The Dame

THIRTY

How had this happened? How was it possible that this man, so competent, so formidable, so seasoned, had been taken down? What manner of foe had come against Jameston to corner him and defeat such a warrior? Jameston had successfully battled trolls and powries and barbarians, even giants for decades. Who could possibly have brought him down?

There was only one answer. Jhesta Tu.

Bransen knelt over Jameston for a long while, cradling the man’s head, trying to come to terms with his loss. The minutes continued to slide past and still Bransen sat, recalling his first meeting with Jameston in the wilds of southern Alpinador, when the scout had joined in a fight against a company of Ancient Badden’s trolls. He remembered the look on the face of Crazy Vaughna when she realized that it was Jameston Sequin, the Jameston Sequin, who had joined in their cause.

Walking with Jameston these last weeks, Bransen had come to appreciate that awestruck expression of Vaughna’s all the more, for truly this man more than matched his impressive reputation.

Now Jameston was gone.

How alone Bransen felt at that terrible, terrible moment. Not just alone but confused, consumed by the unsettling notion that he had played a role in this, that he had allowed Affwin Wi to dismiss Jameston and send him away. All those thoughts swirled and coalesced, first reducing Bransen into a battered and defeated shell, weak in the knees and unable to hold back his tears.

But the stretch of pity and self-pity and hopelessness lasted only a few heartbeats, replaced by a bubbling rage that turned Bransen’s churning gut into a pit of pure acid. He gently laid Jameston’s head back and jumped up to his feet, seeking focus, seeking an outlet.

He considered the hole in the wooden wall, punched through with tremendous force. He turned Jameston’s body over a bit and noted that the same blunt force had hit him with enough power to skewer him. An image of Merwal Yahna and his exotic weapon flashed in Bransen’s mind.

Jameston had been near the wall, his back to it when slain. Bransen turned to see what his friend might have witnessed at that moment and noted blood on the floor by the door. He went to it, following the clear trail of blood droplets to the back of the cottage, a short distance into the forest, where he found the remains of a makeshift pyre and the charred and shrunken remains of a person. He saw a black silk slipper and knew beyond any doubt. No simple soldier had taken down Jameston Sequin.

“Jhesta Tu,” Bransen mouthed as he regarded that slipper, and knew from its size that it had been worn by the woman who had battled Jameston while Bransen had fought Merwal Yahna in their first meeting with Laird Ethelbert’s assassins. At least those two Jhesta Tu had hunted Jameston Sequin. They could not have done so without the permission, indeed the command, of Affwin Wi.

Bransen felt his jaw go tight, the muscles in his arms and legs twitching in anticipation. It took him a long time to slow and steady his breathing, to find his center and his mind-body connection. He couldn’t hold that connection for long.

Too overwhelmed was he, too betrayed and confused. And too angry. Only once in his young life had Bransen Garibond felt such rage: on that terrible day when Laird Prydae had abducted Cadayle for his sexual pleasure and given Callen to Bernivvigar to be murdered. That same terrible time when he had learned of the murder of his father, Garibond Womak. That rage had allowed him to sit within the branches of a bonfire and feel no heat. That moment had incensed him to kill.

Bransen turned to the east, toward Ethelbert dos Entel. Toward Affwin Wi. Sprinting nearly the entire way, Bransen reached the wall of Ethelbert dos Entel before dawn. The sky over the Mirianic glowed in predawn light, but stars remained clear in the west. The city was only beginning to awaken. The Highwayman used that slumber to his advantage. He could have walked in through the gate; Affwin Wi had introduced him to the guards there, and she carried great weight in the city, but something deep within, his Highwayman instincts, told him that stealth was his ally here.

He moved along the wall, listening carefully, until he came to an out-of-the-way corner where he could climb and keep the still-dark western sky at his back. There, he fell into the powers of the malachite and used his strength and training to easily scale the twelve-foot barrier. He peered over the wall, the cat’s-eye allowing him to see as clearly as if the sun was up in the east, with complete confidence that the guard he then viewed a dozen strides away could not see him.

The Highwayman went over silently, the dark sky behind him presenting no silhouette for the half-aware sentry to observe. He could have killed that sentry-it would have been an easier course than slipping across the wall top and down the other side-but he dismissed that notion out of hand. Still utilizing the powers of the malachite to lighten his step, Bransen crossed over quickly, allowing himself to drop to the ground in near silence because of heightened balance.

Though he could see Castle Ethelbert, it took him a few moments to get his bearings and determine the best way to navigate the crowded city, time he didn’t have to spare as more sounds of the city awakening filled his ears and the sky brightened a bit more. He started at a trot, quickly a run, letting that low but imposing castle guide him. Affwin Wi and her group were in a wing of the castle. In short order he could see the balcony from which his spirit had answered Jameston’s dying call.

He could just go back in the room. It was unlikely the others knew he had left or had learned their terrible secret. Prudence called him to that plan, but anger prevented it.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. This was no time for secrecy and plotting, for deception and caution. Or perhaps it was just such a time. Bransen, so consumed, didn’t care. “No.” He walked in the front door of the castle’s far western wing, the complex afforded Affwin Wi’s group.

“When did you go out?” Pactset Va greeted him immediately. “How did you get out?” Va shook his head, his topknot dancing with the movement as he called across the way to his companion Moh Li, noting Bransen’s dark expression.

Moh Li responded quickly to the call, stepping through a hanging curtain to look curiously from Pactset Va to Bransen.

“You did not tell me that this one left,” Pactset Va reprimanded.

“He did not,” Moh Li replied. “Not while I guarded.” Both men turned suspicious stares upon Bransen.

“I left from my balcony.”

Pactset Va waved a finger at him immediately, the man’s face screwing up into a stern look. “You cannot do this!”

The Highwayman smiled slyly and walked right up to that poking finger.

“You leave only on the command of-”

“Shut up,” the Highwayman cut him off.

Pactset Va’s eyes popped wide.

“Shut. Up.” the Highwayman said again, biting off each word through his gritted smile.

Pactset Va slapped him hard across the face.

“Shut up now,” the Highwayman clarified, smiling wider and staring at him, oblivious to the sting of the slap or his red face.

The man moved to slap him again, but this time the Highwayman used Pactset Va’s incredulity to get inside the man’s defenses. He opened up a sudden and furious barrage of punches, left and right, into the face of the man. Five short punches sent Pactset Va back hard into the wall. Va brought both his arms up high to block, but the Highwayman leaped and spun a complete circuit, kicking expertly right below the man’s blocking elbows, scoring a hard kick into Pactset Va’s belly.

The Highwayman landed softly and leaped and spun again immediately, bringing his foot around to connect solidly on the side of his lurching opponent’s face, launching Pactset Va into a sidelong somersault. He landed hard on the floor, semiconscious and groaning.

“You will pay the price!” Moh Li cried.

Without even a glance at him, the Highwayman strode up to tower over Pactset Va. Still not looking at Li, the Highwayman drove his foot down hard on Pactset Va’s throat.

Moh Li gave a cry that told the Highwayman the man was charging at his back. At the last possible moment, the Highwayman reached down and grabbed the sword on his left hip with a backhand grip so that he easily pulled it free and snapped it back out under his right arm, blade stabbing behind him.

Just as Moh Li leaped for him.

The man collided with the Highwayman, but not hard, for he was scrambling desperately to avoid impalement. The Highwayman’s sword angled down, and Moh Li crumpled to the floor. The Highwayman pulled the blade free and spun to see him writhing in agony. Moh Li had come in with a flying kick and had taken the sword into the back of his thigh, a deep, deep wound. Screaming, he flailed around now, trying to stem the blood flow.

“Shut up,” the Highwayman said to Moh Li, kicking him in the face, silencing him. Perhaps he would bleed out, perhaps not. The Highwayman didn’t care. Perhaps Pactset Va would choke from the throat kick, perhaps not. Images of dead Jameston filled Bransen’s mind, and he did not care about these men’s suffering.

He stalked through the room and kicked open the opposite door into the small anteroom before Affwin Wi’s large chamber entryway. That second door swung wide before Bransen crossed to it. There stood Merwal Yahna staring at him, staring at his bloody sword. No look of revulsion showed on Merwal Yahna’s face, though. Indeed, the man’s smile widened wickedly.

The Highwayman reacted with anger, leaping ahead, but Merwal Yahna anticipated the charge, for he was moving even as Bransen did. The warrior from Behr leaped backward and to the side, and the Highwayman went through the door in a rush, skidding to an abrupt stop, acutely aware that Merwal Yahna was not alone in the room.

“You act rashly, warrior,” said Affwin Wi, standing in a corner of the room. “Jhesta Tu do not act in such a manner.”

“But they murder without cause,” Bransen replied through clenched teeth.

“He found his friend,” reasoned Merwal Yahna.

Bransen turned sharply to Affwin Wi and started to ask why, but he bit it back. It didn’t matter; he didn’t even want to know. He presented his sword toward Merwal Yahna, inviting him to battle.

The warrior snapped out his nun’chu’ku in a dizzying, spinning blur, ending his fast movement with a battle shout. He held the poles straight before him, leather cord taut, the muscles on his arms tight under the black silk sleeves of his shirt.

At the back of the room, Affwin Wi similarly exploded into sudden motion, whirling her arms in wide circles as she leaped into a wide-legged, ready crouch.

“A’shin ti!” Merwal Yahna shouted at her. “Abidu a’shin ti!”

Bransen didn’t know the exact translation of the phrase, but he recognized it as plea from the warrior that Affwin Wi allow him to fight this battle alone. From the corner of his eye, he watched Affwin Wi relax and stand up straight, bringing her hands together before her chest and offering a slight bow before stepping back.

Bransen’s gaze shifted back to Merwal Yahna. The Behrenese’s face was locked in a stare of absolute concentration and simmering eagerness. The man went into another flourish, releasing the nun’chu’ku with his right hand and sending it into a violent spin with his left, around and up, over his head and around, and around the back of his head, where he caught it in his right hand and continued the flow around the other side.

The Highwayman didn’t let him continue his display. Bransen rushed forward with a sudden and ferocious stab, retraction, and slash of his blade. Neither came close to hitting the agile Merwal Yahna, who deftly reversed the spin of his own weapon to send it snapping out to intercept.

But Bransen leaped to his right, using the malachite to enhance the great jump and turning his hips to keep his shoulders squared to the warrior from Behr as he sailed past. He bent his legs as he came over a chair, planting one foot on the arm, the other on the back and riding it to the ground as it tipped over.

Merwal Yahna came in fast pursuit, but Bransen hooked his foot under the arm of the chair as it and he descended. He kicked out, launching the chair Merwal Yahna’s way.

Merwal Yahna blocked the spinning chair with a straightened leg, then battered it aside with his nun’chu’ku, breaking off pieces with the mighty blows.

The Highwayman seized the moment and leaped at him, kicking and stabbing. Up came the nun’chu’ku, spinning and snapping. Bransen blocked with his foot, then with his blade, then again to the left and back to the right. He stabbed ahead and Merwal Yahna’s weapon was there, wood slapping the side of the sword, and again a second time.

There was no thinking here, no movements other than instinct as the two warriors let loose tremendous volleys and counters, wood hitting metal, sword slapping nun’chu’ku, a leg thrusting forward to steal momentum from a swinging pole and absorb the blow, an open palm slapping flat against the side of the sword, turning the thrust harmlessly aside.

It went on for a long while, a furious explosion that rolled and rolled from one end of the room to the other. Only Affwin Wi, so trained in the ways of battle, witnessed it. To her, it was a thing of beauty, a dance of precision and discipline.

To any other onlookers, it would have seemed a thing of chaos, a blur of movement and a cacophony of discordant sounds. Untrained onlookers would have gasped through every heartbeat, thinking a kill to be had.

Affwin Wi just smiled, pleased that her lover was showing himself so well here and excited by the possibilities of this stranger who had taught himself the ways of the warrior.

Bransen stepped quickly back against a sudden burst of snapping nun’chu’ku thrusts, the pole popping forward in the air before him in rapid succession. He felt the broken chair behind his heels and jumped backward reflexively, landing lightly.

Over the chair came Merwal Yahna, leaping high in a spin. He landed with his right side facing Bransen and unrolled his right arm out at the Highwayman, the nun’chu’ku lashing out like an extension of his arm.

But Bransen had seen the movement in his mind before it had happened. As soon as Merwal Yahna had leaped the chair, Bransen had known the end of the play. More importantly, he knew that his opponent could not easily alter the ending.

Instead of backing away, the Highwayman went forward and leaped high above the swing of the nun’chu’ku. He threw his sword up past Merwal Yahna, a daring distraction. Bransen turned as he sailed and kicked out, scoring a stunning blow to Merwal Yahna’s face, snapping the man’s head back viciously. He landed close to the warrior, his chest against Merwal Yahna’s outstretched hand. Without slowing, Bransen punched his right arm under Merwal Yahna’s elbow, then stabbed it out across the man’s back, planting his hand firmly against Merwal Yahna’s opposite shoulder blade. At the same time, with his left hand he grabbed Merwal Yahna’s weapon hand. As soon as he had executed this locking hold, Bransen drove forward and upward hard, throwing all his weight into the move. Merwal Yahna, dazed by the kick, still stuck in the momentum of his initial attack, couldn’t begin to turn about appropriately to respond.

Bransen heard the pop of the man’s shoulder coming out of joint, and he drove ahead again to accentuate the move and the pain. He released fast, unafraid of the nun’chu’ku at that point, and spun backward, lifting his foot in a circle kick that caught Merwal Yahna square in the chest, knocking him back several steps. To his credit the tough warrior didn’t fall, but the Highwayman pursued, jabbing hard with a left-right combination, avoiding Merwal Yahna’s attempt to block with his right arm and hitting him squarely in the face.

The Highwayman faked his next punch, half throwing a right before retracting with enough force to drive himself into a backward lean. From there he lifted his left leg up high, so high, straight over his head!

His leg came down hard, outstretched and atop the dislocated shoulder with tremendous force. For all his toughness, Merwal Yahna blanched and lurched to the side. Bransen waded in with another combination of heavy blows, positioning his opponent perfectly to drive his knee into Merwal Yahna’s gut.

The Highwayman sprang back then leaped up in a spin, his flying foot catching the doubling-over Merwal Yahna on the side of the head with such power that it sent him into a sidelong somersault. He landed hard and awkwardly, growling with agony, and grasped his torn shoulder in a mighty grip, groaning through gritted teeth. He was tense and curled, but he couldn’t hold it, and gradually, he melted back to the floor, his growl receding with his strength.

Bransen leaped over him in a crouch, left hand extended against Merwal Yahna’s face, lining up a surely fatal blow from his cocked, right arm.

And a blow did fall, a hard one, but it fell against Bransen before he could finish Merwal Yahna. Affwin Wi’s kick staggered him to the side, and he had to fall over into a roll and then come back to his feet, spinning to face this newest opponent.

“You murdered Jameston!” he accused.

“He attacked those sent to make certain he had left.”

“No!” Bransen retorted. “Never! Not unless he were forced to defend himself!”

Affwin Wi settled back easily and began to laugh. “Foolish young man,” she said.

“I came here as a fellow traveler in the way of Jhesta Tu!” Bransen shouted, and Affwin Wi laughed louder.

“I am not Jhesta Tu!” she shouted back, and the words hit Bransen much harder than her kick ever could have. “Hou-lei!”

Hou-lei? The title rolled around Bransen’s head for few moments until he connected it to his reading of the Book of Jhest. Hou-lei, the tradition that had inspired Jhesta Tu, an old mercenary warrior class, a tradition of divorcing fighting skill from moral judgment, of preparing for battle under the will of Whatever sheik or king paid most handsomely. A Hou-lei warrior was an instrument, a weapon, and nothing more.

Bransen stood there blinking in disbelief, but everything suddenly made sense. “You are paid assassins,” he said.

Affwin Wi shrugged as if that fact should have been apparent long before. She came forward suddenly and viciously, her arms waving alternating circles before her, her hands set in hooklike fashion, thumbs tucked, fingers tightly bent at the knuckles.

The Highwayman dropped his left leg back and fell lower, his own arms up before him.

As they closed, Affwin Wi kept spinning her arms, occasionally jabbing forward. Bransen blocked those first few stabs easily or turned aside from them, eventually coming to the same rhythm as Affwin Wi.

She picked up the pace. He stabbed with his hands. Back and forth they circled and slapped, hands stabbing like striking snakes, hands striking hands. They went faster, more furiously. Affwin Wi dodged one of the Highwayman’s punches and kicked her leg out right before her. Bransen’s shin came up to meet it. They hopped about, each keeping a leg in the air, waving, kicking, punching, slapping like a pair of cranes battling over a frog in a crowded pond.

Unused to this style of fighting, Bransen could not keep up. He was hit by more blows than he landed. Every strike the expert Affwin Wi delivered was in perfect balance, her weight behind the blow, her angle precise.

Bransen knew he couldn’t win this kind of fight. He suddenly threw himself to the side and into a roll, coming up with Merwal Yahna’s nun’chu’ku in his hands. He put the weapon into motion-it had looked so easy in Merwal Yahna’s hands-and nearly clipped himself in the head. Affwin Wi laughed at him and charged.

Bransen dropped the exotic weapon, reached into his brooch, and met her flying form with a lightning discharge that sent her flying back the way she came. She landed and stumbled, fell over and rolled, came back to her feet and stumbled again, her teeth chattering, her black hair jumping wildly.

The Highwayman focused on the image of Jameston, focused on his brooch, focused on the power of Abellican gemstones. He enacted a serpentine shield and became a living torch, using the malachite and his fury to hurl himself at the Hou-lei warrior.

She shrieked and tried to dodge, and Bransen knew he had her. He crashed into her, bringing both to the floor. Bransen closed his eyes, not wanting to watch the flames curl her flesh.

She laughed at him, punched him in the face, and wriggled away.

Bransen looked down to see that his flames were no more. He looked up at Affwin Wi to see her smiling smugly, her hand extended, a gemstone in her open palm. A sunstone. The stone of antimagic.

“I know your secret, Highwayman,” she said.

Bransen tried to yell his fury, but his words came out garbled, indecipherable, Storklike. His thoughts rushed back to the moment on the trail in the fight with the trolls, when a blow to the head had dislodged his gemstone and left him stumbling and helpless.

No, he decided. This was not akin to that. This was a gemstone countering his own. Damn it! He would be the stronger! He reached more deeply into the brooch and this time felt the connection through the static of the sunstone. Bransen leaped to his feet with a growl and charged. Another furious exchange brought him around to the side. Still, he couldn’t keep up with the speed of Affwin Wi, so he focused his blocks and counters to his right side.

Predictably, the Hou-lei warrior seized the opening and launched a left hook Bransen could not block.

He didn’t try to, taking the hit and using the force of the blow along with his own sudden retreat to open the ground between them enough to scramble to the side and grab his sword where he’d dropped it. But the incredibly fast Affwin Wi was there to stomp on the blade. Bransen had to let go of the hilt and throw his arm up to block. To his credit, he did deflect her short left jab, but her right hand swept in from behind and above, slashing down and across. The Highwayman fell back and tried to turn his head to make the hit a glancing one, and indeed, he was nearly out of Affwin Wi’s reach.

But she wasn’t trying to strike him. Her slender fingers caught the edge of Bransen’s magical brooch and wrenched it with her as he fell away, tearing the skin, tearing away the magic.

He was the Stork again, so suddenly, so helplessly, blood running freely from his torn forehead. He somehow got one leg under himself and stumbled halfway to standing, but Affwin Wi was there, dropping a series of heavy and strategic blows, more to taunt and hurt him than to finish him.

Bransen felt himself falling. Affwin Wi caught him by the shirt and hauled him to his feet. Before he could determine if he had the stability to stand, she punched him in the face. He fell away, Affwin Wi leaping a circle kick that snapped his head to the side violently.

All the world was spinning. Bransen hit the floor facedown and helpless. Affwin Wi could finish him with a stomp to the back of his neck. He tried to turn and nearly got to his side when her foot slammed him in the gut, doubling him up. Then she kicked him in the face, straightening him out again.

With a sudden burst of energy, Bransen pushed up to his hands and knees and scrabbled away, Affwin Wi laughing behind him. He thought of Jameston, dead Jameston, and of Cadayle, whom he would never see again. He thought of all the promises of his road and his life, of his brooch and his consistent strength, of the hopes and dreams he had dared entertain. Of his unborn child.

“No!” Bransen heard himself cry from somewhere deep within, from a primal place of pure rage and denial.

“No!” to Jameston’s murder.

“No!” to his failure.

“No!” to the sudden end of his road.

“No!” to his loss of Cadayle.

“No!” to the thought of never seeing his child.

“No!” to the return of the Stork.

Just “no!” A wall of utter denial, of utter refusal.

Affwin Wi walked up to him.

The Highwayman, with all the grace of a Jhesta Tu warrior, kicked his leg out behind him and hit her in the knee, locking her leg painfully. The Highwayman leaped up, spun about, and launched a barrage of punches and kicks that had the Hou-lei warrior backing desperately, her arms working in a blur to try to slow the onslaught.

Where had he found this power and coordination? He had no soul stone, but his line of life energy ran strong and ran straight. He charged as she backed, his barrage did not slow, and all momentum fell to him, to the Highwayman, the Jhesta Tu, the angry warrior.

Fury guided but did not consume him. He punched and kicked with rage but with all his strength and speed in complete control. He focused on the sheer wall of denial that drove him but never lost sight of his surroundings or of his opponent.

Thus, when Affwin Wi feigned a block and fell to the floor, rolling in to take him out at the legs, the Highwayman reacted by leaping straight up into the air so high and gracefully that it felt as if he remained connected to the malachite. He landed in perfect balance, so lightly and perfectly, now towering over Affwin Wi, who had to work doubly hard and at an awkward angle to try to fend him off.

The Highwayman stayed focused enough to detect movement to the side and to get his arm up just in time to block the sliver of silver flying at him through the air. Holding his torn guts with one hand, Moh Li lifted another missile with the other. The spinning, many-toothed disk flashed past the crouching Highwayman. He had to finish Moh Li quickly, he realized.

He glanced at Affwin Wi, thinking that he might have to fend her off fast and then make the run to her companion. She stood with his sword in hand.

Another disk, another shur’a’tu’wikin, a “sword hidden in the hand,” as the clever weapon was known, flashed out at him. He couldn’t dodge and had to block again, this time the disk slicing hard as it deflected off his hand, all but severing his little finger. His digit fell limply to the side, hanging by nothing more than a strand of bloody skin.

Bransen made a decision. He swung his hand around gingerly as he brought it in close, catching the swinging finger in his grasp and tucking his fist tight against his ribs. He broke into a run. With a great leap to the side, he crashed through the grated window.

He dropped to the courtyard on his feet and kept on running. Never looking back, blinded by pain and confusion and a profound sense of despair, the Highwayman ran through the Entel morning. He smashed his way through the market, upsetting carts, and rushed down an alley. He found the strength to lessen his weight and make a great leap to a low roof, then scrambled from there to the city wall.

Sentries and commoners alike yelled at him as he went right over, sprinting away, the bright morning light dazzling through the tears that filled his eyes.

To his surprise he found no pursuit, but he kept running because to stop was to face the awfulness that had found his life.

And he feared, too, that, as soon as he settled and took a full measure, his moment of clarity, of escape from the Stork, would be at its end, and he would become helpless once more.