The Bear sotfk-4 Read online

  The fiery, red-haired Prince of Palmaristown looked to General Harcourt. Milwellis's expression spoke volumes, a combination of frustration and anger. Hadn't he just marched across the land, battling all the way to the very gates of Ethelbert dos Entel? And after arriving there, only to promptly turn about and flee the field after Yeslnik had similarly retreated? The king took a southerly route while Milwellis had marched back along the coast, destroying every building in his path, to return to his father outside of Chapel Abelle's gates. And now, King Yeslnik was ready to repeat that futile and brutal march to the southeastern corner of Honce?

  Staring at him for many heartbeats, his own expression one of amusement and absent surprise, King Yeslnik began to chuckle.

  "You cannot blame the lad his apathy," Laird Panlamaris stated.

  "Your son performed admirably," Yeslnik replied. Panlamaris beamed until Yeslnik qualified the statement. "Until the moment when he arrived at the gates of Ethelbert's city."

  Milwellis shifted uncomfortably.

  "And there he was chased away, and the foolish retreat of his army forced me to likewise abandon the field, to regroup and consolidate my power," said Yeslnik.

  Everyone in the room knew that to be a falsehood; in a brief absence of Prince Milwellis, when he had gone to meet with Yeslnik, Milwellis's army had been forced back by an elite team of Ethelbert's assassins. But the prince had quickly returned and reversed that retreat and, indeed, had gone right back to the very walls of Ethelbert's city, even filling the night air with arrows long after Yeslnik's army was in full retreat across the breadth of Honce.

  Milwellis shifted again uncomfortably and even growled under his breath, clearly agitated.

  But King Yeslnik continued to smile and to let his daring stare drift from Panlamaris to Milwellis and back again.

  Then and there, Laird Panlamaris knew that it didn't matter what had happened on that faraway field. All that mattered was what Yeslnik claimed had happened on that faraway field.

  "You will not return to Ethelbert's gates," Yeslnik said to Milwellis after letting the uncomfortable silence settle for a bit. "To the people along the eastern seaboard your name has become… unfavorable."

  "My king-" Milwellis started to protest, but Panlamaris was quick to put his arm up before his son to back him down.

  "I hold the fact of your unpopularity in your favor," Yeslnik said, deflating the argument before it could begin. "You acted admirably in your march and in your return. Still, I would favor keeping you and your forces closer to home, particularly with powries running the coast. You will return to Chapel Abelle and invigorate the siege. Build great catapults and throw rocks at the monks day after day. Make them more miserable. Let none out and none in. When I and Bannagran of Pryd are finished with the fool Ethelbert, we will join in your efforts and end the threat of Dame Gwydre and Father Artolivan fully."

  Milwellis seemed to calm at that proclamation. Panlamaris only looked on at the surprising King Yeslnik, trying to take a measure of the young man. It seemed obvious to him that Laird Delaval's old generals were advising Yeslnik, and while that might be a good thing regarding the disposition of the war it would surely make this fop harder to manipulate.

  "We have much more to discuss," said Yeslnik. "We have two fleets to coordinate and three armies ready to march. But I am weary from my voyage and would spend some time in private, to rest and to plan. My generals will sit with you, Panlamaris, and help you to understand your role in the grand events unfolding."

  The old laird didn't even bristle at the dismissal.

  "You have my quarters prepared?" Yeslnik asked in such a manner that made it clear to Panlamaris that there could only be one correct answer to the inquiry. Ye seen 'em?" Shiknickel asked his counterpart, the two standing on their respective barrelboat decks, bobbing in the river just north of Palmaristown.

  "Aye, I seen 'em, and me and me boys're thinking we're to do something about them. Murky's boat seen 'em, too, and he's already in the gulf to pass the word."

  "War," Shiknickel said.

  "A thousand dead humans for every dwarf they staked," the other captain agreed. "We'll empty the damned Weathered Isles and bleed Honce until the rivers run red."

  Mcwigik came on the deck beside Shiknickel.

  "And we're not for letting yer friends sail free," the other captain called when he saw Mcwigik, for all knew of the deference that had been given to boats sailing under Dame Gwydre's flag. "Any boat what's not being pedaled is a boat what's being sinked."

  Mcwigik rubbed his hairy face, but he couldn't disagree.

  "Night's falling full," the dwarf captain of the other boat continued. "Yerself for going in tonight?"

  Shiknickel glanced back at distant Palmaristown with so many ships moored near her docks.

  "Nah, too many," Shiknickel said.

  "Some o' them boys're alive," Mcwigik protested.

  "Aye, with a beam shoved through their guts. Nothing's to fix them holes."

  "I ain't for letting them hang!"

  Shiknickel took a deep breath and looked to his peer on the other deck.

  "We go in quiet, then, just to cut 'em down," that dwarf offered. "Fast in, quiet in, and fast out."

  The barrelboats emptied their crews on the riverbank just north of Palmaristown long after midnight. More than one dwarf grumbled that he hoped their staked kin were scarecrows and not bait, for there were not more than twoscore of the powries charging into an enemy city of many thousands!

  But, indeed, Palmaristown was secure in the notion that the powries had been run off and that the staked dwarves would keep them out. Few sentries were about the docks that night, and they were not an alert crew.

  The powries ran over them, quickly subduing and muting those who survived the rush with thick gags and mouthfuls of cloth.

  They went to work methodically on both the stakes and their dead and doomed kin, finishing each dwarf with a swift blow to the head as they took him down and pulled him free of his pole. While some of the dwarves then went to work on the stakes and the prisoners, others cut the hearts from their dead kin, to be used in a ceremony and burial that would ensure descendants from these fallen fellows.

  The barrelboats were back in the river soon after, pedaling hard for the Gulf of Corona, their precious cargo in tow. They would have to put ashore again the next day, they knew, to bury the hearts and perform their rituals.

  The raid could be considered nothing but a terrific success, but all of those dwarves moved away from the city with heavy hearts. They had mercifully finished a dozen of their kin and had retrieved four other hearts besides, exacting vengeance on twice that number of Palmaristown humans. But time and the layout of the city had worked against them: They had left other dwarves staked at Palmaristown's gates. They knew they had left friends behind.

  "We'll pay them back a hundred times over," every powrie on those boats vowed, and it was not idle talk, as all of Honce would soon enough know. The screams echoed over Palmaristown early the next morning, when the city awoke to find more than twenty men staked upside down, some doubled up, to the poles along the docks, a clear signal that Honce's long nightmare had just grown darker still.

  Most looked to the river, faces drained of blood as if they expected a fleet of barrelboats floating up to empty an army on their docks. But when he arrived to see the newest of horrors, Laird Panlamaris turned his gaze to the other direction, toward Chapel Abelle.

  Toward Dame Gwydre.

  She had done this to him. She had unleashed the evil of the powries upon his beautiful city.

  She, above all others, would pay.

  THREE

  Promises and Puzzles

  Rows of soldiers lined the docks, archers trained their bows, ready to sweep the decks clear. Dawson McKeege's Lady Dreamer came into the southeastern port of Ethelbert dos Entel under three flags: the crossed wood axes of Dame Gwydre's holding of Vanguard; the evergreen symbol of the Order of Abelle; and a universally ac
knowledged pennant of peace, a simple white affair. Lady Dreamer had picked up an escort a mile away from the city, a pair of Ethelbert warships, the best open-sea sailing vessels in Honce, with a high deck and three masts of multiple, billowing sails. As they had neared the city, the famed Entel longboats-giant shore-hugging vessels sporting only a single square sail with thirty sturdy oars to a side-had joined the armada.

  One boat had rushed ahead to warn the city, and so thousands of people were out and about the hills overlooking the docks, staring down.

  "Uncertain and afraid," said Cormack. Tall and long-legged with sinewy muscles, the former monk gave the impression that he was a much younger man, almost boyish, with a disarming smile and bright green eyes, a mop of shaggy blond hair on his head, and a scraggly beard such as a teenager might try to grow. Despite having left the Order of Abelle, Cormack still wore the signature brown robes, not so unusual a sight in Honce, but atop his head he sported a distinctive red beret: the bloody cap of a powrie. And so to all who did not know him Cormack surely seemed a walking contradiction-young and innocent, a bearded child as tall as a giant, wearing the robes of a beneficent order beneath a murderer's prized beret.

  "Aye, all word's that they been pushed back inside their walls with nothing but the sea behind them," said Dawson McKeege, the old, grizzled sea dog. Lady Dreamer had put in to port only once since departing the great chapel of St. Mere Abelle, at a small town's single wharf along the outer reaches of the Mantis Arm, to gather supplies and catch up on the news of the day. News that had not shone favorably on the cause of Laird Ethelbert in his struggle against the allies of Delaval City. "Good that they're scared, I'm thinking, given what we're asking. If they thought their side winning, would they even have let us in to port? Nay, they'd've put us into the dark cold far up the coast."

  He glanced away from the dock to look directly at Cormack, who directed his gaze to Cormack's wife, Milkeila, and the look of utter amazement on her wide, round face. Following her eyes to the city of Ethelbert dos Entel, it was not hard to fathom the source of her astonishment, given her background as a shaman among the tribes of rugged Alpinador. Ethelbert dos Entel was much larger than any city Milkeila had ever seen. More than that, the strange southern architecture-domes and slender towers and multistorey structures of angled walls and overhanging eaves-were as impressive in their own manner as the massive cliff and walls of St. Mere Abelle.

  The woman shook her head in wonder, beaded black braids bouncing wildly about, framing her excited smile. Even Cormack, who had lived all of his youth in Honce proper and had heard many stories of this city and had even seen murals depicting it, couldn't help but giggle a bit at the exotic wonder of Ethelbert dos Entel.

  Lady Dreamer slid into the slip readied for her, and Dawson, Cormack, and Milkeila went to the top of the gangplank while the crew and dockhands tied her in place. The three exchanged worried glances as they simultaneously spied archers at the ready lining the dock. Through them stepped a greeting procession comprised of monks amidst a swarm of warriors.

  Dawson called down to them in his most charming voice. "We come from Chapel Abelle with word from Father Artolivan and Dame Gwydre of Vanguard Holding."

  "St. Mere Abelle, you mean," answered the leading monk of the greeting party. "And glad I am to hear that!"

  "You know?" Cormack blurted before Dawson could reply.

  "Good word travels fast across the land, particularly when brothers are fleeing from the brutality of Laird Yeslnik and his armies!" answered the monk.

  Cormack, Dawson, and Milkeila all breathed sighs of relief.

  "Come along, and welcome!" the monk on the docks said. "I am Father Destros of Chapel Entel, sent to escort you to Laird Ethelbert."

  "You mean, now that you're thinking you don't have to murder us," Dawson replied with a laugh and a glance around at the rows and rows of archers, bows still leveled Lady Dreamer's way.

  Destros's reply was to flash a disarming smile. Dawson led his two companions down to the docks.

  "You are a long way from Vanguard," Father Destros said as the procession made its way to the streets and open markets of the remarkable city. It was no secret across Honce that Laird Ethelbert was quite fond of Behr, the desert kingdom to the south around the towering Belt-and-Buckle Mountains, upon whose northern foothills Ethelbert dos Entel had been built, and upon whose southern foothills lay the great Behr city of Jacintha.

  "Dame Gwydre's no fool," Dawson replied. "She's seeing Honce tearing itself apart. Don't doubt that your troubles are to become Vanguard's troubles in short order."

  "My Laird Ethelbert has no such designs upon the northern wilderness of Vanguard, I assure you."

  "Word has it that your Laird Ethelbert isn't the one winning."

  That remark jolted Destros to a halt, and all about them, soldiers and monks alike, gasped.

  "I didn't come here for pretty words and pretend thoughts," Dawson said. "That might crinkle your nose a bit, but you'll be glad to see Lady Dreamer soon enough, I promise."

  "Quite the diplomat," Cormack whispered to Dawson amidst the uncomfortable silence.

  Dawson just chortled and gave a crooked-toothed grin.

  Laird Ethelbert's palace was not a grand affair compared to the splendors of St. Mere Abelle, but it was quite beautiful and, like the city around it, filled with the colorful and exotic goods of the strange kingdom to the south. Painted screens and fans gave a myriad of angles to every room. The polished stones of the hallways prompted shiny and intricate designs of swirling colors and even a few small distinctive images that seemed like pieces of larger murals or teasing sentence fragments on an ancient and much-damaged parchment. The effect proved intoxicating even to grumpy Dawson.

  A long time passed before Cormack and the others realized that Father Destros had slowed his pace considerably to let them bask in the beauty of Castle Ethelbert. He'd led them in a roundabout path to view it all, they realized, when at last they came into the wide audience hall of the laird.

  There was no carpet leading to the marble throne and the old man seated upon it, but the patterns on the floor tiles showed them a clear enough path. A pair of delicate fountains stood to either side of that walkway, two-tiered and with graceful fish statues spitting water into the lower bowl and complementing beautifully the flow and grace of the mosaic tiles and the many screens and tapestries along the walls. Even the guards-dressed in red and blue and with wide flowing sashes as belts and sporting tassels along the length of their tall pole arms-seemed more decorative than utilitarian, though there was no doubting the strength of those iron hooks and axe heads they held fast!

  Cormack, Dawson, and Milkeila took it all in, basking in the designs, but the former monk's gaze soon enough locked on a most curious figure, a small woman, her black hair and brown skin revealing her to be from Behr. She was dressed in black silks and carrying a sword that Cormack was certain he recognized. She stood to the right of the dais that held Ethelbert's throne, beside a man of similar heritage who was similarly dressed. Cormack instinctively understood the danger of these two, much more pronounced than the power of the laird's military advisors standing across the throne from them. It was hard to discern the musculature of the man, who was not of extraordinary height or girth, but Cormack knew that his muscles were tightly wound, like a coiled spring. His head was shaven, his eyebrows thick and black, and his dark eyes did not ever seem to blink, as if the lids dared not interrupt his intense stare.

  "My laird, I present Dawson McKeege of Vanguard, emissary of Dame Gwydre," Father Destros said after bowing to Ethelbert. "And his companions, Cormack of…"

  He paused and glanced back at Cormack and silently mouthed, "St. Mere Abelle?" to which the monk smiled and nodded.

  "Of St. Mere Abelle, the Blessed Chapel," Destros continued. "And his wife, Milkeila of Alpinador. A most varied and unusual crew has come to our docks!"

  That last flourish seemed lost on Laird Ethelbert, who stared only at Cormack w
ith great intrigue.

  "What are you wearing?" the old man said, and, indeed, he seemed ancient to the three newcomers, as old and tired as Father Artolivan himself.

  "My laird?" Cormack asked.

  "On your head," Ethelbert clarified. "Is that the beret of a red-cap dwarf?"

  Cormack shuffled from foot to foot and cleared his throat. "It is, Laird Ethelbert," he explained. "Won in mortal combat."

  "You killed a powrie and took his cap?"

  Cormack thought back to that fateful day on a beach in far-off Alpinador, on the steamy, hot lake of Mithranidoon, when he had battled a nasty little dwarf named Pragganag. He hadn't actually killed the wretch, but he had won the fight. The other powries had then finished the job and had given him Prag's hat as a trophy as agreed upon before the duel.

  "I defeated the dwarf and took his cap," said Cormack, trying to sound confident, "and by order of Father De Guilbe, who led my chapel, I am bound to wear it forevermore."

  Ethelbert looked to Destros, but the young monk could only shrug, having never heard of such a thing before.

  "Any man who can beat a powrie…" Ethelbert paused. "What weapon did you use?"

  "No weapon," Cormack assured him.

  The response brought a great guffaw of laughter from the old laird. "Any man who can beat a powrie-and with his bare hands no less-is a man I want by my side in battle!" the laird proclaimed, to many approving nods.

  Ethelbert came forward in his chair suddenly, poking a finger Cormack's way. "But if you're lying," he warned, wagging that digit and wearing a scowl-but one that could not hold as he fell back and laughed again. "If you're lying, then I'd want you beside me anyway, to tell my tales as fancifully as you weave your own!"

  Almost everyone in the room began to laugh, including the three newcomers, who looked to each other with great relief. Everyone, that is, but the silk-clad warriors, who were not even grinning.

  "You've sailed a long way," Ethelbert said when the titter and chatter died away. "Do you mean to tell me why?"