R. Salvatore - The Bear

His line of ki-chi-kree was not holding. He felt it shivering and splintering. He took a deep breath and stood as straight as he could, and tried to walk.

He was the Stork.

The image of the woman, her head pulled back, her lament for a child she would never again see, haunted him and closed in on him, even as the words of Reandu's protest echoed in his mind.

His personal journey down Jameston Sequin's first road had led Bransen to the edge of a dark and deep hole, and the Stork realized to his horror that he had fallen in.

"Aye, lady, o lady!" came the shouts across the waters, echoing up the stones to the back wall of St. Mere Abelle.

"I bid you go back into the chapel," Brother Giavno said to Dame Gwydre when she arrived on the wall, stoically and stubbornly staring out to sea past the wreckage of the blockade boat to the solitary Palmaristown warship in sight between the high cliffs that sheltered the chapel's docks.

Behind Gwydre, Father Premujon reached for her arm as if to give motion to Giavno's reasonable request.

But Dame Gwydre pulled away.

"I need to hear this," she said.

"Yer Pireth Vanguard's burned, lady!" a sailor on the ship called out. "We sacked her good, we did. Now we've yer women, and fine they be, lady! Come and join with us, and if ye're half the ride of yer peasants, then welcome ye'll be!"

"Is it confirmed?" Gwydre asked tersely.

"Lady?" asked a flustered Brother Giavno.

"Pireth Vanguard," the dame replied. "Has it been sacked?"

Giavno closed his eyes and mumbled a quick prayer to St. Abelle. "Aye," he said. "We know not the extent, but one of the brothers sent his spirit across the gulf and saw that Pireth Vanguard has, indeed, been hit hard."

"And their claim of stealing women?"

Giavno shook his head and held his hands up helplessly. "I know not."

"Could it be true?" Gwydre asked, turning to her friend Premujon. The father had no answer, but his sour expression spoke volumes.

"Send forth more brothers in spirit form, across the gulf, the length of Vanguard's coast," Gwydre demanded.

"We are taxing them greatly," warned Premujon. "This is no easy task-few brothers can so energize the soul stone for such a journey, and fewer still can do so repeatedly."

"I will know the fate of Vanguard," the woman replied in no uncertain terms.

"It is a difficult task," Brother Giavno intervened. "And dangerous."

"I know the risks. But I will know of my home," Dame Gwydre said flatly. She turned back to stare at the distant sails, and when more taunting rolled in with the waves, the lady moved to the ladder and away from the wall.

"It is a difficult time," Father Premujon said to the obviously shaken Brother Giavno. He didn't have to finish his thought, for he knew that everyone at St. Mere Abelle shared it: As difficult as the current situation might be, it was only going to get worse.

Much worse.

Almost on cue, the whole of the courtyard shook as a boulder thrown by one of Laird Panlamaris's catapults slammed into the wall across the way. The opening salvo of a barrage, they knew, and so the brothers followed Gwydre down from the wall and into the strongly fortified chapel structure to ride out the latest rain in an unending storm. Dawson McKeege tore off a piece of smoke-dried fish and chomped it hard, then spat it out onto the deck, muttering with rage. For he, too, heard the echoes of the taunts being hurled from the decks of the Palmaristown warships, aimed at his beloved Dame Gwydre.

"We should put out from our shore running and put the dogs to the water," one sailor remarked, walking past the captain.

"I'll kill 'em four at a time for ye, Captain," another called.

Dawson munched another bite of the chewy fish, grumbling with every movement. How helpless he felt! Lady Dreamer had run fast from Ethelbert dos Entel, sweeping past the few fishing boats still sailing along the Mantis Arm and catching the strong Mirianic breezes on their turn into the Gulf of Corona. It hadn't taken them long to recognize the coming problems, however, for the gulf waters were thick with warships, Palmaristown and Delaval City's fleet. Lady Dreamer had a short keel, though, and so the coastal shallows served as their sanctuary from the much larger warships, both because they could keep out of reach of the deeper-riding ships in many areas and because the shore provided them with some measure of camouflage. Still Lady Dreamer only unfurled her sails under the cover of night, for if she was sighted, she would be shadowed by an increasing fleet of hostile ships and would be boxed in against the shore with nowhere to flee.

They weren't many miles from the cove and St. Mere Abelle's docks now as the crow might fly, but Dawson knew that the treacherous waters and uneven reefs meant more than a day of hard sailing to get in, and he knew, too, that they'd never make it without fighting through at least two warships, each of them twice Lady Dreamer's size. They couldn't get home by sea. It would take at least two days of sailing to find a proper place to debark for a hike to the chapel, and even then, what obstacles, what ranks of enemy soldiers, might they find?

"Man in the water!" came a shout, and sailors began running to the starboard rail, pointing anxiously.

Dawson looked all about in confusion, for no other boats were to be seen. Had one of his men fallen overboard in these calm seas? He understood when he arrived at the rail, but his eyes went even wider in surprise. The description "man in the water" didn't really fit, he decided, for this one was more on top of the water-in fact, running on top of the water.

"Crazy monk," one sailor remarked.

"Brother Pinower!' another said excitedly, for Pinower was known to the crew of Lady Dreamer.

Huffing and puffing, the monk reached the side of the Vanguard flagship. "Might I trouble you for a rope?" he asked between gasps. Makes me glad we got no women," Gnurgle the powrie captain said to the first officer of his barrelboat as they, too, listened to the wicked taunting of the Palmaristown crew. "All them longlegs're ever thinkin' about."

The first mate spat in his open palm and winked lewdly at the captain.

"Ye wantin' to sink the dogs?" he asked.

Gnurgle scanned the waters, noting three other warships within an easy sail of the one whose crew was doing all the shouting. He had only three other barrelboats in his shiver, and these enemies weren't the smaller warships so common along the outer shore.

"Nah, Shiknickel and his boys are waiting for us in the river," he decided. "If we find any o' these sailing alone, we'll put her to the waves and put her boys to the blade, but we're not going against this many afore we've met up with the rest o' the boys."

The first mate spat in the water at that, obviously unhappy, but he kept his grumbling to a minimum. "I'll get us moving, then," he said as he moved back to the hold and the ranks of powries at the pedals. "Sooner we get to the river, the sooner we get to spill some blood. Me beret's going dull."

"Aye, get us moving but keep us wide," Gnurgle ordered, for he knew his bloodthirsty second-in-command well enough to understand that an "accidental" encounter wasn't out of the question here.

Gnurgle really didn't want to engage these particular warships, whose decks were full of archers. Normally he wouldn't have cared much about the odds, but Shiknickel's call had been full of optimism that there would be plentiful bloodletting along those riverbanks.

Patience would make his beret shine all the more. It took all of Dawson's willpower to keep from screaming several times, particularly when he and Brother Pinower crossed near to jagged rocks with a heavy surf threatening to wash them in hard. Dawson held to Pinower's hand with all his strength, thoroughly uncomfortable with this magical water walking, for that hand-to-hand connection extended the magical powers of the malachite from Pinower to him. If he let go, the cold, dark waters would take him.