The Dame

TWENTY-FIVE

They’re running,” Jameston remarked to Bransen. “Like deer before the wolves.” The pair stood looking to the east from opposite branches of a tree. Something was happening there, some fighting or other commotion, but they couldn’t make out what, exactly, for a line of hills blocked their view even from the high perch. That was the nature of this ground along the southernmost Honce coastline, as if the towering mountains just south of their position, the great Belt-and-Buckle, had collided with the sea in days long lost to the world and had strewn great broken mounds all about the region.

Suddenly soldiers were scrambling past the trees as if the demon dactyl itself was close on their heels. Not far before them, one spearman stumbled as he headed down a slope, nearly thrown from his feet as the back quarter of his spear shaft collided with a tree. Finally orienting himself, he just threw the spear to the ground and continued his desperate run.

Bransen got Jameston’s attention and pointed up above.

“Too thin,” the scout replied, meaning the branches.

Bransen shook his head and started up anyway, falling into the malachite in his brooch. He lessened his weight greatly, his hands easily propelling him skyward. Within only a few moments he had climbed nearly twenty feet to the tree’s tiny top (which wasn’t bending under his weight in the least). He looked back to see Jameston gawking at him and shaking his head in disbelief.

Bransen suppressed his smile and looked to the east again. Though he still couldn’t see as widely as he had hoped, the view proved enough to make out the pennants flying over a large force.

“Palmaristown,” he muttered, turning his gaze south. The structures of Ethelbert dos Entel, built on steps up the mountainsides, were in clear view only a couple of leagues away. Was the war nearing its end? And what might this mean for his quest to find the Jhesta Tu? Bransen danced his way back down to Jameston and relayed the information.

“So these are Ethelbert’s men,” Jameston remarked, glancing down at the fleeing force. “They’ll run all the way to the city, I’m guessing.”

“Not all of them,” Bransen determinedly replied. To Jameston’s gasp of surprise, he leaped from the tree and floated-floated, not fell!-to the ground. He was running as he landed, scrambling through the thick copse to intercept nearby soldiers.

“I’ve got to get me some of them damned stones,” he heard Jameston mutter as the man carefully and painstakingly worked his way back down to the ground.

The Highwayman slipped into a grove of pines, sliding silently through the dense branches. He followed a movement out of the corner of his eye to his left, and he glided as a shadow to intercept.

The man ran before him; the Highwayman’s foot thrust out to strike the trailing foot of the fleeing soldier, kicking it behind his other ankle. The man tripped and tumbled forward, landing awkwardly in a skid on his knees and hands. Apparently still oblivious to the source of his fall, he started to scramble back to his feet.

A fine sword blade atop his shoulder, its sharp edge barely an inch from his neck, froze him in place.

“Please, sir, I’ve a family,” he begged.

The Highwayman retracted the sword, grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him to his feet, turning him as he stood to look him in the face. The soldier gasped, eyes widening as he considered the black clothing and the unusual gemstone brooch.

“Affwin Wi?” he asked.

The Highwayman paused at hearing that name yet again. “You know Affwin Wi?” he asked.

“Of her all do,” the terrified soldier replied.

“Let him go!” came a cry from the side where a pair of soldiers appeared, swords in hand. They advanced slowly toward the Highwayman, their blades raised threateningly.

“Oh, I’m not thinking that you’re in a place to be telling him what to do,” came an answer to the side of the newcomers, who both looked and blanched at the sight of Jameston Sequin, his bow drawn, arrow leveled.

“Easy,” the soldier with Bransen instructed his companions. “He’s one o’ Affwin Wi’s boys.”

The other two certainly did relax at that.

“Praise the ancient ones,” one muttered while the other gave the sign of the evergreen.

Bransen and Jameston exchanged glances, both of them noting yet again that curious combination and juxtaposition of the major Honce religions. The ancient ones were Samhaist gods, the evergreen the sign of the Order of Blessed Abelle.

“If ye’re to sting him, then now’s the time or never’s the time,” one of the newcomers remarked.

“Him?” asked Bransen.

“Prince Milwellis,” the other newcomer clarified.

“Aye, that one came back mad because you and your friends stung him so hard the first time,” said the first. “So stick him again, we beg, and this time stick his own body, if ye’re getting me point.”

“He’s a dog what’s killed a thousand mothers and more than that o’ children,” said the man standing beside Bransen.

“To see his blood staining the waters o’ the Mirianic would do our hearts good when we come from Entel, and don’t ye doubt that we’ll be back,” said one of the others.

“Where is Affwin Wi?” Bransen asked. “Has she returned to the city?”

The three soldiers exchanged shrugs.

“She’s still out, I’m thinking,” said the one near Bransen. “Not far from here, last I heard.”

“Be gone,” Bransen told his prisoner and the others, and they were happy to oblige.

Bransen fixed his gaze on Jameston, who nodded solemnly and slipped back into the thick grove of pines, with Bransen close behind.

Two other sets of eyes watched the exchange between the strangers and the soldiers, all the more carefully when they took note of Bransen’s sword.

Merwal Yahna motioned to Pactset Va, and the two men slid away from the scene, no less silent than the black-clothed stranger carrying a sword he should not possess.

“Jhesta Tu,” Merwal reported to Affwin Wi soon after. “There is no doubt.”

“He wore our clothing,” said Pactset Va, a young and strong specimen with small dark eyes and his hair bound in a topknot. “And carried a sword as your own traced with vines.”

Affwin Wi drew her broken blade and rolled it over in surprisingly delicate hands that had many times driven right through the throat of an opponent. She looked to Merwal Yahna with an expression that was not hopeful. The Jhesta Tu had hunted them in Behr, but they had thought their mercenary stint with Laird Ethelbert would allow them reprieve from their continual trials against Affwin Wi’s former masters. Had they found her again?

Affwin Wi took some solace in the likelihood that this new mystic would be acting mostly alone; the Jhesta Tu considered the adjudication of the matter of a rogue like Affwin Wi to be a personal challenge for their disciples, whereas the Hou-lei traditions Affwin Wi had come to follow, much more forceful and warlike, called for as many warriors as needed, and then some more, for any given task. In simple terms, Hou-lei didn’t fight fairly. Three times before the great warrior had helped her fend off Jhesta Tu.

Since the Jhesta Tu’s companion in the woods earlier was surely not of Behr or Jhesta Tu, Affwin Wi had no reason to believe this time would be different.

Well, you do look like a southerner,” Jameston quipped as he and Bransen made their way to the southwest, tracing a wide perimeter of Ethelbert dos Entel. “You’ve got the skin for it.”

Bransen could only shrug. Though Jameston was teasing, his words were true enough. With his brown skin and jet black hair, the black clothing and his exotic sword, the Ethelbert warriors had thought him from Behr. And they understood the significance of his dress. “Affwin Wi,” he mumbled, and he found it hard to breathe. They were close; the Jhesta Tu were close.

“And what are you planning to do when we find these folk?” Jameston asked as if reading his mind, which was probably not a difficult thing to do at that moment.

“Learn from them,” he replied. “You cannot understand, but I am trapped in an infirm body.”

“Are you, then?” the scout asked, his eyebrows rising along with the sides of his mouth as he put on an incredulous grin.

“Without this,” Bransen explained, pointing to his brooch, “I am a helpless, babbling fool, the one you saw being dragged toward the glacier after the troll fight.”

“Wasn’t it a knock in the head?”

“A knock in the head that dislodged the gemstone,” Bransen explained.

Jameston nodded and smiled. “I wondered on that. I saw you walking-being dragged, actually-and thought you knocked silly beyond any chance of regaining your senses.”

Bransen lifted an eyebrow. “Thank you for the assistance.”

“Told you not to fight the damned trolls.”

Bransen let it go with a laugh, not willing to recount all those earlier questions at this pressing time.

“You think these strangers we’re hunting will free you of that stone?” Jameston asked.

Bransen saw that the scout didn’t understand. He was simply too edgy at that moment to go into great detail. “They will,” he replied.

He turned to glance at Jameston and ensure that the explanation would suffice just as the scout froze in his tracks, his eyes locked.

“Looks like we’re going to find out,” Jameston whispered out of the side of his mouth. Following his gaze to a pair of thick pines across a small open patch of ground, Bransen saw a warrior, lithe and strong with tightly wound muscles. His brow, furrowed and pronounced with the dark, thin lines of his eyebrows, made his black eyes seem even angrier, fiercer, an imposing appearance that grew only more so for his shaven head. He was dressed in black silk clothing akin to Bransen’s own and casually swung a strange weapon at the end of one arm, a pair of forearm-length solid wooden poles secured at their ends by a short length of leather.

“Nun’chu’ku,” Bransen mouthed as he considered the very deadly weapon he recognized from his lessons reading the Book of Jhest.

The warrior said something in a strange tongue, and Bransen tried to unwind the words. He knew the language from the book his father had penned, but he had never heard it spoken before. The warrior repeated his phrase, a demand from the insistent tone.

“You know what he’s saying, boy?” Jameston whispered.

“Something about Jhesta Tu,” Bransen answered, shaking his head. “Asking if I am Jhesta Tu, I think, but I cannot be certain.”

“Act certain, then,” Jameston replied.

“Jhesta Tu,” Bransen said loudly.

The warrior’s dark eyes narrowed immediately, and he began to walk slowly to their left, putting himself more in line with Bransen.

“Wrong answer,” Jameston said.

“Jhesta Tu?” Bransen asked this time, and he pointed at the warrior. That stopped the man in his pacing, and his expression turned more to curiosity.

“Who be you?” the warrior asked in the common tongue of Honce, though heavily accented in the dialect of Behr, a rolling and bouncing singsong effect of consonants bitten off and vowels exaggerated.

“I am Bransen Gari-” Bransen started, but he changed direction and said with confidence, “I am the son of Sen Wi of the Jhesta Tu and of Bran Dynard, trained at the Walk of Clouds.”

“But you have de sword,” the warrior said, his accent thick.

“I wield the sword of Sen Wi.”

“You be Jhesta Tu.”

Bransen shook his head, and the warrior snickered.

“You give me the sword.”

Bransen shook his head again.

“You give me the sword now, and you go.”

“And if I do not?”

“Then I take the sword from your body, yes.” As he finished, the warrior sent his nun’chu’ku into sudden motion, spinning the bottom length in a fast rotation at his side, then snapping it across his chest so that it wrapped under his upraised arm and slapped flat against his back. It came back in front of him and to his right for another spinning display before going under his upraised arm and around his back. When he brought the wooden pole humming before him once more, he set it into a furious reverse spin before him, then worked it back and up beside his right ear. He slapped his left wrist across his vertical right forearm and caught the flying pole in his grasp, immediately tugging it across back to his left while letting go with his right hand so that the other pole now flew freely.

Back and forth he worked the amazing weapon, changing hands and perfectly moving the momentum from one pole, through the leather tie to the other pole, reversing the spins.

It ended as suddenly as it had begun, the man somehow turning the nun’chu’ku so that its spin tucked it neatly under his right arm.

“Awful lot of bluster for so few words,” Jameston quietly remarked.

“Give me de sword now,” the warrior said.

Bransen drew his blade in a fluid and powerful movement, snapping the sword before him, angled diagonally to the sky. He slowly folded his elbow, bringing the back of the sword blade in against his forehead. After only a very short pause he snapped the blade down and to the side with such speed that it cracked through the air. He ended, as the practice demanded, with the tip of his blade a hair’s breadth from the dirt, angled down and slightly away from him.

Bransen kept his expression purposely grim, although he was beaming inside in confidence, bolstered by the Behr warrior’s expression, which confirmed to him that he had executed the sword salute perfectly.

“I think not,” he said, taking a slow and deliberate step forward. Jameston faded away from him a couple of short shuffles to the side, bow in his left hand, right hand positioned to grab an arrow from the quiver strapped diagonally across his back.

The warrior paid no heed to Jameston, his dangerous gaze locked on Bransen. He moved his right arm just a bit, the nun’chu’ku dropped free of his hold and unwound to its full length at the end of his grasp. He slid into a crouch, left hand coming up before his chest in a blocking position, his right arm sliding back just a bit. He gave a brief shout and stood from his pose. He never blinked and never stopped staring at Bransen as he took a couple of steps farther to the left and fell once more into that ready posture.

“What’s that about?” Jameston asked.

“He is showing me that he is unafraid,” Bransen explained.

“Should I just shoot him?”

“You wouldn’t hit him.”

“Hmm,” was Jameston’s doubtful response.

The warrior’s eyes narrowed, and his lip twitched into a snarl as if the chatter was an insult to him, which Bransen realized it probably was.

The Highwayman saluted crisply with his sword again then slowly walked his left foot forward toward the warrior, falling into a widestance, forward-diagonal crouch. He crooked his right elbow and turned his right wrist so that his arm looked like a serpent as he brought it back up high, his sword pointing forward past his head. He gracefully lifted his left hand before him, palm out. The warrior from Behr sent his weapon into a spin and strode forward a step.

The Highwayman dropped his arm, stabbing his sword forward in an underhand movement as he stepped closer to his opponent. He came up fast, handing the blade to his left hand and striking a mirror-image of the pose from which he had started.

They were barely three strides apart and then only two as the warrior from Behr gave a shout and came forward, his weapon working a dizzying blur of spins before he caught it in both hands. He turned them so the poles snapped vertically, the leather tie drawing a horizontal line before his face.

The Highwayman tried to sort out a counter. His next movement would likely end the posturing and begin the actual fighting. He tried to remember everything he had read about nun’chu’ku and the techniques involved, tried to somehow link that book knowledge against the minimal display he had witnessed from the Behrenese warrior.

He simply wasn’t sure of what he was up against here, of the limitations and strengths of this exotic weapon. A mischievous grin came to his lips and he thought himself very clever as he began to shift again very slowly.

Suddenly, thrusting his blade, turning it over so that its razor edge pointed skyward Bransen poked toward the warrior’s face but pulled up short and slashed the sword for the sky, thinking to sever the leather tie of the nun’chu’ku. The warrior didn’t try to pull the exotic weapon away; the Highwayman thought he had scored a clean hit.

But the man from Behr lifted his hands as the sword came up, absorbing most of the strike’s energy. As the blade connected with the leather but without any momentum to cut through, the warrior crossed his hands before his chest then thrust upward with his right and pulled downward with his left, the resulting turn of leather and wood nearly tearing the sword from the Highwayman’s grasp!

The warrior drove the weapons higher and stepped through, turning right-to-left suddenly as he went, his trailing left foot snapping out to kick the Highwayman squarely in the gut. Bransen had to grab his sword with both hands to prevent it from being torn from his grasp.

The Highwayman threw his hips back, absorbing the brunt of the sharp blow. As the warrior turned about before him, now driving the sword’s blade back down, Bransen went forward a short step and leaped into a twisting somersault, still holding fast with both hands and now tucking his elbows in tight to try to gain control of the movements of the weapons. He thought he could tear his sword free with the momentum of the twist and take the leather tie apart in the process, but the Behrenese warrior, again one step ahead of him, simply disengaged as Bransen tumbled past. The sudden freedom of his blade nearly toppled Bransen as he came around to his feet.

The Highwayman moved instinctively, knowing that his opponent would expect an overbalance. Taking his sword in his left hand alone, he pivoted onto the ball of his right foot, spinning around and dropping a downward backhand parry perfectly in line with the flying end of the nun’chu’ku. The metal rang out in vibration from the heavy hit as Bransen came up square with his opponent, falling immediately into a defensive crouch, hands joining on the hilt of his sword before him.

Not an instant too soon. The Behrenese warrior, offering no opportunity for Bransen to move to an offensive posture, launched a sudden and furious routine, the nun’chu’ku whipping before him in a sidelong swipe, then going into a spin above his head, where he cleverly changed hands and came in from the other side.

Bransen barely blocked.

Again and again and again the wooden poles hummed through the air up high, down low, behind the warrior’s back. He came in left and down, right across, right and down from on high.

The Highwayman was purely reacting, trying hard to follow the man’s dizzying movements to get his sword out to block. Somehow he kept up, but he felt as if he were drowning, as if the water were rising too fast for him to stay above it.

He tried to block another swing from the right, but the warrior shortened the strike and the nun’chu’ku whipped past. The Highwayman understood as the man dropped low before him, still rotating. Instinct alone had Bransen leaping and tucking his legs, narrowly avoiding a cunning leg sweep that would have put him to the ground.

He couldn’t leap fast enough, though, and he had to put all his weight to his right leg and lift his left, turning it to absorb the blow as the nun’chu’ku came around and smashed him hard against the side of his shin.

Bransen gritted through the hit and stabbed down hard. With no momentum left in the nun’chu’ku, the warrior let it go and caught it quickly with a reverse grip, then slapped the pole against the descending sword blade. Again he loosened his grip and shoved, pushing Bransen’s sword away, turning his hand over as he went, using that sword as a fulcrum to throw the bulk of the nun’chu’ku beneath it. His left hand crossed under his thrusting right elbow, catching the free pole as he sprang from the crouch before Bransen. Momentum regained as he lifted his left hand up high and over then down and back across, the descending warrior got past Bransen’s desperate defensive turn enough to send the flying nun’chu’ku pole hard against Bransen’s right shoulder.

The Highwayman gasped at the explosion of pain and stumbled to his left, stunned by the sheer weight of the blow.

Jameston had seen more than enough. He had long ago taken a measure of the Highwayman as the finest young warrior he had ever seen, but he already knew that Bransen was ill-prepared to battle this fierce warrior. In a single fluid movement, Jameston’s right hand snapped up and grasped an arrow, pulling it from the quiver, drawing it down over his right shoulder, and setting it expertly to the bow. Still moving in the same beautiful line, the scout drew back and lifted the bow, string coming against the side of his nose. He didn’t have much space between Bransen and the strange warrior, but he didn’t need much.

A form, a leaping and spinning, black-clothed warrior, flew in from the side and behind, just above Jameston. His bowstring lost all tension, the top of his bow snapping forward suddenly and awkwardly, arrow falling to the ground.

The scout cried out in surprise but kept his wits enough to grab his bow in both hands like a stave and swing to his left where the assailant had gone.

Had gone and was now coming back ferociously. Jameston turned that way. Smaller than the other opponent, a woman warrior came at him with clenched fists. She opened her left as she thrust it forward. Instinct alone prompted Jameston to pull his bow in close defensively. The small knife she had used to cut his bowstring stabbed into the bow and stuck fast.

At the last moment Jameston leveled his bow like a spear to fend the charging warrior. She did stop but slapped at the bow left and right, grabbing at the wood.

Jameston retracted and stabbed ahead repeatedly, trying to keep her at bay. He began rotating the staff’s end in small, fast circles; when he had her attention there he cleverly charged and thrust forward. He thought he had her, would have scored a solid hit, but a second stave entered the fray, chopping hard from the side, turning down Jameston’s bow-staff.

“What?” he cried, noting another black-clothed warrior to his left. He let go of his bow with his right hand and lifted it to block. Too late, for the warrior ran the staff up the angled wood above his lifting hand.

Jameston managed to turn so that he only took a glancing blow across his jaw, but when he looked back he saw the woman flying through the air at him, spinning a forward somersault. She straightened as she came over, her legs snapping forward, her black silk slippers poking from under the wide cut of her silken pants.

That’s going to hurt, Jameston thought, as one foot crunched against his cheek and nose; the other slammed him hard in the collarbone. He went flying backward, arms and legs akimbo, and landed on his back, his breath blasted away. Before he could begin to even think about rising, the other warrior was above him, the tip of a staff in tight against the bottom of his chin, ready to drive through his throat.

Jameston lifted his hands in surrender.

The Highwayman tried to block out Jameston’s troubles. He couldn’t afford even to glance at his friend’s precarious position while battling a man of such talent and speed. He was still reminding himself of that when the Behrenese warrior faked high and swept low with his legs, sending Bransen tumbling to the ground.

Even as he fell Bransen sought the malachite, lessening his weight. He landed lightly on his back, turned his legs under him and tightened his stomach, hoisting his shoulders with such force that he propelled himself right back to his feet with a suddenness that took his opponent by surprise.

The Highwayman went for the win, thinking to wound this warrior fast and spring away to help his fallen friend. He thrust out, a certain hit on the warrior’s hip, but he shortened the strike, both because he had no desire to kill this man and because he was anxious, too anxious, to get to Jameston. And because the Highwayman simply wasn’t used to fighting someone this quick and trained in the Jhesta Tu manner.

So when he expected his blade to penetrate flesh, he found instead a nun’chu’ku spinning an underhand block, pushing the angle of the cut wide. Worse, the exotic weapon wrapped up and around and the warrior grabbed both ends, locking the sword in place. The Highwayman reacted in time to prevent the sudden twist from snapping his blade in half by turning with the angle change, but the movement had him and his opponent in an awkward alignment, slightly askew of each other and both leaning away.

The warrior from Behr fell even lower, dropping his back, left leg into a deep crouch. Then he began kicking with his right leg, hitting the Highwayman in the shin and side of his knee, and then again in rapid succession.

The Highwayman fell into a similar crouch and responded with his own kicks, but his opponent had the advantage, the momentum, and the initiative. Feet circled and kicked forward and back, slapping and bruising as the two held tight to their entangled weapons.

For a few heartbeats, the Highwayman took two blows for every one he delivered. He gradually moved to more even footing and even managed a solid hit against the back of his opponent’s outstretched thigh, his toes jabbing hard into the man’s hamstring.

But that leg came up higher suddenly and clipped Bransen’s chin, nearly sending him tumbling away. He moved in closer, and kicks became jabbing knees. Again the Highwayman took the worst of it. He knew the style of fighting well from his readings, but he had never engaged in it, had never even sparred with this technique, and he was up against a master.

A knee came in hard against the side of his thigh, bruising him sorely. He shifted away from the assault. The warrior from Behr promptly straightened his leg in a snap kick that left Bransen’s left arm numb.

He wanted to retreat and regroup, but he couldn’t pull his sword free, and he surely couldn’t surrender it.

So the Highwayman went the other way, crouch-walking even closer to his opponent. He let go of his sword with his left hand, punching at the warrior, who easily shifted back enough so that, even if the punch landed, it could do no real harm.

But the Highwayman wasn’t trying to punch the warrior. Instead, he grabbed the man by the front of his silken shirt and with a yell, threw himself forward so that they were tight together.

The warrior from Behr laughed-exactly the response Bransen had hoped to elicit, for it told him that the warrior had believed his move to be a desperate attempt to drive the trapped sword in for the kill. The warrior then snapped his head backward and forward viciously, his forehead crunching against the Highwayman’s nose.

Bransen accepted the powerful hit, for he was already deep into the graphite of his brooch, bringing forth its powers. As the warrior from Behr snapped his head back again for another butt, the mighty jolt of lightning power kept him moving backward, had him flying backward, arms and legs flailing. He hit the ground and jerked about wildly.

The Highwayman stood and with a flip of his wrist sent the nun’chu’ku into the air where he caught it with his free hand. He hid well his grimace of pain as he straightened, for his knee, thigh, and hip were beyond bruised.

“Drop the weapons!” the woman shouted.

Bransen glanced to the side, where the man holding the stave on Jameston retracted it just an inch and popped it down hard against the underside of Jameston’s chin, drawing a pitiful gurgle from the prostrate man.

In front of the Highwayman, the fallen warrior finally managed to stand-or tried to, at least, but his legs wobbled uncontrollably and he staggered back down to one knee. He cried out through chattering teeth in the tongue of the southern kingdom. Bransen understood enough of the words to recognize that he was calling for his friends to back away from Jameston.

In the common tongue of Honce, the Behr warrior added, “This one is worthy to wield that sword!”

Sweeter words Bransen Garibond had never heard.