“Meaning?”
“Meaning that if you refuse your life is forfeit.”
Bransen narrowed his eyes and squared his shoulders.
“And so are the lives of your companions.”
If Dawson had spun his horse about and prompted it to kick Bransen in the face, the impact would have been no less staggering.
“How dare you!” Bransen demanded, but Dawson tugged his horse around and began walking it away, and the mounted guards pressed in on Bransen and the two women in his wake.
“Say your good-byes to them, Highwayman,” Dawson insisted. “We leave now. Serve us well through the winter campaign. If we fight back the Samhaist horde, you will be returned, and all crimes forgiven. I offer you passage anywhere in the world Lady Dreamer can take you.” He stopped his horse and turned about, locking stares with the fuming Bransen. “That is the best offer you will ever get, Highwayman. I can legally have my soldiers kill you, and them, right now, by order of Dame Gwydre herself. Now gather your things and say your farewells. We’ve a long ride this night, and a longer one tomorrow.”
Not since he had learned of Garibond’s execution had Bransen felt such a profound emptiness within him. Lost opportunity, was the only thought he could hear. He didn’t know what to feel and then didn’t know what to make of that! That confusion brought guilt, and that guilt brought more confusion, and truly, Bransen seemed to be spiraling downward.
Dawson McKeege had duped them so easily! The cage the clever man had built around them, both with soldiers and by simple location, seemed as unbreakable as any Bransen had ever known. He sat in the small house the trio had taken as their own, his back to the door, his soul stone strapped under his black silk bandanna about his forehead.
“We could find our way out through the back window and over the wall,” Cadayle said to him as she tied the silk strap about his upper right arm-which was really just an ornament now that his identity was fully revealed. “We’d be gone into the thick forest before Dawson and his men ever knew we’d left.”
Bransen shook his head slowly and deliberately. “Gone to where? That forest is without end. Even if you and I could make our way, your mother is not a young woman.”
“Then you go out,” Cadayle said. “Be gone, Bransen, I beg. You are not for war; your heart is not the heart of a soldier. When you are fighting men-Alpinadorans-who have not wronged you, will you revel in the kill?”
“No choice to be found,” Bransen said, echoing Dawson’s words.
“Run!” Cadayle begged him.
“And that will leave you and Callen to the mercy of Dame Gwydre. You heard Dawson’s warning.”
“Dawson will not harm us.”
“He will, milady,” came Dawson’s voice from the doorway. “Regrettably, but certainly.”
Bransen narrowed his eyes as he stared at the man. He instinctively grasped the hilt of his fabulous sword at his side. But he could not deny the truth of Dawson’s logic, that the monks would have killed him to avoid the wrath of Laird Delaval.
“You do not appreciate our desperation,” Dawson went on, walking into the room. “We are pushed to the gulf. Entire villages have been slaughtered by the Samhaist aggressors and their monstrous minions. Entire villages! Women and children and even the animals. I have no love of deceiving you: I feel not clever or happy with the act. But doubt not my words of warning, for your own sake.”
He looked at Bransen. “Now,” he said. “We go,” he announced simply, walking through the door.
Stunned with the sudden turn of events, Cadayle wrapped Bransen in a desperate hug. Callen came over and joined in, the shoulders of both women bobbing with sorrow.
Bransen pushed them back just enough so that he could stand. He kissed Cadayle on the cheek and wiped away her tears, though more were sure to replace them in short order.
“I will return to you,” he promised. “Never doubt.” With that, Bransen set her back firmly and followed Dawson through the door.
FIFTEEN
Echoes of Cordon Roe
Concentration!” Brother Giavno warned above the tumult of the battle raging again about the chapel’s strong walls, which mostly involved crude spears (sharpened sticks) volleying against stones thrown from on high, coupled with a continual exchange of taunts and the incessant thumping of barbarians pounding on the fitted stones with heavy wooden mallets in an amazing attempt to weaken the integrity of the fortification. “It is most important, to your very survival.”
The two younger monks looked at each other with obvious concern-and why should they not? For they were about to go into the middle of the barbarian attackers!
“Brother Faldo, you must maintain the power of the serpentine,” Giavno repeated yet again. “At all costs! Accept a spear to your chest, but do not allow the magic of that gem to dissipate!”
Faldo rested the huge and surprisingly lightweight shield on one shoulder and nodded sheepishly. Behind him, the other young volunteer, Brother Moorkris, moved closer and took his companion’s hand and together they shuffled for the secret door set in the wall, just to the side of the main fighting. Moorkris held out his open palm toward Giavno, as he had been instructed, and Giavno nodded for Faldo to enact the serpentine shield.
A moment later, a blue-white glow encompassed both young monks, and Giavno gave promising Brother Moorkris a ruby, the stone of fire.
“Charge into them,” he whispered, and he nodded to the pair working the door.
It opened fast and Giavno shoved the two terrified young brothers out, then fell back through the door quickly and spun about, throwing his back against the stone. He knew they wouldn’t long hold their nerve.
And he was right, for the pair had barely moved from the outside of the door before the barbarians took note of them. Faldo did well to keep low behind his shield and to keep his thoughts on the serpentine, maintaining the magical protection. A spear hit the shield, then a second, but this was of barbarian make, woven of thin wood into layers behind a leather front, and those weapons did not get through the clever tangle.
But the Alpinadorans didn’t hesitate in the least and charged right in, and Faldo got rammed hard as a shoulder slammed against his shield, sending him lurching back and nearly upending him.
To his credit, he maintained the serpentine barrier, but the jolt broke his grip with his companion just as Moorkris sent his energy through the ruby and conjured a tremendous fireball.
With the connection to Faldo broken, Moorkris had no protection from his own blast, and like the poor barbarians caught in the area of conflagration, he was engulfed in his own flames.
It was all screaming and burning and shouting then, and Brother Faldo, confused and dazed and having no idea of where to turn next, stumbled back through the smoke toward the door. He felt someone punch him in the back, but he managed to stagger through, and Giavno and the others quickly shut and secured the portal behind him.
“I held the barrier,” the devastated young brother started to explain, blubbering through his mounting guilt as he came to understand that his failure to hold on had immolated his friend Moorkris. He couldn’t finish the thought, though, as he just fell over, for that punch in the back was not a punch at all, but a spear that had driven deep into his kidney.
“Get him to Father De Guilbe,” Giavno yelled at the other two, and he rushed for a ladder that would take him up to the parapets. When he got there, he found that his comrades were no longer raining stones on the attackers, and when he peered over the wall, he understood.
For the Alpinadorans were running off, and just below Giavno no less than seven bodies-whether men or women, he could hardly tell-either lay very still or writhed on the ground in mortal agony, their clothing melted to their blistered and bubbling skin. He recognized the monk he had sent out there by the shape of the still-burning robes, and his instinct to run out and retrieve Brother Moorkris lasted only the heartbeat it took him to realize that the young and promising young Abellican was already dead.