The Dame

TWENTY-NINE

A storm?” Brother Pinower asked. He stood on the wall with Brother Giavno, looking out to the west. The sun was not yet halfway down from its zenith to the horizon, but a dull pall had already settled on the land, a premature twilight.

Brother Giavno was shaking his head before Pinower even asked the obvious question. “No. Not a storm, not clouds.”

Pinower looked at him curiously, and the man’s grim expression, horrified even, had the young monk even more perplexed.

“Smoke,” Brother Giavno explained.

“Smoke?” Pinower echoed, turning fast to regard again the strange phenomenon. “But that is too far… I see no flames. It is out to the horizon and more…”

Brother Giavno didn’t bother to respond. It was smoke, he knew. Somewhere far to the west something big was burning.

More monks came to the wall over the next few hours as the daylight waned and the gigantic cloud in the west grew darker and more ominous. Across the field the army of Palmaristown seemed equally engaged by the spectacle.

Many brothers stayed on the wall after night fell to view the sky three-quarters full of stars and one quarter, the western edge, an eerie combination of blackness built on the foundation of an ominous orange glow.

Dawn’s light showed the cloud expanding still, and that morning everyone in St. Mere Abelle moved to the towers and the walls to view the spectacle, even Dame Gwydre and Father Artolivan.

The old father groaned at the site.

“What could it be?” Brother Pinower asked from behind him.

“Palmaristown,” the old monk said with certainty.

The Highwayman is still out there,” King Yeslnik said to his perfumed wife.

“And you think he is coming to slay you?” Lady Olym asked.

“Do not be flippant with me, wife!”

“He didn’t kill your Uncle Delaval.”

“You know nothing!” Yeslnik scolded. “We found his sword…”

“There are many swords.”

“Not like his!”

Lady Olym sighed and waved him away. “Perhaps he dropped it or someone took it from him.”

“Plundered his corpse, perhaps?” said Yeslnik in a sneering tone that struck hard. “That would not please you, would it?”

“I do not know of what you are speaking,” she said, but the possibility worded by Yeslnik had clearly knocked her off-balance here, and there was little conviction in her assertion.

King Yeslnik slapped her hard across the face. It was the first time he had ever done anything remotely like that. When she lifted her hands to try to deflect him, he punched her squarely in the nose. She staggered back and fell on her backside, staring at him in wonder.

“I will hear no more of the Highwayman from you. Ever,” Yeslnik warned.

“You spoke of him first!”

“Ever!” he repeated threateningly. Wailing, Olym curled into a fetal position.

“Ever,” King Yeslnik said again, leaning over close. “Bannagran will kill him. Kill him!” he shouted suddenly, and the startled Lady Olym jerked and wailed. Yeslnik whirled away from the pitiful woman and plopped into the chair at his desk, dropping an elbow on the arm and chewing at his nails.

Had he failed in fleeing the field before Ethelbert dos Entel? Should he have accepted the losses and pressed Ethelbert to the edge of the sea to be done with this foolishness quickly? But Ethelbert’s assassins would have killed him!

He lurched to his feet and began pacing nervously. “Panlamaris will deal with those traitors at Chapel Abelle,” he said to himself. “Why is this so hard? Why won’t these fools just concede to the inevitable?”

“You are king,” came an unexpectedly supportive voice. Yeslnik spun about to see his wife sitting up. He looked at her curiously, then more closely.

“You are the King of Honce,” she said again. “Only the prideful laird of that miserable city in the south and the traitorous fools at Chapel Abelle refuse to see it. All the rest is yours.”

Yeslnik continued to stare at her, but he felt compelled to move over to her. He fell to his knees, very close, and stared into her eyes, one swelling from his punch.

“Gather the lairds who follow you,” Olym suggested. “The dozens who love you. Lend them warriors to extend their holdings to engulf all of those flattened by you in your glorious march and by Prince Milwellis. Take the Inner Coast and the Mantis Arm. Take all those communities along the Belt-and-Buckle. Take them all, and let Ethelbert in his city and the monks in their chapel watch from their walls as the world, as King Yeslnik’s Honce, goes along without them.”

Yeslnik’s jaw hung open, for never had he heard such advice from this source. He was amazed that Lady Olym even knew about the march of Milwellis in the east or of the many communities he had run across and run over to Ethelbert dos Entel and back. He continued staring for just a few heartbeats. Slowly shaking his head with disbelief, he pulled her close and kissed her more passionately than he had in a long, long while.

Lady Olym pushed him back after a few more heartbeats. “They cannot come out against you, or you will destroy them,” she said.

“Delaval warships will blockade Ethelbert dos Entel,” King Yeslnik proclaimed.

“Yes!” Olym squealed.

“And Chapel Abelle!” said Yeslnik. “A prison of their own making!”

“Yes! Oh, yes!”

“And I will send Panlamaris by land and by sea into Vanguard, and Dame Gwydre will know her folly!”

“Lead them yourself! You are the King of Honce!”

Yeslnik tackled her, showering her with kisses all over her face.

“Take me, my king!” she cried. “Ravish me!”

Yeslnik nearly swooned, overwhelmed, for he had never seen his wife in such a state of passion aimed at him before. His confidence grew with every kiss and every caress.

It was good to be the king.

Panlamaris,” said the whispers across the wall as the lone rider stormed across the field toward St. Mere Abelle. “That is Laird Panlamaris himself!”

Some calls went out for archers or for gemstone assaults as the large and imposing Laird of Palmaristown drew closer to the wall, but those were few and without conviction.

That cloud of smoke rising in the west, that sign of Palmaristown burning, served as a white flag of temporary truce in the stunned sensibilities of all who glimpsed it. Although Palmaristown had come against St. Mere Abelle, even in the face of the executions of Fatuus and the other brothers, the image of certain horror occurring in the west allowed Panlamaris to make this ride unhindered, right to the base of St. Mere Abelle’s high wall.

Behind him on the field a few other riders halfheartedly followed, but it was obvious that the laird’s seemingly reckless ride had caught his own soldiers by surprise.

“To eternal flames with you, damned witch!” the man called when he came in sight of the Dame of Vanguard. “The blood of thousands, of mothers and children, stains your pretty hands. How will you wash it away?”

Dame Gwydre rocked back on her heels.

“She is here, as are those in support of her!” Father Premujon yelled down at Panlamaris. “Whatever ill has befallen your city-”

“Powries!” the fiery old laird interrupted. “Powries by the score. Powries set loose by the witch of Vanguard. What horror have you set upon the folk of Honce, wicked Gwydre?”

“I did no such thing,” Gwydre managed to reply.

“As in the harbor with my ships!” Panlamaris yelled. “And now a cowardly assault on a sleeping city, to cut the throats of children and burn the buildings to ash! Eternal fires for you, I say! And, oh, but do not doubt that your precious Vanguard will feel the wrath of Palmaristown, of Panlamaris and Milwellis, of King Yeslnik and all the goodly folk of Honce! They will know you, powrie friend, and they will loathe you! I await the day when Dame Gwydre is dragged through the streets of Palmaristown that all may spit upon she who invited the powries back to Honce!”

He whirled his mount around and thundered away, and not an arrow or bolt of gemstone lightning reached out after him.

The siege of St. Mere Abelle ended within the hour, Laird Panlamaris and his army moving with all haste back to the west.

Later that same day Prince Milwellis’s army appeared in the distant south, moving with great speed to the west, to home, to the ruins and the dead.