R. Salvatore - The Dame

“Yes, yes, I know the sad tale.”

“Do you know that he was trying to rape my wife when Bannagran’s axe found his chest?” Bransen asked.

Affwin Wi’s hand flicked out at Bransen’s side, jabbing his thigh hard. He looked at her; she glared her reply. “Proper respect,” she whispered.

“That is quite all right, my huntress,” Laird Ethelbert said with a lighthearted laugh. “Better that this one speak the truth in his heart so I may better come to know the truth of him, yes?”

Affwin Wi gave a curt bow.

“And I do know enough of Prydae to acknowledge what you claim. Well, let us just say that he was not capable of such an act,” Ethelbert said to Bransen.

“That did not stop him from trying,” Bransen replied. “Or from falsely condemning her mother”-he glanced to the monk wearing the robes of a father and standing at Ethelbert’s side as he finished-“to the Samhaists.”

“I surrender, I surrender,” Ethelbert said with a jovial laugh. “I will not replay those events and will not argue with one who was there when I was not. I was saddened by the death of Prydae, a man I had known as an ally in battle. Whether he deserved it or not…” He let it go at that with a shrug.

Bransen accepted that reasoning with a bow.

“And you are an interesting mutt, are you not?” Ethelbert said. “You wear on your forehead the gemstones of an Abellican monk, yet you fight with the techniques-and clothing-of the southern mystics.”

“My father was of the Order of Blessed Abelle, my mother a Jhesta Tu,” said Bransen.

“I know that,” Ethelbert said. “I met your father and your mother on their return from Behr. They came through my city two decades ago, and I granted them an audience. It did not end well for them, I assume.”

Bransen’s face went from a sudden brightening to a dark cloud at the grim reminder of Bran and Sen Wi’s respective fates.

“I warned your father that the brothers would not be as tolerant as he hoped,” Ethelbert said.

Bransen felt as if the ground were shifting under his feet. He had come in here full of confidence and determination, and now Laird Ethelbert had maneuvered the conversation to a place that clearly had Bransen on edge. He wanted to hear more of Ethelbert’s encounter with his parents, and he knew that such desire ensured that he would not.

Ethelbert read him perfectly and quickly deflected the conversation yet again.

“You know of my struggle with Laird Yeslnik?” he asked.

“I thought he called himself King Yeslnik,” Bransen replied with enough obvious disdain to draw a large smile from Ethelbert.

“He can call himself God Yeslnik if it pleases him,” Ethelbert replied. “Because when I kill him it will matter not at all.”

Bransen didn’t react.

“So I have met him as you desired,” Ethelbert said to Affwin Wi, suddenly sounding very bored with it all. “What is the purpose? Is he friend, or is he foe?”

“He states that he is Jhesta Tu,” the woman replied. “He will pledge loyalty to Laird Ethelbert.”

Bransen looked at her in surprise.

“Because I am his superior,” Affwin Wi clarified boldly. “And the decision is not his to make.” She turned to regard Bransen directly. “Is that not true?” she asked, invoking a clear test of his loyalty.

Bransen paused, but only for a moment, before answering, “Yes.”

“Is there anything more?” asked Ethelbert.

Affwin Wi studied Bransen for a few moments then said, “Speak your mind freely. This is your last chance to do so.”

Bransen didn’t know exactly what that might mean. “I am Jhesta Tu,” he explained. “In part. But because of my heritage and my experience, I am more. I have found the promise of my father, the joining-”

Affwin Wi hit him so hard across the face that he was sitting on the floor before he had even registered the pain of the blow.

“You are Jhesta Tu, or you are not,” she said while Ethelbert laughed. “Which are you?”

“I am Jhesta Tu,” Bransen said, lowering his gaze to the floor.

My arm’s getting tired and I just might let go,” Jameston warned. “You must be gone,” the woman replied.

“I was going-” Jameston started to say, but he bit it off, suddenly realizing what she really meant. He had tracked them and had found them. He had fought this very woman and believed he was beating her when her friend had intervened.

He knew of them, which made him an intolerable threat.

“So that’s what it is, is it?” he said. “You can’t have me wandering on my way knowing what I know.” He gave a little laugh. “Well, I know a lot more now, I expect…”

He heard the pop behind him, a sharp bang and the splintering of wood, followed by what he thought was a hard punch in his back just behind his right hip.

Jameston instinctively glanced down, and then he knew. For the nun’chu’ku had blown right through the wall behind him and into his back with such force that Jameston’s leather jerkin was pushed out in the front.

“Oh, now,” Jameston muttered, realizing that the pole had gone right through him. Already the feeling was leaving his legs, and he was having a hard time drawing breath.

He looked up at the woman, who stood easily now, smiling at him.

Jameston managed a nod. Growling, he drew back and sent his arrow at her. She got her arm up with amazing speed, but the arrow bored right through her forearm and into her forehead. She was still smiling when she fell dead to the floor.

Jameston shuddered, a thousand fires exploding within him as the warrior with the shaven head-it had to be that one, Jameston knew-tugged the nun’chu’ku out of him and back through the wall.

Jameston was sitting when the fierce warrior came around the front and entered through the door. The scout wanted to put his bow up for one last shot, for one chance to kill this vicious man, but when he lifted his left arm, he only then realized that he wasn’t even holding the bow anymore, that it was on the floor at his feet.

Merwal Yahna crouched over the dead woman, then rose and glanced at Jameston. He would come over and finish the job, Jameston figured, but surprisingly the man just snorted and turned away.

Jameston watched as the warrior cradled his fallen friend, then carried her out of the house.

And as he left, the darkness began to close in on Jameston Sequin.

Mcwigik leaned his elbows on the top of the small barrel boat tower, staring at the distant fires and candles twinkling in windows. So many lights. More than Mcwigik had ever seen, more than he had ever imagined possible. For a hundred years he had looked across the waters of Mithranidoon, where even a single firelight was an oddity. For many years of life before that, the largest collection of people together he had ever seen was the town of Hard Rocks on the Weathered Isles.

But even that place, once thought impressive, couldn’t have been one-twentieth the size of this!

“Got to be Palmaristown,” Bikelbrin said, coming up beside him. “We’re at the mouth o’ the river, and that’s where Shiknickel said it’d be.”

“We get ten of us boys together, and we call it a town,” Mcwigik replied, shaking his hairy head. “Thirty and we call it a city, a hundred and it’s a kingdom.”

“Lot o’ people in there,” Bikelbrin agreed.

“Lot o’ blood,” his friend reminded.

“We get killed to death in there, and there’s none to be burying our hearts.”

“Bah, but we won’t be knowin’ that anyway!” Mcwigik said with a laugh, and he and Bikelbrin clapped each other on the shoulders.

The powrie shiver stayed offshore as the lights went down in the city, and only then did the eager dwarves resume their pedaling, moving very slowly and quietly. With a hundred thirty warriors among all the boats, they figured they’d find themselves outnumbered a hundred to one or more.