R. Salvatore - The Dame

“Advise me,” Milwellis demanded, pleaded.

“Do as our king,” Harcourt said. “Turn and burn the land behind your march.”

Milwellis began to nod. “To Chapel Abelle,” he whispered, as if he couldn’t put anything more behind his voice.

“Most of Ethelbert’s minions are back in his city now,” Harcourt offered hopefully. “We can run to the gates of Ethelbert dos Entel within a matter of hours.”

“Tomorrow,” Milwellis decided, his voice suddenly strong once more. “A fresh march. Let us get close enough to shoot our arrows at them and turn quickly enough to persuade them that we leave of our own choice. Perhaps we can even send a message to Laird Ethelbert, a warning that if he comes forth we will destroy him.”

Harcourt nodded, glad to see that his prince was continuing to think on his feet, adapting, and wisely, to every new twist.

“Tomorrow,” he echoed. “And today we camp here in Yansinchester?”

“We have unfinished business here,” said Milwellis, turning his angry stare right at Chapel Yansin. “For here we discover enemies of Palmaristown.”

They came within sight of Ethelbert dos Entel’s northern reaches the following afternoon, staring down from the same hills where Milwellis had lost his knights. The carnage of the battle remained all too clear. Milwellis trembled with rage.

Harcourt did not miss that reaction. “My prince,” he said comfortingly, drawing the volatile young man out of his fuming contemplations.

“Would that I had Ethelbert’s head on the ground before me,” Milwellis growled.

“But you do not, though take heart in that you have surely wounded him more profoundly than he you.”

Milwellis looked up from the body of a Palmaristown knight-Erolis, he recalled, though the carrion birds had done too much to disfigure it for him to be sure-and offered a thankful nod to his honest companion.

“What can we do to sting Ethelbert one last time before we turn?” he asked. “What can we do to make him know that we are here, right before his wall, and that he daren’t come forth?”

Harcourt grinned and nodded.

Under the cover of darkness, on that cloudy and moonless night, every archer in Milwellis’s force crept down from the hill to the field before Ethelbert dos Entel’s north wall.

They couldn’t see their target any better than any defenders might see them, of course, but then, their target was the size of a city.

A hundred bows lifted to the sky and let fly. Then again and again and many more times after that until at last cries came from the city as Ethelbert’s people realized they were under attack. The last volley was flaming arrows, five score streaking through the night sky to cross over the wall and seek further fuel within.

A response finally came, but by then the Palmaristown archers had turned and fled.

Several fires erupted within the city wall, Milwellis and Harcourt saw from the hilltop. Perhaps a few people had been injured or even killed, perhaps those fires, though surely quickly attended, would cause some damage. But none of that was the point, after all. Milwellis had just told Ethelbert that he was here in the dark within striking distance of the desperate laird’s last refuge.

The next morning Milwellis’s army moved back to the north, driving livestock and villagers before them, destroying the gardens and the fields.

And dragging with them the twenty-three brothers of Chapel Yansin bound for Chapel Abelle.

They’re running,” Jameston remarked to Bransen. “Like deer before the wolves.” The pair stood looking to the east from opposite branches of a tree. Something was happening there, some fighting or other commotion, but they couldn’t make out what, exactly, for a line of hills blocked their view even from the high perch. That was the nature of this ground along the southernmost Honce coastline, as if the towering mountains just south of their position, the great Belt-and-Buckle, had collided with the sea in days long lost to the world and had strewn great broken mounds all about the region.

Suddenly soldiers were scrambling past the trees as if the demon dactyl itself was close on their heels. Not far before them, one spearman stumbled as he headed down a slope, nearly thrown from his feet as the back quarter of his spear shaft collided with a tree. Finally orienting himself, he just threw the spear to the ground and continued his desperate run.

Bransen got Jameston’s attention and pointed up above.

“Too thin,” the scout replied, meaning the branches.

Bransen shook his head and started up anyway, falling into the malachite in his brooch. He lessened his weight greatly, his hands easily propelling him skyward. Within only a few moments he had climbed nearly twenty feet to the tree’s tiny top (which wasn’t bending under his weight in the least). He looked back to see Jameston gawking at him and shaking his head in disbelief.

Bransen suppressed his smile and looked to the east again. Though he still couldn’t see as widely as he had hoped, the view proved enough to make out the pennants flying over a large force.

“Palmaristown,” he muttered, turning his gaze south. The structures of Ethelbert dos Entel, built on steps up the mountainsides, were in clear view only a couple of leagues away. Was the war nearing its end? And what might this mean for his quest to find the Jhesta Tu? Bransen danced his way back down to Jameston and relayed the information.

“So these are Ethelbert’s men,” Jameston remarked, glancing down at the fleeing force. “They’ll run all the way to the city, I’m guessing.”

“Not all of them,” Bransen determinedly replied. To Jameston’s gasp of surprise, he leaped from the tree and floated-floated, not fell!-to the ground. He was running as he landed, scrambling through the thick copse to intercept nearby soldiers.

“I’ve got to get me some of them damned stones,” he heard Jameston mutter as the man carefully and painstakingly worked his way back down to the ground.

The Highwayman slipped into a grove of pines, sliding silently through the dense branches. He followed a movement out of the corner of his eye to his left, and he glided as a shadow to intercept.

The man ran before him; the Highwayman’s foot thrust out to strike the trailing foot of the fleeing soldier, kicking it behind his other ankle. The man tripped and tumbled forward, landing awkwardly in a skid on his knees and hands. Apparently still oblivious to the source of his fall, he started to scramble back to his feet.

A fine sword blade atop his shoulder, its sharp edge barely an inch from his neck, froze him in place.

“Please, sir, I’ve a family,” he begged.

The Highwayman retracted the sword, grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him to his feet, turning him as he stood to look him in the face. The soldier gasped, eyes widening as he considered the black clothing and the unusual gemstone brooch.

“Affwin Wi?” he asked.

The Highwayman paused at hearing that name yet again. “You know Affwin Wi?” he asked.

“Of her all do,” the terrified soldier replied.

“Let him go!” came a cry from the side where a pair of soldiers appeared, swords in hand. They advanced slowly toward the Highwayman, their blades raised threateningly.

“Oh, I’m not thinking that you’re in a place to be telling him what to do,” came an answer to the side of the newcomers, who both looked and blanched at the sight of Jameston Sequin, his bow drawn, arrow leveled.

“Easy,” the soldier with Bransen instructed his companions. “He’s one o’ Affwin Wi’s boys.”

The other two certainly did relax at that.

“Praise the ancient ones,” one muttered while the other gave the sign of the evergreen.