R. Salvatore - The Bear

Smiles spread on the faces of the two younger generals, and both lifted their glasses in agreement.

"Take heart, my friends," Kirren Howen proclaimed. "If the Highwayman's confidence is at all justified, and King Yeslnik has reason to be worried, then we will profit. Let us assemble a swift and agile force. I'll not have us caught outside our walls and not engage in any battle until and unless it is of our choosing."

"For Ethelbert dos Entel!" Myrick the Bold said and lifted his glass once more.

"For Laird Ethelbert!" Tyne added and corrected, tapping his glass against that of his friend.

"They are nowhere to be found, my laird," the scout reported.

"Go away," Milwellis said to him, and when the scout tried to further respond, the laird fixed him with a threatening glare. Bowing ridiculously, the scout ran away.

"Always the same," said Harcourt. "She is a clever one."

"Too clever," said Milwellis. "Always too clever! How is this possible? How can the witch so anticipate our every move, our every ambush, and our every feint? Do we have spies among us?"

"Do continue," came a third voice, and the pair turned to see Father De Guilbe walking over, nodding with every long stride.

Both men, particularly Harcourt, fixed him with a hard stare, for he wore a wry, little smile, as if he was enjoying their frustration. Given the inevitable growing rivalry within the court of Yeslnik, where several prominent figures, Milwellis and De Guilbe among them, would constantly vie for the king's favors, the moment grew more tense with every stride the loud and arrogant monk took their way.

"It is a source of constant discussion in King Yeslnik's court," De Guilbe said, when neither man moved to speak. "You need not hide your folly here."

"Do tell," said Harcourt.

"Surely it is no secret that Dame Gwydre has run you all about the ways of Honce," said De Guilbe. "When you departed Delaval City with so grand a force at your call, we had thought-we had all thought-your task to be a matter of days in completing, not weeks and surely not months, and yet the summer grows old and Gwydre runs free."

Harcourt and Milwellis exchanged concerned looks.

"And, of course, that unfortunate situation forces King Yeslnik to hold fast his other force, Bannagran's force, and offers comfort and reprieve to the defeated Ethelbert," De Guilbe went on dramatically. "Your failure sends discontent across the kingdom."

Harcourt glared at the man and seemed ready to spring upon him, but Milwellis caught something else here, some background motive to De Guilbe's nattering.

"What do you want, monk?" the Laird of Palmaristown asked bluntly.

Harcourt looked at Milwellis curiously, while De Guilbe feigned surprise. "Want?"

Milwellis held up his hand to silence the monk immediately.

"You have come to fashion a report for King Yeslnik," Milwellis reasoned.

"King Yeslnik's patience thins."

"And so will that report be favorable to Laird Milwellis or favorable to Laird Bannagran?" Milwellis asked.

"What has Bannagran to do with this matter?" Harcourt interjected, but his face lit up with revelation as he regarded the grin of Father De Guilbe.

"You would use us against each other to Father De Guilbe's gain," Milwellis stated.

"That is a harsh accusation, laird," said De Guilbe.

"It is a logical assumption, for I would do the same, were I you," said Milwellis, and De Guilbe grinned all the wider.

The monk's expression grew grim almost immediately afterward, though. "I want Dame Gwydre defeated," he said. "I want Father Artolivan thrown down into the mud and all his followers with him."

"You want your seat at Chapel Abelle, no matter how grand the promise of a mother chapel in Delaval City," said Milwellis. "Should King Yeslnik empty every quarry in Honce of stone and build you a chapel so huge as to dwarf the Belt-and-Buckle range, you would still prefer the seat at Chapel Abelle."

De Guilbe looked to Harcourt, his smile returned. "How can one so young show such insight?" he asked the general.

"What do you want?" Milwellis demanded.

"To press King Yeslnik's favor to the side of Laird Milwellis?"

The laird didn't respond at all, didn't even blink.

"I want to know that you agree with me that Chapel Abelle must be defeated and that I must be installed there, not in Delaval or anywhere else, if the Church of the Divine King is to hold sway over the outland chapels," the monk said, his voice very serious and even.

"Nothing would please me more than to enter the courtyard of Chapel Abelle and avenge my father."

"I know," said De Guilbe. "And that is why I have come to you at this time. Not as a spy for King Yeslnik but as a friend."

"A friend?" Harcourt asked doubtfully.

"An ally," De Guilbe corrected.

Milwellis nodded, figuring it all out. "When Dame Gwydre is defeated and Laird Ethelbert is pushed into the sea, the brothers in the fortress of Chapel Abelle will pursue diplomacy."

"What choice will be left to them?" asked De Guilbe.

"And King Yeslnik will be advised to heed that call, his armies weary, the length and breadth of the land battered," the laird went on.

"But would he be wise in heeding that call for peace?"

"For him, yes," Milwellis admitted. "But for you, no."

"And for you?"

"No."

"Then we are agreed?" De Guilbe asked and extended his hand, which Milwellis accepted.

"Chapel Abelle and Palmaristown will be fine allies," the monk remarked. Very little surprised or shook Father De Guilbe. The man had traveled the world, had battled powries and barbarians, and had led his brothers through the harshest of climes. The Order of Abelle had never known a tougher man, often cruel and pragmatic, a man who would not spare the whip (as Cormack could surely attest!) and who accepted the death of soldiers, fellow monks, and innocent civilians with hardly a shrug of care, so long as the outcome of such conflict moved toward his vision of order.

More than a few of his colleagues through the years had remarked that he was more akin to the Samhaists in temperament than to the brothers of Abelle, and De Guilbe knew that in many ways they were surely correct. His split with Father Artolivan had been as philosophical as incidental; to De Guilbe, the church had grown soft under Artolivan's gentle guidance, and that could only spell the ultimate doom of the order.

The order.

That was the key to it, after all. It was the duty of the church, whatever church stood dominant, to impart a sense of order and discipline upon the fearful rabble. When it had become obvious that Yeslnik would be King of Honce, that Delaval City would prevail over Ethelbert dos Entel, the Order of Abelle had to abandon its stance of neutrality and throw in with the winner.

Whether Yeslnik was a moral and good man was irrelevant, to De Guilbe's thinking. Whether his order to execute the prisoners taken from Ethelbert was right and just was not important. Not in the long run. Not for the future of the church that would remain in the kingdom Yeslnik had claimed.

Still, for all the hardness that encrusted the character of Father De Guilbe, he found himself gasping for breath when at last he had unraveled Dame Gwydre's awful secret.

"What do you know?" demanded Harcourt when the obviously shaken monk walked into the tent of Laird Milwellis that dark and rainy night.

His face ashen, shaking his head with every word, De Guilbe announced, "They have thrown off all bounds of morality and decency. They have abandoned all caution in their desperation."

Milwellis lifted his palms, his posture and expression showing him to be completely baffled.

De Guilbe held up a gray stone, a soul stone. "Spirit walking," he explained. "It is-it was-a rare practice, a dangerous practice, an often immoral practice. In the more disciplined church before the rise of Artolivan, spirit walking was used only in cases of extreme emergency, when the mother chapel needed to impart some edict or warning of utmost importance.