R. Salvatore - The Ancient

He ended with a nod that brooked no debate, took his arrows from Bransen and Brother Jond, and threw one more wink Vaughna’s way before hiking off to the east.

The party of five just shrugged and followed. What else was there for them to do?

After they made their camp that night, Vaughna and Jameston sat together, chatting and laughing like old friends.

“They were once lovers,” Olconna remarked to Crait, the two of them on the far side of the encampment, cleaning and sharpening their weapons.

Crait laughed heartily. “More than once, if I’m knowin’ Crazy V!”

Olconna shot him a curious glance, and his face crinkled. “You as well?”

Crait laughed again. “And I’m knowin’ Crazy V!” he said.

Olconna looked back at the sturdy woman, shaking his head.

“That a problem for you?” Crait asked bluntly. “Make you think less of me, does it?”

“She’s not so pretty,” Olconna said.

“Bah!” Crait retorted without the slightest hesitation, and he, too, turned to regard the woman. “She’s the most beautiful woman I ever seen.”

Olconna put on a most incredulous expression.

“And if she’s e’er to offer you a ride, you’d be a wise man to take it!” Crait added with a wink.

“Like everyone else?” the younger man asked sarcastically.

“Oh, but don’t be going to that place,” Crait replied. “You spend your days killing people and you’re to judge one who takes a ride now and then?”

“But…”

“Ain’t nothing to ‘but’ about,” Crait cut him short. “Look at her, boy, and look at her well. Crazy V. She’s living every moment with fire and filling her soul with memories and experiences most folk will never begin to imagine. She can outfight, outspit, outswear, and outfornicate almost any man alive and any woman I ever heard of. She’ll go to her grave without regret. How many of us can say that?”

Olconna started to reply-several times-but he fumbled with the words, and all the while he stared at Vaughna.

Crait sat quietly, staring at the young warrior who had become his prot$eAg$eA of sorts and thinking that he had just given Olconna one of the most valuable lessons of all.

I resist.

I do not know where it comes from, what deep-seated instinct or subconscious component of my being precipitates the apathy, but for all the truth and truthful desperation of Dame Gwydre’s plea I resist her call to arms. She is correct in everything she said. I do not doubt that, had I stayed in Honce proper, the Church or the lairds would have caught up with me and brought me to an untimely and painful end. I do not doubt Dawson’s words that the brothers of Chapel Abelle knew the truth of the Highwayman and were prepared to capture or kill me. I have seen Abellican justice before.

I do not doubt that the Dame of Vanguard is desperate or that her people are suffering terribly under the weight of encroaching hordes, bounded (as they are Samhaist driven) by no moral constraints.

And still I resist.

I have seen the result of the troll raids, a town burned to the ground, every soul slaughtered. I am revolted and repulsed and angered to my heart and soul. I feel Dame Gwydre’s outrage and her desperation and know that if she felt anything different she would be a lesser person. I see her trembling with outrage, not because of the tentative nature of her survival and title, but because she truly feels for those people who look to her for leadership-that alone, I know, elevates her high above the average laird of Honce proper.

And still I resist.

Who am I? I thought I knew, for all my life the answer was so self-evident that I never bothered to ask the question. At least not in this manner.

The Book of Jhest and the gemstones freed me from my infirmities and redefined me in a physical sense. That much is obvious. But now I come to know that the blessing of the inner healing is forcing upon me a second remaking, or at the very least, a very basic questioning of this man I am, this man I have become.

Who am I?

And what am I beyond the confines of my strengthened flesh?

Quite contrary to my expectations, this strengthening, this healing, has led me to a more uncomfortable place. It has forced upon me a sense of obligation and responsibility for others.

For others…

For all of my youth and into early adulthood there were few others, and those-Garibond, some few brothers of Chapel Pryd, Cadayle on those occasions when I was graced with her presence-were important to me almost exclusively because of what they could do for me. They were in the life of Bransen Garibond because Bransen Garibond needed them.

It is difficult for me to admit that there was something comfortable and comforting in my infirmities. While the other young men were competing in this game we call life, whether simply running against each other, or seeing who could throw a rock the farthest, or in the more formal competitions to gain a position in the Church or in the court of the laird, I was excluded. It wasn’t even an option.

There was pain in that exclusion to be sure, but I would be a liar if I didn’t admit that there was also a measure of comfort. I did not have to compete in the endless battles to determine the hierarchy of the boys my age. I did not have to suffer the embarrassment of being honestly beaten, because no one could beat the Stork honestly!

My infirmity was no dodge, of course, but I cannot be certain that I would have eschewed a dodge had I needed one. I cannot make that claim because I never had to face that choice.

Then, suddenly, I was freed of that infirmity. Suddenly I became the Highwayman. Even in that identity I cannot claim purity of intent or righteousness of motive.

Who did the Highwayman truly serve in his battle with the powers that were in Pryd Holding? The people? Or did he serve the Highwayman?

The world of the Highwayman is not as simple as that of the Stork.

– BRANSEN GARIBOND

Uncomfortable Riddles

A splash of water brought a cough. With that convulsion Cormack slid back from the deep darkness of unconsciousness. He felt wet along one side and sensed that his lower legs were floating.

The first image that registered to him was that of a glacial troll face, not far from his own, the creature hanging on the side of a (of his, apparently!) small boat and forcing its edge under the water to swamp it.

Cormack reacted purely on instinct. He rolled up to his elbow, facing the troll, reached across with his left hand, and grabbed the creature by its scraggly hair. He kept rolling, using his weight to push that ugly head back, then turned under, rolling his shoulder and hopping to his knees, thus driving the troll’s head forward and down. It cracked its chin on the side rail but slid over so that Cormack’s weight had it pinned on the rail by its neck.

Up leaped the man. The quick movement freed him enough to lift one leg and stomp down hard on the troll, eliciting a sickening crackle of bone. Cormack nearly overbalanced in the process and tumbled overboard.

Overboard? How had he gotten on a boat, out in the middle of the lake? Burning pain from his back reminded him of his last awful conscious moments, and the rest began to fall in place even as he tried to sort out his present dilemma.

They had cast him out, set him adrift, and now the trolls had found him.

The boat rocked, and Cormack had to work hard to hold his balance. The aft was almost underwater, lifting the prow into the air. Cormack started to turn back that way when he noted a troll scrambling over the prow and coming down at him.

He feigned obliviousness until the last second, then jammed his elbow back, cracking it into the creature’s ugly face, crunching its long and skinny nose over to one cheek and tearing its upper lip on its own jagged teeth. The monk retracted and slammed his elbow back again, then a third time, for the troll’s weight wouldn’t allow it to simply fall away on the steep incline.