The Dame

FIVE

The lines of allies couldn’t have been clearer to Dame Gwydre as she listened to Bransen relay his tale of capture, escape, and ultimate victory over Ancient Badden. Beside Bransen stood the fallen monk Cormack and the barbarian woman Milkeila, with a pair of powries behind them.

Across the way to the left side of the room sat Father De Guilbe and his entourage, including Brother Jond, who Gwydre knew was the link between these wildly disparate groups. Jond was a good man, an honorable man, who put moral duty first and foremost. Gwydre hoped that to be the case, for De Guilbe had made no secret of his loathing of Cormack.

“We had enough allies to get through the ancient’s defenses,” Bransen remarked, throwing a sour look Father De Guilbe’s way as he spoke.

Gwydre sighed inwardly. Why did things always have to be so complicated?

“It was not our place to go!” Father De Guilbe protested. “I could not know of your predicament, Dame Gwydre!”

“We have already been over this, good Father,” Gwydre calmly replied. “No one holds you or your brothers at fault for the choice you made in retreating from the glacier.”

“No one?” De Guilbe asked sharply, his glare landing on Bransen.

The man in the black silk clothing grinned, something Dame Gwydre did not miss. “And you slew Badden?” she asked Bransen.

“It would do great injustice to those around me, these four and two other powries, for me to make such a claim, Lady,” Bransen replied, managing another sly grin at De Guilbe as he did. “It was my blade that took his head, yes, but only through the sacrifice and efforts of those around me.”

“However it was done, it is appreciated,” said Dame Gwydre.

“It was done for a price,” Bransen reminded, and all in the room widened their eyes at that rather callous announcement, a reminder that stole the joy from the room. “And now, good Lady, with your generosity, I would ask that you extend that reward.”

Beside Gwydre, Dawson McKeege and another advisor began to protest, but Gwydre held up her hand to silence them and bade Bransen to continue.

“I would have my Writ of Passage,” Bransen demanded. “I will go and collect my wife and her mother and travel Honce as a free man as I was promised.”

Gwydre nodded.

“And I insist upon a similar writ for Cormack and Milkeila,” Bransen added.

“No!” shouted Father De Guilbe, leaping to his feet. Beside him, Brother Giavno tried to grab his arm, but the large, older man tugged free of his grasp and stormed toward Gwydre. “Cormack does not answer to the laws of the lairds but to that of the Order of Abelle.”

“Are you saying that Chapel Abelle will not honor my wishes?” Gwydre asked. If the cool and calm woman was shaken in the least by the sudden and violent outburst she didn’t show it.

“I beg you not to do this, Dame Gwydre!” Father De Guilbe said. “Brother Cormack betrayed us!”

Despite the heightened tension, Gwydre smiled at De Guilbe’s clever and selective use of Cormack’s title. He only called Cormack “brother” when claiming church jurisdiction, it seemed. She waited for De Guilbe to finally stop his march, just a few feet from her chair, then she turned to Cormack.

“Have you anything to say in your defense?”

“I followed my heart,” Cormack replied. “Everything I did, I did because I believed it to be the will and manner of Blessed Abelle, the calling of my order.”

“Betraying us to the barbarians?” rasped De Guilbe.

“Ending a needless slaughter,” Cormack corrected. “You held the men of Milkeila’s clan prisoner. You-we-had no right!”

De Guilbe started to shout back, but Dame Gwydre silenced him and bade Cormack to continue.

“The Alpinadorans of the neighboring islands would all have died at the base of our chapel before surrendering our captives to us,” the young man explained. “I could not tolerate that slaughter. There was no need for it.”

“So what did you do?” Gwydre prompted.

“I freed the four men and showed them the way out of our dungeon to rejoin their people. The Alpinadorans left our island. The battle ended, and so ended the death-the death of Alpinadorans and of monks.”

Dame Gwydre turned to De Guilbe, her expression cold.

“A simplistic review,” the monk said.

“Then do elaborate.”

“The men we held were not captured, they were rescued. Rescued from certain death and healed of grievous wounds through the power of Blessed Abelle, by the brothers of Blessed Abelle.”

“That does not give us the right to hold them as prisoner!” Cormack argued. “You cannot so coerce fealty to faith!”

Gwydre looked from Cormack back to De Guilbe, her expression caught somewhere between disbelief and outrage.

“Our manner is of no concern to Dame Gwydre,” Father De Guilbe said to her. “My orders came from Father Artolivan of Chapel Abelle. To him alone do I answer.”

“True enough,” Dame Gwydre conceded. “But a writ is mine to give, and so I do, to both Cormack and this woman, Milkeila, though I would like to speak at length with you both before it is finalized.”

“Yes, Dame Gwydre,” Cormack said, and Milkeila graciously bowed.

“I would ask for writs for the other heroes of the fight,” Bransen interjected then.

“Bloody caps?” Dawson McKeege gasped behind Gwydre, and, indeed, the Lady of Vanguard, too, seemed more than a bit disconcerted at that suggestion.

To the side Father De Guilbe laughed loudly, as if mocking Gwydre and this path she now walked.

“Go back to your brothers,” Gwydre said to him and waved him away.

He complied, but continued his mocking laughter.

“Come forward,” Dame Gwydre bade the powries.

“Name’s Mcwigik,” said one. “And me friend’s Bikelbrin. Come from the Julianthes but spent a hunnerd years on that lake, Mithranidoon, with our friends.”

“And your friends are still there?”

“Yach, still on the rock.”

“You do not wish to rejoin them?”

“Seen too much o’ that smokin’ lake,” Mcwigik replied. “Not for going back, unless going back’s for taking them off with us.”

“Yach, but more than a few’re wanting off that rock,” Bikelbrin added.

Dame Gwydre sat back in her chair, and Dawson McKeege immediately began whispering in her ear, his great concern more than obvious.

“You ask much of me, Bransen Garibond,” Gwydre said a few moments later.

“I… we gave much to you,” the Highwayman replied. “At great risk.”

Gwydre frowned. “I cannot grant powries the writ to walk freely through the lands of men.”

Bransen stood up very straight and crossed his arms over his chest.

Gwydre sighed and looked at the dwarves. “Were I to grant you passage, free of battle, throughout all of Honce, would you agree to lay down your arms?” she asked.

Both Mcwigik and Bilkelbrin began shaking their arms and looking at the limbs curiously. “They’re attached to our shoulders,” Mcwigik answered. “Ye sayin’ we got to cut off our arms to stay with ye?”

Gwydre and the others, even Cormack, chuckled at that. “Your weapons,” she explained. “Were I to grant you passage, do I have your word of honor that you will not take up arms against any man or woman? That you will not do battle with any men?”

“Even them that’s deservin’ it?” asked Bikelbrin.

“Even them. No battle. Not ever. If I am even to consider giving you the writ Bransen desires, then you must promise me that you will not-not ever!-again spill human blood. Can you make such a pledge?”

“Don’t hear ye whining that we spilled Badden’s blood,” Mcwigik retorted. “Last time I looked, he was human. Headless, but human.”

“Aye, and we dipped our caps in his blood, and mines shinin’ all the better,” added Bikelbrin.

“Where we come from, them needing a crack get a crack,” said Mcwigik.

“That is not the way among men,” said Gwydre.

“Bah, but them men with money and land and power-and them women with such-they get to pick them needing a crack,” said Mcwigik. “And when the crack’s given, what?”

Behind and all about Gwydre, men bristled at the obvious insult, but Gwydre remained calm, reassuring them all

“It is by the law, good dwarf,” said Gwydre. “The law is bigger than men and women.”

“Bigger than most,” said Mcwigik. “Not bigger than the lairds and the priests, from what I’m hearing. Even a powrie might walk free, what, if a laird or lady says so.”

“I do not know,” Gwydre answered honestly. “My writ for you might hold no weight beyond Vanguard.”

Mcwigik spat upon the floor.

Dame Gwydre looked at Bransen and shook her head. “This is beyond my power to grant.”

Bransen narrowed his eyes.

“But I will offer this. When the weather breaks and the winter is no more, I will send you both back to the lake,” she told the powries, “with wagons laden with supplies and with a map to take you and your kin to Brinewind, a port in eastern Vanguard. From there, I will supply you with a boat and star charts so that you can sail for your distant home.”

Mcwigik and Bikelbrin looked at each other for a few long moments. Mcwigik stepped forward and fell to the floor, where he sucked up his spit.

More than one person in the room groaned.

Mcwigik stood up straight and smiled at Gwydre.

“I am not sure what that means,” she said, caught between revulsion and laughter.

“Means I ain’t spitting at yerself anymore,” said Mcwigik. “And means me and me friend’re liking what ye’re saying.”

Gwydre watched as Bransen looked at Cormack and Milkeila, both of whom (apparently more familiar and comfortable with the ways of powries) smiled and nodded.

“You would turn them free on the coast to lay waste to innocents,” Father De Guilbe said from the side.

“They did not kill me, though they surely had the chance,” Cormack argued. “When Father De Guilbe cast me adrift, beaten and dying, the powries took me in.”

“More the reason to hate them,” muttered the unrelenting De Guilbe, who had only gone as far as the doorway.

“Enough,” Dame Gwydre warned him. “Father De Guilbe, you weary me.”

“And you overstep your province with Cormack and now with these two little… murderers,” the monk replied. “I assure you that Chapel Abelle will hear of this, all of this!”

“At the same time they learn of the death of Ancient Badden, no doubt,” said Bransen. “And learn that Dame Gwydre has led them greatly in their battle with the Samhaists.”

Father De Guilbe looked at him curiously, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing from this strange man. “Who are you?” he asked.

“The man who helped save the life of one not worth the trouble, it would seem,” Bransen replied.

Now Father De Guilbe’s eyes went very narrow, a look of absolute loathing and threat.

Bransen grinned at him.

“Perhaps you should not be so secure of Dame Gwydre’s writ, Highwayman,” De Guilbe said.

Dame Gwydre stood up suddenly, her eyes flashing as she scowled at the obstinate monk. “If you would counsel Father Artolivan to ignore my writ, then you would counsel him badly,” she warned in an even and deathly serious tone.

“You war with the Samhaists and you would war with the Brothers of Abelle, too?”

“Chapel Pellinor, all the chapels of Vanguard, exist by my grace alone,” Gwydre retorted. “Do not ever forget that.”

Behind Gwydre, Dawson McKeege groaned. Behind De Guilbe, Brother Giavno did likewise.

You are satisfied with her decision?” Cormack asked Mcwigik and Bikelbrin when they were alone with Milkeila.

“She didn’t attack us, and that’s something,” Mcwigik replied.

“She assured you safe passage,” Milkeila reminded.

“Yach, and we’re knowin’ it,” said Mcwigik. “And we’re not thinkin’ bad of her.”

“She did good by us. We’re knowin’ that,” Bikelbrin added.

“Don’t mean we won’t kill her one day and dip our caps in her blood, though,” Mcwigik said, and when both Cormack and Milkeila’s eyes went wide, the two dwarves enjoyed a good laugh at their expense.

“We’ll be taking the wagon and the boat, and off we’re going back to where we’re belonging,” Mcwigik proclaimed.

Cormack reached up and grabbed his cap, pulling it from his head. “Will you want this back?” he asked.

“Are ye wanting to give it back?”

Cormack thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I wear it as a reminder of some unusual friends,” he explained. “I wear it to remind myself not to be hasty in judging others until I know them.”

“Fine words,” said Mcwigik.

“To get ye killed to death,” added Bikelbrin, and the dwarves laughed at Cormack again.

“We let ye live to put a burr in Prag’s fat arse, ye dolt,” said Mcwigik. “Weren’t for him and ye’d’ve been gutted on the beach that first day.”

Cormack fell back as if slapped.

The powries laughed again.

“How am I to know when you’re speaking true and when you’re speaking in jest?” the former monk protested.

“Ye’re not,” Mcwigik answered. “Not now, and not ever.”

“Are you friends, Mcwigik and Bikelbrin?” Cormack asked.

“Been friends for a hunnerd years,” Mcwigik assured him.

“To me!”

The dwarves looked at each other. “If we’re ever in the forest or on a boat and we see Cormack or Milkeila in trouble, then know we’ll help ye,” Mcwigik said for both, for Bikelbrin nodded his assent through every word of it.

“And we’ll be thinking many times o’ the one human wearing a powrie cap and glad how he came by it,” Bilkelbrin added. “Kicking Prag’s ugly face!”

Cormack patted each on the shoulder appreciatively as he left with Milkeila to go to their room across the hall. “I will miss those two,” he said to his wife.

Milkeila nodded, hand on the knob. “The world seems less… colorful already.” As she finished, she led Cormack’s gaze down the hall, where several grim-faced guards stood ready with long halberds and armored all in bronze.

“Dame Gwydre did not err in granting them passage,” Cormack said.

“You speak to convince yourself, not me.”

Cormack looked at his wife carefully and glanced over his shoulder at the closed door of the powries’ room. He wondered if he was a fool, for had he been in charge he would have trusted that pair of dwarves, would have given them a Writ of Passage.

“No other laird would have honored that writ,” Milkeila said as if reading his mind.

“You know nothing of Honce,” Cormack replied.

“I saw the looks on the faces of those here in Pellinor,” Milkeila said. “Mcwigik and Bikelbrin would not have much of a life in the lands of your people. What life, I wonder, might Milkeila find there?”

Cormack put his arm about her shoulder and pulled her close as he guided her into their room. “A fine one,” he promised, but he glanced back over his shoulder again as he closed the door. He would indeed miss his powrie companions, his powrie friends.

I have little desire to be caught up in the endless drama that so marks your church,” Bransen said to Brother Jond.

“You know little-”

“I know much!” Bransen interrupted. “I spent years as a slave in service to the Brothers of Chapel Pryd.”

“A slave? Surely you exaggerate!”

“I lived in a hole in the floor and spent my days emptying chamber pots. True, in exchange, they gave me bits of miserable, cold food, and my dungeon wasn’t open to the snow and the rain.” Bransen gave a little snicker, his eyes looking past Jond and, indeed, into the past, as he remembered those many days he had spent with Father Jerak and Brother Bathelais and Brother Reandu… ah, Brother Reandu! Blind Brother Jond couldn’t see the confusion on Bransen’s face at that moment, of course, but he did tilt his chin in apparent curiosity at the man’s pause.

Bransen’s mind whirled back to his days as the Stork, living in a tiny, one-room cellar at Chapel Pryd. He almost felt ashamed at the way he had described his time there to Jond. For all the discomfort and for all his outrage at the brothers for what they had done to Garibond, the brothers at Chapel Pryd had not been cruel to the young and wounded Bransen, who, because of his affliction, was known then as Stork. Brother Reandu in particular had often shown him affection and sympathy and, indeed, had aided him in his last desperate fight with Laird Prydae, at the cost of Master Bathelais’s life.

“They let me go,” he said finally.

“The brothers of Chapel Pryd?”

“Chapel Abelle,” Bransen corrected. “They let Dawson McKeege take me here to serve Dame Gwydre, though they knew that Delaval and that pathetic excuse of a man, Yeslnik, would have rewarded them greatly had they turned me over for execution.”

“But instead, you were pressed into service you did not desire.”

Bransen shrugged. “Aren’t we all? I do not think Dame Gwydre wanted this war. Nor did Crait and Olconna and Vaughna. Nor Brother Jond.”

The blind monk smiled widely at that, as if he saw something Bransen could not.

“What is it?” the young warrior asked.

“It does my heart good to hear you speak like that, my friend,” he explained.

The door swung open to the room, and Father De Guilbe and Brother Giavno entered.

“What are you doing here?” De Guilbe asked Bransen.

“He is here at my invitation,” Brother Jond answered. “I have known this fine young warrior for many weeks now. We have shared the road of adventure.”

“You speak for him?” De Guilbe asked rather sharply.

“I do.”

“He befriends Cormack,” De Guilbe warned.

“Cormack who saved the folk of Mithranidoon from certain doom, your chapel and clergy among them,” Brother Jond reminded.

Bransen noted the big man tense up at that, and so he smiled widely, just to make De Guilbe even more uncomfortable.

“Beware your actions,” De Guilbe warned him.

“Cormack helped kill Ancient Badden,” said Bransen. “While you ran away, he battled the greatest foe of your order and of Dame Gwydre’s holding. Perhaps it is Father De Guilbe and his fleeing monks who should beware their actions.”

“Leave this place,” De Guilbe commanded.

Bransen looked to Brother Jond, who needed no prompting. “Stay!” the monk from Chapel Pellinor argued.

“Brother!” De Guilbe fumed.

“Good Father, I serve Father Premujon of Chapel Pellinor,” Brother Jond answered, remaining very calm. “I name this man as a friend, for he has stood beside me in my trials.”

“As you helped me after our capture,” Bransen replied.

“I’d no more abandon him than I would abandon my beloved Abelle, Father De Guilbe,” said Jond. “He is a man of good heart and great courage, a man we should coax to the ways of Abelle, not a man to be shunned.”

Father De Guilbe wore a strange, wicked smile as he replied, “And Cormack? Have you made an assessment of the former Brother Cormack?”

Jond shook his head. “Should he appeal to Father Premujon for reinstatement in the order, I will speak honestly of that which I know regarding the man.”

“And you believe that I was wrong in excommunicating him?”

Again Jond shook his head. “I make no judgments of that which I do not know, Father,” he said. “I know little of this man, Cormack, but I will speak honestly to that which I have seen… heard. His work against Ancient Badden was no small thing, but whether that absolves him of his actions on Mithranidoon is not for me to decide.”

“Those actions should absolve him,” Bransen insisted. “Particularly since he did nothing wrong on the island on the lake.”

“Be gone from this place!” Father De Guilbe insisted, and again Brother Jond started to argue. But this time, Bransen put his hand on Jond’s shoulder to quiet him, more than happy to be out of the company of the irascible De Guilbe.

De Guilbe didn’t even look at him as he walked past, but Brother Giavno gave him a look that seemed regretful, almost heartbroken, almost apologetic.

Bransen chuckled as he walked from the room, thinking of how much that reaction by the younger brother reminded him of the same sort of conflicts he had seen in Chapel Pryd regarding the young man known as the Stork.

He got into the hall, pulling the door closed behind him, and heard De Guilbe explode at Brother Jond. Bransen just shook his head. He certainly had needed no further confirmation of the many reasons he was no fan or friend of the brothers of Abelle.

Exhausted from the squabbling in her audience chamber, from the incessant complaining of the unlikable De Guilbe, from having to deal diplomatically with powries-with bloody-cap dwarves!-exhausted from her own excitement and anticipation of the possibilities now that Ancient Badden was dead, Dame Gwydre wanted nothing more that night than to fall into the arms of Alandrais, the brother of Chapel Pellinor who had become more than a friend to her.

The moment she entered her private chambers, where Alandrais was waiting, she knew something was wrong.

The man hadn’t dressed down into his nightshirt but was still wearing his heavy brown robes and hadn’t untied his uncomfortable sandals. He half stood, half sat on the edge of Gwydre’s desk, his strong arms crossed over his chest, his expression stern.

Thinking him distracted by something extraneous (or hoping that to be the case), Dame Gwydre walked over and reached up to stroke his face.

He was looking right at her when he stiffened away from her touch.

“What is it?” she asked, afraid she knew.

“Father De Guilbe is a powerful man in the Order of Abelle,” Alandrais replied.

“So is Father Premujon.”

“Who supports Father De Guilbe. And Father De Guilbe has the ear of Father Artolivan.”

Dame Gwydre stepped back from the man. “I have not spoken to Father Premujon about the new arrivals from Alpinador, nor does it matter much concerning my own words-”

“You should not diminish him or contradict him, particularly on matters relating to the order,” Alandrais scolded. “As with the man, Cormack, it is not your concern.”

Gwydre nodded her head as she mulled over those words for a few heartbeats. “Cormack, who helped defeat Ancient Badden and thus may have saved my people?” she asked. “That man, Cormack? That hero, Cormack, is not the concern of Dame Gwydre, who rules Vanguard?”

“His disposition in the church is a matter for the Order of Abelle.”

“When have I said that it is not? My argument with De Guilbe stemmed from his remarks to my man, the Highwayman.”

“Your threat to him, you mean.”

“Aland, what is this about?” Gwydre asked, coming forward in a conciliatory manner, again reaching to stroke his bearded face.

This time, he stood straight and turned his back on her.

“Alandrais?”

“Dame Gwydre…” he started, and then he took a deep breath and turned around to face her directly. “Gwyd,” he restated, using his pet name for her. “I am a brother of Abelle. I will always be such-my first and foremost love is forever my church and my prophet.”

“I have never asked you for more than that,” Gwydre interrupted.

“Haven’t you? When you threaten the very chapels of my order, as you did with Father De Guilbe, you place me in an uncomfortable-”

“And I am the Dame of Vanguard!” Gwydre cut him off. “The people of this land depend upon me for their welfare, as they depended upon my husband before me and my father before him. I will always be as such, and first and foremost in my heart is my responsibility to the people of Vanguard. I have never asked you to betray your order, to place me before Abelle in your heart, and yet you are doing just that to me, right here and right now.”

“Your words to Father De Guilbe-”

“Were not an idle threat, I assure you,” Dame Gwydre snapped.

Brother Alandrais stared at her hard, but there was no blink coming from the woman, no backing down in the least.

“You should leave,” she said after many moments of unsettling silence had passed.

Brother Alandrais started to reply but stopped short, looked to the side for a moment, then nodded and walked past Gwydre, out of the room.

The Dame of Vanguard winced when that door slammed closed. She took a deep breath, wiped away whatever tears were daring to form in her eyes, and walked across the room to her private stock and poured herself a large glass of boggle, a rare and precious wine, rumored to be made by woodland elves or some other such faerie folk.

It had been a long day.

Indeed.