The Bear Read online

  He glanced over at Dame Gwydre, at Queen Gwydre.

  Or was this his destiny? He silently replayed her promises in his head, her assurance that the gain would be worth the price.

  Bransen fell into the magic of his brooch, more fully and deeply than ever before. The serpentine glow came up around him, and flames engulfed him, angry, furious, white-hot flames. He drew forth his sword, his mother’s sword, and held it high, and then, with the magic of Abellican malachite lifting his body, the Highwayman leaped from the ridge.

  He glided down the slope from on high, a soaring beacon of hope for Dame Gwydre and, soon, a flaming harbinger of doom for the men of Laird Milwellis.

  He landed on the field before the center square, a tremendous blast of flames rolling out from his feet. Those front ranks cried out and ducked as the wave of heat washed over them, and several threw spears.

  But the Highwayman was already gone, leaping into the air again, clearing those tightening front ranks and crashing down in the middle of the tight formation. Again came an explosion of flames, this one engulfing many men near to the Highwayman’s landing.

  Screams and chaos shook the square, multiplying many times over as the Highwayman rushed about, flames bursting from him, his sword stabbing with deadly precision at terrified man after woman after man trying desperately to get out of his way.

  His ruby magic exploded again, and many died, and he leaped to the back of the square and turned, aiming his sword along a line of archers moving between the center square and the one to the north, and from that sword tip came a stroke of lightning.

  As one, the line of archers fell to the ground.

  From the other direction came a volley of arrows, as Bransen turned on the second archer line. The missiles flew all about him, but he did not feel their sting, so deeply was he into the magic of the brooch.

  A second lightning bolt laid that line low.

  The Highwayman bounded away, to the north, leap after leap that ended each time in a devastating fireball.

  On one descent, he saw a spear set before him, but he could not sway. And so he cried out in rage and denial, impaling himself as he landed and blowing away all those around him, including the warrior holding the spear. The Highwayman leaped away immediately, trailing no blood, for as the spear had pierced his flesh, so, too, had it punctured the serpentine shield, and the hot flames had cauterized the wound as soon as the Highwayman had leaped back off the bloodied weapon.

  He felt no pain. The soul stone in the brooch kept him strong. He bounced back the other way, assaulting the third square.

  Up above, Dame Gwydre saw her moment and began her charge.

  The old ones!” came a cry.

  “They fight for the witch Gwydre!”

  “Oh, we are doomed!”

  “It is Abelle himself, come from the grave!”

  The shouts grew more desperate along Milwellis’s lines. Those leading formations evaporated, scores of men burning and dead on the western slope, dozens of archers thrashing in the death throes of killing lightning, scores more cut down by the fiery blade of the Highwayman.

  That retreat did not halt at the next grouping of military squares, for with the fleeing soldiers came the Highwayman himself, in full, burning glory and power.

  “Stop him!” Father De Guilbe shouted from behind Milwellis, who sat beside Harcourt.

  “Stop him!” De Guilbe shouted again as another fireball exploded, scattering men, some aflame, all fleeing in abject terror. The monk shouted again as more cried of the old ones or of Abelle himself rising up in support of Dame Gwydre.

  Milwellis turned and yelled, “How?” in the monk’s face, his frustration clear and consuming. He turned to Harcourt, who had no answers, for the general, like the laird, the monk, and all the men on both sides of the battle, had never seen anything like this display of sheer, unbridled magical power. Godlike, the Highwayman bounced about the field, making his way through the ranks and leaving mounds of bodies in his devastating wake.

  “It is magic!” Milwellis shouted, turning back on De Guilbe. “Your magic! You stop him!”

  Harcourt grabbed Milwellis by the shoulder and shook him, and Milwellis looked back at the man with shock . . . until he noted that Harcourt was pointing frantically ahead.

  For on came the Highwayman, in all his terrible splendor.

  “Archers form! Around me!” yelled Milwellis, and so commanding was his roar that many archers and spearmen heeded his command.

  “Fill the air! Shoot him dead!” Laird Milwellis screamed, and a scattering of arrows flew away.

  “No! Together, you fools! A barrage to lay him low.”

  Fully engulfed by the magic and the fury, the Highwayman moved without direction but with great purpose. Wherever he saw a concentration of enemies, he bounded and exploded, and darted about, stabbing and killing.

  Every blast, every strike, killed a bit of his own soul, he knew, but he held to the promise of Gwydre, the promise of Honce renewed.

  Up into the air he went, and only then did he see the great black volley swarming his way. He threw forth a fireball there in midair, the force of it deflecting many missiles aside and disintegrating many others.

  But some got through the conflagration, and Bransen felt the iron tips and wooden shafts sliding into his body.

  He landed unsteadily, but instinctively sprang away again, veering to the side, trying to get away from the biting arrows, for another volley was in the air. He landed and leaped into a copse of trees.

  Confused and with his line of ki-chi-kree wavering, trying hard to fall fully into the soul stone and enact healing magic upon himself, Bransen slammed hard into a tree trunk. He managed to grab on and hold his place some twenty feet from the ground, but the only fires burning then were those in the trees behind him, lit by his flaming wake.

  He tried to fall more fully into the one stone that could save him, for now he felt, most profoundly of all, the serious wound from impaling himself. His gut was torn, his line of life energy shivering, breaking. The pain threatened his concentration.

  He thought of Cadayle.

  Behind him he heard the horns of Gwydre’s countering charge. He hoped he had done enough.

  Break off!” Bannagran commanded his forces repeatedly. He led his chariot group along the lines, pulling back his men.

  For the rout was in full now, with King Yeslnik fleeing the field. His army crumbled behind him, men throwing down their weapons and running away, or falling to their knees and begging for mercy.

  Mercy that Bannagran was determined to show, for that was what Gwydre had taught him and that was what filled his awakening heart.

  As his orders multiplied throughout his forces, warriors and commanders echoing the call for quarter, Bannagran swung back to the east and lashed his team into a full gallop.

  “Relent! The day is won!” he shouted as he neared Kirren Howen’s legion, and it was strange, indeed, to hear these men of that eastern city cheering for him as he passed among their ranks. He pulled up fast before the three generals.

  “All quarter given,” he told Kirren Howen.

  “You ask much,” the new Laird of Ethelbert dos Entel replied. “The day is won, and my men, so long at war, will have their revenge.”

  “No, laird!” Bannagran demanded. “This is for Honce. All of it.”

  Kirren Howen and his two generals stared at Bannagran as if he had reached over and slapped the laird across the face.

  “Yeslnik is through,” Bannagran explained. “He cannot survive this day. It is time to heal the land of Honce.”

  “Is this mighty and merciless Bannagran I hear before me?” Laird Kirren Howen asked.

  The great warrior, the Bear of Honce, smiled and shook his head. “Perhaps it is Dame Gwydre,” he admitted. “But it is right, and it is for the best for what will follow this day.”

  Kirren Howen straightened in his saddle as his generals and his men looked at him curiously. “You will be king,
yes?” he asked.

  Bannagran didn’t flinch.

  “And Gwydre your queen?”

  Again, the Bear didn’t respond.

  “What for Ethelbert dos Entel, then?” the laird asked.

  “A shining and wondrous city on the Mirianic Coast, with the full support of Delaval and Pryd and Vanguard and the Order of Blessed Abelle,” Bannagran promised.

  Kirren Howen paused and considered the words for a long while. “My trusted generals and friends,” he said at length, and both Myrick and Tyne leaned toward him. “Do spread the word that all quarter is to be given.”

  For what seemed like a thousand heartbeats, not a sound could be heard about Laird Kirren Howen and the stunning proclamation.

  “And tend the wounded,” he continued, and he looked at Bannagran as he finished, “of both sides.”

  Bannagran walked his chariot beside Kirren Howen’s horse and held forth his hand. “I have not forgotten our alliance in the east against the powries,” he said.

  “Nor have I,” Kirren Howen replied, and he took Bannagran’s hand.

  As if from very far away, Bransen heard the cheers around Milwellis, heard the laird himself calling for more volleys into the copse.

  Bransen held on tightly and concentrated on his soul stone, holding steady his life energy. He managed to glance about, the branches crackling with flames behind him and skipping arrows all about him. He noted the carnage he had wrought this ugly day.

  He had killed hundreds and wounded hundreds more.

  He held to Gwydre’s words, her promise, and the thought of the world his child would come to know. He had to believe that the price was worth the gain. He winced as another arrow invaded his body, driving deep into his shoulder, but the soul stone magic was there, keeping him alive.

  He heard one voice above all others, though, and the message that it carried wounded Bransen more profoundly than any dart ever could. For it was Milwellis, rallying his force.

  “The demon is dead,” Milwellis proclaimed. “And now comes the witch in folly!”

  Bransen couldn’t see much of the battlefield through the pain and the tears and the smoke and the tumble of smoking leaves, but he quickly came to understand that Laird Milwellis had somehow held his force together. He managed to glance back behind him, toward the western slope, toward the horns of Gwydre. Down the hill she came, he knew, and knew, too, that he had weakened Milwellis’s line enough for her to drive hard through those first ranks.

  But as he swung his gaze back, Bransen realized that it wouldn’t be enough. Not hardly. For those thousands around Milwellis stood firm, and the laird himself sat tall above them, forming them into a countercharge and heartening them with every word.

  Bransen’s shaking hand reached into his pouch, and he brought forth his fist, clutching a gem.

  The soul stone protested as he turned his focus, and he knew then that to relinquish his concentration from the healing magic was surely to die.

  He knew it, but he knew that Gwydre was doomed.

  The price. The gain.

  And now she is ours!” Laird Milwellis insisted. He lifted his mailed fist before him in a punch of victory, and all the men began to cheer.

  The sharp crack of air interrupted that, though, and just as he started to shout the command to charge, Laird Milwellis felt his own fist, his own gauntlet, smash into his face with tremendous force.

  And from that gauntlet, through that gauntlet and through his hand, came a screeching projectile, crushing through bone, tearing through brain, and blowing the back of Milwellis’s skull and helm away.

  The laird flipped backward from his horse, falling facedown to the mud, quite dead before he ever landed.

  “Laird!” Harcourt cried after the moment of shock. “Father, tend him!” he started to yell at De Guilbe, but when he looked at the monk, his words failed.

  For De Guilbe sat on his horse behind Milwellis, a strange look in his eye, a weird chuckle escaping his lips. He looked down at his own chest, where blood widened under his brown robes and streamed out the hole made by the lodestone.

  He looked at Harcourt curiously.

  “I am dead,” he said.

  And he was.

  In the tree, Bransen could not see his handiwork, for his sight had turned inward. He pictured Cadayle, beautiful Cadayle, reaching down to him as he lay in the mud, the poor Stork who had been bullied to the ground yet again. He felt her warmth, her kiss . . . her love. He felt the brush of her brown hair on his face, a gentle place to hide from the pain.

  He heard Gwydre’s promise.

  And he knew, somehow he knew—perhaps it was the cries around him, the calls of Abelle or the old ones themselves come to Dame Gwydre’s call.

  Somehow he knew that his sacrifice had not been in vain.

  He left the battlefield with hope.

  TWENTY-NINE

  The Royal Procession

  Yeslnik stared out from the high window of his keep, beyond the walls of Delaval City to a field blackened by a great and combined army. He had less than two legions, no more, for in the rout many had died, many more had fled, and many, so said the rumors, had turned against him, joining the ranks of the Bear of Honce.

  “Milwellis,” he whispered, he begged to the wind, praying for the Laird of Palmaristown to come forth and crush the army before his gates. He looked to the river, where an armada of his warships and those of Palmaristown had gathered, but they remained far out in the river, out of range of Bannagran’s archers.

  He rubbed his face.

  “He will come,” Olym assured him when he turned around. “Harcourt will tell us.”

  She referred to the news that had come to Yeslnik’s chambers only a few moments before, an announcement that General Harcourt of Palmaristown, Laird Milwellis’s second, had somehow managed to bypass Bannagran and Gwydre’s tens of thousands and enter Delaval City.

  “When will Milwellis attack?” Yeslnik demanded of Harcourt as the man was escorted through his door.

  The general stopped his march and cast a curious look Yeslnik’s way. “Laird Milwellis is dead,” he replied. “And his army scattered before the rage of Dame Gwydre and some demon dactyl known as the Highwayman.”

  “What?” Yeslnik screamed, coming out of his throne and trembling. “I lent you legions!”

  “The carrion birds feast well in Blenden Coe,” Harcourt replied. “The army was broken and the battle ended, even before Laird Bannagran arrived with thousands more to bolster Dame Gwydre’s cause and with the warriors of Ethelbert dos Entel beside him to bolster the cause of both.”

  “But surely you have something left?” Yeslnik pleaded. “I see the armada in the river!”

  “Crewed thinly,” said Harcourt, “and by no force that might do battle with the Bear of Honce.”

  “But you got in here, and so we can escape,” Yeslnik said, grasping at any hope he could find.

  Harcourt laughed at him. “Laird Bannagran, who has my sword in surrender, sent me in,” he explained, and Yeslnik fell back into his throne. “He demands that you yield. Delaval City, all of Honce, is his, is King Bannagran’s.” He paused and drew a deep sigh. “And Queen Gwydre’s, curse her name.”

  “No!” Yeslnik screamed, slamming his fist on the arm of his oaken throne. “No! We must kill them! You must kill them!”

  Harcourt looked at him with an expression of pity . . . not pity for feeble King Yeslnik but for all of Honce, it seemed. “All is lost,” he said somberly, and he bowed and exited the room.

  Yeslnik sat as if frozen for many heartbeats, then finally leaped from his throne and rushed out of the room, to the top of the long stair.

  “You cannot leave me!” he screamed at the man now far below. “You cannot! I command that you kill them!”

  Yeslnik felt a strong grip on his shoulder, and he swung about to see Olym before him. “You do it!” she screamed at him, pounding on him frantically. “Strengthen your army! Hold strong the walls until they a
re gone! You feeble fool! You should have stayed on the field as your generals demanded, to defeat Bannagran out there!”

  “While you fled?” Yeslnik screamed back.

  “I am your queen! You must protect me!”

  She hit him, but now, for the first time in his life, Yeslnik was having no more. He balled his fist and slugged Olym hard in the face, then repeatedly slapped and punched her, and, when that did not suffice to satisfy his rage, he grabbed her by the hair and tugged hard, taking out not only a handful of strands but a hairpin as well.

  He struck with it, stabbing it into Olym’s chest. Again and again, Yeslnik pumped his arm, all of his fury playing out with every invasion of his wife’s flesh.

  She screamed, she begged, she threw herself against him.

  But Yeslnik merely growled, glad that he had mortally wounded her.

  He kept growling until he realized that he couldn’t support her great bulk against him and that his heels were against the top step of a long staircase.

  Cormack and Milkeila had not marched that afternoon with Gwydre and Bannagran back to Delaval City. As soon as the battle had ended, Bannagran and Gwydre had swung about in pursuit of Yeslnik, to be done with this all. But they had left many behind to tend the wounded, to pile and burn the dead. So Cormack and Milkeila remained about Blenden Coe, with so many wounded to tend and so many questions still unanswered.

  It wasn’t until two days later, the same morning that Harcourt arrived in Delaval City, that the pair at last discovered some credible witnesses who led them to a burned and scarred copse of trees. The couple made their way among the many trunks and roots, and, of all the treasures that would be looted from the carnage of Blenden Coe in the aftermath of that battle, none shone more precious than the sword Milkeila found on the ground in the leaves beneath one tall maple.

  The woman paused a long while, steadying herself, before she dared look up.

  To the tree-borne grave of the Highwayman.

  “He’s dead,” the young and pretty woman said to Harcourt when he rushed back to the stairs to view the broken body of King Yeslnik. “They’re both dead!”