R. Salvatore - The Dame

If I battled Bannagran now, I would defeat him, and with little difficulty. I say that with the full humility and understanding that such a truth brings upon me a call for responsibility.

And thus, the ultimate question hangs heavy over my head: What do I owe?

It’s always been an easy question for me regarding those I love. I would have died for Garibond and would die now for Cadayle or Callen. I would fight for Jond and must admit that even Cormack and Milkeila and the powrie pair have become beloved companions in the manner of Vaughna, Crait, and Olconna.

I could have parted ways with them on the rocky rise above the glacier, but I did not. No one was more surprised than I when my feet hit that ice, when I rushed down to join in the fray against Ancient Badden’s multitude of minions. By all rights, I could have turned south and gone all the way back to Dame Gwydre, and I do not doubt that she would have granted me my freedom for the trials I had already faced.

But I went down and fought, all the way to Badden, beside these companions (dare I hope, these friends?).

I owed them.

Dame Gwydre speaks of responsibility to people she does not even know, to her people across Vanguard. Is it just the truth of being a ruler, I wonder, that demands such a sense of community, or is it that we all owe one another in this greater community?

I have Badden’s head in a sack; I will be freed of my indenture when we return to Dame Gwydre in a couple of weeks’ time. I can then gather Cadayle and Callen and hold the promise that Gwydre will sail me wherever in the world I want to go. I can go on my way and let the world go its own, I can forget the battles here in Vanguard and the continuing strife between the too-proud lairds Ethelbert and Delaval in the south.

Or can I?

What do I owe? -BRANSEN GARIBOND

She felt his calloused but gentle touch on her shoulders and neck, rubbing the stress away with oft-practiced perfection. Dame Gwydre sat staring out her window in Castle Pellinor, looking to the cold north. She had cut her brown hair quite short, but there was nothing mannish about her appearance, for the cut only accentuated her fine, thin neck and slender shoulders. And even under all the duress of the recent months, and even well into middle age, Dame Gwydre’s face featured an eternal youth and vigor and sensuousness that belied the icy strength and determination ever in her eyes.

Gwydre sighed.

“We’ll know soon enough,” Dawson McKeege, the only man in the world who could be massaging Dame Gwydre, said to her.

She craned her neck to glance back at him, gray stubble prominent on his grizzled leathery face. Dawson was only a few years Gwydre’s senior, but, having spent most of his life at sea, he looked much older. How well Dawson knew her!

“What makes you believe that I am thinking of them?” Gwydre asked.

“Because ye haven’t been thinking of anything else since you sent that band after Ancient Badden,” Dawson said with a laugh, and he kneaded Gwydre’s shoulder as he spoke, bringing a wince of both pain and pleasure from the woman. “And you’re all in knots under your skin.”

It was true enough and he had seen right through her attempted dodge. Gwydre led Vanguard, and that vast wilderness holding was enmeshed in a brutal war, one that was taking a terrible toll on Gwydre’s hearty subjects. Desperate times had forced a desperate gambit, and so Gwydre had enlisted some of the elite warriors of her land and sent them north to behead the beast that had arisen against her, the priest leader of an ancient and brutal religion.

“Why do we fight, Dawson?” she asked her dear friend.

“I’ve got no fight with you.”

“Not us,” Gwydre replied in exasperation. “We, men and women, all of us. Why do we fight?”

“Now or all the time?”

Gwydre half turned as her friend backed away and offered him a shrug.

“Now we fight because Ancient Badden’s afraid that his Samhaist Church is being pushed aside, and so it is. He can’t let go of that power without a fight, as we’re seeing. He’ll do anything to hold it.”

“And so he has inflicted misery across Vanguard,” said Gwydre. “To those loyal to me, and to those loyal to him. Great misery.”

“They’re calling that ‘war,’ I’m told,” came the sarcastic reply.

“And why is the rest of Honce, all the holdings south of the Gulf of Corona, now in the grips of war?” Gwydre asked.

Dawson chuckled, seeing where this was going and having no answers.

Gwydre, too, gave a helpless laugh. Up here, the folk of Vanguard were embroiled in a brutal war with the monstrous minions Ancient Badden and the Samhaists had enlisted as mercenaries. Down south, across the far more populous holdings of Honce proper, it was brother against brother, laird against neighboring laird, as the two most prominent rulers battled to unite the land under one king for the first time in known history.

“They fight for the same reason we fight,” Dawson said quietly, and in all seriousness (which was a rarity for Dawson McKeege). “They fight because one man, or two men, decided they should fight.”

“Or one man and one woman?” Gwydre asked, clearly implicating herself in Vanguard’s troubles.

“Nah,” the sailor said with a shake of his head. “You didn’t start this. This is Badden’s folly and fury, and you’ve no choice but to defend.”

“Thank you for that,” Gwydre replied, and she patted her hand atop Dawson’s, which was still on her shoulder. “In the southlands, Laird Delaval and Laird Ethelbert have decided that one and only one should rule over all the holdings, and because of that rivalry, thousands and thousands of men and women have been trampled under the march of armies. So is it just them, Dawson? Just those two men? Or do the armies marching for them want to fight?”

Dawson’s face screwed up with puzzlement. “Many are believing in their leader, not to doubt,” he said.

“But do they want to go to war?”

“Milady, I doubt any man’s looking for more war after he’s tasted war. It’s an ugly thing, to watch your friend writhing on the muddy ground after his guts have been opened by a sword.”

“So it is the pride and ambition of two men driving the insanity,” said Gwydre.

Dawson shrugged and nodded. “As up here, it’s the pride and ambition and anger of one, Ancient Badden.”

With another sigh, Dame Gwydre turned back to stare out her northern window, and Dawson immediately moved nearer to her and began rubbing her neck once more-not because he had to, but because, as a friend, he wanted to.

“My father would not have gone to such a war,” Gwydre remarked offhandedly.

“That’s why the people of Vanguard loved Laird Gendron,” said Dawson. “That’s why the whole of Vanguard cried with you when he fell from his horse that day and didn’t recover. And Pieter wouldn’t have thought to fight such a war, either,” he added, referring to Gwydre’s husband, whom she had married while still a teenager, after Laird Gendron’s death. “You picked a good one there.”

“I miss him, Dawson. It’s been more than a decade and a half, and still I miss him.”

“You miss him more when Ancient Badden’s pushing you, I’m thinking.”

“I hate this,” Gwydre admitted. “The suffering and the blood and the simple worthlessness of it all.”

“There’s nothing worthless about defending Vanguard against Ancient Badden and his monster hordes.”

Gwydre patted his hand again. “And in the south?”

Dawson snorted derisively. “Who can be saying? Tough days in Vanguard, to be sure, but when we win-and we’re to do that, don’t doubt!-I’ll be glad that we’re a hundred miles of water or a hundred miles of wilderness away from those armies.”