R. Salvatore: The Bear

What kind of husband would drag Cadayle and their babe into such an existence?

That question nearly drove Bransen to his knees. The implications were too harsh for him to even entertain their possibility.

Where would he fit in? How would he ever fit in?

And most important of all, why would he want to?

Prince Milwellis burst into the barn with a roar of defiance. Flames ate at one wall, but the mob battling within hardly seemed to notice, so desperate was their struggle.

The young, red-haired warrior prince rushed at one nearby fight, where a Palmaristown man lay bloody on the floor and two others tried desperately to keep up the with the furious movements of the red-capped dwarves darting all about them. One soldier scored a hit with his sword, a solid stab, but the dwarf shrugged it off and returned with a smash of his spiked club that shattered the man's knee. Only Milwellis's intervention prevented a second and more devastating powrie strike as the soldier tumbled in agony.

The prince struck with his sword, a devastating slash across the powrie's chest that sent the dwarf stumbling back… but just a step. The ferocious little beast came on again with a snarl and a howl and a most wicked grin. Milwellis fell back, not willing to trade blows with the powrie. As he retreated he shoved his remaining comrade toward the dwarf.

That man, too, stabbed the dwarf hard, a strike that would have felled most opponents. In response the soldier got the club right between the eyes, a spike stabbing into his brain. His legs dropped from under him. As he fell he twisted the dwarf's club awkwardly, tying up the creature.

Milwellis stepped in. This time his clean strike at the powrie's neck finally finished the vicious little thing.

Milwellis jumped back and looked for the next opportunity. Beside him, the man with the crushed knee pleaded for help.

"Silence, fool!" Milwellis hissed, kicking the wretch to silence. "Crawl out of here!"

The fires reached across the ceiling, the barn surely lost. Milwellis and his men knew it and worked toward the door, but the remaining powries-the prince was shocked to see that there were only three others-fought on as if they hardly cared. Another Palmaristown man was pulled down and slaughtered and then another, though the last desperate swing of his sword managed to take one powrie with him.

Milwellis pushed his way through the door, tripping over the man with the shattered knee. The barn roof fell in behind them, sending sparks and embers flying into the night sky. Milwellis regained his footing and brushed the dirt from his clothes, storming about, cursing every step. "Only four?" he yelled in outrage. "Only four?"

For he had lost nearly a score of fighters in that barn, killed five to one by powries.

"Easy, my son," Laird Panlamaris begged a few moments later, the old man riding over at the sound of Milwellis's bellowing.

"Four, Father!" said Milwellis. "Four wretched powries held that barn for half the night and killed a score of my finest warriors."

"These are formidable foes," Laird Panlamaris agreed. "A bitter lesson I learned decades ago upon the sea."

"They are the curse of Honce," said another who rode up, a giant of a man, wearing the brown robes of the Order of Abelle. "Do not forget who loosed the evil upon us."

Prince Milwellis eyed Father De Guilbe squarely and nodded, his face locked in a hateful grimace.

"Dame Gwydre did this," De Guilbe said. "Dame Gwydre and Father Artolivan, the heretic who claims to rule the church."

"They will pay with their blood," vowed Milwellis.

"Not to doubt," agreed the Laird of Palmaristown, whose once-great city now lay before him in near ruin, the devious work of barely a hundred powries. "When Palmaristown is secured once more, the scourge of red caps driven into the Masur Delaval and drowned like the rats they are, I will sweep Gwydre's Vanguard into ruin."

"Do not forget Chapel Abelle, I beg," said De Guilbe. "If I am to take my rightful place as leader of the Order of Abelle, loyal to King Yeslnik and you, Laird Panlamaris, then I must be properly seated at the chapel that has come to be the center of power for my order. No replacement chapel, however grand, will suffice."

"Not even if King Yeslnik builds you the grandest one of all in Delaval City with a congregation numbering in the thousands?" the laird asked.

Father De Guilbe couldn't contain his grin about that intriguing possibility, though he quickly dismissed it. "Only if the rot at Chapel Abelle is cleansed," he declared. "A grander chapel would, indeed, be a step forward for the church, but only if the disease that has rotted its core, Chapel Abelle, is cleared from the land. Else that rot will continually spread, and the lies of Artolivan and his cohorts will undermine any of my efforts to bring the flock more in line to the edicts of King Yeslnik and the lairds who rule Honce. We cannot ignore Chapel Abelle!"

"And yet, friend, we would not again throw our men at those walls and against the gemstone barrage of a hundred brothers," Milwellis reminded him no. He looked to his father, whose face was locked in a grimace, his teeth grinding.

"Look at your city nearly burned to the ground!" De Guilbe shot back.

"We will trap them in their hole and take all the land about them," Prince Milwellis promised. "We'll keep them in and keep them silenced."

"We will bombard them until they fall upon their own knives out of madness and despair," Laird Panlamaris added, growling out every word. "From the field and from the sea! We will fill their walls with thrown stones."

Both De Guilbe and Milwellis thought the remark to be mostly bluster. To truly sack Chapel Abelle would require a vast army and armada at a price untenable to King Yeslnik's designs, particularly now that vicious powries had entered the fight on the side of their enemies. Certainly the wizened and seasoned Laird Panlamaris understood the truth of his words.

Prince Milwellis stared at his father and saw no hint of doubt in his steeled gaze.

"Come along," Laird Panlamaris told all around him, his voice still thick with simmering rage. "We've more powrie rats to catch." The rocking of the ship across the currents and waves of the great river seemed much more acute belowdecks. Yeslnik expected that he would find his wife with her head out of their private chamber's porthole, "feeding the fish," as Captain Juront of his flagship (newly named Grand Dame Olym in honor of his wife) often called it.

He was pleasantly surprised to find that Olym was not at the window and didn't seem to be heading there anytime soon. Dressed in fine and revealing lace, her smile only adding to the obvious invitation, the Queen of Honce leaped upon her husband as he entered, wrapping his slight frame in her ample arms. Smothering him with passionate kisses, Olym reached over to shut tight the cabin door.

"There are powrie boats in the river," Yeslnik managed to say between kisses.

"We will destroy them," Olym rattled back in a single breath as she drove him back with a ferocious kiss and pushed him onto the bed.

"We will make Palmaristown in the morning," Yeslnik went on. "The city is in great disrepair. Hundreds were murdered by the dwarves."

"You will destroy them," Olym said without the slightest hesitation or reservation. She sat up and straddled him, pulling aside the folds of her garments. "You are the King of Honce. You are Yeslnik the Terrible, and all will tremble before you!"

She began clawing at his shirt, trying to undress him and herself furiously as the moment of passion swept her away.

"Yeslnik the Terrible," the foppish young king whispered to himself during the frenzy. He liked that. And he liked more the wild passion that had come over his wife of late! He had slunk back to Delaval from the far west, from the gates of the city of his greatest foe, Laird Ethelbert, in near despair, the promises of a swift victory slipping away. Emotionally flailing about, unsure of his next move or even of any point of any possible next move, Yeslnik had found strength in the least expected place: the arms of a wife who had cooled to him greatly over the last couple of years and, indeed, who had taken an obvious fancy to the rogue known as the Highwayman, the very same dog Yeslnik blamed for the murder of his uncle, King Delaval.