Cadayle shook her head.
"You should welcome us with your legs wide," Tarkus Breen said, and he kicked her and started to roll her over. "You should be honored that we think you worthy of our seed!"
"Take her!" one of the others eagerly prompted, and the other three laughed.
Bransen told himself to move, ordered his legs to take him out there and intervene. And yet, he stood huddled against the tree, hardly breathing.
He looked at Cadayle, offering a silent apology for his weakness.
She didn't see him, but as if in response, she seemed to go suddenly weak, all defiance falling into hopelessness, and she began to cry.
Those tears, lines of wetness glistening in the starlight, crystallized Bransen's thoughts. All his personal emotions fell aside in the face of that sight, of dear and wonderful Cadayle crying and broken, the surrender of the woman who had been one of the pillars of strength in his life.
Bransen was moving without even thinking. Bransen's subconscious and muscles were falling into the martial lessons of the Book of Jhest. He hardly realized that he was approaching the group; he hardly even saw the closest man, the big one who had kicked in the door, turn and stare.
Bransen slid to one knee as he came up on that man, who was just beginning to cry out in surprise. Without breaking his momentum, Bransen drove the heel of his right hand hard into the big man's groin, lifting him up to his toes.
Bransen sprang up, snapping his foot up to kick the man in the face. As the victim straightened, Bransen hit him a left, right-left-right combination, finishing with a left hook that had the man flying sideways. Bransen leaped forward going right past the reacting attacks of the two men at the sides of Cadayle and going right over her to land before Tarkus Breen.
Breen's arm flashed out, a knife in his hand, but to Bransen he almost seemed to be moving under water. Bransen turned his fingers upward and pushed the striking arm harmlessly wide.
Reacting on instinct, he leaped straight in the air, tucked his legs beneath him, then kicked out on both sides, stopping the charges of both men beside him. He landed with his arms crossed over his chest, then flung his arms out, the backs of his hands smashing against the faces of his attackers. Bransen slipped to the right, bending his right arm, then lashing out once and again with his elbow. He felt the crunch of the man's nose with the first blow.
He dropped as that man fell and snapped out his leg into the kneecap of the other attacker, stopping him short. The man stiffened and stumbled backward, and Bransen used the distance to begin a charge of his own, easily deflecting another stab from Tarkus Breen. Two short steps and he leaped and spun, turning nearly horizontal in the air, adding even more weight behind his kick to the man's midsection.
As one leg flew out hard, Bransen lowered his other leg. He landed, absorbing the impact by letting his knee bend deeply and using the movement to regain his center of balance as he dropped nearly to the ground.
Then, with all his strength, he came up hard and threw all his strength and weight into the move to gain enough momentum to again lift him from the ground. Around he went as he rose, sending his free leg into a circle kick. It was too high, and cut the air above Tarkus Breen's head as he ducked and charged ahead, arm extended.
But Bransen's kick had been too high on purpose, in accordance with the movements taught in the Book of Jhest. As Breen ducked, Bransen launched his intended attack, his other foot snapping straight up into Breen's face.
Bransen landed easily on both feet, Tarkus Breen staggering backward. To Bransen's left, an attacker was rising but scrambling away, one leg broken. To his right, a man squirmed on the ground and clutched his broken face. Behind him, Cadayle cried; and beyond her, the big man lay very still.
"Who are you? What do you want?" Tarkus Breen said, the confidence long gone from his voice.
"I am…" Bransen paused, as if awakening from a dream, as if for the first time actually realizing what he had done. While his body had come in here, fighting perfectly, his thoughts were stalled back at the tree. Now he was waking up.
But what was he to say? He recalled some of the brothers at the chapel complaining that the roads were becoming unsafe again, with powries and highwaymen. He recalled pieces of their stories of older times and great deeds. He seized on that without even thinking.
"I am the Highwayman," he said, hardly considering the implications.
Tarkus Breen wasn't listening, Bransen then realized, but had used the pause only so that he could gather himself for another attack. He came forward hard, slashing his knife back and forth.
But Bransen, though he had regained his awareness of himself, was no longer afraid. There was no paralysis in him, and the lessons of the Book of Jhest flowed through him as easily and fully as if he were reading the book. His line of chi, formed so solidly by his discipline and by that soul stone set under his black mask, held tight and straight, relaying his thoughts to his muscles perfectly, and calling them to action.
Breen's knife slashed, left to right, then back again, but Bransen retreated and veered, so as not to trip over Cadayle. Tarkus Breen followed, stabbing straight ahead. Bransen's hand pushed the strike out wide, but then his attacker surprised him by breaking off and turning back to Cadayle.
Tarkus Breen stabbed the knife out toward her.
He never got close to connecting.
For Bransen rushed back to Cadayle, catching Breen's wrist with his left hand. He lifted Breen's arm and went under it, turning it and forcing the bully to come up straight. Bransen kept twisting as he stood up straight. He lifted his right arm and drove his elbow against Breen's.
The snap of bone sounded like the breaking of a thick tree branch.
Bransen hardly heard it and hardly slowed, ducking under the shattered arm and turning to come face-to-face against the agonized man, the twisted and broken arm between them.
The look in Breen's eye-somewhere beyond pain, somewhere in the realm of shock and horror-was the first indication of something serious to Bransen. He leaped back, letting go, and Tarkus Breen stood still, his right arm hanging at his side, his left hand coming in slowly, trembling every inch, approaching the hilt of his knife, which he had driven hard into his own diaphragm.
Shaking fingers moved around the hilt and started to close, but Tarkus Breen seemed to lose all strength then. He looked at Bransen. His arm fell to his side.
He fell over dead.
Cadayle screamed, but Bransen hardly heard it. He knew his enemy was dead. He knew that he had killed a man.
He searched through the Book of Jhest for an answer to this sudden realization. He tried to remember to breathe.
Another woman's cry behind him took it all away, and Bransen spun and charged into the house.
A moment later, Callen staggered out, crying, one eye swollen. She caught the door with one hand as she passed and managed to pull it partially closed behind her. She stumbled to Cadayle, who rose to embrace her, and the two turned back to the house, to the sounds of fists connected repeatedly, to the sound of grunts.
The door slammed closed then exploded outward, the assailant flying through it backward. He hit the ground hard, groaned, and rolled over, giving the two women a view of his bloody face.
The Highwayman appeared at the door.
"Be gone, all of you!" he demanded of the beaten attackers. "Be gone and return to this place only on pain of death."
They staggered and scrambled, hoisted their friend with the shattered kneecap, dragged Tarkus Breen's body, and managed to move away.
"They'll not return," Bransen said to the two women.
"How can we ever thank you?" Cadayle said to him breathlessly as she continued to hug her crying mother.