The Bear

FIFTEEN

Every step he took moved him farther from his sword, from the artwork, the legacy, of his mother, Sen Wi. That thought nagged at Bransen and pulled against him like an invisible rope, but he stubbornly kept going. He focused instead on what lay ahead, on Cadayle, his beloved, pregnant with his child.

His thoughts were spinning, though. The sight of Cormack and Milkeila and their news of an alliance among Gwydre and Ethelbert and Father Artolivan had rattled him and brought him a level of discomfort more profound than he had expected or understood.

"It is not my fight," he told himself repeatedly, always trying to increase his pace. When crossing a forest he took to the trees, thinking to run across the branches as he had that night he had gone hunting for Ethelbert's scouts.

But he was not nearly as graceful; the gemstone magic was not flowing through him consistently or powerfully. And his line of ki-chi-kree shivered. Instances of the Stork pulsed through him, terrible moments when he feared that all of his coordination would flee, leaving him flailing and helpless upon the ground.

Still he kept going. What he lacked in speed he made up for with endurance, walking long into the night and moving again at first light. He didn't recognize the trails this far to the east, though, and so he kept his road straight to the north. To the gulf, he figured, then a turn to the west and St. Mere Abelle. He passed by several villages, not razed like those in the south or those closer to the coast where Milwellis had wound a path of destruction similar to that of King Yeslnik on their respective retreats from Ethelbert dos Entel.

Bransen resisted the urge to go into any of those settlements. He was lonely, to be sure, but that was his way now, he reminded himself. He was walking the second road of Jameston Sequin-the correct road, he now believed, where his focus was himself and his needs, a little corner of the world where he could escape the greater madness of mankind. Unlike Jameston, he would have Cadayle and their child and Callen with him, and what else did they need? What more could the hectic and troubled world offer?

Guided by such an attitude, Bransen felt little guilt on those nights when he did sneak into a village to pilfer food. On one such occasion, he happened upon a large pie cooling in the window of a small cottage. He took the whole thing. It was his, after all, because he wanted it, and what did he care for the desires of those in the house? That's what he tried to tell himself, anyway, as he left, but soon after he had eaten a small slice of the delicious treat, Bransen returned the remainder to the windowsill.

"It wasn't very good," he muttered as he walked away from the windowsill once more, trying to believe the silly justification.

He came upon the coast one bright morning, and he eagerly turned for the west, hoping that he was not too far from St. Mere Abelle and Cadayle. He wanted nothing more than to be in her arms, to be back across the gulf into Vanguard, where he and his family could forget the rest of the world as Jameston had done for all those years.

It had been Jameston's tragic mistake to forsake that reclusive lifestyle, Bransen believed. The scout should have remained in the wilds of Vanguard, the forests he called his home, and let the petty wars of petty lairds solve themselves in blood.

For what did it matter anyway? Whichever laird won; whichever religion, Samhaist or Abelle, had proven victorious in Vanguard; whichever kingdom, Honce or Behr or Alpinador, gained supremacy mattered not at all in the end. Even Dame Gwydre, far better to her people than a selfish fop like Yeslnik, would be only a very temporary reprieve, after all, in the long scheme of the world.

Should Gwydre win, another Yeslnik or Prydae or Ethelbert would soon enough arise to seize the throne and quite likely, yet again, through the spilled blood of peasants.

Bransen couldn't escape his conclusion: It was all a sad, sad joke. Reports came in to Father Premujon's command room nearly every hour. The spirit-walking brothers of St. Mere Abelle had reached the far shore of the Gulf of Corona and bid the Vanguardsmen to come forth. They had monitored Dawson's progress and the continuing retreat of the Delaval and Palmaristown warships. They had followed Prince Milwellis's hard march back to the Masur Delaval and paid keen attention to the remaining forces commanded by Panlamaris as the irate laird continued the siege and bombardment of the chapel.

The spirit-walking brothers knew everything going on in this region of Honce-the placement of ships and warriors and even the beleaguered condition of Panlamaris's overworked crews.

"They will be more eager to break to the west and run for home," Brother Giavno advised in the command room session that afternoon. "If we fill their eastern flank with the hard assault of gemstone magic and send them in flight, a larger, waiting force in the west will have little trouble in massacring them."

"Is that what you advise?" Dame Gwydre asked him rather pointedly.

Giavno cleared his throat, obviously uncomfortable. "It would seem the prudent military option."

"But is it in your heart, brother?" the Dame of Vanguard pressed.

Brother Giavno took a deep breath but then merely looked away.

"You are a good man," Gwydre said, and many in the room crinkled their brows in confusion.

"I have little desire to massacre Panlamaris's force or any men of Honce," Gwydre explained. "Let us sweep them from the field and send them running, but all quarter will be offered, at all times."

"Lady, I remind you that we will be outnumbered more than two to one," Brother Jurgyen remarked.

"They will be caught completely without their guard," Gwydre assured him. "And every report shows them to be a haggard and exhausted bunch, worked to the point of collapse. Let our initial assault be full of lightning and fire, explosions and great noise and shouts of war. They will break and run."

"Laird Panlamaris will not run," said Jurgyen.

"Then we will kill him," said Father Premujon, and the matter-of-fact answer from the father of the Order of Blessed Abelle, speaking of killing a man as casually as if he was referring to emptying a chamber pot, made more than one monk stare at Premujon with astonishment.

"Let there be no doubt that we have entered the battle, that we now fight in the war," said Premujon. "It is not our preference, surely, but neither was it our choice or doing. Bitter experience over many months has taught us of Vanguard that in such a struggle to the death, the lessening of violence does not lessen the misery. Nay, it is the truth of war that brutal and swift is oft the most merciful way."

"But with all offer of quarter," said Giavno, and Premujon smiled and nodded.

"Then let it begin," said Gwydre. "At dawn tomorrow, the catapults of Laird Panlamaris will fall silent at last."

Every former prisoner residing at the chapel, nearly four hundred men and women, reaffirmed his or her allegiance to the Order of Blessed Abelle, and all were ready and eager to go out and fight under the banner of Dame Gwydre. All the day, they spoke of Brother Fatuus, who had walked from Laird Panlamaris's line, who had suffered the spears of his enemy but had not relented until he had reached the gates of the chapel, whereupon he had gone happily to his just and everlasting reward. They would fight for the order, for Dame Gwydre, and, most of all, for the memory of Brother Fatuus.

The ferrying began that night, two lines of water-walking monks escorting the warriors to the shoreline to the east and west of St. Mere Abelle. Brothers Pinower and Giavno personally escorted Dame Gwydre and promised to fight by her side until they drew their last breath. It went on all through the first hours of quiet darkness. Soon after midnight, the two hundred warriors and forty monks beside Dame Gwydre in the east sorted their ranks and recited their strategy, while in the west, across Panlamaris's line, half of those numbers in warriors and monks dug in to strategic positions, quite confident of the route of retreat. Moving along the coast long after the sun had dipped below the western horizon, Bransen spotted a dark but definite encampment to the south. At first he thought to simply pass by and continue on his way, for St. Mere Abelle loomed in the west, high in the distance against the starry sky, but not so far away. With the assistance of the cat's-eye agate, he would arrive this night, even if he allowed himself this small detour.

He quickly discerned that it was a military camp, and he glanced often at the distant chapel, guessing that these were enemies intent of that place-that place where Cadayle and Callen slept. He still wanted no part of the war, but certainly he would not allow his stubbornness to endanger his beloved wife and his unborn child.

He decided that he would return to the chapel with much information of this force in the east. He even pulled his mask up, assuming once more that alter ego he had known in Pryd Town. Slipping past the outer guards proved no difficult task for the stealthy Highwayman. Along the ground or in the trees, Bransen's line of ki-chi-kree held strong, as did his command of the gemstones. He noted many monks among the soldiers and feared that the wretch De Guilbe had garnered a strong following in short order. He spotted only one fire, small and obviously shielded from distant eyes.

He crept along in the branches, nearing the close perimeter of the few seated about the low-burning flames. And then he lost his breath, as among the few near the fire he recognized Brother Pinower of St. Mere Abelle, Brother Giavno, and none other than Dame Gwydre herself!

Dumbstruck and suddenly afraid that St. Mere Abelle might have fallen, Bransen blurted out an indecipherable sound and, without even realizing the movement, dropped from the branches to the ground. All in the camp stirred at that, reaching for weapons and gemstones, and behind him Bransen heard a pair of guards call out, "Stand or die!"

He held his hands out in a nonthreatening manner. "I am Bransen Garibond," he managed to sputter as the soldiers came up to him, spear tips gleaming in the moonlight.

"Bransen!" Pinower and Giavno said together.

Giavno rushed up beside the Highwayman and clapped him on the shoulder. "A fine night it is, then," he cheered, ushering Bransen through the line of nodding soldiers and monks to join Gwydre and Pinower by the fire.

"And a fine meeting," said Dame Gwydre.

"Blessed Abelle is shining on us this night!" Pinower exclaimed.

"Aye and the old ones are looking to our cause," Gwydre added, just to draw a smirk from both monks, and when those expected looks came, the Dame of Vanguard grinned from ear to ear.

"The chapel?" Bransen asked. "Cadayle and Callen?"

"Faring well behind thick walls Yeslnik cannot breach," Dame Gwydre assured him.

"But you are out here in the open night."

"The alliance has been sealed with Laird Ethelbert," Gwydre explained. "I am out to further our needs…"

"I came from the encampment of Laird Bannagran of Pryd and from a parlay with Laird Ethelbert and Cormack and Milkeila," Bransen explained.

"Fine news!" said Brother Pinower. "It is our hope that Bannagran will turn to our cause."

"What said he?" Dame Gwydre pressed.

"He told Laird Ethelbert to go home," Bransen replied dryly. "And better for your cause if you had never allied with that murderous old fool."

All three exchanged glances, then turned their eyes upon Bransen.

"Ethelbert's assassins murdered Jameston Sequin," Bransen reported. Gwydre gasped and put a hand over her mouth, and Giavno called upon the gods by making the sign of the evergreen. Whispers erupted all about the camp and much of the joy at discovering the Highwayman returned washed away in the blink of an astonished eye.

"Jameston Sequin? Murdered? On Laird Ethelbert's command?" Dame Gwydre asked after the few moments it took her to compose herself.

"I know not and I care not if Ethelbert was involved," said Bransen. "I found Jameston dead in an abandoned cottage, and I have no doubt as to whose weapon struck him down. That man, a warrior of Behr, serves Ethelbert as a mercenary, and he accompanied a fellow assassin from Behr, a woman named Affwin Wi, to murder King Delaval, as well."

"How do you know this?" Brother Pinower demanded.

"I was there in their court," Bransen replied. "The broken sword found in King Delaval's chest was the blade of Affwin Wi, Laird Ethelbert's prime assassin."

Again, Pinower, Giavno, and Gwydre looked to each other blankly, surprised by the news, and out of that stupor came Brother Pinower, eyeing Bransen more closely.

"You wear a headband above your mask," the monk said in a leading manner.

"To hold a soul stone to my forehead."

"But the brooch Father Artolivan gave to you-"

"Was torn from my head by Ethelbert's assassin. She carries it now, and my sword."

Fittingly, considering the mood shift descending upon the encampment, a log shifted in the fire then and rolled away, the already low firelight diminishing greatly.

"I barely escaped with my life," Bransen added. "Affwin Wi is trained as a Jhesta Tu and is surrounded by other formidable warriors."

"Laird Ethelbert meant to kill you?" Dame Gwydre managed to say past the lump in her throat.

"I doubt he knew anything of it," Bransen replied. "It was personal with Affwin Wi."

"This happened at Laird Bannagran's camp?" Dame Gwydre asked.

Bransen chuckled and kicked the fallen log back to the fire, then took a seat beside it. Staring into the flames, he recounted his journey to Pryd Town and to the coast beside Jameston, then detailed the time he had spent with Affwin Wi in the court of Ethelbert. He saw no reason to hide anything from this group.

He told them of his fight and escape and of the journey along the devastated southland that had taken him again to Pryd and to the march with Bannagran and Reandu and fifteen thousand warriors back to the east.

"And so I left them," he finished some time later. "For their fight is not my fight, and I no longer care which side prevails."

"You say that to Dame Gwydre's face?" Brother Giavno scolded. "You have no shame, then?"

"Shame?" Bransen echoed with a mocking laugh. "You who march to war would speak to me of shame?"

"Bransen, what has happened to you?" Dame Gwydre asked. She stood up and motioned for the others to remain silent, then moved beside the young man. "Walk with me," she bade him softly. "Your troubled soul wounds me."

Bransen looked at her doubtfully, but he did stand and walk off arm-in-arm (for he did not resist when she took his arm with great familiarity) with the Lady of Vanguard.

"Laird Ethelbert has joined us in alliance," she said as they moved to the edge of the firelight, the forest thick about them. "It is necessary, for both of us to hold any hope of turning back the scourge that is Yeslnik. I will see to it that your sword is returned to you."

Bransen sighed at her, for she simply did not understand.

"And the brooch," she said. "Surely you wish those items returned."

"I do not deny that," Bransen said. "But I care hardly as much as you believe."

"What is it, Bransen?" Gwydre pressed. "What has happened to you? You are not the same man who departed St. Mere Abelle. Indeed, you seem more akin to-"

"The man you first encountered, tricked into your service by your man Dawson?"

"Yes," Gwydre admitted.

Bransen thought long and hard on that observation, for he knew that it was true enough. What had happened to him?

He had dared to care. He had dared to let optimism creep into his vision.

"I am no mercenary," he said, and he chuckled again, sadly, pathetically, recounting his night hunt from Bannagran's camp to collect trophy ears for gold.

"Of course you aren't," said Gwydre.

"Yet you used me as one, did you not?" the young warrior asked. "I served as Dame Gwydre's mercenary, her assassin, to go and slay Ancient Badden."

"You know the truth of Ancient Badden," Gwydre protested. "You know that it was right and good and necessary that he be slain."

"I went for reasons of personal gain," Bransen argued. "As a mercenary."

"And you admitted to me that, had you understood the greater truth of the war in Vanguard, you would have gone of your own volition without need for such reward," Gwydre reminded him. True enough, it sent a jolt through Bransen's dour mood.

"Nor did you go as a profiteer even before you understood the greater good," Gwydre persisted. "You went for the sake of your freedom and for the good of your family, and that is a noble cause, not the crass gold-hunting of a mercenary. Surely, Bransen, your mood cannot be of any fears that you are no better than those who do murder for Laird Ethelbert's gold."

"It does not matter," Bransen replied without hesitation.

"Truly it does!"

"No!" Bransen shouted right back at her. He looked away and pulled away and gritted his teeth, and it was all he could manage to hold back a scream of ultimate frustration. "It does not matter, because none of it matters. The way of the world is war, and the unscrupulous will ever rise to rule."

He kept walking slowly, but Dame Gwydre stopped. When he turned back to regard her, he found her standing straight, hands on hips, scowling after him.

"Not you," he stammered in apology. "I know that you rule Vanguard wisely, and I doubt not that you would serve as a wonderful Queen of Honce and that the lives of your peasants would be bettered by your actions."

"You just said that it matters not."

"Because you are a mortal woman, after all, and so fleeting is life. The cycle of misery can be interrupted, but it cannot be stopped."

"I do not believe that."

Bransen shrugged. He did not care. How could this war-how could any war-be worth the cost for such a temporary gain?

"Our great and glorious cause is a fool's errand," he said quietly, and that defeated tone made it all the more profound and powerful. "Even should Bannagran turncoat against Yeslnik, even should we march to Delaval and seat you as Queen of Honce, there will always be another Ancient Badden or King Yeslnik or Laird Prydae or Father De Guilbe to take it back. I understand now why the Jhesta Tu dwell in a remote mountain fortress far from the politics of men. With their strength and knowledge, they could likely shape the world, but they, too, recognize the futility of it all. Jameston Sequin should have stayed in the northern woods."

"His cause was just," Dame Gwydre insisted.

"Just and hopeless. One good soul against a castle wall topped with unjust enemies."

"We can win the day for Honce," Gwydre said. "I believe that young Yeslnik has erred in his decree to the Order of Blessed Abelle. He has pushed the goodly brothers too far with his demands of execution and betrayal, and they…" She paused when she looked upon Bransen, shaking his head as if none of it mattered.

"What road for Bransen, then?" she asked. "I cannot force you to march with me, of course, and trust that you'll never support Yeslnik."

"That you can trust, yes," the young warrior assured her. "I am bound for St. Mere Abelle and the arms of my wife. By our agreement, you will sail me wherever I choose, and I choose Vanguard."

Gwydre started to respond, but Bransen cut her short. "Not to serve you," he explained. "To find a place where I and my family can live in peace, away from the stupidity of the wider world."

"You will run and hide in a forest?"

"It was good enough for Jameston Sequin."

"Cadayle's mother might now consider Dawson McKeege part of that family," Gwydre warned. "For they have fallen in love."

The news caught Bransen by surprise, obviously, but he merely gave his signature helpless chuckle yet again and moved on.

"I cannot get you to Vanguard," Dame Gwydre admitted. "And surely not with a pregnant Cadayle beside you!"

"I have your word."

"You have the Gulf of Corona swarming with Palmaristown and Delaval City warships," Gwydre explained. "There is no safe passage."

Bransen chewed his lip.

"So what then for Bransen?"

"To remain with Cadayle in St. Mere Abelle as long as Father Artolivan allows," he said quickly, not bothering to think it through, for all that he cared about at that moment was making it clear to Dame Gwydre that he had no intention of going to war.

"Father Artolivan is dead," Gwydre informed him, and he winced. "Peacefully and of natural cause. Father Premujon is seated at the head of the Order of Blessed Abelle now, a worthy successor to a fine man."

"And when that successor is not so worthy?" the unrelenting Bransen asked.

"You are running and hiding," Dame Gwydre dared remark, but in a light tone.

"You should be glad that I am and that I am not continuing my bargain with Bannagran to aid in his fight with Ethelbert."

"That is a fight we hope to avert."

Bransen shook his head and hardly cared-or made it seem as if he didn't care, at least. "When I learned of your alliance with Laird Ethelbert, out of deference to you I rescinded my agreement with Bannagran and departed," he lied, and Gwydre's smile showed that she saw right through him.

"And now you are again the same Bransen who first came to Vanguard," Gwydre said. "Full of cynicism."

"Accepting of reality," he corrected.

It was Dame Gwydre's turn to shake her head. "You had grown so much," she said. "Tell me, Highwayman, if we could go back to that time you first came into Vanguard but with all the knowledge you have gained these last months, would you join with me and go after Ancient Badden?"

The old question, Bransen realized. Dame Gwydre's measuring stick for Bransen Garibond's character. "No," he answered, flooding his voice with strength and not bothering to internally sort whether it was the strength of conviction or of simple stubbornness. He didn't blink when Dame Gwydre argued with him, telling him that she did not believe him. This was not the same conversation he had shared with the woman in Pellinor those months ago, when he had then proclaimed that he would have, indeed, enlisted in her cause against the Samhaists, and for the sake of his own peace of mind he could not allow her to believe that this was a replay of that discussion.

"Do you even care that Ethelbert murdered Jameston?" he asked bluntly.

"You do not know that to be true. You, yourself, said it was likely personal with Affwin Wi." Gwydre looked into his stubborn face with great sadness. "Of course I care. The death of Master Sequin wounds me profoundly. He was a great and accomplished man, and I was proud to call him a friend."

"But you would look past it for the sake of this alliance you so desperately need even if you discovered Ethelbert knew of his assassins' work?"

Dame Gwydre blew a weary and pained sigh, and Bransen knew that he was getting to her, wounding her, though to what end or for what purpose, he did not know. She started to respond several times, trying futilely to explain that the circumstances surrounding Jameston's death would indeed have consequence but, finally, admitting that the situation was much larger than the question of Jameston Sequin.

"I am responsible for the people of Vanguard, some fifty thousand souls, all weary of war," she said. "King Yeslnik has already begun his assault on my shores. Would you have me throw away Vanguard's only hope?"

"If Laird Ethelbert is your only hope, then you have already lost," Bransen said dryly.

"The alliance between Vanguard and Ethelbert and St. Mere Abelle purchases leverage," she explained, "to bring more lairds to our cause. Few would follow King Yeslnik if they came to believe in an alternative ruler who might defeat him on the field."

"If you wish to lessen the misery of all, then just surrender to Yeslnik," said Bransen. "Let the war end, let him go back to Delaval as you go home to Vanguard."

"And allow him to claim all of Honce as his domain?"

"Why would you care, if not for foolish pride? Do you believe that Yeslnik the idiot will know enough about the goings-on in your far-distant holding to truly interfere?"

"The people of Honce proper cry out in despair. I cannot ignore that plea!"

"Only those who crave their own power cry out," Bransen argued. "For the rest, be it Yeslnik or Ethelbert, Gwydre or Premujon now, they care not. They only want the war to end."

"And when King Yeslnik, secure in Honce, decides that Honce is not enough?" Gwydre asked. "When he sails an armada to Behr to wage a wider war? When he marches through Vanguard on his way to conquer the Alpinadoran tribes?"

"You do not know he will do that."

"I know that he is without mercy and that he is full of treachery. He would have the monks execute all the prisoners taken from Ethelbert's ranks."

"And all of your own actions are for the cause of the common man?" Bransen asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "None of this is for the gain of Dame Gwydre?"

The woman looked at him as if he had struck her.

"A pox on all your houses," Bransen snapped at her, but his voice quickly broke into a stutter as he continued, "If I cared at all which of you won the worthless throne, then perhaps I would fight, but since I do not…" It took every ounce of his concentration to even get the sentence out, dragging some syllables along painfully and biting off others as his jaw involuntarily clenched.

"You can lie to me, Bransen Garibond, but you cannot lie to yourself. Listen to your own words, for they speak not to the truth in your heart. That is the source of your malady. That is why you again need the gemstone tied tightly to your forehead. When your heart is not right, so, too, will go astray your body and mind."

"You know nothing of me," he shot right back.

Dame Gwydre looked at him carefully for a few heartbeats. "Perhaps I do not. Perhaps I was wrong to think so highly of Bransen Garibond."

"Perhaps you were. Would you rescind your Writ of Passage, then, Queen of Honce?"

Dame Gwydre wore a sour expression. She shook her head, though in response to his question or simply to show her disgust Bransen could not fathom.

Bransen didn't even follow her back to the camp to rejoin the monks. He just walked off to the north and the coast, then to the west, chewing his lip with rage every step of the way.

He began to see signs of the besieging force as St. Mere Abelle came into clear sight, sitting up on the high and rocky cliff, unscalable from the ocean and a fairly steep ascent from all three other directions. Bransen climbed a tree to gain a better view of the field and the situation. Directly down the hill from the front gates, he saw the line of catapults, and even as he watched, one let fly a large stone. It arced through the air to hit the turf directly before the wall, skipping up to crack against the wall itself. It bounced harmlessly back to the grass, where it lay among dozens and dozens of other boulders.

They were halfway between midnight and dawn, and still Ethelbert's catapults were throwing?

The sight alarmed Bransen, for Cadayle was within those walls.

Another rock went into the air, and he grimaced, imagining her huddled with terror, hugging Callen, as it slammed in hard, shaking the foundation of the chapel complex. A third stone went up shortly after, and this one cleared the wall. Bransen nearly cried out in fear.

A moment later, he was glad that he had not, for movement below him and not far from the tree in which he was perched caught his attention. He froze in place, staring down, sorting out the movement as a small group of soldiers, obviously Palmaristown, patrolled the region. He thought to wait them out, but the report of another stone slamming into the stone of the complex startled him. He had to get to Cadayle!

The Highwayman came down from the tree in a rush, using the malachite to ease and control his fall. He got to the lowest branch before being spotted by a leather-clad soldier some ten strides away-ten strides or one great, gemstone-enhanced leap for the Highwayman. He soared toward the shouting man, who lifted a battle-axe at the sight. The man took his weapon in both hands as he realized to his horror that the Highwayman flew toward him from on high, a leap that no man should have been able to make. Awkwardly, he turned the blade and swiped it upward as his attacker descended.

The Highwayman easily kicked it aside with one foot, landing heavily on the other onto the shoulder of the man, who groaned and lurched and flew to the side. The Highwayman didn't fight the momentum, just threw himself over sidelong, settling in a deep crouch. The man he had landed upon didn't fare as well, though. He stumbled and staggered off balance, grabbing at his wounded shoulder before tripping over a root and tumbling to the ground.

The Highwayman was over him in an instant, but he didn't land a finishing blow. He didn't have to, for in the tangle of his fall the poor soldier had fallen on his axe blade. He writhed in pain, a long but superficial gash running the length of his ribs.

Bransen stood straight and swung about to face another soldier coming in hard, spear extended. Up into the air the Highwayman leaped, higher than any man should, and when he tucked his legs, his feet were up higher than the newest opponent's head. She lifted her spear to try to fend, but the Highwayman went right over her. He landed lightly and sprang up again, lifting above her as she turned and spinning a tight circuit as he went so that he could launch a heavy circle kick that met her squarely at the top of her ribs and the base of her throat as she came around. She flew back as if she, too, had been launched from one of Milwellis's catapults, her spear flying harmlessly aside.

Shouts erupted from the brush as more soldiers closed in on the Highwayman, but he thought of Cadayle and was having none of it. He sprinted off for the distant chapel, his strides lengthening as his fell into the malachite, great bounds like that of a hunting cat or a fleeing deer. He easily outdistanced the pursuit, even outrunning the volley of spears that were thrown his way.

With Cadayle in his thoughts, the Highwayman would not slow, and when he reached the base of the high wall of St. Mere Abelle, the malachite's power flowing through his limbs, he seemed, to those watching from the distant trees and to those monks cheering him on from the parapets, to simply run up the wall.

He shrugged off their shoulder clapping and well-intentioned hugs and leaped down to the courtyard, sprinting across the way to the room he had shared with Cadayle.

His relief at seeing her, eyes and smile wide with surprise and pure joy, was matched only by the sincere sense of calm that came over him when she wrapped him in a great hug. They fell asleep in each other's arms, all tears and giggles, and Bransen felt as if he could stay there, could hide there, forevermore.

It proved a short respite, for barely a couple of hours later, Callen Duwornay burst into the room, calling out and waving her arms frantically.

"It's begun!" she cried. "Oh, it's begun, and a beautiful thing it is!"

Bransen snapped into a sitting position. "What?"

"Gwydre's fight, don't ya know? Sweeping the field, she is! Oh, come and look!"

Bransen and Cadayle scrambled out of bed and dressed quickly, then rushed out of the keep and across the courtyard, to join all of those remaining inside St. Mere Abelle atop the front wall.

Bransen's pulse pounded in his veins, for he heard the shouts of battle before he ever got up the ladder. Horns blew and magical lightning bolts crackled in the early-morning air. By the time he reached the parapet, slowing only to help Cadayle up the last couple of steps, several lines of thick black smoke rose into the dawn's light.

"They're burning the catapults!" said one of the monks on the wall, a young brother who seemed as if he was yet to reach puberty and whose high-pitched voice confirmed his youthful appearance.

The brother kept talking, but Bransen wasn't listening. He moved right up to the wall and peered over intently. The rout was on before him, and, truly, it was a lopsided affair. Gwydre and her force had charged in from the east, from in front of the rising sun; Bransen could picture the spectacle of that, and could imagine the horror of Panlamaris's men as they tried to sort out the enemy assault with the blinding glare behind. He felt a tinge of regret and tried hard to suppress it.

"We've suffered their rocks every day and every night," Cadayle reminded.

Bransen nodded. A large group of Panlamaris's men broke away to the west, in full panic and retreat, and Bransen spied the large man-the laird himself-screaming at them and waving his great sword.

All along the wall the monks and others began cheering wildly, even more so when a group of the Palmaristown garrison rushed their way, scrambling up the hill, all crying and begging for mercy.

"All quarter offered!" several brothers began to shout. "These misled warriors are our brothers and sisters!"

Bransen felt as if the slightest breeze might knock him from his feet.

"Get out there," Cadayle said in his ear, through the tumult rising all around them.

Bransen turned to stare at her incredulously.

"This is your fight," she said. "This is our fight, as surely as any we have ever known."

"I am done with fighting!" he shouted back, and many around them quieted at that, several monks gasping in shock and obvious dismay. This was the Highwayman standing among them, after all, one of the great champions of their desperate cause.

"It doesn't matter," Bransen said. "None of it matters."

"Ye cannot be thinking that Queen Gwydre'll be as ill-tempered as King Yeslnik," remarked Callen, coming over and sounding every bit the peasant woman from Pryd Town. "What fool's got ye, boy?"

"Don't you see?" Bransen asked, pulling away from Cadayle and addressing all of those around him, most of whom were staring at him with open shock, and some with open contempt. "Even should we seat Gwydre on Delaval's own throne, it would be but a temporary reprieve, a short pause of misery."

"Bransen!" Cadayle pleaded.

"It's the truth," he said to her, coming close again and taking her hands in his own. "I've come to know that, and it pains me greatly. The road men walk is a roundabout. There is no better way to be found."

"How can you say such things?"

"Too many who believed otherwise have died in vain. My father and mother…"

"In vain, ye say, but yer ma saved that girl ye hold," Callen reminded from behind him.

"Garibond and Jameston," Bransen went on, trying to ignore her. "All dead, and to what end?"

"And what would you have us do?" Cadayle asked.

"Run away to the north. To the forest, once home to Jameston Sequin, and far from this madness."

"To live as hermits in the woods, then?"

"Free of lairds, free of church, free of war," Bransen insisted.

Cadayle stepped back and pulled her hands free, one of them coming up to cover her mouth.

"Dame Gwydre will honor the terms, and will sail us to…" Bransen started to say, but he stopped abruptly when Cadayle hit him with a stinging slap across the face.

"You would do that to our child?"

"Cadayle," Bransen whispered.

"Hit him again," said Callen dryly.

Cadayle glanced at her mother for that comment, but only briefly. "Why did you ever get up?" she asked Bransen.

He looked at her perplexed.

"When they knocked the Stork into the mud," Cadayle explained. "Why did you get back up?"

"What nonsense-"

"No nonsense," Cadayle interrupted. "If it all means nothing, then why'd the Stork ever climb out of the mud? If there's nothing to be gained, then why didn't you just lay there and die in the soft black muck of nothing?"

Bransen looked at her dumbfounded and glanced around to meet the hard stares of everyone in the area.

"It's a roundabout!" he declared. "A walk in a circle to the same awful places again and again."

"More of an egg," said Callen, and all eyes turned to her. "And a rolling one, at that. Oh, the road's going back sometimes-too oftentimes-but it's rolling forward so long as men and women of heart and cause are moving it so. The world's a better place than it was when Callen went into the Samhaist's sack o' snakes, don't ya doubt! And 'twas a better place then than when Callen's ma was a girl and half o' Pryd starved to death."

Cadayle grabbed Bransen by the front of his shirt and pulled him to face her directly. "We've a chance now, right now, and it's one worth taking. You go push the road, the roundabout, whatever you may call it, forward! For me and for our baby that's in my womb. And for yourself, my love." She tenderly stroked his face, and though he initially tried to pull away, he didn't fight her touch for long.

"You'll not forgive yourself if you run away."

"Or you'll not forgive me," he said dryly.

Cadayle took pause at that and looked at him with clear love and sympathy and gently stroked his face once more. "I could never not love you, my Stork," she said. "But don't you wallow there in the mud. You get up. This is our fight, all of us, and I only wish I could go with you, weapon in hand and a song on my lips. Dame Gwydre deserves your sword."

"I have no sword," Bransen reminded.

"Get the Highwayman a sword, ye damn fools!" Callen shouted, and several men on the wall rushed away.

Bransen looked at his mother-in-law, and Callen shrugged. Bransen couldn't help but chuckle against the unrelenting woman.

"Father Artolivan's church stood against Yeslnik," Cadayle went on. "They stood for mercy and justice and at great cost. Would you abandon them now?"

The young monk rushed up and thrust a sword into Bransen's hand, nodding hopefully. Bransen turned from the eager young man to Cadayle, who reached up, holding a thin black strip of cloth.

She tied his mask on his face and whispered, "Go." And then she offered him her hand, as she had when he had lain in the mud on that long-ago day.

Bransen took her hand and kissed it softly. Then he nodded to the others, offered a self-deprecating snort, and jumped over the wall.

Many gasped at that, but not Cadayle. She moved to the crenellation and looked at her husband, the Highwayman, as he descended the high wall with spiderlike speed. All about her, the cheering began anew. Get up, ye damned child!" Laird Panlamaris said, his voice uneven. He tried to kick at the soldier, who huddled upon the ground, but the desperate laird staggered as he did and nearly fell.

The soldier scrambled away, crying and begging for mercy.

Panlamaris spat at him, though that, too, fell far short. The large, old laird spun about, inadvertently drawing a circle in the bloody dirt with his low-hanging sword. He looked for his men, he called for his men, but, alas, there were none about-none who would answer that call, at least.

He had been routed, his army driven from the field around him. Old Ethelbert knew the truth of it. So many times he had seen his enemies in this very predicament.

Not far to the east, the sun now raised above them, Dame Gwydre and her line re-formed. Grim-faced, their banners high, to a man and woman they stared at the Laird of Palmaristown.

"Come on, then!" Panlamaris howled, lifting his sword awkwardly, the movement nearly throwing him from his feet. The blood on the ground about him was his own. Garish wounds crisscrossed his arms and chest, and so bloody was one side of his face that he couldn't see out of that eye. The stump of a broken spear stuck out from his side, waving with his every breath.

"You are defeated, Laird Panlamaris," the Dame of Vanguard replied, and she and those around her advanced to within a few strides of the man. Flanking her left and right, brothers Pinower and Giavno each lifted a hand, presenting graphite-the stone of lightning-Panlamaris's way.

"Ah, ye witch!" the old laird roared, and he reached back his sword arm as if to throw.

Twin bolts of lightning shot out from Gwydre's escort, jolting him, slamming him, knocking him back several strides.

The stubborn old man did not fall over, though. He held his balance, spat some more blood. He looked hatefully at Gwydre and lifted his sword arm yet again.

A black form rushed across in front of him before the monks could even loose their second volley, and the Laird of Palmaristown staggered back again, a look of sheer surprise on his weathered face-surprise rooted more in the realization that he was dead than by the appearance of the Highwayman on the field.

For in his passing, the Highwayman had spun a tight circle, his elbow flying high behind him to score a perfect strike against the threatening old laird's windpipe.

Panlamaris looked at him curiously for a few moments, his arm dropping, his sword falling free of his grasp.

He fell facedown in the bloody dirt, dead at last.

"Welcome home, Highwayman," Dame Gwydre said.

Bransen glanced back at the distant St. Mere Abelle, where Cadayle, he knew, was watching. He was on Jameston Sequin's third road now, the path that had led Jameston to his death.

His wife demanded this of him; his unborn child demanded this of him; the Stork demanded this of him.