The Ancient sotfk-2 Read online

  He heard the horses closing in fast from behind, but he didn’t dare turn to observe for fear that the effort would make him fall flat on his face. Callen and Cadayle did look about, though, and Callen whispered, “Laird Delaval’s men.”

  “Make way!” came a gruff command from behind a moment later. The riders pulled their horses to an abrupt stop. “Move this wagon off the road and identify yourselves!”

  “He is speaking to you,” Callen whispered.

  Bransen struggled to turn about, finally managing it, though he nearly tumbled at several points. When he did come around he noted the astonished looks on the faces of the two soldiers, a pair of large, older men.

  “What are you about?” asked one of them, a portly giant who sported a thick gray beard.

  “I… I… I…” Bransen stammered, and he honestly couldn’t get out any words beyond that, for he had grown unused to speaking without the aid of the gemstone. “I…”

  Both men crinkled their faces with disgust.

  “My son,” Callen explained, and she moved to support Bransen.

  “You admit that,” asked the other soldier, younger and clean-shaven, except for a tremendous mustache that seemed to reach from ear to ear. Both men laughed at Bransen’s expense.

  “Bah, but go on now and leave him be,” said Callen. “Wounded in the war he was. Took a spear in the back saving another man. He’s deserving your respect, not your taunts.”

  The gray beard looked at them both suspiciously. “Where was he wounded?”

  “In the back,” said Callen, and the man put on a sour expression indeed.

  “Good lady, I’ve not the time for your ignorance nor for your feigned ignorance.”

  “South o’ Pryd Town!” Callen blurted, though she had no idea if there had been any real fighting south of Pryd Town.

  That answer seemed to satisfy the pair, however, to Callen’s relief-until the younger man fixed his gaze upon Cadayle, his gray eyes immediately lighting up with obvious interest.

  “He’s not really my son,” Callen blurted, drawing his attention. “He’s my daughter’s husband, so I’m thinking of him as such.”

  “Daughter’s husband?” the younger man echoed, staring at Cadayle. “He’s married to you?”

  “Aye,” said the woman. “My beloved. We’re for Delaval to see if any of the monks there might be helping him.”

  The soldiers shared a look. The younger one slid down from his saddle and moved beside Bransen and Callen.

  “What’s your name?” he asked, but when Callen started to answer for Bransen, the man held up his hand to hush her.

  “Bra… Br… Brrrran,” Bransen sputtered, spraying the man with every forced syllable.

  “Bran?”

  “Sen,” Callen added, and the man hushed her with a scowl and a sharp retort.

  “Bran?” he asked again.

  “S… Sssss… Brranssen,” said the Stork.

  “Bransen?” the soldier asked, walking a circuit about him.

  “Y… Y… Yes.”

  “Stupid name,” said the soldier, brushing into Bransen, which sent the Stork into an exaggerated stumble, one hand flailing, the other desperately trying to get the walking stick under him for support.

  The honesty of that awkward gait and those fumbling movements had the soldiers glancing at each other again with a mixture of disgust and sympathy. The younger one grabbed Bransen roughly and helped steady him.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said to Cadayle.

  “He’s not dead,” the woman replied, obviously trying hard to fight back her anger at the soldier for bumping Bransen.

  “Sorry for that, too,” said the man with a snicker. “Monks ain’t to help this one. Better for him and for yourself if he’d’ve just died out on the field.” He gave a derisive snort and walked away from Bransen, toward the wagon, visually inspecting it as he neared. “You’re loyal for bringing him to the monks, I expect. But if he ain’t for pleasing you, then you just let me know,” he added with a wink and a lewd smile.

  Cadayle swallowed hard. Callen moved immediately to Bransen and put her hand on his forearm, fearing that he would leap ahead and cut the fool down for the insult.

  Abruptly other sounds could be heard from behind, plodding hooves and the creak of a coach.

  “Or maybe she’s liking those jerking movements in their lovemaking, eh?” the young soldier asked his older companion, who frowned at him in response.

  “Just get the wagon off the road,” the gray beard said.

  “But the ground is uneven and full of roots,” Cadayle complained as the younger man moved around to the side of the horses. “And our wheels are worn and will not-”

  “Just shut your pretty mouth and be glad that we’ve not the time for other things,” the younger soldier said to her. “Or the time to take the horses and wagon in the name of Laird Delaval.” He gave a disapproving look at the wagon and team and old Doully the donkey tethered behind, adding, “Not that any of ’em’re worth stealing.”

  “Don’t, I beg!” said Cadayle, but the man grabbed the nearest horse’s bridle and roughly tugged the creature to the side, guiding the wagon down a small embankment, where it rolled fast for a few seconds, coming to rest up tight against a tree.

  Up on the road across the way, the gray beard walked his horse at Callen and Bransen, forcing them to move off the other side of the road, pulling his companion’s horse beside him as he stepped farther along.

  “Bow your heads for Prince Yeslnik, Laird of Pryd!” he instructed, staring at Callen all the while, making sure to keep his horse between the two wanderers and the approaching coach. As it rolled by, all gilded in shiny gold and pulled by a fine and strong team, Bransen noted the drivers, a pair of men he had seen before. He saw, too, the Lady Olym, Prince Yeslnik’s annoying and spoiled wife, as she stared out the window.

  He smiled as he glanced up at her from his half-bowed head. She regarded him with a start, which seemed a bit of recognition. Bransen winked at her for that, and she fell back, putting her gloved hand to her mouth.

  That made Bransen smile all the more, but he kept his face aimed at the ground to make sure the gray-bearded soldier didn’t catch on.

  “He is a prince, you say?” Callen asked the man. “Or a laird, for you’re calling him both.”

  “Prince Yeslnik of Delaval,” the gray beard confirmed, moving his horse onto the cobblestones. Across the way, his younger companion rushed up the embankment to join him and quickly mounted.

  “Named Laird of Pryd soon to be Laird of Delaval,” the younger man insisted.

  “Aye, and the king of all Honce, don’t you doubt,” said his companion. “Ethelbert’s soon to break, and when we’re done with that one, we’ll put the other lairds in place in short order.”

  “Aye,” agreed the younger. “Now that we’ve got the river running free o’ wild northmen and goblins, and Palmaristown’s joined in Laird Delaval’s cause, the ships’re moving and it’s not to be long. Ethelbert’s city of Entel will find herself blockaded by the spring, and without his supplies and warriors flowing in from the southland he won’t last long.”

  The gray beard shot his young and boisterous companion a scolding expression, clearly willing him to silence by showing him that he was wagging his tongue too much.

  Bransen caught the nuance and understood that they were speaking of something terribly important.

  To him, though, it all seemed meaningless banter, for he cared not at all which side won this fight, or what Honce came to look like thereafter. He had no love for any laird and could only hope that they would all kill each other in the last throes of the seemingly endless war. One thing did strike him, though: the notion that Prince Yeslnik had already been named as the replacement laird for Prydae, a man dead because of Bransen. It amused Bransen to think that Yeslnik was in line to become Laird of Delaval, and even king of Honce. The man was a fool and a coward, Bransen knew all too well. He had come upon the
very coach that had just rolled past a long time before, when vicious bloody-cap powries had forced it from the road. Yeslnik, his wife, and their two drivers (one of whom had been seriously wounded) were surely doomed, but Bransen, the Highwayman, had come to save the day.

  Of course, he had taken some reward for his efforts-much more than the stingy and ungrateful Prince Yeslnik had offered-and so the tale of his heroics had been buried by the prince’s wounded pride.

  Bransen closed his eyes and reconnected with the soul stone set under his black silk bandanna, leaving the Stork far behind.

  “Laird Yeslnik?” he whispered under his breath as the two soldiers moved off. Cadayle called to the departing men, begging them to help her get her wagon back on the road, but of course they just ignored her.

  “King Yeslnik?” Bransen asked quietly, shaking his head as if the possibility was truly incomprehensible. And indeed, to him, it surely was.

  Still, given his experience with the nobility of Honce, he was hardly surprised.

  “We should have gone straight out for Behr, as we’d planned,” Cadayle said to Bransen as he coaxed and tugged the horses to get the wagon back on the road.

  “No choice to us,” he answered, and not for the first time.

  Cadayle sighed and didn’t argue. Both of them had wanted to get out of Honce to board a ship in the port of Ethelbert dos Entel and sail around the Belt-and-Buckle Mountains into Behr. Bransen’s greatest desire-at least, that which he expressed to his two companions-was to find the Mountains of Fire and the Walk of Clouds, the home of the Jhesta Tu mystics. Their centuries of wisdom had created the tome that Bransen’s father had penned. Bransen’s mother, Sen Wi, had been of their order. In their midst, Bransen believed, he would find the answers to his dilemma. There, he would attune himself more fully to his ki-chi-kree, his line of life energy, and would thus free himself of having to wear the soul stone strapped to his forehead. That soul stone allowed Bransen to keep his line of life energy straight and strong; without it, his energy sputtered and flitted in every different direction, leaving him the crippled Stork.

  The Jhesta Tu had his answers, he believed, and he prayed. But he could not go there at that time, as he had hoped, not through Ethelbert dos Entel, at least, for the place was locked down, and any man who entered the holding of Laird Ethelbert without proper authorization would find himself pressed into service or hanged by the neck.

  And so the trio had come southwest instead of southeast and now neared Delaval, the principal city of the land, the seat of power for Laird Delaval, the man who would be king of Honce. Rumors along the road said that passage could be gained to Behr from that city, though it would be a roundabout journey indeed, sailing up the great river, the Masur Delaval (recently named for the ruling family), then through the southern expanse of the Gulf of Honce, and down along the broken region of small holdings known as the Mantis Arm.

  It would be an expensive journey, no doubt, and perhaps one full of danger, but the roads simply were not an option at this time of intense warfare.

  Or perhaps they were, but Bransen wasn’t quite ready to make that all-important journey.

  They were moving again soon after. Around a bend in the road less than a mile to the west the trio came in sight of the renowned city nestled at the base of southern hills, surrounding three fast-flowing tributaries that swept down through the streets and joined in a deep pool before the city’s northern wharves. This was the head of the Masur Delaval, a river whose currents swirled and backed with the varying tides of the northern gulf.

  The city itself was everything Bransen, Cadayle, and Callen had imagined, with rows and rows of stone and wooden buildings, many two or even three stories high. A stone wall surrounded much of the town, including all of the central region. Within it sat the most impressive structure that any of the three had ever seen, a castle so imposing and expansive that it dominated the landscape wholly, a series of three connected keeps whose walls towered so high and strong that Laird Delaval’s designs on ruling the entirety of Honce as the one king suddenly seemed all too tenable.

  By late afternoon, the trio had come to the outskirts, crossing through lanes bordered by trade shops of every type and with a large produce market set in a wide square just outside the city wall. A few peasants moved about the market, old women mostly, trying to get in a last purchase before the vendors closed their kiosks.

  “Rotten goods,” Callen whispered to the others, for Cadayle had come down from the wagon now to walk beside them, the three of them leading the team slowly. “Kitchen throwaways from the castle, no doubt.”

  “No different than in Pryd Town,” Cadayle said. “The lairds and their closest take all the best, and we get what’s left.”

  “Except the best that we never let go their way in the first place,” Callen remarked with a wry grin.

  “Or the best that a certain black-clothed highwayman took from them,” added Bransen, and all three shared a laugh.

  Cadayle was the first to stop, though, as she caught the undercurrent of the statement. She stared at her husband suspiciously until at last he looked her way with a puzzled expression.

  “You can’t be thinking…” she said.

  “I often am.”

  “Of letting him out here,” Cadayle finished. “The Highwayman, I mean. You keep yourself in the guise of the Stork while we’re in Delaval.”

  “No guise, I fear,” said Bransen as he reached up and popped the soul stone out from under his bandanna, quickly pocketing it. Instantly he felt the first twinges of separation, the first sparks of discord from his line of ki-chi-kree. “It is who… oo I ammm.”

  Cadayle winced at the stutter, despite her insistence.

  “You hate seeing me like that,” Bransen remarked, his voice relatively strong and steady. Cadayle looked at him in surprise. In response, he merely glanced down at his hand, still in his pocket, still holding the soul stone. He was getting much better at maintaining that connection even when the stone was not strapped to the focal point of his chi, up on his forehead.

  Cadayle frowned, though, and Bransen immediately began his awkward gait.

  “Don’t you be thinking of stealing anything in this town,” Cadayle whispered. “Laird Delaval frightens me.”

  Bransen didn’t reply, but of course he was thinking precisely that.

  They were turned away at the gate, for no wagons and horses were allowed inside other than those owned by the fortunate nobility who lived within the walls and the higher-priced merchants and tradesmen who had to pay dearly for a license to bring a horse or donkey or wagon inside. The guards did point them at a nearby stable outside the wall, however, and assured them that the proprietor was a man of high regard.

  His reputation didn’t matter much to them anyway. They had little of value in the wagon other than Bransen’s silk clothing and the pack they simply would carry away with them. Doully was old and more a friend than a worker, and they had planned to sell the horse team upon their arrival anyway, for the poor beasts had seen too much of ill-groomed roads and broken trails.

  “They’ll both need shoeing, to be sure,” Yenium the stablemaster informed them. He was a tall and very thin man with a dark complexion and darker beard that grew in every day. “Ye been walking a long way.”

  “Too long,” said Callen.

  The man stared at Bransen.

  “Bringing him to the monks,” Cadayle explained. “He was hurt in the war.”

  Yenium laughed aloud. “But they’ll do ye no good,” he said, waving his hands in apology even as he spoke the words. “Not unless ye got good gold to pay, and lots of it.”

  Callen and Cadayle exchanged sour looks, though neither was surprised, of course. It seemed as if some things were constant throughout the land of Honce.

  “Our funds run short,” Callen said. “We were hoping that you would have need of the horses and the wagon.”

  “Buy ’em?”

  “They’ve walked too much of t
he roads,” Callen explained.

  “True enough,” Yenium said. “And the donkey?”

  “We’ll be keeping that one,” said Callen. “We’ve a long way to go yet.”

  Knowing their negotiations to be in good hands, Bransen let Cadayle lead him off to the side. Sure enough, Callen joined them shortly after, jiggling a small bag of silver coins and even a single piece of gold. “And he’s to board Doully for us free for as long as we’re in Delaval,” Callen said with a satisfied grin. “A fair price.”

  “More than,” Cadayle agreed and slung the pack over her shoulder. She was about to suggest that they go and see the city proper before the daylight waned but was interrupted by the blare of horns from inside the city wall. Cheers followed, and many of the peasants outside the wall began streaming for the gates, moving eagerly and chattering with obvious excitement.

  Callen and Cadayle flanked Bransen and moved him along swiftly to beat the rush. Fortunately, they weren’t far from the gate, and with a rather lewd wink at Cadayle, the young guard let them through. Not that the view was any better beyond the wall as thousands had gathered around the grand square, all jumping and shouting, lifting their arms high and waving red towels.

  “What is it, then?” Cadayle asked a nearby reveler.

  The woman looked at her as if she must be crazy.

  “We’ve just come in,” Cadayle explained. “We know nothing of the source of the celebration.”

  “The laird’s come down,” the woman explained.

  “The king, ye mean!” another corrected.

  “Laird Delaval-King Delaval soon enough, by the graces of Abelle and the Ancient Ones,” the first said.

  Bransen shook his head shakily, continually amazed at the manner in which the peasants always seemed to hedge their bets regarding the afterlife, citing both of the dominant religions.

  “He’s come down with his lady and all the others,” said the woman. “Tonight the brave Prince Yeslnik’s to be formally named as Laird of Pryd Holding. That and a host of other honors on the man. Oh, but he’s handsome, and so brave! He’s killed a hundred of Ethelbert’s men, don’t ye know?”