R. Salvatore - The Bear

Staring at him for many heartbeats, his own expression one of amusement and absent surprise, King Yeslnik began to chuckle.

"You cannot blame the lad his apathy," Laird Panlamaris stated.

"Your son performed admirably," Yeslnik replied. Panlamaris beamed until Yeslnik qualified the statement. "Until the moment when he arrived at the gates of Ethelbert's city."

Milwellis shifted uncomfortably.

"And there he was chased away, and the foolish retreat of his army forced me to likewise abandon the field, to regroup and consolidate my power," said Yeslnik.

Everyone in the room knew that to be a falsehood; in a brief absence of Prince Milwellis, when he had gone to meet with Yeslnik, Milwellis's army had been forced back by an elite team of Ethelbert's assassins. But the prince had quickly returned and reversed that retreat and, indeed, had gone right back to the very walls of Ethelbert's city, even filling the night air with arrows long after Yeslnik's army was in full retreat across the breadth of Honce.

Milwellis shifted again uncomfortably and even growled under his breath, clearly agitated.

But King Yeslnik continued to smile and to let his daring stare drift from Panlamaris to Milwellis and back again.

Then and there, Laird Panlamaris knew that it didn't matter what had happened on that faraway field. All that mattered was what Yeslnik claimed had happened on that faraway field.

"You will not return to Ethelbert's gates," Yeslnik said to Milwellis after letting the uncomfortable silence settle for a bit. "To the people along the eastern seaboard your name has become… unfavorable."

"My king-" Milwellis started to protest, but Panlamaris was quick to put his arm up before his son to back him down.

"I hold the fact of your unpopularity in your favor," Yeslnik said, deflating the argument before it could begin. "You acted admirably in your march and in your return. Still, I would favor keeping you and your forces closer to home, particularly with powries running the coast. You will return to Chapel Abelle and invigorate the siege. Build great catapults and throw rocks at the monks day after day. Make them more miserable. Let none out and none in. When I and Bannagran of Pryd are finished with the fool Ethelbert, we will join in your efforts and end the threat of Dame Gwydre and Father Artolivan fully."

Milwellis seemed to calm at that proclamation. Panlamaris only looked on at the surprising King Yeslnik, trying to take a measure of the young man. It seemed obvious to him that Laird Delaval's old generals were advising Yeslnik, and while that might be a good thing regarding the disposition of the war it would surely make this fop harder to manipulate.

"We have much more to discuss," said Yeslnik. "We have two fleets to coordinate and three armies ready to march. But I am weary from my voyage and would spend some time in private, to rest and to plan. My generals will sit with you, Panlamaris, and help you to understand your role in the grand events unfolding."

The old laird didn't even bristle at the dismissal.

"You have my quarters prepared?" Yeslnik asked in such a manner that made it clear to Panlamaris that there could only be one correct answer to the inquiry. Ye seen 'em?" Shiknickel asked his counterpart, the two standing on their respective barrelboat decks, bobbing in the river just north of Palmaristown.

"Aye, I seen 'em, and me and me boys're thinking we're to do something about them. Murky's boat seen 'em, too, and he's already in the gulf to pass the word."

"War," Shiknickel said.

"A thousand dead humans for every dwarf they staked," the other captain agreed. "We'll empty the damned Weathered Isles and bleed Honce until the rivers run red."

Mcwigik came on the deck beside Shiknickel.

"And we're not for letting yer friends sail free," the other captain called when he saw Mcwigik, for all knew of the deference that had been given to boats sailing under Dame Gwydre's flag. "Any boat what's not being pedaled is a boat what's being sinked."

Mcwigik rubbed his hairy face, but he couldn't disagree.

"Night's falling full," the dwarf captain of the other boat continued. "Yerself for going in tonight?"

Shiknickel glanced back at distant Palmaristown with so many ships moored near her docks.

"Nah, too many," Shiknickel said.

"Some o' them boys're alive," Mcwigik protested.

"Aye, with a beam shoved through their guts. Nothing's to fix them holes."

"I ain't for letting them hang!"

Shiknickel took a deep breath and looked to his peer on the other deck.

"We go in quiet, then, just to cut 'em down," that dwarf offered. "Fast in, quiet in, and fast out."

The barrelboats emptied their crews on the riverbank just north of Palmaristown long after midnight. More than one dwarf grumbled that he hoped their staked kin were scarecrows and not bait, for there were not more than twoscore of the powries charging into an enemy city of many thousands!

But, indeed, Palmaristown was secure in the notion that the powries had been run off and that the staked dwarves would keep them out. Few sentries were about the docks that night, and they were not an alert crew.

The powries ran over them, quickly subduing and muting those who survived the rush with thick gags and mouthfuls of cloth.

They went to work methodically on both the stakes and their dead and doomed kin, finishing each dwarf with a swift blow to the head as they took him down and pulled him free of his pole. While some of the dwarves then went to work on the stakes and the prisoners, others cut the hearts from their dead kin, to be used in a ceremony and burial that would ensure descendants from these fallen fellows.

The barrelboats were back in the river soon after, pedaling hard for the Gulf of Corona, their precious cargo in tow. They would have to put ashore again the next day, they knew, to bury the hearts and perform their rituals.

The raid could be considered nothing but a terrific success, but all of those dwarves moved away from the city with heavy hearts. They had mercifully finished a dozen of their kin and had retrieved four other hearts besides, exacting vengeance on twice that number of Palmaristown humans. But time and the layout of the city had worked against them: They had left other dwarves staked at Palmaristown's gates. They knew they had left friends behind.

"We'll pay them back a hundred times over," every powrie on those boats vowed, and it was not idle talk, as all of Honce would soon enough know. The screams echoed over Palmaristown early the next morning, when the city awoke to find more than twenty men staked upside down, some doubled up, to the poles along the docks, a clear signal that Honce's long nightmare had just grown darker still.

Most looked to the river, faces drained of blood as if they expected a fleet of barrelboats floating up to empty an army on their docks. But when he arrived to see the newest of horrors, Laird Panlamaris turned his gaze to the other direction, toward Chapel Abelle.

Toward Dame Gwydre.

She had done this to him. She had unleashed the evil of the powries upon his beautiful city.

She, above all others, would pay.

Rows of soldiers lined the docks, archers trained their bows, ready to sweep the decks clear. Dawson McKeege's Lady Dreamer came into the southeastern port of Ethelbert dos Entel under three flags: the crossed wood axes of Dame Gwydre's holding of Vanguard; the evergreen symbol of the Order of Abelle; and a universally acknowledged pennant of peace, a simple white affair. Lady Dreamer had picked up an escort a mile away from the city, a pair of Ethelbert warships, the best open-sea sailing vessels in Honce, with a high deck and three masts of multiple, billowing sails. As they had neared the city, the famed Entel longboats-giant shore-hugging vessels sporting only a single square sail with thirty sturdy oars to a side-had joined the armada.