The Bear

TWO

Prince Milwellis burst into the barn with a roar of defiance. Flames ate at one wall, but the mob battling within hardly seemed to notice, so desperate was their struggle.

The young, red-haired warrior prince rushed at one nearby fight, where a Palmaristown man lay bloody on the floor and two others tried desperately to keep up the with the furious movements of the red-capped dwarves darting all about them. One soldier scored a hit with his sword, a solid stab, but the dwarf shrugged it off and returned with a smash of his spiked club that shattered the man's knee. Only Milwellis's intervention prevented a second and more devastating powrie strike as the soldier tumbled in agony.

The prince struck with his sword, a devastating slash across the powrie's chest that sent the dwarf stumbling back… but just a step. The ferocious little beast came on again with a snarl and a howl and a most wicked grin. Milwellis fell back, not willing to trade blows with the powrie. As he retreated he shoved his remaining comrade toward the dwarf.

That man, too, stabbed the dwarf hard, a strike that would have felled most opponents. In response the soldier got the club right between the eyes, a spike stabbing into his brain. His legs dropped from under him. As he fell he twisted the dwarf's club awkwardly, tying up the creature.

Milwellis stepped in. This time his clean strike at the powrie's neck finally finished the vicious little thing.

Milwellis jumped back and looked for the next opportunity. Beside him, the man with the crushed knee pleaded for help.

"Silence, fool!" Milwellis hissed, kicking the wretch to silence. "Crawl out of here!"

The fires reached across the ceiling, the barn surely lost. Milwellis and his men knew it and worked toward the door, but the remaining powries-the prince was shocked to see that there were only three others-fought on as if they hardly cared. Another Palmaristown man was pulled down and slaughtered and then another, though the last desperate swing of his sword managed to take one powrie with him.

Milwellis pushed his way through the door, tripping over the man with the shattered knee. The barn roof fell in behind them, sending sparks and embers flying into the night sky. Milwellis regained his footing and brushed the dirt from his clothes, storming about, cursing every step. "Only four?" he yelled in outrage. "Only four?"

For he had lost nearly a score of fighters in that barn, killed five to one by powries.

"Easy, my son," Laird Panlamaris begged a few moments later, the old man riding over at the sound of Milwellis's bellowing.

"Four, Father!" said Milwellis. "Four wretched powries held that barn for half the night and killed a score of my finest warriors."

"These are formidable foes," Laird Panlamaris agreed. "A bitter lesson I learned decades ago upon the sea."

"They are the curse of Honce," said another who rode up, a giant of a man, wearing the brown robes of the Order of Abelle. "Do not forget who loosed the evil upon us."

Prince Milwellis eyed Father De Guilbe squarely and nodded, his face locked in a hateful grimace.

"Dame Gwydre did this," De Guilbe said. "Dame Gwydre and Father Artolivan, the heretic who claims to rule the church."

"They will pay with their blood," vowed Milwellis.

"Not to doubt," agreed the Laird of Palmaristown, whose once-great city now lay before him in near ruin, the devious work of barely a hundred powries. "When Palmaristown is secured once more, the scourge of red caps driven into the Masur Delaval and drowned like the rats they are, I will sweep Gwydre's Vanguard into ruin."

"Do not forget Chapel Abelle, I beg," said De Guilbe. "If I am to take my rightful place as leader of the Order of Abelle, loyal to King Yeslnik and you, Laird Panlamaris, then I must be properly seated at the chapel that has come to be the center of power for my order. No replacement chapel, however grand, will suffice."

"Not even if King Yeslnik builds you the grandest one of all in Delaval City with a congregation numbering in the thousands?" the laird asked.

Father De Guilbe couldn't contain his grin about that intriguing possibility, though he quickly dismissed it. "Only if the rot at Chapel Abelle is cleansed," he declared. "A grander chapel would, indeed, be a step forward for the church, but only if the disease that has rotted its core, Chapel Abelle, is cleared from the land. Else that rot will continually spread, and the lies of Artolivan and his cohorts will undermine any of my efforts to bring the flock more in line to the edicts of King Yeslnik and the lairds who rule Honce. We cannot ignore Chapel Abelle!"

"And yet, friend, we would not again throw our men at those walls and against the gemstone barrage of a hundred brothers," Milwellis reminded him no. He looked to his father, whose face was locked in a grimace, his teeth grinding.

"Look at your city nearly burned to the ground!" De Guilbe shot back.

"We will trap them in their hole and take all the land about them," Prince Milwellis promised. "We'll keep them in and keep them silenced."

"We will bombard them until they fall upon their own knives out of madness and despair," Laird Panlamaris added, growling out every word. "From the field and from the sea! We will fill their walls with thrown stones."

Both De Guilbe and Milwellis thought the remark to be mostly bluster. To truly sack Chapel Abelle would require a vast army and armada at a price untenable to King Yeslnik's designs, particularly now that vicious powries had entered the fight on the side of their enemies. Certainly the wizened and seasoned Laird Panlamaris understood the truth of his words.

Prince Milwellis stared at his father and saw no hint of doubt in his steeled gaze.

"Come along," Laird Panlamaris told all around him, his voice still thick with simmering rage. "We've more powrie rats to catch." The rocking of the ship across the currents and waves of the great river seemed much more acute belowdecks. Yeslnik expected that he would find his wife with her head out of their private chamber's porthole, "feeding the fish," as Captain Juront of his flagship (newly named Grand Dame Olym in honor of his wife) often called it.

He was pleasantly surprised to find that Olym was not at the window and didn't seem to be heading there anytime soon. Dressed in fine and revealing lace, her smile only adding to the obvious invitation, the Queen of Honce leaped upon her husband as he entered, wrapping his slight frame in her ample arms. Smothering him with passionate kisses, Olym reached over to shut tight the cabin door.

"There are powrie boats in the river," Yeslnik managed to say between kisses.

"We will destroy them," Olym rattled back in a single breath as she drove him back with a ferocious kiss and pushed him onto the bed.

"We will make Palmaristown in the morning," Yeslnik went on. "The city is in great disrepair. Hundreds were murdered by the dwarves."

"You will destroy them," Olym said without the slightest hesitation or reservation. She sat up and straddled him, pulling aside the folds of her garments. "You are the King of Honce. You are Yeslnik the Terrible, and all will tremble before you!"

She began clawing at his shirt, trying to undress him and herself furiously as the moment of passion swept her away.

"Yeslnik the Terrible," the foppish young king whispered to himself during the frenzy. He liked that. And he liked more the wild passion that had come over his wife of late! He had slunk back to Delaval from the far west, from the gates of the city of his greatest foe, Laird Ethelbert, in near despair, the promises of a swift victory slipping away. Emotionally flailing about, unsure of his next move or even of any point of any possible next move, Yeslnik had found strength in the least expected place: the arms of a wife who had cooled to him greatly over the last couple of years and, indeed, who had taken an obvious fancy to the rogue known as the Highwayman, the very same dog Yeslnik blamed for the murder of his uncle, King Delaval.

Even as Olym began to almost savagely ride him, Yeslnik recalled that the chasm between him and his wife had widened after Yeslnik's embarrassment on the road in Pryd a year before. His coach had been assailed by powries, and only the Highwayman's intervention had saved the day. Of course, the rogue had then humiliated Yeslnik and stolen from him!

Olym had turned from Yeslnik then and toward the knave! Yeslnik had been blaming the Highwayman for his conjugal troubles, but now, finally, pinned beneath his nearly frantic wife, he understood the truth. Power and danger drove this woman's hungry loins. She wanted-nay, demanded-a man who would crush the skull of an enemy under his boot with hardly a thought, a man who carried a sword more often than not bloodied with his enemy's entrails.

Lady Olym wanted a king, not a peasant! And this wild creature riding him to levels of pleasure and passion he had never thought possible deserved nothing less.

He was Yeslnik, King of Honce, and woe to those fools who did not drop to bended knee before him! He was Yeslnik the Terrible. Look upon him and be afraid.

Every time the people of Palmaristown believed they had rid themselves of the scourge that had crawled from the Masur Delaval in that awful night now called The Dark of Long Murder, another group of powrie dwarves reared its ugly head. And no matter the odds, those dwarves fought with their typical fury. The ratio Prince Milwellis had seen in the barn held pretty closely with each incident: Nearly forty powries had been killed or captured by the end of the second day, but the Palmaristown garrison had also lost more than two hundred warriors.

Back in his castle, which had mostly survived the fires, Laird Panlamaris took every report of powrie incidents with a heavy and resigned grunt, followed immediately by a slam of his large fist upon the armrest of his oaken throne. He waved away the newest crier who had come in to relate that a single powrie had killed eleven people in the market district before they had tied him down.

Panlamaris sank back wearily in his seat and muttered curses at Dame Gwydre under his breath, not wanting the guards in the room, their morale already low, to hear him.

His son, though, was not nearly as diplomatic. "Why are you not more outraged, Father?" Prince Milwellis rushed forward to stand before the throne. "How can you hear of these murders and not scream and thrash?"

Panlamaris's old eyes narrowed at his impetuous son. "To what end? We have shallow graves filled with hundreds of Palmaristown bodies. There will be more, many more, before this is settled."

"Eleven more now," Milwellis spat.

"You hold your sarcastic tongue," Panlamaris growled. He let his glower sweep the room, stealing any widening grins before they could begin. "I will not be mocked by anyone, least of all my son."

Milwellis looked about to argue, but he bit it back and bowed low in deference.

Panlamaris eyed him with amusement now. "You think me not outraged enough, my son?"

Milwellis could contain himself no longer, beating his chest with one fist. "I would go to Market Square and choke the powrie dead with my own hands," he replied through clenched teeth.

"A rather easy death for a powrie, then." Panlamaris gave a hateful little chuckle. "Perhaps I am more angry than you."

Milwellis and all the others in the room looked at the old laird curiously.

"How many powries have we in our dungeons now?" Panlamaris asked.

"Twenty-seven, my laird," one of the guards answered. "Twenty-eight if this latest survives the mob at Market Square."

"The rat'll live," another said. "Hard to kill the damned things."

"Prepare twenty-eight stakes," Panlamaris announced. "Tall stakes."

Prince Milwellis was about to learn much from his father in ways he had never expected. I've spent many a day killing these little rat-dogs," Panlamaris explained later as the stakes were prepared to his specifications in the city square. "Not too sharp," was the order, for a sharp stake would cause such overwhelming trauma as to reduce the duration of the suffering.

"Never thought we'd have to fight them again," said Harcourt, hands on his old hips as he watched the construction. Panlamaris's trusted general had been in the east serving as advisor to Milwellis. "Never wanted to."

"We'll chase them off like we did on Durbury's Rock," Panlamaris promised. He turned to Milwellis, who, though listening, stood staring past the two old warriors toward the spectacle in the square before him. The first powrie prisoner had been dragged from the dungeon and stripped of his ratty clothing. Bound hands and ankles to four horses, the dwarf was naked and laid out spread-eagled in the square.

"Bah, what're ye doin'? O, ye dogs!" cried the powrie. His howls became indecipherable screams as a soldier pushed a stake slowly into the dwarf's rectum. The volume of his screams increased, surprising Milwellis, who hadn't thought it possible to so agonize a dwarf, as the intrusive pole tore through the creature's bowels and gut. Even the most bloodthirsty of the gathered throng on the square gulped and looked away.

The torturer kept going, though, and the screams became gurgles as the stake reached to the dwarf's throat. The horses pulled as instructed, and the bloody tip of the stake came right out the dwarf's mouth surrounded by bloody bubbles.

More soldiers cut the ropes and carried the dwarf to the docks where supports had been built. They hoisted the powrie up to hang high atop the stake some ten feet from the ground.

"How long?" asked Milwellis, very conscious that he was sweating.

Panlamaris shrugged. "Hours at the least. Seen some live for nearly a week."

Back in the square the next dwarf was dragged from the dungeon, the process repeated.

By the fourth powrie, the mob's squeamishness was gone, replaced by shouted reminders of the horrors the dwarves had inflicted upon Palmaristown. As the sun settled in the west that day, twenty-eight powries rode high on stakes by Palmaristown's south and west gates and along her docks.

… Scarecrows warning their kin away. King Yeslnik!" Captain Juront yelled in a tone that gave Yeslnik great pause. He knew they were nearing Palmaristown, finally, and was not surprised to hear Juront calling him, but the man's tone bespoke great uneasiness and concern. With a glance at his wife, Yeslnik rushed from his cabin, Olym scrambling close behind.

The young king climbed to the deck, the devastation of Palmaristown obvious immediately, with some areas of the city still shrouded in smoke. The sight initially brought relief to Yeslnik, who had feared that Juront's frantic tone was inspired by powries attacking Grand Dame Olym. He moved to the captain, who stood staring out to starboard and the Palmaristown docks, his first mate beside him, equally intent-so much so that neither man seemed to be drawing breath.

When he finally got into a position where he could follow Juront's gaze, Yeslnik, too, sucked in his breath with shock at the sight of dozens of powries on spikes in the harbor.

"Oike! What is that?" Queen Olym exclaimed as she came up beside the three men.

"Powries, milady," Juront managed to gasp.

"Ugly little things. Are they dead?" Even as Olym spoke, the flagship gliding in toward her waiting berth, one of the powries flicked his arm out to the side.

"Soon, milady," Juront promised.

"What is this?" Yeslnik asked.

"The vengeance of Laird Panlamaris, my king," Juront answered. "He is a fierce man of many battles. A man not known for mercy."

King Yeslnik tried to steady himself. He glanced at Olym, fearing the sight too raw for her delicate sensibilities.

But she was smiling, her eyes twinkling. "Fierce," she whispered with obvious admiration and intrigue. "He is a man to be feared."

Yeslnik cleared his throat and forced himself to stand tall. "Yes, well, the more of the dwarves he kills, the better it is for us all," he said.

Grand Dame Olym slid into her berth a short while later, the crack crew working fast to tie her off. Captain Juront led the procession from the ship, the royal guard spreading out quick marching to the docks to prepare the way for the king and queen. One of the staked powries hung just to the side of the gangplank. Yeslnik and Olym moved past and could hear the wretch groan and wheeze. A drop of blood splattered on the planks beside Queen Olym. The woman gasped, and King Yeslnik pulled her a bit to the side.

She wasn't horrified, however, as she revealed when she whispered into her husband's ear, "You must erect bigger stakes!"

A not-so-subtle growl, a promise of passion to come, reverberated behind those words. Yeslnik got her message and privately resolved to fell a forest of Honce's tallest trees. Hold quiet," Shiknickel implored his barrelboat crew. The small powrie boat bobbed on the waves of many crossing wakes, for they dared not put their strong legs to the pedals and drive the craft along. A fleet of tall-masted Delaval warships sliced through the water all about them, churning the river with the power of their passing.

Bloody-cap powries rarely ran from a fight, any fight. But if they revealed themselves in the midst of this fleet, Shiknickel and all the others knew, it wouldn't really be much of a fight. They might use their submerged battering ram to punch a hole in one ship, of course, but to what end? Typically, the ferocious dwarves would scramble to the deck as the ship listed and toppled, so that they could pull the sailors from the waters and cut them open to redden the powries' magical berets with more human blood. But even if they hit a ship now and tried to crawl out onto the deck, the archers from several other warships would cut them down in short order.

So they sat quiet, hoping their low profile-for the bulk of a barrelboat lay below the water-would allow them to remain unnoticed as the Delaval warships sailed past.

At the front of the seated crew, Mcwigik and Bikelbrin exchanged looks, at once wistful, resigned, concerned, and excited. They had spent one hundred years with a small group of powries trapped on the islands of a steamy northern lake, fed by hot springs, a place of teeming life amidst the harsh Alpinadoran tundra. Circumstance, unexpected friendships, and unusual happenstance had freed this pair and subsequently their kin from that soft prison only recently. Now fate had put them in this predicament on a river far to the west of the open sea that would take them to the Weathered Isles and their old homes, surrounded by enemies, surrounded by victims.

This, on the edge of disaster, was the rightful life of a powrie, the pair agreed with shared grins and nods, eagerness for battle overcoming any nostalgia for the safety of the island life.

"They're gone, one and all," Shiknickel announced to the crew.

"Fast for Palmaristown," one of the crew replied. He chuckled. "What's left o' Palmaristown!"

That brought a cheer across the ranks, for this group had been among the six crews who had quietly landed on the riverbank near the great human city and had gone in to lay waste, to let blood, and to stoke fires. Three of the six boats had gone back in for a second strike, unable to resist the seemingly endless supply of easy victims. Shiknickel, more comfortable on the water than on land and more conservative in his risk taking, had decided against that course.

"We really stung 'em good," Mcwigik remarked. "They're callin' to all the land for help, and all their misery's from just six crews."

His words brought more cheering.

"Aye, and if we can muster ten more crews we could take over the whole o' the place called Honce, I'm thinking!" another dwarf in the back blustered.

"Me cap'd get so thick and fat with blood it'd buckle me knees!" said another.

The backslapping and self-congratulating went on for a long, long while, each of the crew snickering and telling of his own mighty adventures in the night of carnage he had inflicted upon the unsuspecting folk of Palmaristown. Of course, since these were powries, each retelling spoke of grander battles, of more desperate struggles against legions of organized enemies, and of far greater kill counts.

It got so exaggerated that at one point, Mcwigik chimed in above the din with, "Bah, but if ye killed to death as many as ye say ye killed to death, and he killed half what he's saying, and him just half o' his, then I'm knowing them boats that just floated past us to be ghost ships or floatin' strays, because sure that there aren't any left alive in the whole damned place o' Honce!"

That pronouncement brought the greatest laughter and cheers of all, but it didn't slow the stories, which grew more outrageous as the barrelboat moved steadily northward, now far behind the north-sailing Delaval fleet, toward the mouth of the Masur Delaval and the open waters of the Gulf of Corona.

"Practice yer tales well, boys," Shiknickel said to them. "For ye'll be tellin' them to our mates on the Weathered Isles in just two weeks' time."

Yet another rousing cheer ensued, as loud as the dwarves dared with so many hostile warships not so far ahead of them in the river, followed by an old song of the rocky shores of the Weathered Isles.

Captain Shiknickel, however, did not join in. He looked back out the low conning tower of the barrelboat, then almost immediately turned to the crew, his shocked expression speaking volumes.

"What d'ye know?" Mcwigik asked and came out of his seat.

Shiknickel slammed his fist against the hard wall of the boat, shifting aside to give Mcwigik access.

"By a dead fish's stink!" Mcwigik yelled a moment later, and all remaining traces of the song died away, and more than half the dwarves jumped up from their seats.

"Staked them," Shiknickel explained.

"Aye, and at least the two nearest us're still alive," Mcwigik called. He spat on the floor and moved out of the way, allowing Bikelbrin to lead a procession of dwarves to view the gruesome sight of Palmaristown's dock, where a line of staked powries hung on tall poles. Every crew member spat after the viewing and grumbled all the way back to his seat, with most echoing the sentiment, "We got to go get 'em down and take their hearts for burying."

"Got friends there," one grumbled. "And I'll be seeing their kids born o' their hearts, don't ye doubt!"

Similar sentiments echoed up and down the line until Shiknickel finally hushed them with a reminder that they were very near to their enemies now and by pointing out that the humans likely had more stakes.

"Bah, but I ain't running!" one of the crew growled. "Not now."

"So that's how they're wanting to play it, are they?" Mcwigik said.

"I'm bettin' we can make a human scream louder than any of them boys up there when they got the stake," Bikelbrin added.

"And what are ye thinking?" Mcwigik demanded of the captain.

"I'm thinking that we're not to be seeing our home anytime soon," Shiknickel shot back. "Not now," he added, looking to the crewman who had earlier proclaimed the same.

"And not anytime soon," Mcwigik growled back at him.

"Aye, and we'll put word to them that's ahead of us, a line o' messages all the way to the Weathered Isles, and we'll put every boat we got into the water," Shiknickel proclaimed. "We'll take the gulf, we'll take the coast, and we're going ashore every time we see the chance to make the dogs pay."

"I'm thinking we're going back into Palmaristown in short order to take our boys down," said Mcwigik. Shiknickel nodded determinedly. "Get yer blood up, boys, and think o' ways we can make them hurt."

"I'm thinking that more than a few stakes'll be empty and waiting for us to put 'em to new use," said Bikelbrin.

Every dwarf on the barrelboat nodded grimly and vowed revenge-payback many times over for the horror inflicted upon their companions. The King of Honce arrives," Laird Panlamaris said to his son Milwellis, Father De Guilbe, Harcourt, and several other commanders.

"If he is everything I have heard him to be, I can hardly breathe for my anticipation," said Harcourt dryly.

Father De Guilbe blanched at the clear breach of etiquette-to mock a king in such a manner!-but Laird Panlamaris chuckled and patted Harcourt's strong shoulder. The two went back twoscore years to when they were young men, barely more than boys, sailing the high seas side by side, battling powries and pirates and doing a bit of pirating on their own. Harcourt had only recently traveled across Honce with Milwellis, advising the young general as he laid waste to the Mantis Arm and the coastal communities along Felidan Bay. If Panlamaris was to entrust the training of his promising son to the man, then surely they were familiar enough for a goodhearted jab, even one aimed at the would-be King of Honce. Neither Harcourt nor Milwellis had returned from the walls of Ethelbert dos Entel with a high opinion of the king, given that Yeslnik had turned tail and fled when victory seemed assured.

"He is a treasure," Panlamaris agreed. "As opposite his uncle Delaval as any man could be."

"And you loved Laird Delaval like a brother," Milwellis interjected, his sour expression showing that he, too, wasn't overjoyed at the unexpected arrival of Yeslnik's fleet. Indeed, Delaval and Panlamaris had been cut from the same cloth, one similar to Laird Ethelbert. Powerful warriors, brave in battle, stern in rule, and lusty with the spoils of their conquests, they exemplified an older code from when the world was wilder. Although none predated the Order of Abelle, all three had come to power under the harsh religious instruction of the Samhaists and at a time when the sword was more important than the notion of diplomacy.

"He is the King of Honce, by Delaval's proclamation," Father De Guilbe reminded them. "His bold actions regarding my order have set in motion long-overdue corrections against the weakness that has crept into the hearts of the brothers."

"Bold actions," Panlamaris echoed with a snort. He had seen the result of those bold actions firsthand when his army had charged the wall of Chapel Abelle only to be battered by a magical barrage the likes of which Honce had never before witnessed. "Has he made a new enemy where he might've found a friend, I wonder?"

Father De Guilbe's face went very tight, and he crossed his thick arms over his large chest and leaned back against the wall. He was a giant of a man, well over six feet tall and with wide and strong shoulders. The fact that he wore the brown robes of his order was the only thing that separated him physically from the burly and toughened warriors in the room.

"You would side with Father Artolivan now?" De Guilbe asked.

Panlamaris scoffed. "He has thrown in with the witch of Vanguard who brought powries to my shore. Bring me Artolivan, and I'll gladly hoist him on a stake as I did the powries."

"But you just implied-"

Panlamaris cut him off. "Yeslnik turned the church away, and so we are left with a monster." He paused for a moment and glared at the monk, who backed down. "To the docks," Panlamaris ordered them all. "Let us meet the king, though he is likely kneeling before the rail, reminding himself of what he ate for lunch."

They shared another laugh at Yeslnik's expense and went out of the room, Panlamaris leading.

Grand Dame Olym was already in her slip, her gangplank lowered, when Panlamaris and his entourage walked on the planks of the long wharf. Knights of Castle Delaval stood at silent attention in two rows upon the dock, halberds in hand, eyes staring straight ahead.

"Very impressive," Harcourt noted, grinning.

Laird Panlamaris, though, was not pleased. Upon the ship stood King Yeslnik, and there was something about his demeanor that immediately unsettled the fiery laird. Some confidence, he decided. The king started down the decline, his steps sure; he didn't even grasp the ropes on either side but descended quickly and steadily.

Behind him came more guards, then Queen Olym, followed by still more Delaval City warriors.

Yeslnik swept through the line of his guards, moving to stand right before the Laird of Palmaristown.

"You have reclaimed your city?"

"Of course. Powrie dwarves. Tough little ones, but they felt the bite of a stake up the arse." Panlamaris bit off the last word as Queen Olym rushed up to stand beside her husband.

No, not quite beside him, Panlamaris noted, but one step behind him to the left. It was a subtle shift from the norm for this couple, but sometimes, Panlamaris knew, the subtle indications would prove the most important.

"Dwarves loyal to Dame Gwydre, I am told." Panlamaris looked at Father De Guilbe.

"That will aid us," Yeslnik replied. "Gwydre remains in Chapel Abelle?"

"Aye, I've got three of my finest ships running the coast. There's no breaking out for a sail to Vanguard."

"But your ground army retreated back to Palmaristown, I am told," said Yeslnik.

"Retreated?" Panlamaris started rather sharply, but he calmed himself as Yeslnik stiffened and narrowed his eyes.

The young king was trying to claim the higher and more valiant ground here, Panlamaris realized, though the laird was having a hard time putting himself back in balance to properly respond.

"You left a nominal force, of course," Yeslnik said. "And runners to tell us if our enemies have broken out of their self-imposed prison."

Laird Panlamaris took a deep breath and stood up straight, his gaze darting all about. He didn't much like being spoken to in such a manner, particularly from a snot-faced boy like Yeslnik who had never bloodied his blade on a man able to defend against the strike. He could see his people shifting uncomfortably all about him but noted, too, the many heavily armed guards who had accompanied Yeslnik to the dock and the warships settled all about the long wharf, their decks lined with onlookers-archers all, no doubt.

He looked back to the young king and stared into his eyes. Panlamaris was quite surprised to see a measure of iron there that he had never before known, indeed, that contrasted starkly with everything that had ever been spoken of the foppish nephew of Laird Delaval.

"I've enough there to slow any attempt to break out of the chapel," Panlamaris finally answered. "But it's not something I'm expecting. Behind those walls Father Artolivan and Dame Gwydre stay alive, but if they come out they'll be caught and killed, and they know it. Oh, they can strike hard with their gemstones from the parapets while warriors scramble and try to bust through the heavy gates, but on an open field we'd kill them dead, and they know that, too."

King Yeslnik considered the words for a bit, then nodded, seeming satisfied with the reasoning.

"Good. I intend to keep them in their prison and to make their lives utterly miserable. We'll hold them there while our forces gather and march to the south, and this time Ethelbert will be pushed into the sea. How secure will Gwydre and Artolivan feel when they are fully isolated, the only resistance remaining against me in the whole world?"

"All the holdings?" Prince Milwellis asked.

"All," Yeslnik replied. "They will pledge fealty, or they will be razed to the ground without mercy."

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.