R. Salvatore - The Bear

Dumbstruck and suddenly afraid that St. Mere Abelle might have fallen, Bransen blurted out an indecipherable sound and, without even realizing the movement, dropped from the branches to the ground. All in the camp stirred at that, reaching for weapons and gemstones, and behind him Bransen heard a pair of guards call out, "Stand or die!"

He held his hands out in a nonthreatening manner. "I am Bransen Garibond," he managed to sputter as the soldiers came up to him, spear tips gleaming in the moonlight.

"Bransen!" Pinower and Giavno said together.

Giavno rushed up beside the Highwayman and clapped him on the shoulder. "A fine night it is, then," he cheered, ushering Bransen through the line of nodding soldiers and monks to join Gwydre and Pinower by the fire.

"And a fine meeting," said Dame Gwydre.

"Blessed Abelle is shining on us this night!" Pinower exclaimed.

"Aye and the old ones are looking to our cause," Gwydre added, just to draw a smirk from both monks, and when those expected looks came, the Dame of Vanguard grinned from ear to ear.

"The chapel?" Bransen asked. "Cadayle and Callen?"

"Faring well behind thick walls Yeslnik cannot breach," Dame Gwydre assured him.

"But you are out here in the open night."

"The alliance has been sealed with Laird Ethelbert," Gwydre explained. "I am out to further our needs…"

"I came from the encampment of Laird Bannagran of Pryd and from a parlay with Laird Ethelbert and Cormack and Milkeila," Bransen explained.

"Fine news!" said Brother Pinower. "It is our hope that Bannagran will turn to our cause."

"What said he?" Dame Gwydre pressed.

"He told Laird Ethelbert to go home," Bransen replied dryly. "And better for your cause if you had never allied with that murderous old fool."

All three exchanged glances, then turned their eyes upon Bransen.

"Ethelbert's assassins murdered Jameston Sequin," Bransen reported. Gwydre gasped and put a hand over her mouth, and Giavno called upon the gods by making the sign of the evergreen. Whispers erupted all about the camp and much of the joy at discovering the Highwayman returned washed away in the blink of an astonished eye.

"Jameston Sequin? Murdered? On Laird Ethelbert's command?" Dame Gwydre asked after the few moments it took her to compose herself.

"I know not and I care not if Ethelbert was involved," said Bransen. "I found Jameston dead in an abandoned cottage, and I have no doubt as to whose weapon struck him down. That man, a warrior of Behr, serves Ethelbert as a mercenary, and he accompanied a fellow assassin from Behr, a woman named Affwin Wi, to murder King Delaval, as well."

"How do you know this?" Brother Pinower demanded.

"I was there in their court," Bransen replied. "The broken sword found in King Delaval's chest was the blade of Affwin Wi, Laird Ethelbert's prime assassin."

Again, Pinower, Giavno, and Gwydre looked to each other blankly, surprised by the news, and out of that stupor came Brother Pinower, eyeing Bransen more closely.

"You wear a headband above your mask," the monk said in a leading manner.

"To hold a soul stone to my forehead."

"But the brooch Father Artolivan gave to you-"

"Was torn from my head by Ethelbert's assassin. She carries it now, and my sword."

Fittingly, considering the mood shift descending upon the encampment, a log shifted in the fire then and rolled away, the already low firelight diminishing greatly.

"I barely escaped with my life," Bransen added. "Affwin Wi is trained as a Jhesta Tu and is surrounded by other formidable warriors."

"Laird Ethelbert meant to kill you?" Dame Gwydre managed to say past the lump in her throat.

"I doubt he knew anything of it," Bransen replied. "It was personal with Affwin Wi."

"This happened at Laird Bannagran's camp?" Dame Gwydre asked.

Bransen chuckled and kicked the fallen log back to the fire, then took a seat beside it. Staring into the flames, he recounted his journey to Pryd Town and to the coast beside Jameston, then detailed the time he had spent with Affwin Wi in the court of Ethelbert. He saw no reason to hide anything from this group.

He told them of his fight and escape and of the journey along the devastated southland that had taken him again to Pryd and to the march with Bannagran and Reandu and fifteen thousand warriors back to the east.

"And so I left them," he finished some time later. "For their fight is not my fight, and I no longer care which side prevails."

"You say that to Dame Gwydre's face?" Brother Giavno scolded. "You have no shame, then?"

"Shame?" Bransen echoed with a mocking laugh. "You who march to war would speak to me of shame?"

"Bransen, what has happened to you?" Dame Gwydre asked. She stood up and motioned for the others to remain silent, then moved beside the young man. "Walk with me," she bade him softly. "Your troubled soul wounds me."

Bransen looked at her doubtfully, but he did stand and walk off arm-in-arm (for he did not resist when she took his arm with great familiarity) with the Lady of Vanguard.

"Laird Ethelbert has joined us in alliance," she said as they moved to the edge of the firelight, the forest thick about them. "It is necessary, for both of us to hold any hope of turning back the scourge that is Yeslnik. I will see to it that your sword is returned to you."

Bransen sighed at her, for she simply did not understand.

"And the brooch," she said. "Surely you wish those items returned."

"I do not deny that," Bransen said. "But I care hardly as much as you believe."

"What is it, Bransen?" Gwydre pressed. "What has happened to you? You are not the same man who departed St. Mere Abelle. Indeed, you seem more akin to-"

"The man you first encountered, tricked into your service by your man Dawson?"

"Yes," Gwydre admitted.

Bransen thought long and hard on that observation, for he knew that it was true enough. What had happened to him?

He had dared to care. He had dared to let optimism creep into his vision.

"I am no mercenary," he said, and he chuckled again, sadly, pathetically, recounting his night hunt from Bannagran's camp to collect trophy ears for gold.

"Of course you aren't," said Gwydre.

"Yet you used me as one, did you not?" the young warrior asked. "I served as Dame Gwydre's mercenary, her assassin, to go and slay Ancient Badden."

"You know the truth of Ancient Badden," Gwydre protested. "You know that it was right and good and necessary that he be slain."

"I went for reasons of personal gain," Bransen argued. "As a mercenary."

"And you admitted to me that, had you understood the greater truth of the war in Vanguard, you would have gone of your own volition without need for such reward," Gwydre reminded him. True enough, it sent a jolt through Bransen's dour mood.

"Nor did you go as a profiteer even before you understood the greater good," Gwydre persisted. "You went for the sake of your freedom and for the good of your family, and that is a noble cause, not the crass gold-hunting of a mercenary. Surely, Bransen, your mood cannot be of any fears that you are no better than those who do murder for Laird Ethelbert's gold."

"It does not matter," Bransen replied without hesitation.

"Truly it does!"

"No!" Bransen shouted right back at her. He looked away and pulled away and gritted his teeth, and it was all he could manage to hold back a scream of ultimate frustration. "It does not matter, because none of it matters. The way of the world is war, and the unscrupulous will ever rise to rule."

He kept walking slowly, but Dame Gwydre stopped. When he turned back to regard her, he found her standing straight, hands on hips, scowling after him.

"Not you," he stammered in apology. "I know that you rule Vanguard wisely, and I doubt not that you would serve as a wonderful Queen of Honce and that the lives of your peasants would be bettered by your actions."