R. Salvatore - The Ancient

For other friends of theirs, like Brother Moorkris, had died in protecting the prisoners and the chapel. Arguing about whether or not Father De Guilbe’s decision to keep their prisoners and accept the siege and battle was not their prerogative, nor had any found the time to do so. Their jobs had focused simply on survival, on beating back the enemy whatever the reasons for the enemy being there.

On a logical level, some might come to understand and accept Cormack’s treacherous actions. On a visceral level, the fallen brother had gotten exactly what he had deserved.

“If he’s still alive, he’s not long for it,” another brother said.

Giavno stepped forward and tossed a red beret, Cormack’s powrie cap, into the boat atop the prostrate, bleeding man. “It is a wound to every heart on Chapel Isle,” he said. “Cast him out that the currents might take him to a cove where the beasts will feast, and when he is gone we will speak no more of fallen Brother Cormack.”

Giavno turned and walked away and a group took hold of the small craft, guiding it toward the water. One man paused long enough to take the beret and set it upon Cormack’s head, and when he looked at the curious stares coming at him for the action, he merely shrugged. “Seems fitting.”

They all laughed-it was either that or cry-and brought the boat out onto the lake, giving it a strong shove to get it away from the island far enough so that one or another of the many crisscrossing currents caused by the underground hot streams that fed the lake would catch it.

“If it washes back in, I’ll tie it to another and tow it far out,” one brother volunteered, but that wasn’t necessary. As a brilliant orange sunset graced the western sky, the stark, low silhouette of Cormack’s funereal boat at last moved out of sight.

Dame Gwydre’s Trump

He walked with a sure and determined stride that mocked time itself, for he had seen seven decades of life and could pace men one-third his age. He stood tall and broad-shouldered, but his thick muscles had slackened, and his skin, so weathered in the northern sun, had sagged a bit. Still, no one doubted that the large fist of this man, Jameston Sequin, could flatten a nose and take both cheekbones with it!

His hair was long and gray, his beard not so long and still showing hints of the darker colors of his earlier years, and his great and thick mustache stood out most of all. He wore a tri-cornered cap, one he had fashioned, one that had been considered unique when he had fashioned it. Long and narrow, it trailed back from a roundpointed front to a flattened back that was just a bit wider than his head, and he kept a black feather along its right side, bent low to follow the line of the hat.

At one of Vanguard’s archery contests half a century before, one won by young Jameston, of course, the man had received more than a bit of teasing regarding his rather unusual cap-until, of course, he had explained that the pointed front allowed him to properly line up his shots. Within a few months, and to this day, the Jameston, as the hat was called, was quite common among Vanguard’s hunters, thereby adding to a legend that needed no enhancement.

It was said that he was of Alpinadoran descent, or mixed blood at least, but his long nose and protruding brow spoke of ancestors along the southeastern coast of Honce. His eyes were green, and his smile, though a bit snaggletoothed now, was infectious and strangely disarming, given the man’s imposing stature and often withering glare.

He was smiling now, as much out of curiosity as anything else. “This far north?” he asked himself (a not unusual occurrence) as he moved far enough down the side of one mountain to better view the combatants in the dell below, which included men, apparently Vanguardsmen.

Now more interested in the fight, which he had presumed to be another skirmish between the various troll or goblin tribes, Jameston quick-stepped closer, but to a higher perch with a better view.

His first instinct at that point was to charge right in, for a quick glance made him realize that the small group seemed sorely outnumbered and sure to be overwhelmed. Before he had taken a step, though, he understood that such impressions didn’t begin to tell this tale. The goblins, with a dozen lying dead already, were the ones in need of support.

Jameston drew Banewarren from his shoulder and set an arrow on its resting string as he watched the play. One man in particular, dressed in black from bandanna to boot, had the old scout nodding with approval. The man raced the length of the line, leaping and spinning, his thin sword cutting graceful and precise lines through the air and through the goblins alike. Wherever that man passed, goblins fell dead, and though an Abellican monk stood back from the action, ready to heal this man or any others who needed his magical services, Jameston doubted he’d expend much of his healing energy on this one.

A second, burlier figure crossed the black-clothed man’s wake as he rushed out to the far left of the human defensive formation, and Jameston smiled even wider. For this one, Vaughna por Lolone, he surely knew. “Crazy V,” he whispered, her nickname, and he laughed aloud as she lived up to it yet again, throwing herself with abandon into the midst of the goblins.

Jameston moved to find a better vantage point, testing the pull of Banewarren with every long stride.

Vaughna carried two iron hand axes as solidly as if they were extensions of her living arms. She punched out with her left, lifting the angle of the blow to clip a goblin forehead and jerk the creature’s head back. Her second hand came in fast at the exposed neck, but she had flipped her axe into the air, hitting the goblin’s exposed throat with her stiffened fingers instead.

As it staggered back gasping, Crazy V put her face right in front of the beast’s, opened wide her eyes and mouth, and screamed wildly. As she did, she blindly caught her descending axe, dropped her shoulders back, and delivered a chop into the goblin’s side, bending it over in pain.

Crazy V drove across with her left but brought it up short, evading the wounded creature’s flimsy defense. For she stepped out with her left as she swung and pivoted on that foot, bringing a trailing right-hand backhand all the way about to chop the goblin almost exactly across from the first serious wound.

Then she spun away as if to leave but turned about suddenly and unloaded a barrage of chops, left and right, on the creature, melting it into a pile of torn muck.

Blood-spattered and unbothered, Crazy V twirled about and sought her next target, and even took a step that way before an unusual, red-feathered arrow whipped into the goblin and sent it flying into a tree, where the arrow drove through and pinned the dead thing upright.

Crazy V’s face erupted in a gleeful look of recognition and she yelled again, just because. Only one man in this region was known for such fletching. She rushed off to find something to hit, because she knew that between this Highwayman and his sword and their newest arrival, there soon would be few remaining targets!

Bransen was careful that his dance did not venture too close to the ferocious Vaughna; he always took pains to avoid that one. It had nothing to do with his personal feelings, though the crass and crude woman often left him shaking his head. Rather, it was because her fighting style was so unpredictable, so out-of-control, it could interrupt the flow of his own, meticulous motions.

He stayed nearest to Brother Jond, both to ensure that the monk was free to continue his gemstone healing and the occasional magical offensive strike and because of the friendship they had forged in previous battles.

The remaining two members of the strike force, a middle-aged crusty old warrior named Crait and a redheaded young bull named Olconna, fell somewhere on the spectrum between Bransen and Vaughna. Neither could match his grace or her ferocity, but both performed an effective enough combination of the two.