R. Salvatore - The Bear

Bransen resisted the urge to go into any of those settlements. He was lonely, to be sure, but that was his way now, he reminded himself. He was walking the second road of Jameston Sequin-the correct road, he now believed, where his focus was himself and his needs, a little corner of the world where he could escape the greater madness of mankind. Unlike Jameston, he would have Cadayle and their child and Callen with him, and what else did they need? What more could the hectic and troubled world offer?

Guided by such an attitude, Bransen felt little guilt on those nights when he did sneak into a village to pilfer food. On one such occasion, he happened upon a large pie cooling in the window of a small cottage. He took the whole thing. It was his, after all, because he wanted it, and what did he care for the desires of those in the house? That's what he tried to tell himself, anyway, as he left, but soon after he had eaten a small slice of the delicious treat, Bransen returned the remainder to the windowsill.

"It wasn't very good," he muttered as he walked away from the windowsill once more, trying to believe the silly justification.

He came upon the coast one bright morning, and he eagerly turned for the west, hoping that he was not too far from St. Mere Abelle and Cadayle. He wanted nothing more than to be in her arms, to be back across the gulf into Vanguard, where he and his family could forget the rest of the world as Jameston had done for all those years.

It had been Jameston's tragic mistake to forsake that reclusive lifestyle, Bransen believed. The scout should have remained in the wilds of Vanguard, the forests he called his home, and let the petty wars of petty lairds solve themselves in blood.

For what did it matter anyway? Whichever laird won; whichever religion, Samhaist or Abelle, had proven victorious in Vanguard; whichever kingdom, Honce or Behr or Alpinador, gained supremacy mattered not at all in the end. Even Dame Gwydre, far better to her people than a selfish fop like Yeslnik, would be only a very temporary reprieve, after all, in the long scheme of the world.

Should Gwydre win, another Yeslnik or Prydae or Ethelbert would soon enough arise to seize the throne and quite likely, yet again, through the spilled blood of peasants.

Bransen couldn't escape his conclusion: It was all a sad, sad joke. Reports came in to Father Premujon's command room nearly every hour. The spirit-walking brothers of St. Mere Abelle had reached the far shore of the Gulf of Corona and bid the Vanguardsmen to come forth. They had monitored Dawson's progress and the continuing retreat of the Delaval and Palmaristown warships. They had followed Prince Milwellis's hard march back to the Masur Delaval and paid keen attention to the remaining forces commanded by Panlamaris as the irate laird continued the siege and bombardment of the chapel.

The spirit-walking brothers knew everything going on in this region of Honce-the placement of ships and warriors and even the beleaguered condition of Panlamaris's overworked crews.

"They will be more eager to break to the west and run for home," Brother Giavno advised in the command room session that afternoon. "If we fill their eastern flank with the hard assault of gemstone magic and send them in flight, a larger, waiting force in the west will have little trouble in massacring them."

"Is that what you advise?" Dame Gwydre asked him rather pointedly.

Giavno cleared his throat, obviously uncomfortable. "It would seem the prudent military option."

"But is it in your heart, brother?" the Dame of Vanguard pressed.

Brother Giavno took a deep breath but then merely looked away.

"You are a good man," Gwydre said, and many in the room crinkled their brows in confusion.

"I have little desire to massacre Panlamaris's force or any men of Honce," Gwydre explained. "Let us sweep them from the field and send them running, but all quarter will be offered, at all times."

"Lady, I remind you that we will be outnumbered more than two to one," Brother Jurgyen remarked.

"They will be caught completely without their guard," Gwydre assured him. "And every report shows them to be a haggard and exhausted bunch, worked to the point of collapse. Let our initial assault be full of lightning and fire, explosions and great noise and shouts of war. They will break and run."

"Laird Panlamaris will not run," said Jurgyen.

"Then we will kill him," said Father Premujon, and the matter-of-fact answer from the father of the Order of Blessed Abelle, speaking of killing a man as casually as if he was referring to emptying a chamber pot, made more than one monk stare at Premujon with astonishment.

"Let there be no doubt that we have entered the battle, that we now fight in the war," said Premujon. "It is not our preference, surely, but neither was it our choice or doing. Bitter experience over many months has taught us of Vanguard that in such a struggle to the death, the lessening of violence does not lessen the misery. Nay, it is the truth of war that brutal and swift is oft the most merciful way."

"But with all offer of quarter," said Giavno, and Premujon smiled and nodded.

"Then let it begin," said Gwydre. "At dawn tomorrow, the catapults of Laird Panlamaris will fall silent at last."

Every former prisoner residing at the chapel, nearly four hundred men and women, reaffirmed his or her allegiance to the Order of Blessed Abelle, and all were ready and eager to go out and fight under the banner of Dame Gwydre. All the day, they spoke of Brother Fatuus, who had walked from Laird Panlamaris's line, who had suffered the spears of his enemy but had not relented until he had reached the gates of the chapel, whereupon he had gone happily to his just and everlasting reward. They would fight for the order, for Dame Gwydre, and, most of all, for the memory of Brother Fatuus.

The ferrying began that night, two lines of water-walking monks escorting the warriors to the shoreline to the east and west of St. Mere Abelle. Brothers Pinower and Giavno personally escorted Dame Gwydre and promised to fight by her side until they drew their last breath. It went on all through the first hours of quiet darkness. Soon after midnight, the two hundred warriors and forty monks beside Dame Gwydre in the east sorted their ranks and recited their strategy, while in the west, across Panlamaris's line, half of those numbers in warriors and monks dug in to strategic positions, quite confident of the route of retreat. Moving along the coast long after the sun had dipped below the western horizon, Bransen spotted a dark but definite encampment to the south. At first he thought to simply pass by and continue on his way, for St. Mere Abelle loomed in the west, high in the distance against the starry sky, but not so far away. With the assistance of the cat's-eye agate, he would arrive this night, even if he allowed himself this small detour.

He quickly discerned that it was a military camp, and he glanced often at the distant chapel, guessing that these were enemies intent of that place-that place where Cadayle and Callen slept. He still wanted no part of the war, but certainly he would not allow his stubbornness to endanger his beloved wife and his unborn child.

He decided that he would return to the chapel with much information of this force in the east. He even pulled his mask up, assuming once more that alter ego he had known in Pryd Town. Slipping past the outer guards proved no difficult task for the stealthy Highwayman. Along the ground or in the trees, Bransen's line of ki-chi-kree held strong, as did his command of the gemstones. He noted many monks among the soldiers and feared that the wretch De Guilbe had garnered a strong following in short order. He spotted only one fire, small and obviously shielded from distant eyes.

He crept along in the branches, nearing the close perimeter of the few seated about the low-burning flames. And then he lost his breath, as among the few near the fire he recognized Brother Pinower of St. Mere Abelle, Brother Giavno, and none other than Dame Gwydre herself!