The Highwayman

7

To the Side of Things The middle-aged man stared out the partly open door for a long and silent moment, then finally seemed to breathe again and stepped back, pulling the door wide. "Can it be?" he whispered, and he held up a candle before him. He was of medium build, a bit shorter than most men, with a shaggy head of black and gray hair, and with several days of beard evident on his face. One of his eyes was quite dead, showing only milky white, but the other held a lustrous blue-gray sparkle.

Brother Dynard put on a wide smile. "Garibond, my heart fills with joy at seeing you alive and well." He stepped inside the dimly lit stone house, and in doing so, stepped out the lake, for this stone structure was constructed on a rock out in the water, a dozen feet from the shore along a sometimes submerged, sometimes revealed, shoal. The house was built in two parts, with this, the lower level, right at the lakeside, and a higher, drier structure a dozen feet above and farther from the shore, on the higher rocks. Even with the two structures, connected by a cave and stone extension, there was little elaborate workmanship showing about Garibond's home, just two stonewalled rectangles with thatched roofs.

"Bran in the flesh! Back from his travels around the world!" Garibond Womak replied. He stepped forward and clapped Dynard hard on the shoulder, then wrapped him in a great hug, which Dynard comfortably returned.

Garibond leaped back. "Come in," he bade. "Come in! You must tell me every detail." His enthusiasm melted almost at once, as he noted the grim expression on the face of his long-lost friend.

"I need your help," Dynard said seriously.

"Have I e'er shown you anything but?"

With an appreciative nod, Dynard stepped back outside and splashed across the shallows to the shore, returning a moment later with the unconscious young woman in his arms.

Garibond's good eye went wide.

"We found her at the end of the new road," Dynard explained.

"Where Bernivvigar left her to die, with the blessing of Laird Pryd."

Dynard nodded.

"Are you mad?" Garibond asked. "The woman was convicted and executed. She met the adder in the sack-to the joy of the folk who went to watch, I am certain," he added, his voice taking a sour note. "You cannot-"

"I could not leave her out there. I-we-met powries dancing about her, ready to take her blood."

"Dead is dead. Probably better that way than from the slow poison of the snake."

Dynard just shook his head and moved to the side, gently laying the woman down on a thick bearskin rug elevated on a wooden frame near the still-warm hearth.

"You had to know the truth of her predicament," Garibond protested. "You've seen old Bernivvigar's work before."

"I could not leave her."

"They'll put you in her place, you fool," protested Garibond. "You cannot go against the word of Laird Pryd. Your own brothers of Abelle were there in attendance, bearing witness."

Dynard held out his arms helplessly, and Garibond gave a great sigh.

"You said 'we,' " Garibond remarked. "Who was with you, and more important to your own skin, where is he now?"

The smile returned to Brother Dynard's face and he stepped back outside and motioned off into the night. A moment later, SenWi appeared at his side in the doorway. "Not he. My wife."

Garibond's good eye went wide again, and widened even more as he came to understand the truth of SenWi's exotic heritage. "But she's a pretty one," he managed to say at length.

"Will you help us?"

"What would you have me do?" Garibond answered skeptically. "I'm no healer."

"Just let us stay here for a bit, that we can tend the girl and keep her safe and warm."

"You're to be the death of me."

"I know you can hide her-can hide us," Dynard said with a grin, and Garibond gave a sigh. "He has tunnels beneath this house," Dynard explained to SenWi. "Keeps him safe from powries and goblins." He turned back to Garibond and, with a wide grin, added, "Though I thought you'd have slowed enough by now for them to catch you before you got your old arse into the hole."

"Bah, them stupid ones don't even come around here. If they did, I'd be more likely to stand and kill them all before I'd run like a child into the tunnels!"

Dynard knew the truth of the bluster, but he didn't press the point.

Garibond's smile proved short-lived. "Tunnels or no, she won't be safe if Lord Pryd-or worse, his son, Prydae-discovers that she is missing," Garibond said.

"Prydae?"

"Aye, Prydae. A boy when you left. A man now. A young warrior with as much fight and metal as the father ever knew, who makes his reputation daily against the goblins and the powries."

Again Dynard was reminded of how long he'd been gone. He looked at SenWi and gave a helpless laugh and shake of his head. "The world moves on without me, it would seem."

"Young Prince Prydae would not take well to your disruption of old Bernivvigar's holy ritual."

"Murder is holy ritual?" SenWi asked, her eyes going wide, and she looked up at Dynard for support.

"Not murder," the monk tried to explain, but he found little heart for the distinction he offered. "The Samhaists carry out the executions and other punishments of convicted criminals."

"This young girl was a murderess?"

"An adulteress," said Garibond.

SenWi looked to Dynard, who explained the crime in the woman's native tongue. That explanation did little to alleviate either her confusion or her disdain, however.

"Appeasing the Samhaists has always been important to the lairds," Garibond reminded Dynard. "You know that."

Brother Dynard paused to study his friend before answering. "But you will allow us the use of your home?"

"Shut the damned door, old fool," Garibond said. "And come along to the upper house where it's more dry-and bring along a log or two to throw upon the fire. I've some stew I can heat." He gave another sigh and looked at SenWi. "And for you, pretty one…" He turned to Dynard with his pause.

"SenWi," the monk explained.

"Yes, SenWi, pray you go behind that curtain and find more blankets for the poor girl."

"Prince Prydae will see the powrie tracks and think no more of it," Dynard assured his friend.

"Or he will follow your own to my house, and Bernivvigar's next ceremony will feature four sacks."

That brought a laugh from Dynard, though he knew well that Garibond was hardly joking.

A short while later, with SenWi tending Callen by the hearth in the upper house, Dynard and Garibond sat opposite each other in comfortable chairs of wood and skins a few feet back, telling the woman of Behr the tales of their long friendship. The two had been fast friends since childhood, and Garibond had even tried to enter the Church of Abelle at the same time as Dynard. But the court of monks had seen that Garibond's motivation was strictly one of loyalty to his friend and not wrought of any sincere belief in the Church and its precepts, and so he had been refused even before Dynard had set out from Pryd Holding to the mother chapel in the north.

Their friendship had not been as tight when Dynard had returned a few years later, the two explained to SenWi, and they both blamed circumstance and no lessening of their almost-brotherly love. Dynard had been busy in the town and chapel, right up to the time when he had departed for the southland, after all; and Garibond only very rarely went to the town, preferring the solitude of his small farm east of the community.

"Sometimes it is easy to forget those things that are truly most important to us," Dynard reflected.

"And this one has always been getting me in trouble," Garibond said suddenly, and he jabbed his accusing finger in the air Dynard's way.

"Or the other way around!" Dynard argued.

" 'Twas your own idea to take the ripened tomatoes from farmer Filtin."

" 'Twas my idea to take only the ripened ones after you dragged me to his fields," came Dynard's not-so-subtle correction.

The two laughed, and SenWi did as well, until Garibond began to pat his hands in the air and whisper for quiet, reminding them that his house wasn't that far out of town, after all.

"What are you doing to her?" Garibond asked SenWi then, for she had bent over the gravely injured younger woman and slid her hands under the blanket around the poor girl's midsection.

"She is offering her healing powers to the poor girl," Dynard answered.

"Callen," said Garibond. "Callen Duwornay. She was indeed guilty of the accusation of adultery, from what little I heard, but she's not deserving this fate. Poor girl indeed."

He studied SenWi as she slid her hand back out and shifted to put it back from a different angle. "She uses no soul stone," he remarked.

"SenWi is Jhesta Tu," Dynard replied.

Garibond shrugged. The name likely meant nothing to anyone north of the mountains, Dynard knew.

"Just one of the many marvels I have to share with you," the monk said, and he began recounting his journeys then, from the road to Ethelbert to the sea voyage around the Belt-and-Buckle and all through the wild deserts of Behr to his culminating exploration at the Jhesta Tu monastery. He spoke with passion and true admiration as he detailed those years spent at the Walk of Clouds with the devoted mystics, and his story lasted until the eastern sky had begun to lighten with the coming dawn. Garibond didn't point out the lateness of the hour and neither did SenWi, whose work with Callen was hardly finished.

"What are you going to do?" Garibond asked somberly when at last Dynard settled back in his chair.

"In the morning, I return to Chapel Pryd with SenWi."

"Take care," Garibond warned. "Things have changed in the ten years since you left, my friend."

"How so?" Dynard asked, responding to the alarm in his friend's voice.

"The work on the road is hard on the people; and Laird Pryd, like all the lairds of Honce, is determined that his holding will not be outdone in this endeavor. But the land is not tamed-less so than even when you left, I would say."

"Laird Ethelbert spoke of goblins and powries."

"The powries are as thick as trees, as you saw for yourself," said Garibond. He paused and looked curiously at his friend. "How did you get rid of the beasts? You've never been a warrior."

Dynard led Garibond's gaze to SenWi.

"Interesting," Garibond remarked.

"So you are not surprised to hear that we encountered powries?"

"The bloody caps are all about," Garibond explained. "They've left me alone, for the most part. I don't know why. Mayhap they think my dirty old blood will soil their berets."

"Or it could be those tunnels beneath your house," Dynard said with a wink.

"Perhaps you should move closer to the town," SenWi offered in her halting command of the language.

"Ah, that would kill me sooner than any powries ever could!"

"Fie the day that we granted them the safety of our coast," Dynard added, and Garibond nodded.

"A group of powries came to the shores of Honce many years ago," Dynard explained to SenWi. "Perhaps a score of years ago now. The lairds chose not to confront them, but parlayed instead, granting the dwarves a region of the coast as their own. We have come to regret that generosity."

"Your own Church did not oppose the decision," Garibond reminded, to which Dynard could only hold up his hands.

A long pause ensued, and Garibond's last statement led Brother Dynard back to the meetings he would face in the morning. "How fares Father Jerak?"

"He is getting very old, and looking even older. Rumors say that Brother Bathelais has assumed most of his duties now."

That news saddened Dynard but did not surprise him; Jerak had already been an old man when Dynard had set out on his mission, after all. Nor did it alarm him in any way. He and Bathelais had been friends before he had left, and, from what he knew, Bathelais was possessed of a good heart and a clear mind.

"More important is the passage of the title of laird," Garibond explained. "Laird Pryd is robust yet, so many say, but he was not at Bernivvigar's court last night. Day by day sees the rise of Prydae."

"A good man?"

Garibond shrugged. "That would hardly be my place to judge, though I have heard nothing contrary to that. His courage against the powries cannot be dismissed, and the soldiers of Castle Pryd follow him with great loyalty. He is as proud as he is fierce, some say, but whether that will prove a strength or a weakness in these days of change, who can know?"

It occurred to Dynard to ask about how this young and rising prince might view the Church of Abelle, but he held the question private. Garibond wouldn't likely know the inner workings of Pryd's Church of Abelle, since he wasn't one to visit Chapel Pryd. Had he ever gone to the place after the monks had turned him away, except on that one occasion to see Dynard off on his mission?

The conversation drifted away then, and so did the three companions, falling into light sleep right where they sat. Sunlight awakened them soon after, though, streaming in through every crack and opening in Garibond's old house.

"And what am I to do with her?" Garibond asked when Dynard and SenWi moved immediately to collect their packs.

Dynard looked to SenWi.

"She will not likely awaken today," SenWi said with confidence.

"And we will return to you this very night," Dynard promised. He looked all about, then reached into his pack and pulled forth his most-prized possession, the transcribed Book of Jhest. He stared at it for a few moments, wondering whether he should reveal it to Father Jerak immediately upon his return to Chapel Pryd. A nagging thought in the back of his head, undefined but forceful, made him reconsider, and he glanced all around. He moved to the back of the two-roomed upper house and pulled open the partially hidden trapdoor, revealing a narrow shaft. He tenderly wrapped the tome and went down the hole with it. He returned a moment later without the book, to see his two companions, particularly Garibond, watching him intently.

"More trouble you're bringing to my house?"

Dynard looked at his friend. "It will not remain here for long," he promised, and Garibond merely smiled and shook his head-a familiar look that sent Dynard's thoughts careening back to the garden raids of their youth.

"First sign of the laird's men, and Callen's going down the hole, as well," Garibond warned.

"Gently, I trust."

"Quickly."

Dynard smiled, knowing the truth of his compassionate friend. Another fine, warm summer day surrounded Dynard and SenWi as they moved back to the end of Pryd's lengthening road. Workers and soldiers were all around, some studying the myriad tracks, others looking to the empty pole where Callen had been strung.

"To think that they meant to work all day under the shadow of the hanging woman," Dynard quietly remarked as he surveyed the scene, while he and SenWi were hidden from the sight of the crew. He noted that the powries had apparently returned after the fight and retrieved the bodies of their fallen. Still, the signs of the struggle clearly remained, a puzzle that the folk milling about the area were trying hard to decipher.

"Are you ready to meet them?" Dynard whispered. He couldn't suppress a helpless chuckle when he regarded his wife, who seemed so uncomfortable dressed in a typical Honce woolen tunic. The dress was normal for the land, true, but wearing it, SenWi hardly seemed like any normal Honce citizen.

SenWi looked up at him, her typically calm expression telling him all he needed to know. He took her hand and rose, then crossed out onto the open ground before the work area.

Calls for them to "stand and be counted!" assailed the couple almost immediately, and soldiers drew out their short swords.

Dynard couldn't help but grin as he noted those weapons, of bronze and iron, and compared them to the sword that SenWi had strapped across her back.

The soldiers approached cautiously, fanning out to flank the couple.

"Be at ease, soldiers of Laird Pryd, for I am of your town, returned now to my chapel," Dynard said to them.

"That's Bran Dynard!" one of the workers yelled out, and a host of murmurs erupted.

"Indeed," said the monk. "The time of my mission is ended, and so I return to Pryd."

"I do not know you," said the nearest soldier, a large man with knotted muscles and a broad and strong chest. Although hardened like a seasoned veteran, he was less than twenty years of age, by Dynard's estimation, perhaps no more than sixteen.

"I am of Chapel Pryd," he explained. "You would have been no more than a boy when I departed."

"It is that monk," said another of the soldiers, and he slid away his sword and moved closer. Nods of agreement came from all around and the warriors relaxed.

Dynard's relief was short-lived, though, for he noted their expressions as they scrutinized SenWi, showing a range of emotions from lewd to curious to dismissive, as one might view a goat or a cow. It was that last expression, offered by the powerful younger warrior, that most unnerved the monk, showing the warrior's complete disregard for the dark-skinned southerner.

" 'Twas powries who ran off with the girl," Dynard said, drawing them all back to him.

"What do you know of it?" asked one, apparently the leader of the group, a slender, tall warrior of about Dynard's age whom the monk thought he recognized, though he could not recall the man's name.

"Captain Deepen," the man introduced himself, and Dynard nodded his recollection.

"We came upon them last night, and did battle," the monk explained. "They were too numerous for us to retrieve the girl, but we drove them away."

"And yet you escaped?" Deepen asked, obvious doubt in his tone.

"Because of your gemstones, no doubt," another remarked.

"More the work of my wife," Dynard explained, looking to SenWi, and he didn't miss the horrified expressions all around him as he proclaimed this diminutive woman, the stranger to Honce, this "beast of Behr," as his wife. Dynard steeled himself against that response and recounted the battle in full, dramatizing SenWi's prowess and sword work, and leaving out only the not-so-small detail that he and SenWi, and not the powries, had run off with poor Callen.

"Laird Pryd will hear of this," Deepen decided and he reached out as if to take Dynard by the arm.

The monk recoiled. "I am for Chapel Pryd straightaway. Too long have I been out on the road. I will speak with Father Jerak, and will come to the summons of Laird Pryd, of course, if I am so called."

The captain eyed him suspiciously, then at SenWi as well, but he did back away a step, clearing the way to the road.

"Where'd you find that…one?" the young and powerful warrior asked Dynard, and the man strode up to study SenWi more closely.

"She is my wife, from Behr," he replied, and the man gave a burst of laughter.

"And your name is?" Dynard asked.

"Bannagran," said the warrior, and he looked at Dynard, chuckled again, then walked away.

Dynard took SenWi by the arm and led her along quickly before the soldiers could reconsider, before they perhaps grew more interested in, and concerned about, the weapon strapped across her back.

In short order, the couple were long out of sight of the workmen and the soldiers, walking quickly down the road. Dynard slowed their pace when they came to the outskirts of Pryd Town and in clear sight of Castle Pryd, considering again the expressions on the faces of those folk at the battle scene, looks from soldier and peasant alike, as they regarded his foreign wife.

How might his brothers of Abelle respond to her?

He wondered if perhaps he should have left SenWi with Garibond. "By the Ancient Ones, it is impossible!" Garibond said to Callen when he came back from his chores to find the woman sitting up in bed, the blankets wrapped about her shoulders. "The poison had you, girl."

Callen kept her head bowed, but Garibond saw her brown eyes glance up at him from behind the screen of her wheat-colored hair.

"The woman-of Behr no less!-saved your life, girl. She gave you healing." He shook his head in disbelief.

Callen rose, unsteady for a moment. "Have you clothing for me?" she asked, and the tremor in her voice reflected the ordeal she had suffered.

Garibond nodded at the foot of the bed, where a tunic and traveling cloak were set out.

"I will be gone this morn," Callen said, and she moved to the clothing and began to dress, discarding modesty in the face of necessity.

"Now, take your time," Garibond said. "Where will you go?" He started for Callen, but held back until she had slipped the tunic over her head.

"Where will you go?" he asked again when she turned back to him.

"I've family in the west," she answered. "They will see to me."

"You've friends here," Garibond replied.

Callen stared at him for a few moments, then tightened her lips and shook her head. She was afraid, he could plainly see. She knew that she was a danger to any who showed her kindness.

"You need food and rest," Garibond remarked, and he rushed across the way and pulled open a cabinet and began searching for some food he might offer. "You cannot go out there now, not so soon. They'll see you and guess the truth of it, don't you see? You should let all the whispers of Callen Duwornay die away before you venture out anywhere where you might be seen. Memories are short, don't you worry, and soon enough, strong and with all health returned, you'll find your way." He finished hopefully, and turned with a loaf of bread in one hand and a cooked chicken in the other.

But the door was open and Callen was gone.