R. Salvatore - The Bear

Kirren Howen rubbed his face, feeling very old and very tired. He hadn't even buried his beloved laird yet, hadn't even let the word go forth that Ethelbert was dead, and the nonsense of so many possible conspiracies did not sit well on his shoulders at that grim time.

"Enough of this useless conjecture," he told them both. "We must decide what is best for Ethelbert dos Entel. Laird Ethelbert would demand no less of us."

A guard burst into the chamber. "General!" he cried, gasping for breath.

"What is the meaning of this?" Myrick asked.

"He has her sword!" the guard exclaimed.

"What?" all three commanders said in unison.

"The Highwayman," the guard explained. "He has Affwin Wi's sword!"

Kirren Howen's face went blank. The world had just grown more confusing and more dangerous.

Kirren Howen looked at the charred body of Affwin Wi, so disfigured as to be nearly unrecognizable.

"The Highwayman did this," Myrick the Bold said. "There can be no doubt."

"So it would seem," Kirren Howen replied.

"And so he was part of the plan to murder Laird Ethelbert!" Myrick exclaimed. Kirren Howen flashed him an angry glare, reminding him to keep his voice down. They had come with a dozen sentries and the peasant woman who had discovered the bodies. All stood nearby in the shade of the same tree into which Bransen and later Affwin Wi had leaped.

Both generals glanced that way now, to see curious looks coming back at them, but it seemed clear that Myrick's words hadn't fully registered to the group. Kirren Howen breathed a sigh of relief at that. He wasn't sure how he wanted to proceed here. They hadn't let news of Ethelbert's death spread from the castle yet, and Kirren Howen preferred to keep it quiet until he could figure out exactly how the laird's demise had come about. Something about the obvious story, about a woman from Bannagran sneaking in and murdering the man, rang hollow to him.

Where were the guards who had left the gate with this assassin, reportedly taking her to see Ethelbert? What of Bransen, the Highwayman, who had arrived to speak with Ethelbert on the morning after the laird's death? Had that been but a ruse so that he wouldn't be implicated in the murder? But if that were the case, then why had the Highwayman shown his face at all in the city? Certainly he could have gotten out of the city as quietly as he had apparently gotten in!

Now this, the two greatest warriors in all of Ethelbert dos Entel, lying dead on a field outside the city's walls. Little of it made any sense to Kirren Howen.

"What are we to do?" Myrick asked more quietly. "Do we march to Pryd Town to avenge our laird?"

"Avenge? You presume much. To think that we could even go to war with Bannagran is folly."

"Then what?"

"We learn the truth of this crime."

"We know the truth!" the impetuous and hot-blooded Myrick insisted.

"We know nothing," said Kirren Howen. "But we shall." I told him where you went and what you did," Dame Gwydre said to Bransen as they departed Pryd on the morning after his return.

Bransen looked at her skeptically, as if determined to remind her that he really didn't care what Bannagran might think of him. "He said that we lost valuable warriors for our cause, no doubt, should Ethelbert turn to our cause."

Gwydre laughed, showing Bransen that he wasn't far off the mark. "There is that," she admitted. "But more so, Bannagran appeared impressed, both by your simple act of defeating those two warriors and that you went to such lengths to avenge a fallen friend."

"Without reminding you that he hadn't avenged his fallen friend by executing me?" Bransen asked sarcastically, and Gwydre laughed again. Indeed, she seemed to be in a fine and joyous mood this morning.

"Bannagran thinks highly of you. He respects your journey and the place it has taken you."

"Now I feel guilty for all the fantasies I've had of killing the brute."

"There is no end to Bransen's sarcasm, I see."

"Would you have it any other way?"

Dame Gwydre stared at him.

"I am here, am I not? I led you here, in fact! Is that not enough of a show of faith in Laird Bannagran?"

Gwydre let it go at that, and the pair bounded across the countryside. To Gwydre's surprise, though, Bransen headed for the east, and not directly north toward her forces. When she finally found the moment to question Bransen of their course, he said it was time for her to meet Laird Ethelbert.

"You trust that he will not kill you for what you did to his warriors?"

"You think me foolish enough to give him the opportunity?" Kirren Howen brought his hands up to tousle his hair as he leaned back against the wall of a storage shed not far from the city's main gate. Two guards lay dead on the floor before him, ostensibly the victims of the same woman assassin who had murdered Laird Ethelbert.

The crafty old general noted that these two had been bludgeoned, one's neck snapped, while Ethelbert had been slashed across the throat. More and more curious. Myrick postulated that the Highwayman likely killed these two, while the woman murdered Ethelbert.

Father Destros and Tyne argued with him on that point, and it was obvious to Kirren Howen that Destros was sharing his doubts about the whole theory. They had interviewed the other guards who had been at the gate when the woman had arrived, and the snippets she had told them spoke of an altogether different kind of treachery here aimed at Bannagran.

"Take them to the chapel and study their wounds more closely," he instructed Destros. "Then come to me in the castle when you are certain of the type of weapon used and when you can guess at the expertise required."

Myrick started to protest.

"You are a fine commander, Myrick the Bold," Kirren Howen interrupted, "but you show your inexperience with every word you utter. You are speaking of the fate of a city here… of a city that is now fully our responsibility. To run off impetuously is to risk disaster. Nay, our course is to remain calm and to learn."

"But-" the many started to argue.

"I know your pain, friend," said Kirren Howen. "And I would see Laird Ethelbert's assassin dead in the most painful manner I can determine, do not doubt. But many important decisions lie before us, and we have not nearly the information we need to make them properly." He glanced at Destros and nodded. The monk rushed outside to summon fellow brothers to help him carry the dead sentries to Chapel Entel.

Kirren Howen had barely returned to the castle when the excited Destros rushed in to speak with him. "The Highwayman returns," he blurted.

Kirren Howen stared at him dumbfounded. "He is here?"

"Soon."

"How can you know this?"

"He came to me, spirit walking, and bade me to speak with Laird Ethelbert, to arrange a parlay this day at sunset."

"He will be taken when he enters the city."

Father Destros shook his head. "He wishes a parlay outside the gates in an abandoned cottage at the edge of the forest not far from here."

Kirren Howen narrowed his eyes threateningly.

"He brings Dame Gwydre to speak with him."

Kirren Howen's eyes opened wide at that! "He asked for Ethelbert?"

"He does not know that our laird has been slain."

"Or he is a practiced liar."

Destros shook his head. "Spirit walking and communicating in such a form is a joining of minds and of souls, my laird…" He paused and looked at Kirren Howen curiously, and the general, too, was caught off guard by the reference to a title that he surely would call his own.

"In such a state there can be no deception," Father Destros concluded. "The Highwayman was not lying. He does not know that Laird Ethelbert has been slain."

Kirren Howen wasn't truly surprised by that bit of news when he paused to consider it. So much of the assumed story had kept him off balance, with nagging doubts regarding the tiny details at the edges of the tale.