Jond crinkled his face. “Do you know what that means?”

The monk shook his head, and Bransen snickered and said, “I did not expect anything different.”

“Jhesta Tu is a… religion?”

“A way of life,” said Bransen. “A philosophy. A religion? Yes. And since it is one not of Honce, but of Behr, I would hope that the Abellican Order has no reason to hate it. But of course they do. Why control people’s lives only a bit of the way, after all?”

“There is no end to your sarcasm.”

“None that you’ll ever see,” Bransen promised, but he was smiling as he spoke, despite himself, and Brother Jond got a laugh out of that, too.

“I know that your journey here was the result of a lie,” Jond said a long while later, as the two finally neared the end of the line of wounded. “But I cannot deny that I am glad you have come. As are they,” he added, sweeping his arm and his gaze out over the injured.

Bransen wanted to offer a stinging retort, but in the face of the suffering laid out before him, he found that he could not.

“As am I,” came a voice from behind, and the pair turned to see Dame Gwydre, stepping into one of Brother Jond’s conversations for the second time that day.

Bransen stared at her and did not otherwise respond.

“Greetings again, Lady,” Brother Jond said. “Your presence will surely uplift the spirits of these poor wounded warriors.”

“Soon,” she promised. “For the moment, though, I would speak with your companion.”

She matched Bransen’s stare, and motioned for him to join her outside the tent.

“Your anger is understandable,” she said when he joined her outside. She led the way, walking across the encampment through a light rain that had come up.

“I will sleep easier knowing that you approve,” he said, taking some solace in being able to so casually and impudently address this imposing and powerful figure. He felt as if he had scored a little victory in that retort, though he quickly scolded himself silently for such a petulant and childish need, particularly when Gwydre took it all in stride, as if it was deserved or at least understandable.

“The wind has a bit of winter’s bite in it this evening,” she said. “The season is not so far away, I fear. Our enemies will not relent-glacial trolls feel the cold not at all. But my own forces will be more miserable by far.”

“A fact that little concerns you, I expect,” Bransen said, and this time he did elicit a glower from the Dame of Vanguard. “Other than how it might affect your holding, I mean.”

“Do you understand and accept why Dawson brought you here?” Gwydre asked quietly.

“I understand that I was deceived.”

“For your own good.”

“And for yours.” Bransen stopped as he spoke the accusation, and turned to face the lady as she similarly swung about to regard him.

“Yes, I admit it,” she said. “And though I knew not of Bransen Garibond, this Highwayman legend, when Dawson left Pireth Vanguard, and though I had no idea that he would so coerce you to come, I admit openly that I approve of his tactics and of the result.”

“You would say that standing out here alone with me?”

Gwydre laughed at him. “Openly,” she reiterated. “I know enough of Bransen to recognize that he is no murderer.”

“Yet my anger is justified.”