R. Salvatore - The Bear

Milwellis blanched and fell back another step, not knowing what to make of this demon that had once been his father. Truly, he had never seen Panlamaris so out of sorts, so full of outrage. He looked past the man to the always levelheaded Harcourt, and the general seemed almost embarrassed and equally perplexed.

"Go!" Panlamaris shouted, and Milwellis staggered away.

"My laird," Harcourt dared to say a few moments later. He walked up to his old friend and lowered his voice so that no one else could possibly hear. "Prince Milwellis is a fine progeny. He has made a great name for himself and for the line of Panlamaris."

"I will have that witch," the seething laird replied.

"It would not do to embarrass Milwellis in front of the men he has so finely commanded," Harcourt warned, and then he, too, fell under Panlamaris's withering gaze.

But the laird said no more. He tore his sword free of the ground and stalked away. Very soon after he was screaming at another crew of porters he deemed too slow with the stones, though the exhausted men seemed as if they would simply collapse where they stood.

Laird Panlamaris would hear none of it. The catapults kept their frantic pace; that was all that mattered to him. She was a fair thing, barely past her tenth birthday and full of life and love. Work on the farm was hard, to be sure, even for the child, for her father and older brother were off to war, and she and her mother and her aunts had to keep the gardens tilled and weeded.

But she was happy when she went to her chores in the field outside the small town of Greenmeadow. It was a beautiful summer day in the pretty town of trees and pastures with the silver snake of the Masur Delaval glistening in the west. On a clear day, the high walls of Delaval City could be seen far to the south, particularly if there had been a morning rain and the white stones of the great city glistened with wetness.

Not today, though, for the clouds lay heavy, and every so often a gentle mist drizzled about her.

That didn't diminish the young girl's smile. She skipped across the small field to the far planting, hoping to collect some squash in the basket she carried. She paused before she got there, puzzled by the sight of someone amidst the crops. She thought it another child, perhaps her age, for he stood about the same height as her, though his limbs and torso were much thicker.

"Hey, buy'a'mule," she called, using the nickname her father had often tagged on her, a gibberish word created for the sake of an old joke about silly children running errands to the town's common market.

The other fellow stopped and turned about, and she grew even more perplexed, for he was indeed her height, but his face was hairy like an adult's, and his clothing was most unusual.

She didn't know the significance of a powrie beret. She had never heard of the bloody-cap dwarves.

She was smiling until the very instant a serrated blade cut her throat.

All along the eastern bank of the Masur Delaval the powrie barrelboats slid onto the sand, the eager dwarves pouring forth, knives in hand. Mischief had transformed to open war, and in a powrie war there were no innocents and no civilians.

The goal was to kill anyone and everyone they encountered, to murder people in their sleep, if possible, to chase them down through the fields and forests and slay them, all of them. Their orders were to avoid the large cities of Palmaristown and Delaval and to focus instead on the many small villages, most no more than clusters of three or four homes. Sweep the rural areas of humans, chase them to their great cities, and then slip away to the waters of the great river, the Gulf of Corona, and the Mirianic Ocean. They would strike and strike again, along the river, the gulf, and the seacoast.

They would pay back the humans for staking powries on long poles outside of Palmaristown.

A thousand dead would not sate their bloodlust. Ten thousand dead would not sate their bloodlust. Ten thousand dead human children would not sate their bloodlust. The counterweight fell, the wheels spun, and the long arm of the trebuchet creaked and groaned and swung, launching the rock through the morning air. The crew cheered as soon as it was away, certain they were on the mark this time. Sure enough there came the sharp retort as the stone exploded against the thick and unyielding wall of St. Mere Abelle. As one the artillerymen turned to regard Laird Panlamaris, who stood, scowling as always of late, and staring at the chapel with hatred etched upon his old face.

Not far away, Prince Milwellis clapped his hands in salute to the crew, the first who had actually hit the distant chapel in more than a day.

"More!" Panlamaris barked. "Knock them into the sea!"

"Easy, my laird," said General Harcourt, standing beside him. "There aren't enough rocks in all of Honce to knock down those walls."

"There are, and we'll bring them," Panlamaris growled at him. "And we'll throw, hour after hour, day and night, until the place falls or fills. I'll have that witch."

"King Yeslnik bids us merely to hold the siege," Harcourt reminded him. For all the day, he and Milwellis had tried to gently nudge the outrage away from Laird Panlamaris. They had never seen the man in such a state, and his anger did not seem to have any end.

"I'll not be taking advice from the likes of the boy Yeslnik," Panlamaris replied. "I'll let him play at king, but only because of the gains to Palmaristown and only because he's better than the witch up that hill and better than Laird Ethelbert. So we'll do as he asks-as long as it's what we're wanting. Now I'm wanting more than to sit here and wait while that witch who sent the powries to Palmaristown rests easy."

"She is not resting easy," said Harcourt. "The siege will play upon her sensibilities, as will the occasional throws of the catapults."

"Occasional?" Panlamaris said incredulously, angrily.

"To weaken their walls and weaken their resolve," the general tried to explain.

"Every day, dawn to dusk and dusk to dawn, like the cadence drums of a tireless marching army," Laird Panlamaris insisted. "When Vanguard falls, what will Dame Gwydre think, I wonder? When Ethelbert is pushed into the sea, how maddening will our thunder sound to Father Artolivan and his fellow fools?"

"Might they come forth?"

Panlamaris shrugged. "If they do, we will kill them. If they do not, we will go in and kill them."

Harcourt winced at that notion, as did Milwellis, who had come over to join the pair. They had both heard the story of the last attempted assault on the chapel, and it had not gone well. With their gemstone magic the monks had turned the Palmaristown charge into a fast and desperate retreat, one that left many Palmaristown soldiers dead on the field.

"Our spearmen and archers could not reach them behind their walls, but oh, how their magical bolts reached down at you," Harcourt dared to remind the laird. "Would you shed more Palmaristown blood against those impregnable walls? Please, laird, I beg of you to let Chapel Abelle be their prison, then, while King Yeslnik conquers the world around them. And let it remain their prison."

Panlamaris began a stream of curses at Artolivan and the monks then and didn't stop until long after, when Father De Guilbe walked over to join them.

"I thought you'd be halfway to Delaval City this late in the morn," Milwellis greeted. The priest had traveled from Pryd only to deliver King Yeslnik's report with plans to be out the next morning to begin organizing the new Church of the Divine King from the streets of Delaval City.

"I do so enjoy watching the great stones thunder against the foolishness of Artolivan," the large monk answered. "When I am properly seated within Chapel Abelle, perhaps I will leave our boulders scattered about the walls and courtyard to remind my brethren forever that the church cannot exist outside of the state, that we are linked by divine providence to the King of Honce."