The Bear

TWENTY-TWO

They found the town of Pollcree deserted that hot early-summer day. They had expected as much, for the approach of an army-any army-struck sheer terror into the hearts of the beleaguered Honce citizens after these brutal years of war.

Fortunately for the folk of Pollcree, though, this was Dame Gwydre's army, with no intention of causing mischief. Even more fortunately for Pollcree, the spirit-walking monks knew precisely where the townsfolk had gone to hide.

By design, Bransen was first to that spot, a series of well-hidden caves more than a mile to the south of the town itself. He approached silently and in the shadows, taking a lay of the ground and noting several disguised entrances. He went to the largest, near the center of the line along a long running ridge.

"Belay your spears," he called as he neared. "I am no enemy. I am the Highwayman of Pryd Town, sick of war and of lairds who claim dominion over lands they do not own."

There was no movement from the shadows behind the brush that had been piled before the opening, but Bransen knew that guards watched him from within. Still he approached openly, confident that he could dodge any spear or arrow coming forth.

"Will you greet me, or will you cower?" he asked. "For I know you are in these caves, hiding from the march of another army."

He shuffled forward slowly, hands up before him unthreateningly. He heard a whisper, "Kill him!" followed by some tussling and objections.

"What will you gain by killing me?" he asked, straightening. "I come to you unarmed and in peace, with information and to serve as your prisoner if you so determine that necessary."

He was right at the brush by then, where he paused and listened. But no sound came forth, and he could well imagine several guards just inside the cave, holding their collective breath.

"Your leaders will wish to hear what I have to say," he remarked and began to pull brush away from the pile.

"No!" came a call from above and to Bransen's right. He looked up and tried to hide his surprise when he saw two guards-a man and a woman-standing on an outcropping barely fifteen feet from him. The man held a sword, the woman a bow, leveled his way.

Bransen held up his hands.

"Not through there," the man instructed, waving Bransen up to him.

For a moment, Bransen considered falling into his malachite magic and leaping the fifteen feet to stand before the pair, but he wisely decided against that course, realizing that it might bring a frightened shot from the archer. So he climbed up agilely instead, wiping the dirt from his hands as he stood before the pair.

"The Highwayman of Pryd Town?" the woman asked, seeming unimpressed.

But the man added, "I have heard tell of you."

Bransen bowed politely.

"Why have you come?" the woman asked sharply.

"With information. To tell you of the army that approaches-one you need not fear-and of the momentous happenings in Honce."

"We know all too much of those," said the man.

Bransen bowed again.

The woman motioned with her bow to an opening in the hillside, barely visible behind a large stone. With the bow still trained on him, Bransen led the way in.

As his eyes adjusted to the dimness of the cave beyond, with few torches burning and only a few openings letting in meager bits of daylight, he noted a sight that had become all too familiar about Honce: the beleaguered civilians of an awful war, mostly very young and very old, their faces haggard, eyes full of fear. But fear tinged with deep resignation, Bransen noted, and that made it all the more heartbreaking.

He noted, too, many weapons leveled his way.

"I am not your enemy," he said.

An old woman sifted through the crowd. She was thin, very thin, with a hunched back, but despite her advanced age-Bransen figured that she had to be near to ninety years old-her hair was still dark and barely tinged with gray.

"Then why are ye here?" she asked. Bransen's scrutinizing gaze prompted her to add, "Eireen's me name, and Pollcree's me town."

"The Dame of Pollcree?"

"Bah, but Pollcree's not a holding, just a town," she corrected. "Part o' Laird Binyard's lands, but he's dead now, o' course, and his garrison's scattered and the lands are in ruin."

"The Governess of Pollcree, then," Bransen said with a bow.

"As good a title as any, for what any're worth."

"I am here as the advance messenger for the army of Dame Gwydre of Vanguard, who has joined with the brothers of St. Mere Abelle…"

"Brothers o' what?"

"Chapel Abelle," Bransen clarified. "Now St. Mere Abelle. The monks who serve the memory and desires of Father Artolivan."

"Memory? He dead, too?"

Bransen nodded. "Peacefully so, and with his successor picked, and with a new mission for the brethren." He stepped back to take in more of the audience as he finished. "To oppose the war and the men who claim dominion at the end of a spear. The brothers are to serve the townsfolk, not to support the armies that march and ravage the land."

"Didn't ye just say ye was in front of an army, then?" Eireen asked.

"But an army that has entered Pollcree in peace, good governess. Not to burn your buildings but to repair them." That brought more than a few whispers about the cave, and more and more people gathered around.

"Do send your scouts to confirm my words. Five thousand men and women, repairing homes and finishing the work in the fields… well, as much as two days will allow, for that is all that we have, with Laird Milwellis and a vast force in pursuit of us. We wish to be away long before he nears, that he'll turn aside from Pollcree and not march through your fair town.

"And Dame Gwydre herself will arrive here soon. Yes, we know of this place, and it was not happenstance that brought me here. She will come with brothers carrying gemstones to heal the wounds of your people and with stocks of food for the people of Pollcree. Our hunters have been busy of late, the game surprisingly plentiful."

"At what cost?"

"None."

Eireen looked at him skeptically, as did many others.

"Dame Gwydre will defeat Laird Milwellis and Yeslnik, who calls himself king," Bransen assured her. "And she will rule Honce as she has ruled Vanguard, a servant of her minions, who would see to their health and well-being in the knowledge that such will promote a stronger and more prosperous land for all."

"Ye said ye were against war."

Bransen shrugged. "Some stubborn people simply will not surrender, I fear."

"Ye're crazy."

"I have been called that and worse." From outside the cave came word that a small force of soldiers and porters and monks neared the hillside. "But no matter," Bransen finished. "For Pollcree, the present is good, whatever the ultimate result. Come and meet Dame Gwydre, I bid you. Have your sick and injured gather and prepare your cooking fires for a meal long overdue and long deserved."

What choice did the folk of Pollcree have? They were no army, and the few among them who could fight would have been slaughtered to a man and woman had they attacked even the fraction of Dame Gwydre's army that accompanied her to the caves that hot summer day. And any thoughts they had of resisting, even of doubting, diminished quickly, as the monks went to the task of using the soul stones on the sick and injured and as piles of food-good and fresh food-were set before the caves.

Eireen did send scouts to the town proper, and they returned excited and grinning widely, with reports of ongoing repairs to roofs and walls and many crops being put in. Suddenly what had seemed assuredly a disastrous harvest was given promise, though much of the season was past.

The critical moment of the entire encounter came as midday passed, when Bransen happened upon a secret back chamber of the cave and found within a group of nearly fifty men and women, young and healthy.

"Dame Gwydre," he called. "You will see this." Many of the twoscore and ten before him put their heads down in despair. Some wept, for they had been through this before.

Gwydre, Brother Pinower, and Dawson arrived beside a protesting Eireen and with scores of townsfolk behind them.

"Well now, what have we here?" Dawson asked.

"Deserters," Bransen reasoned.

"Ye're not to take them!" Eireen yelled sharply at Gwydre, but the younger woman held up her hand, and her commanding presence set Eireen back on her heels.

"You have tired of war, and who can blame you?" Dame Gwydre said to the frightened group. "I'll not ask which side you fought for, for it hardly seems to matter now." She turned to the monk. "Brother Pinower, fetch your brethren and tend to these poor souls."

"I'm not fighting!" one woman yelled from the back.

"No," Gwydre said before others could chime in. "Nor do I ask that of you. You have nothing to fear from me and mine. We come not as conquerors and surely as no press-gang! But do come forth from this hole. There is food aplenty!"

"At what cost?" one man near to Gwydre asked sharply.

"I charge you with continuing the work here at Pollcree," Gwydre answered without hesitation. "Your weapon is a plow or a hoe or a mallet, if need be. That is the price I place upon you, if you are to partake of the healing magic and the foodstuffs. What say you?"

They said little and moved tentatively, as did the other off-balance townsfolk, for none had expected anything quite like this. For years, they, like many of Honce's other towns, had been battered by the march of one army after another, their healthy, young adults whisked away to fight for Ethelbert or for Delaval or for Yeslnik-it mattered not at all.

But Dame Gwydre kept her word, and for two days her monks and soldiers tilled and planted, hammered and split wood, healed and gave food, and then, with Milwellis turning toward her from the north, she bid Pollcree farewell and marched her army off to the southwest.

Indeed, she and her forces were planting more seeds than those in the fields.

And they continued to sow, day after summer day, in villages across the north-central region of Honce. Sweat beaded on Laird Milwellis's sunburned face as he surveyed the rolling fields before him. Dame Gwydre was supposed to be here. Every report had indicated that her march would take her to this very spot and in a time frame that allowed Milwellis to arrive first.

But she wasn't here.

"I assured King Yeslnik that battle would be joined in this time and place," the laird said quietly to Harcourt, riding at his side.

"Her force is smaller and more nimble," Harcourt replied.

That did little to comfort Milwellis. For weeks now, as summer had passed its midpoint, he had been in pursuit of the elusive dame. Time and again, Milwellis had marched into a town to discover that Dame Gwydre's army had passed through only a few days-once, only a few hours!-prior and then had vanished like ghosts into the countryside.

Every ambush he had set had been missed or ambushed in turn, and always in that hit-and-run style, a quick skirmish with little real damage to either side, though with more to Milwellis's ranks, invariably.

Milwellis glanced around at his vast army, at the tired and sweaty faces. The damage he saw there, not measured in blood, was all too real.

"Do you think Gwydre grows as weary of this as I do?" he said.

"Do you?"

Milwellis looked at Harcourt directly and grimly and shook his head. "The townsfolk grow to love her and supply her forces and cheer their passage."

"And so we must continue to make examples of them as traitors!" declared Father De Guilbe, riding up to join the pair. Obviously uncomfortable in the brutal heat and astride a horse, the giant man huffed and puffed with every word.

Milwellis fixed him with a stern stare. De Guilbe had only recently rejoined them, sent as an emissary from the impatient Yeslnik.

"You should have burned every house in Pollcree to the ground," the monk went on undeterred. "And more than a few with the families still inside! They gave comfort to your enemy."

"You have that backward, good father," said Harcourt.

"Nay," Father De Guilbe argued. "Their relationship is mutual. In accepting the hand of Gwydre, they reject the hand of King Yeslnik, and so they must be punished. Every villager of every town in Honce must know that the arrival of Dame Gwydre portends doom. We must teach them to shun her or even to fight her."

"Enough, De Guilbe," said Milwellis. "We did punish Pollcree."

"The only villagers executed were the four brothers of Chapel Pollcree!" the monk reminded. "A fitting example."

"You walk a thin ledge here," Harcourt warned the monk. "You would have us batter King Yeslnik's subjects while Dame Gwydre feeds them?"

"What is your more gentle recourse gaining you? When Gwydre moved through Pollcree those weeks ago, you did nothing to warn her away, and, alas, the witch returned through the town to cheers!"

The simple statement of fact left Harcourt at a loss, and he turned away. With a superior expression stamped upon his wide, tanned face, the monk not so gracefully turned his gelding about and bounced away.

"The taste of that man grows more foul with every word," Harcourt grumbled.

"But perhaps there lie beads of truth within his uninvited sermons," Milwellis replied, and he was almost as surprised by his statement as was Harcourt, whose eyes widened and mouth hung agape.

"He would have us attacking Chapel Abelle while Gwydre runs free!"

"Not that, of course," said Milwellis. "But regarding the villagers."

"Pollcree?"

"When De Guilbe executed the four brothers of Pollcree, did not the fifth and sixth join his ranks?" Milwellis asked.

"Oh, and I'll be counting upon their loyalty when the arrows fill the air," came the sarcastic reply.

Milwellis dismissed that obvious retort with a glare. "Where is she?" he asked his general, turning back to the field and the question of Gwydre. "She should be here, and yet, her forces are nowhere to be found. And so we continue our run through the heat and the mud, losing men at every turn in the road."

"Gwydre runs, too."

Milwellis shook his head, having none of it. He understood the difference here and, indeed, could see it clearly within the two factions of his own army. The Delaval contingent, war-weary and too long from home, marched because they had no choice in the matter. Some spoke around their campfires in nostalgic whispers about Laird Delaval, but these were men and women too long from home and detached from any real sense of purpose out here.

They were in stark contrast to Milwellis's Palmaristown garrison, men and women who had seen their homes burned and their neighbors murdered by the most foul powries and who blamed Dame Gwydre personally for that heinous attack. All they wanted, all Milwellis wanted, was to take the field against Gwydre and repay her for the assault on Palmaristown. They were hot and tired, of course, but their purpose remained strong, and, to a one, they would stay out here for as long as it took to defeat the witch of Vanguard.

Milwellis wasn't worried about losing his Palmaristown soldiers to attrition, and, he feared, neither was Gwydre regarding her fresher Vanguard contingent.

Across the fields later that same afternoon, Laird Milwellis marched into a hamlet, just a cluster of about a dozen houses and a single common room. He blamed them, loudly and publicly, for aiding Dame Gwydre and accused them of warning her of his approach. No denials rang loudly enough to defeat his accusations.

He burned the town to the ground and killed every male villager he found, the very old and the boys who could barely be called men.

"So be it," he remarked to the fuming Harcourt as they rode out of the hamlet. "Let us try Father De Guilbe's way." I trust that you will honor the flag of parlay," Bransen said when he entered the castle.

"Are you going to ask me that every time you bring Dame Gwydre to Pryd?" Bannagran replied.

"Protocol."

"Bring her in and be gone," the laird said and waved his hand. But he was smiling, as he had been over the last few weeks on every occasion that Bransen had brought Dame Gwydre for a visit. And over the last three weeks, since the passage of midsummer, those visits had grown much more frequent.

"There is more this time," Bransen said. "More that I must ask of you."

Bannagran looked at him with a mixture of curiosity and concern. Bransen was glad to see that concern!

"I must be gone this night," Bransen explained. "And I fear that I may not return. Should that happen, I would ask you to deliver Dame Gwydre back to her forces."

"Where are you going? Is this some plot to murder Yeslnik or Milwellis?"

Bransen shook his head. "It is a personal quest, one that I have avoided and wrongly so. If I succeed, then I should return by this time tomorrow. If not, then know that I languish in Laird Ethelbert's dungeon or, more likely, that I am dead."

"You're going for your sword."

Bransen didn't blink.

The Laird of Pryd began to laugh. "All your talk of service to Dame Gwydre and service to Honce is a lie, then," he chided.

Bransen stiffened his spine but didn't respond. He understood Bannagran's reasoning, of course, and had battled it mightily in his own thoughts for many days now.

"Why would you do something so dangerous when the cost to Dame Gwydre's cause would be very high and the gain, if there is one, is to Bransen and not to Honce?"

Bransen didn't see things that way. There was more to that sword and the brooch than the personal comfort of having them returned would bring. With those items, he would surely better serve Dame Gwydre's cause. More than that, though, Bransen knew now that he needed to do this to complete his journey.

And it was past time to sort out this uneasy relationship with Laird Ethelbert.

"The night is uncomfortable," came Gwydre's voice from the doorway. "The biting bugs relish the heat."

"Do enter," Bannagran said.

Gwydre walked up, but stopped short, looking from the laird to Bransen. "Have I missed an important conversation?"

"No," said Bransen, but Bannagran interjected, "Your man here was telling me that he will be off at once to hunt Laird Ethelbert's assassins."

Dame Gwydre's eyes opened wide, and she gawked at Bransen.

"We must learn of Laird Ethelbert's intent," he said.

"He sits and waits and watches," she replied, "like many of the lairds." When she finished, she put a sly look over at Bannagran, who merely shrugged. "Our progress has been strong. Laird Milwellis and King Yeslnik grow more frustrated and foolish by the day. The countryside is turning against them. You would risk-"

"The countryside is full of old women and children," Bannagran interrupted. "Your dance around Milwellis's force has been impressive, I admit, but if he catches you, he will destroy you."

"Only if the other lairds of Honce are too cowardly to stand for that which is right for Honce," Dame Gwydre retorted without hesitation.

"A mouse who steps aside a charging horse is no coward," Bannagran replied.

"I see a town possessing a vast army with a general they adore," said Gwydre. "Hardly a mouse, sir."

Their stares grew more intense with each word, and Bransen realized that this was not a new discussion, that, more likely, they threw these words back and forth with each of Dame Gwydre's visits, like a ritual… a courting ritual.

"I will not go if you deny me permission," Bransen interjected.

Both dame and laird turned to him, and both seemed almost surprised to find that he was still there.

"What do you intend to do?" Gwydre asked.

Bransen blew a deep breath and offered an almost sheepish shrug. "To speak with Ethelbert, to try reason with him again, both for his allegiance and for the return of those items wrongly taken from me."

"And if he denies you? Do you intend to do battle with the garrison of Ethelbert dos Entel to get to this assassin woman?"

Bransen shook his head-an honest answer-for he knew that it would never come to that. Affwin Wi would not need to be cornered to engage in a duel with him. She would welcome it. It was her way, the way of the warrior, the way of Hou-lei and of Jhesta Tu.

"You have earned my trust in your judgment," Gwydre said. "I owe you this, at least-and indeed, much more. Be temperate and be wise, my young friend. Honce cannot afford to lose the Highwayman at this time."

Bannagran snickered at that, but Bransen ignored him and offered a nod and an appreciative smile to Gwydre.

"Return to me as soon as is possible," Gwydre commanded. "I charge you with that task above all."

Bransen nodded again and took his leave, fully intending to adhere to that order. My dance about Honce impresses you?" Gwydre asked as soon as Bransen had left them alone.

Smiling, Bannagran rose from his seat and moved to stand before her. "So much about you impresses me," he said quietly, and they kissed.

But Bannagran pulled back from that embrace and, grinning wickedly, added, "But I still think that King Yeslnik is going to kill you."

Gwydre fell back as if slapped, but only for a moment. "Only if Bannagran is a coward," she retorted, and the mighty laird laughed all the louder.