R. Salvatore - The Bear

"Dismiss your guards," Bransen bade him. "All of them."

Bannagran stared at him hard for a moment but then motioned for the sentries to leave the room. Bransen followed them to the heavy oaken door and shut it behind them.

"Artolivan is dead, you say?" Bannagran asked the woman.

"Father Premujon of Vanguard now leads the Order of Blessed Abelle. It was he who blessed the army, my army, when we swept Laird Panlamaris from the field before St. Mere Abelle."

Bannagran's eyes widened, indeed!

"Laird Bannagran, I present to you Dame Gwydre of Vanguard," said Bransen, walking up beside his companion.

"You come here, to the court of your sworn enemy, unarmed?" Bannagran asked.

"I have the most dangerous weapon in the world beside me," Gwydre assured him. "And I have the word of an honorable man, do I not?"

"That remains to be seen, perhaps," said Bannagran. "But what I am not is a foolish man. You come to me championing the cause of Laird Ethelbert, whose murderers tried to assassinate the couriers you sent to him. Is that your meaning of 'honorable'?"

A sharp knock on the door interrupted the conversation, followed by the voice of Master Reandu. "Laird Bannagran! I would speak with you and Bransen."

Bransen looked to Bannagran for permission, and the laird just laughed at the ridiculousness of it all and waved his hand toward the door. "I will enjoy his expression when you tell him his beloved Father Artolivan is dead," he said to Gwydre, but before he could begin to revel in his cleverness, Dame Gwydre shot back, in all seriousness, "No, you won't."

Bransen opened the door and Reandu, Cormack, and Milkeila rushed in, and before they could even begin to properly greet Bransen, Cormack identified Dame Gwydre and all three stared in silent confusion.

Bransen closed the door behind them.

"Ah, yes, and back to our discussion of Laird Ethelbert," Bannagran started again. "Ask your emissaries, lady. Ethelbert's assassins tried to kill them, and these same assassins murdered King Delaval, who was ever a friend of Pryd. And you come here in the hopes that you would convince me to fight for his cause?"

"No," said Gwydre. Bannagran's volume had increased by the word, and he had moved much closer to Gwydre, an obvious attempt to make her feel smaller. But she didn't back away an inch. "For Honce!" she said right in his face. "I come here in the hopes of convincing you to fight for what is right."

"And for Bannagran," Bransen added, but no one paid him any heed, all eyes locked on Gwydre and Bannagran, these two most impressive and powerful figures, standing barely a hand's width apart and staring at each other with such intensity that if someone had dropped kindling between them and it had spontaneously ignited, not a person in the room would have been surprised.

"For Honce," Gwydre said again. "For the people of Honce. For all of those who have been forgotten in the march to personal glory."

"For the peasants?" Bannagran asked dismissively, and Gwydre fiercely scowled.

"What choice was offered to the people of Honce, peasant and noble alike, in the decision of these two lairds, Delaval and Ethelbert?" Gwydre asked.

"The choice of which."

"Merely that?"

"That is more than they deserve."

"You do not believe that."

"You do not know me," Bannagran reminded her, but Gwydre's ensuing smile took a large measure of the certainty from his rigid expression.

"By what right?" she asked. "Ethelbert and Delaval and now this wretched Yeslnik after him claim the throne of all the land simply because they presume themselves the strongest. It is not by edict, not by the request of the lairds, and not for the good of the holdings. Nay, it is the temptation of power and nothing more. To be the king is what they, all three, demand and desire. To expand their personal powers and nothing more, and for their folly tens of thousands have been pecked by the carrion birds and the crops fail and the young and old sit hungry and cold. Tyrants, all three."

"And Gwydre is different?"

That evoked a hard and angry stare from the woman, her eyes flashing dangerously.

Bannagran's dark eyes flashed as well in response. A smile creased his face as he took a deep breath-took a deep breath because Gwydre had obviously just taken his breath away.

"By Abelle," Bransen heard Reandu whisper.

"You will find that I am someone who does not like to be mocked, Laird Bannagran," Dame Gwydre said in a low and even voice. "I came here in good faith to appeal to a man of character."

"You came here hoping that I would bow before you and lend you my thousands so that you could steal victory from the weary and warring lairds and thus claim Honce as your own," Bannagran replied. "Do not pretty it with pretty words, lady. The blood smells the same."

"And yet, the church supports my claim."

"If you believe that will impress me, then perhaps you should scold your scouts who told you of my affinity for the church, Abellican or Samhaist. I'll not weep for dead Father Artolivan, I assure you." He looked at Reandu as he finished, and the man blanched as Bannagran's words truly registered.

"Then you are not as wise as Bransen, who championed your character to me, believes," said Gwydre. "For Artolivan was a wise and temperate man, blessed with generosity and wisdom in amounts far greater than those of this foolish young king you slavishly follow."

The word "slavishly" had proud Bannagran standing up straighter, squaring his shoulders and narrowing his eyes.

"O wondrous Laird Bannagran," Gwydre taunted. "The great Bear of Honce, sniffing the heels of foppish King Yeslnik."

"Beware your words, lady," Bannagran said quietly.

"How many victories will you have to win on the field, Bear of Honce, to repair the legacy of any man who would whimper at the whip of sniveling Yeslnik?"

"A victory that strikes dead the Dame of Vanguard should suffice."

The four onlookers shared alarmed expressions, but Gwydre didn't blink.

"You disappoint me," she said evenly, and of all the words launched that day, those seemed to strike Bannagran the hardest. Mostly it was her tone, Bransen and the other onlookers knew, for it was full of honest remorse.

Bannagran didn't reply, didn't blink, and quickly erased his wince.

"Am I permitted to remain in Pryd Town this night?" Gwydre asked. "Or should I be away at once?"

"I would be within my rights to take you prisoner."

"Laird!" Reandu gasped, and Bransen took a step forward, more than ready to intervene, with lethal force if necessary.

But Gwydre disarmed them both by lifting her hand to the side to ward them away. "There is more to the character of Bannagran than Bannagran is brave enough to admit," she said.

Bannagran laughed at her. "You may stay in the castle itself, of course," he said. "I would have it no other way, Lady of Vanguard. I'll honor your parlay." He turned to Bransen. "But that one will be the guest of Master Reandu at Chapel Pryd. I need no assassins in my midst."

"I'll not leave Dame Gwydre," said Bransen.

"Yes, you will," Gwydre corrected, and when Bransen stared at her hard, she responded in kind and bid him to be gone.

"I will have an attendant show you to your room, lady," said Bannagran. "You will be gone with the sunrise."

"Gladly away," she agreed. Below the side kitchen area of Castle Pryd, in smoke-filled rooms of mud and stone, where the rats ruled and the cockroaches served as commoners, the few miserable human intruders, guards and prisoners alike, lost all sense of time and humanity.

Beaten and starved, Wahloon dangled by his wrists, the iron collars digging painfully into the base of his hands.

Painful, but only when the disciplined warrior allowed it to be. Wahloon had trained under Affwin Wi in the ways of Hou-lei, the ways of the warriors of Behr. Like the training of their descendants, the Jhesta Tu, the discipline of the Hou-lei was all encompassing. It strove for harmony between mind and body within a specific philosophical framework that balanced the relationship in the realms of the physical and tactical by disregarding the emotional-in the Hou-lei's case, the elimination of conscience, for conscience was viewed as weakness in a warrior. That was the distinguishing feature between Jhesta Tu and Hou-lei, for a Hou-lei warrior was an instrument of war. Nothing more and nothing less. A perfect, disciplined weapon.