R. Salvatore - The Dame

“I pray you are right,” Gwydre said softly, and she stared to the north, the empty north.

I ain’t a’feared o’ fighting,” said the tough little powrie Mcwigik. He plopped his bloodred beret on top of his wildly bushy orange hair and rubbed it into place as if he was adjusting a helmet. “In truth, I’m liking it, and likin’ it more when we’re talking o’ fighting trolls. But if ye’re asking me and Bikelbrin to go down there to fight that mob, and ye’re thinkin’ o’ keeping one back here to watch over no-eyes there, then ye’re thinking wrong. We’re just five, ye dopes!”

“Six,” corrected Brother Jond, the man Mcwigik had called “no-eyes.” Dressed in his brown woolen Abellican robe and weather-beaten sandals with cloth wrapped inside their black straps to keep his feet warm, the monk shifted in his sitting posture to better face the sound of the dwarf’s voice. He did nothing to hide his torn face, both eyes and the bridge of his nose lost as a prisoner of the wretched Ancient Badden; indeed, Brother Jond strained his neck to better demonstrate the wound to his companions.

“Bah, ye’re a blind fool, and that’s not a mix I’m wanting to fight beside,” Mcwigik argued.

“I can use gemstones!” Brother Jond retorted.

“And put a lightning bolt up me arse!” roared Bikelbrin, Mcwigik’s powrie companion. The two looked like bookends as they stood bobbing side by side. Both were tall for powries, five feet at least, and seemed as solid as the stones upon which they stood. And both had never met a blade suitable for trimming either hair or beard, it seemed, which gave their heads an enormous appearance.

“The soul stone!” Brother Jond argued. “I can send healing energy.”

“To the trolls, ye twit!” said Mcwigik.

Similarly dressed in Abellican robes, though he had fallen from the order, and a powrie beret won in a fight with one of Mcwigik’s former clan’s dwarves, Cormack cast a nervous glance at his wife, Milkeila.

“If you do not lower your voices, the fight will come to us,” Milkeila warned them all. The weight of the tall woman’s words was not lost on any of the three arguing. She stood as tall as Brother Jond, a foot above the powries; there was nothing delicate about Milkeila. She had been raised among the shamans of Yan Ossum, a barbarian tribe on the Lake Mithranidoon. She had seen battle both magical and physical since her early days and had lived a life of discipline and dedication-and her defined and strong muscles bore testament to the fact. By any measure, human or powrie, she was handsome, even beautiful, her wide and round face showing a range from feminine wiles to warrior ferocity. The sparkle in her dark eyes promised passion or battle, and anyone engaging in either with this formidable woman would enter the fray tentatively, to be sure. She kept much of her brown hair braided, but it was obvious that she didn’t fret with it for the sake of vanity.

All of that-her size, her obvious strength, her sheer intensity-brought gravity to Milkeila’s words. Even the stubborn powries lowered their volume as they continued their argument, which again wound along the same path to Bikelbrin claiming emphatically, “Ye’ll put a lightning bolt up me arse!”

“No, he won’t,” said the sixth of the party, a smallish man wearing an exotic outfit of black silk, a wide farmer’s hat, and a fabulous and intricately detailed sword on his hip.

“Then he’ll heal the damned trolls!” Bikelbrin fumed.

“No, he won’t,” said the man, Bransen Garibond, said with a confident grin and a wink at the blind Jond-a wink that brought a chuckle to the blind brother’s lips. What a ragtag group they were, Bransen thought. Outcasts all, except for Jond, they had banded together in common purpose to bring about the end of Ancient Badden. For the others, it had been a personal battle-the powries, Milkeila, and Cormack were defending their, and one another’s, communities on the warm Lake Mithranidoon below Ancient Badden’s glacier, and Jond had come north with Bransen at the behest of Dame Gwydre of Vanguard, in an attempt to decapitate the enemy by killing the vile leader. Bransen considered himself the biggest mercenary here, when he thought about it. He was not personally invested in the Mithranidoon communities, or in Vanguard, a land to which he was a stranger, and he had been tricked into the service of Dame Gwydre. He had come hunting Badden to earn freedom, for himself and for his wife and mother-in-law, reparation for his actions as the Highwayman that had outraged many of the Honce lairds. Now they were all traveling south from the defeated Ancient Badden’s fortress, back to Dame Gwydre with their gruesome trophy. There was nothing left up here for the powries, Cormack, and Milkeila, and wounded Jond wanted to go home to Chapel Pellinor, and Bransen just wanted to get back to Cadayle and Callen.

Bikelbrin and Mcwigik both started arguing with Bransen, but Milkeila interrupted, and all turned to her to see her looking from Bransen to Jond curiously. “How did you see that?” she asked the blind monk.

“I saw nothing. I see nothing.”

“You reacted.”

“I agree with Bransen.”

“To the wink,” Milkeila insisted.

Jond’s smile widened. “I felt it.”

Both powries, Cormack, and Milkeila stared long and hard at the blind man.

“Ye felt the wink?” Mcwigik said with obvious doubt. “I got a great fart coming-ye feelin’ that, are ye?”

Bransen drew his sword suddenly, pulling all attention his way. With a shrug, he poked its fine tip into his palm, drawing blood. “I am wounded!” he said to Jond, and before the monk could react, the agile Bransen silently shifted around to the other side of the group, behind the powries.

Brother Jond lowered his head and lifted a hand from his pouch, his fist clenched around a small hematite, a soul stone, which Milkeila had given him from her necklace of various magical gems.

Bransen, remaining perfectly silent, held his hand up for all to see, and sure enough, a wave of magical energy from Jond sealed the small wound.

“How is that possible?” asked Cormack, formerly Brother Cormack, who knew well the properties of the Abellican stones. “How did you anticipate his move?”

“We are all joined, connected,” Bransen explained.

“Only a great shaman can sense such movements through the earth,” Milkeila protested.

“Or a Jhesta Tu,” said Bransen. “Brother Jond and I have formed a bond. He can heal me, and will heal me, unerringly, as we do battle with the trolls we spied on the road ahead. He will not heal the trolls by mistake.”

“And I’ll cast no bolts of lightning, I promise,” said Brother Jond.

“And how’re ye to keep the trolls off yer torn face?” Mcwigik asked. “I’ll not be looking over me shoulder to protect yer arse when I’m fighting for me own!”

“Nor would I ask you to,” said Jond.

“We’ll find a place for him, near the fighting,” said Bransen. “Near enough to throw a healing spell, at me or at any of you who can find a similar bond.”

Cormack was nodding with obvious appreciation, and so was Milkeila, and after a moment of looking at each other, both dwarves said, “Well, all’s the better then!” and the issue was settled.

“Six cogs one!” Mcwigik proclaimed, an old powrie expression of a team of warriors working in unison toward a single goal. “Now, let’s go kill us some trolls, just because it’s a fine day and there’s no better way in all the world to spend it.”

B

ransen held his breath as he watched the approach of the troll mob, some dozen or so of the creatures pushing and shoving and growling as they made their way along the path, windblown free of snow, that served as the main road into Vanguard from southern Alpinador. The young warrior couldn’t help but remember the last time he had been in a situation just like this, when he and a few friends had attacked a troll caravan in an attempt to free the humans they held as prisoner. Crait, a warrior of great legend and stature, had died in that fight, and Bransen and the remaining of his band had been taken captive.