The Ancient

FOUR

The Crutch

Bransen rolled off Cadayle and onto his back. He threw his arm up over his face and even miscalculated that action, thumping himself hard on the forehead. Tears of frustration welled in his eyes, and with much trembling and shaking, he managed to guide his arm down to cover them. Cadayle came up to her side on one elbow to look over him.

Down below, Bransen’s foot twitched and shot out to the side, smacking against the front support of their tent, nearly caving in the entrance. In ultimate frustration, the man managed to clasp the soul stone which lay at his side.

Cadayle gently stroked her husband’s bare chest and whispered soft assurances to him.

Bransen didn’t move his arm, didn’t look at her.

“I love you,” Cadayle said to him.

Despite his stubborn pride, Bransen reached over and clasped the soul stone that he had placed at his side. “You would have to, to suffer my… my clumsiness.”

Cadayle laughed, but bit the chuckle off short, realizing that it wasn’t being taken in the manner in which she was offering it. “We knew that it would take time,” she said.

“It will take forever!” Bransen retorted. “And I do not improve! I dared believe that by now I would be free of the soul stone. I dared hope…”

“It takes time,” Cadayle interrupted. “I remember the Stork, who could hardly walk. You can walk now without the stone tied to your head. You have improved.”

“Old news,” Bransen replied, and he finally did lower his arm so that he could look at his wonderful and understanding wife. “My improvements were dramatic and I dared to hold hope. But they have stopped now. Without the stone I am a clumsy oaf!”

“No!”

“Without the stone I cannot even make love to my wife! I am no man!”

Cadayle pulled away from him and sat up, shaking her head. As Bransen rambled on she began to laugh.

“What?” he asked at length, growing very irritated.

“I am unused to the Highwayman so full of self-pity,” she said.

Bransen stammered and could not even give voice to his anger.

“You have brought down a laird and robbed the prince of Delaval-twice!” Cadayle said. “You are a hero of the folk-”

“Who cannot make love to my wife!”

Cadayle kissed him. “You make love to me all the time.”

“With a gemstone bound to my forehead. Without it I am too clumsy.”

“Then be glad that you have it!”

Bransen looked at her blankly. “I want-”

“And you will find it,” she cut him off. “In time. But if you do not, then so be it. Be glad that we have the soul stone. Indeed, I am.” She frowned. “But even if we didn’t have it, even if you could not make love to me with any grace, do you believe that it would affect the way I feel about you? Do you think it would diminish my love and adoration for you?”

Bransen stared at her.

“If I could not make love to you,” she challenged him, “would you throw me from your life to find a ‘whole’ woman?”

Bransen’s stammer was powered by more than his physical infirmities.

“Of course you would not,” Cadayle pronounced firmly. “If I believed you could, I would never have agreed to marry you.”

Cadayle’s expression softened. “I love you, Bransen,” she said, her small hand stroking his chest. “The physical act of making love is sweet to me with or without the gemstone upon your head. There is no more to be said, and no more of your self-pity, if you please. I cannot suffer it from my beloved, who could kill a dragon protecting me. You have stepped yourself so far above the common man that self-pity from you is worse than irony. It is foolhardy and laughably ridiculous. You are the Highwayman. You are the best man I have ever known. A better does not exist. You are my husband, and every day I awaken and thank God and the Ancient Ones that Bransen Garibond found his way into my life.”

Bransen tried to answer, tried to respond that it was he who should fall to his knees in thanks, but Cadayle silenced him by putting her finger over his lips, then bringing her own lips in to brush his softly. She moved atop him, then, straddling him and kissing him all over his face, whispering assurances all the while.

Bransen knew that he was the fortunate one here, but he let it go and lost himself in the softness and beauty of his beloved Cadayle.

She’s not to like this,” the scraggly-faced old man said through his two remaining teeth.

Dawson McKeege shot the hunched old grump an incredulous look. “They’re all dead,” he said, sweeping his arms out to the smoking ruins that had been a thriving town only a few days before, and raising his voice so that the others of the troupe could hear him well- before the arrival of Dame Gwydre, who was said to be only a few hundred yards away. “How could anyone like this, old fool? Men and women and children of Vanguard, our brethren, our fellows, slaughtered before us by the monstrous plague.”

“Goblins and them wretched blue trolls!” someone shouted from the side.

“Aye, and with Alpinadoran backing, not to doubt!” a third chimed in.

Dawson could only nod. The war had grown all about the northern frontier of Vanguard, and now, if this was any indication, it had snuck in around the edges. For this burned and broken town, Tethmawle by name, sat closer to the Gulf of Corona than to the battlefields in the north.

The sound of approaching horses ended all the chatter, and the fifteen men of the expedition turned as one to regard the procession galloping down the road. The elite guards of Castle Pellinor led the way and took up the rear, sandwiching a trio of monks dressed in their brown robes, a pair of advisors lightly armored and armed, and two women who both seemed at ease on their respective mounts, riding hard and not in the sidesaddle manner, which had become fashionable among the courtesans of the holdings south of the Gulf of Corona. One of those women, the taller of the two, with hair going silver, but her shoulders still tall and straight, held the attention of the onlookers most of all.

“She should not be out of the castle,” Dawson muttered under his breath, and he rubbed his weary eyes and tried to be at ease. He could not, though, and he found himself glancing around nervously, as if expecting a host of goblins and trolls and other monstrosities to swarm down from the tree line and score the ultimate kill in this wretched war.

The procession rambled up to the edge of the town, the soldiers fanning out into defensive positions while the seven dignitaries trotted up to Dawson and the others.

“Milady Gwydre,” Dawson said with a bow to his ruler, his friend.

Gwydre rolled her leg easily over her mount and dropped to the ground, handing the reins to one of the nearby men without a thought. She spent a moment surveying the area, the smoking ruins, the charred bodies and the bloated and stinking corpses of small gray-green goblins and blue-green trolls littered all about the area.

“They fought well,” the old coot near Dawson dared to remark.

Gwydre shot him a glare. “They are all dead?”

“We’ve found none alive,” Dawson confirmed.

“Then it was no small force that came against them,” said Gwydre. “How? How was such a sizable group able to sneak so far south?”

“Samhaist magic,” one of the monks whispered from behind, and all three of the brown-robed brothers launched into quiet prayers to their Blessed Abelle.

Gwydre seemed more annoyed than impressed, and Dawson agreed with her completely.

“It is a wild land, milady,” Dawson said. “We are not populous. Our roads are hardly guarded, and even if they were, a short trek through a forest would bypass any sentries.”

“And their determination is aggravating,” replied Gwydre. She walked past Dawson and motioned for him to follow, then held up her own advisors, even the Lady Darlia, her dearest friend, so that she and Dawson could move off alone.

As always, Dawson was impressed by how in control and command Dame Gwydre remained. She carried an aura of competence around her, one that had initially surprised many of Castle Pellinor’s court. For Gwydre had been just a young girl that quarter of a century before when her father, Laird Gendron, already a widower, had been killed unexpectedly in a fall from his horse while hunting. Gendron, revered by the folk of this northern wilderness known as Vanguard, had held the scattered and disparate communities together with a “warm fist,” as the saying had gone-a saying applied to Gendron, to his father before him, and to his great uncle who had been Laird of Pellinor before that.

“I cannot tolerate this,” Gwydre said, her lips tight, her voice strained. “Chapel Pellinor’s fall has created unrest, and the folk will be all the more unnerved when news of Tethmawle’s fate spreads through forest trails.”

“You fear they will question the fortitude of their dame?” Dawson asked, and Gwydre sucked in her breath and snapped an angry glare at him. But it did not hold, of course, for Dawson McKeege was perhaps the only person in all of Vanguard who could have spoken to Gwydre with that necessary candor.

“Do you remember when Laird Gendron died?” Gwydre asked somberly.

“I was with you when we received the news.”

Gwydre nodded.

“Aye,” said Dawson, taking the cue. “And so began the whispers, the laments of ‘why hadn’t the laird sired a son?‘”

“The lower their voices, the louder they sounded,” Gwydre assured him. “Those voices were part of the reason I so abruptly agreed to marry Peiter.”

The admission didn’t startle Dawson. “He was my friend as he was your husband. I suspect that he, too, heard those whispers, and couldn’t suffer to see his beloved Gwydre so pained.”

“I was a young woman, barely more than a girl,” Gwydre admitted. “And never in my life had I done anything that would have, or should have, inspired their confidence. Even those years later when Peiter died, their doubts about me rightfully lingered.”

“That was fifteen years ago, milady,” Dawson reminded her. “And before your thirtieth birthday. Do you fear that they still doubt you?”

“We are in a desperate war.”

“It is Vanguard! We are always at one war or another. The woods are full of goblins, the coast crawling with powries, the northland thick with trolls, and never in my life have I met a more disagreeable bunch than those Alpinadoran barbarians.”

“This is different, Dawson,” Gwydre said. Her tone quieted the man more than her words. For there lay a truth there that neither could deny. Dame Gwydre had taken a lover, an Abellican brother, and in the two years of her tryst, that particular Church’s stature had grown considerably throughout her holding and by extension, throughout Vanguard-much to the dismay and open anger of the dangerous and powerful Samhaists.

“You fell in love,” Dawson said to her.

“Foolishly. I placed my heart above my responsibilities, and all the land suffers for it.”

“Those same Churches were going to fight, with or without your actions,” Dawson argued. “As they fight a proxy war through the lairds in the South, where, it is said, three hundred men die every day.”

Dame Gwydre nodded and couldn’t deny the truth of Dawson’s claims, for indeed, this same battle for religious supremacy over the folk of Honce was playing out throughout the Holdings of Honce Proper. There, the fight between Abellican and Samhaist was shielded from view behind the fa$cLade of the warring lairds Delaval and Ethelbert, but it was no less real and no less fierce.

In the South, the Abellicans were clearly winning, for their gemstone magic, both healing and destructive powers, was coveted by the many lairds feuding for dominance. In the quieter North, where few Abellicans and fewer gemstones haunted the wild land, the Samhaists had found refuge, so they had believed. Tied to the seasons and the world and the animals great and small through wise and ancient traditions, Samhaist wisdom served Vanguardsmen well indeed.

But then Dame Gwydre had fallen in love with an Abellican brother.

“There will be more Tethmawles,” Dame Gwydre said solemnly. “One community after another will be sacked.”

“I beg you not to tell that to your subjects, milady.”

Gwydre shook her head to deny the dryness of Dawson’s remark, and that action conferred to Dawson that she wasn’t being melodramatic. She knew that she was losing to the hordes from the North, the legions of Ancient Badden.

“My council with Chief Danamarga did not go well,” Gwydre admitted, referring to the powerful leader of one particularly friendly Alpinadoran tribe, with whom the men of Vanguard often traded, and who many times had graced Gwydre’s table at Castle Pellinor. “He will likely keep his clan out of the fighting.”

“That is good news,” Dawson said. “His warriors are fierce.”

“But he will not intervene on our behalf with the other tribes.”

“The Samhaist influence is great among the Alpinadorans. But great enough to keep them allied with ugly goblins and the light-skinned trolls?”

Dame Gwydre shrugged and scanned the burned-out village. “We are losing, and Danamarga is a pragmatic man. If Vanguard is to be sectioned by the victors, then he would not serve his clan well to be left out of that gain.”

“Vanguard is land. Without us it is empty land,” Dawson argued. “What good will it alone bring to the Alpinadorans? What point is this war?”

Gwydre nodded her complete understanding. The Samhaists, so they believed, were egging on the monsters and the barbarians, but the underlying logic told Gwydre and her advisors that Ancient Badden didn’t really want to wipe the Vanguardsmen from the region and chase refugees back across the Gulf of Corona.

“Ancient Badden and his disciples do not wish to minister to goblins and trolls,” Dawson said. “Nor to the barbarians of Alpinador who loyally follow their own gods.”

“Gods not far removed from the Samhaist deities,” Gwydre reminded.

“True enough, but would you expect Danamarga and the other chiefs to relinquish their control to Badden’s miserable priests? Of course they will not.”

“Then this whole war is to teach me a lesson,” said Gwydre.

Dawson shrugged, for he could not disagree. “It is to drive the Abellicans back across the waters and secure Vanguard for the Samhaists,” he added. “We, all of us-indeed, even Dame Gwydre-are caught in the middle of a war of religions. And it won’t end with Vanguard if Badden drives the Abellicans south. He knows that Laird Ethelbert and Laird Delaval have thrown in fully with the Abellicans, and it’s not to his liking. He will chase the monks from Vanguard, then use us to cross the gulf and assail Chapel Abelle itself. Begging your pardon, dear woman, but that’s no fight I’m wanting.”

His dramatic tone brought a much-needed smile to Dame Gwydre’s angular features, an impish grin that reminded Dawson of the beauty of the woman. Even now in middle age she retained much of that beauty, but the last year had weighed heavily on her, and too rare flashed that smile, reassuring and warm, superior but not condescending, and surely disarming.

So disarming.

It said much about Ancient Badden’s hold on the land, and even more about the current state of the war, that Dame Gwydre’s smile had not brought Chief Danamarga to their side.

“We must force upon Ancient Badden that wider fight you believe he desires, and before the battleground is his for the choosing,” Gwydre said, and her eyes turned from Dawson to the south.

“An immigrant army,” Dawson muttered.

“It is a fine season for the folk of Honce to turn their eyes to the open and beautiful North, I think,” Gwydre confirmed. “Palmaristown, from all reports, has become the haven of rats and foul odors, and there are rumors that the refugees of the war collect en masse at Chapel Abelle, where there is little excess shelter and supplies. And yet, we have villages already built and ready to house those who would seek a better life, and a land as bountiful as any in Corona.”

“Villages empty because all the men are fighting the war, or are already planted in the ground,” Dawson reminded her, but he stole none of her momentum.

“It is the way of things,” she said. “A man who comes here to fight for Gwydre is fighting, too, for his future. If he remains in the South, he will be swept into Delaval’s army, or Ethelbert’s, into a war whose outcome will have no bearing on the prosperity or security of his family. What will change for the folk of Palmaristown, or any other town, if Ethelbert wins? If Delaval wins? They are two lairds of the same cloth-their fight is one for personal gain and not over any manner of governance. But up here, the battle has more meaning. Up here, my warriors strike hard at the flesh of goblins and glacial trolls.”

“And men,” Dawson pointed out.

“Barbarians,” Gwydre corrected. “Not the brethren of the men of Honce as we see in the South. Not a brother, perhaps, who through mere circumstance moved to a town now serving the other side.”

Finally it seemed as if Dawson had run out of answers, and so Gwydre looked at him directly, flashed him that commanding grin, and said, “The gulf is calm, and the ships are waiting.”

“Chapel Abelle?”

“That would be a fine place to start,” said Gwydre. “The brothers there know of our desperation, and they do not wish to have a powerful Badden ruling Vanguard unopposed. Let them direct you to towns not yet emptied by Delaval’s press crews.”

“If Laird Delaval learns of my actions in stealing his potential soldiers…” Dawson warned.

“Do not let him know.”

Dawson smiled hopelessly. When Dame Gwydre made up her mind it was not to be easily changed.

“They will come,” Gwydre assured him. “You will convince them.”

Dawson McKeege knew the meaning of Gwydre’s “convince,” and while it left a sour taste in his mouth, in looking around at the ruins of Tethmawle, it was not hard for him to weigh one evil against the other. Without hardy reinforcements, this wretched sight before him would soon become all too common.

He fell down for the fourth time.

Cadayle ran toward him, but Bransen stubbornly waved her off. Trembling every inch of the way he managed to get over onto his belly and up to his knees. He did well to hide his grimace as he noted the sympathetic and concerned look that passed between Cadayle and Callen.

They were on the road north of Delaval, heading north-northwest along the bank of the majestic waterway that had recently been named the Masur Delaval. Though this northeastern bank was considered the “civilized” side of the river, the road, or trail actually, hardly showed any such signs. They were only three days out from Delaval Town, in a region untouched by the war, yet it was hard to call their path a road. Uneven, muddy, and littered with the large roots of the great willows that lined the river, the trail could trip up any but the most careful traveler. Every step proved a test of courage for Bransen, who stubbornly carried his soul stone in his pouch and not even in his hand, let alone strapped to his forehead.

Resting on his hands and knees to reorient and catch his breath, Bransen fought the urge to slip his hand into his pouch and produce the gemstone. He noticed a pool of red liquid and only then realized that he had slammed his nose on that last fall, splitting his lip as well. He spat a few times, red spray flying from his mouth.

He felt Cadayle’s hand on his back and reminded himself that she loved him, that she was concerned for him, and rightly so.

“Don’t you think that’s enough for the day?” she asked quietly.

“W… W…” Bransen stopped and spat again, then reached for his pouch. He would have fallen over with the movement except that Cadayle caught him and held him steady. She grabbed his flailing hand and gently guided it to the pouch and the gemstone, then helped him bring the stone to his forehead.

“We’ve barely covered two miles,” he protested in a voice clear and strong. Indeed, the sudden change shocked even Bransen.

“We should try to cross another five before dusk,” said Cadayle. “We’ll not go another single mile at our pace, and if you truly injure yourself…”

Bransen turned his head to eye her hard.

“I understand,” she whispered to him, “and I know your reasoning. I wouldn’t dare pretend that I have the right to disagree. But I beg of you to measure your pace, my love. You are tormenting your body more than it can take. You’ll need more than the soul stone if you break your knee, and where will that leave me and my ma?”

“My patience is long gone with this creature known as the Stork,” said Bransen.

“But mine is not.”

Still holding the gemstone tight against his forehead, Bransen leaped up to his feet, catching himself surely and with incredible agility. He was the Highwayman now, the rogue who could scale a castle wall of tightly fit weatherworn stones. He was the Highwayman, who could challenge a laird’s champion in battle and win.

Bransen pulled the gemstone away. Immediately, he swayed. He caught himself, though, and kept Cadayle at bay with an upraised hand. Then he stubbornly put his gemstone back in his pouch and let it go.

He took a step, awkward and unsteady. He nearly fell over, but he did not, and he even managed to glance back at Cadayle to see her and her concerned mother exchanging frowns.

Hand shaking, arm flailing, Bransen managed to get his fingers back around the precious gemstone. He brought it forth and collected, too, the black silk bandanna he used to secure it to his forehead.

“I did not wish to end with a stumble,” he explained, securing it in place. He managed a strained smile, one that undeniably showed Cadayle and Callen that he was surrendering for the day for their benefit and not his own.

“I will be as patient as I can,” he promised his wife. Despite his frustration his words were sincere.

“I love you,” Cadayle said.

“With or without the gemstone,” Callen added.

Bransen licked a bit of blood from his lip.

How could he be so fortunate and miserable all at the same time?

And how, he wondered as he brought his hand up to check on the security of the gemstone, could he both appreciate and resent its healing magic? The soul stone freed him from his infirmities, made him whole-heroic, even. And yet at the same time it trapped him and held him dependent to its powers.

He wanted to be free of it, but he could not tolerate the reality of that freedom.

“You are better than you were before you found the soul stone,” Cadayle said. She waved her hand at the rough and root-strewn trail. “This ground trips you up, perhaps, but in your youth the flat grass of the monastery courtyard often left you on your face.”

“Ki-chi-kree,” Bransen said.

“The promise of the Jhesta Tu,” Cadayle agreed. “You will overcome this infirmity.

“You already have,” she added. Bransen eyed her curiously. “You defeated it with your spirit long before you found any real control of your limbs. To others you were the Stork, some in jest and some in earnest sympathy. But you have always been Bransen. And you will always be Bransen, with or without the soul stone, whether or not you need the soul stone to walk a broken trail.”

Bransen Garibond closed his eyes and took a deep breath, blowing out all of his frustration in one great exhale. “I never knew my real father,” he said, and Cadayle and Callen nodded, for they knew well the tale. “He studied the Jhesta Tu. He has been to the Walk of Clouds. He copied their book-the same book that Garibond taught to me when I was young. He will have answers.”

“Or he will show you where to look for them.”

Bransen nodded, his smile genuine, and genuinely hopeful. “Garibond told me that he went to Chapel Abelle in the North. If I can find him…”

“Bran Dynard was a good man,” Callen said, stepping up beside her daughter. “I owe him my life as surely as I owe it to Sen Wi. He knew why I was put out on the road to die, and why I carried the bites of the serpent. He knew that his superiors in his Church had witnessed my execution and had, with their silence, condoned it. And still he fought for me against the vicious powries, and he hid me away at great personal peril. You are much like him, Bransen. You carry his integrity and his sense of justice. Physical strength is nothing when weighed against that.”

“I will find my physical strength,” Bransen replied. “It is there-the soul stone shows it to me. I will overcome this infirmity.”

Callen nodded. “I would never doubt you, and double blessed am I to have been saved by your father and again by you, the Highwayman.”

Cadayle walked over and took Bransen’s arm. “Five miles?” she asked.

“That would make seven for the day,” said Bransen. “And we will do seven tomorrow.”

Cadayle tilted her head back to get a better look into her stubborn husband’s eyes.

“Two without the gemstone?” she asked.

“Two and a half,” he replied flatly.

Callen’s laugh turned them both to regard her, standing with Doully’s reins in hand. “And they say that my walking companion brings a reputation for stubbornness,” Callen remarked, shaking the donkey’s lead.

All three were laughing, then, and even old Doully gave a snort and a whinny.