R. Salvatore - The Highwayman

No, this burden was his own.

To the Side of Things The middle-aged man stared out the partly open door for a long and silent moment, then finally seemed to breathe again and stepped back, pulling the door wide. "Can it be?" he whispered, and he held up a candle before him. He was of medium build, a bit shorter than most men, with a shaggy head of black and gray hair, and with several days of beard evident on his face. One of his eyes was quite dead, showing only milky white, but the other held a lustrous blue-gray sparkle.

Brother Dynard put on a wide smile. "Garibond, my heart fills with joy at seeing you alive and well." He stepped inside the dimly lit stone house, and in doing so, stepped out the lake, for this stone structure was constructed on a rock out in the water, a dozen feet from the shore along a sometimes submerged, sometimes revealed, shoal. The house was built in two parts, with this, the lower level, right at the lakeside, and a higher, drier structure a dozen feet above and farther from the shore, on the higher rocks. Even with the two structures, connected by a cave and stone extension, there was little elaborate workmanship showing about Garibond's home, just two stonewalled rectangles with thatched roofs.

"Bran in the flesh! Back from his travels around the world!" Garibond Womak replied. He stepped forward and clapped Dynard hard on the shoulder, then wrapped him in a great hug, which Dynard comfortably returned.

Garibond leaped back. "Come in," he bade. "Come in! You must tell me every detail." His enthusiasm melted almost at once, as he noted the grim expression on the face of his long-lost friend.

"I need your help," Dynard said seriously.

"Have I e'er shown you anything but?"

With an appreciative nod, Dynard stepped back outside and splashed across the shallows to the shore, returning a moment later with the unconscious young woman in his arms.

Garibond's good eye went wide.

"We found her at the end of the new road," Dynard explained.

"Where Bernivvigar left her to die, with the blessing of Laird Pryd."

Dynard nodded.

"Are you mad?" Garibond asked. "The woman was convicted and executed. She met the adder in the sack-to the joy of the folk who went to watch, I am certain," he added, his voice taking a sour note. "You cannot-"

"I could not leave her out there. I-we-met powries dancing about her, ready to take her blood."

"Dead is dead. Probably better that way than from the slow poison of the snake."

Dynard just shook his head and moved to the side, gently laying the woman down on a thick bearskin rug elevated on a wooden frame near the still-warm hearth.

"You had to know the truth of her predicament," Garibond protested. "You've seen old Bernivvigar's work before."

"I could not leave her."

"They'll put you in her place, you fool," protested Garibond. "You cannot go against the word of Laird Pryd. Your own brothers of Abelle were there in attendance, bearing witness."

Dynard held out his arms helplessly, and Garibond gave a great sigh.

"You said 'we,' " Garibond remarked. "Who was with you, and more important to your own skin, where is he now?"

The smile returned to Brother Dynard's face and he stepped back outside and motioned off into the night. A moment later, SenWi appeared at his side in the doorway. "Not he. My wife."

Garibond's good eye went wide again, and widened even more as he came to understand the truth of SenWi's exotic heritage. "But she's a pretty one," he managed to say at length.

"Will you help us?"

"What would you have me do?" Garibond answered skeptically. "I'm no healer."

"Just let us stay here for a bit, that we can tend the girl and keep her safe and warm."

"You're to be the death of me."

"I know you can hide her-can hide us," Dynard said with a grin, and Garibond gave a sigh. "He has tunnels beneath this house," Dynard explained to SenWi. "Keeps him safe from powries and goblins." He turned back to Garibond and, with a wide grin, added, "Though I thought you'd have slowed enough by now for them to catch you before you got your old arse into the hole."

"Bah, them stupid ones don't even come around here. If they did, I'd be more likely to stand and kill them all before I'd run like a child into the tunnels!"

Dynard knew the truth of the bluster, but he didn't press the point.

Garibond's smile proved short-lived. "Tunnels or no, she won't be safe if Lord Pryd-or worse, his son, Prydae-discovers that she is missing," Garibond said.

"Prydae?"

"Aye, Prydae. A boy when you left. A man now. A young warrior with as much fight and metal as the father ever knew, who makes his reputation daily against the goblins and the powries."

Again Dynard was reminded of how long he'd been gone. He looked at SenWi and gave a helpless laugh and shake of his head. "The world moves on without me, it would seem."

"Young Prince Prydae would not take well to your disruption of old Bernivvigar's holy ritual."

"Murder is holy ritual?" SenWi asked, her eyes going wide, and she looked up at Dynard for support.

"Not murder," the monk tried to explain, but he found little heart for the distinction he offered. "The Samhaists carry out the executions and other punishments of convicted criminals."

"This young girl was a murderess?"

"An adulteress," said Garibond.

SenWi looked to Dynard, who explained the crime in the woman's native tongue. That explanation did little to alleviate either her confusion or her disdain, however.

"Appeasing the Samhaists has always been important to the lairds," Garibond reminded Dynard. "You know that."

Brother Dynard paused to study his friend before answering. "But you will allow us the use of your home?"

"Shut the damned door, old fool," Garibond said. "And come along to the upper house where it's more dry-and bring along a log or two to throw upon the fire. I've some stew I can heat." He gave another sigh and looked at SenWi. "And for you, pretty one…" He turned to Dynard with his pause.

"SenWi," the monk explained.

"Yes, SenWi, pray you go behind that curtain and find more blankets for the poor girl."

"Prince Prydae will see the powrie tracks and think no more of it," Dynard assured his friend.

"Or he will follow your own to my house, and Bernivvigar's next ceremony will feature four sacks."

That brought a laugh from Dynard, though he knew well that Garibond was hardly joking.

A short while later, with SenWi tending Callen by the hearth in the upper house, Dynard and Garibond sat opposite each other in comfortable chairs of wood and skins a few feet back, telling the woman of Behr the tales of their long friendship. The two had been fast friends since childhood, and Garibond had even tried to enter the Church of Abelle at the same time as Dynard. But the court of monks had seen that Garibond's motivation was strictly one of loyalty to his friend and not wrought of any sincere belief in the Church and its precepts, and so he had been refused even before Dynard had set out from Pryd Holding to the mother chapel in the north.

Their friendship had not been as tight when Dynard had returned a few years later, the two explained to SenWi, and they both blamed circumstance and no lessening of their almost-brotherly love. Dynard had been busy in the town and chapel, right up to the time when he had departed for the southland, after all; and Garibond only very rarely went to the town, preferring the solitude of his small farm east of the community.

"Sometimes it is easy to forget those things that are truly most important to us," Dynard reflected.

"And this one has always been getting me in trouble," Garibond said suddenly, and he jabbed his accusing finger in the air Dynard's way.