Authors: R.A. Salvatore
“A gentler man, whomever it might prove to be,” Abbot Je’howith replied calmly. “And fear not for Duke Kalas, my King. The Duke of Wester-Honce, the Baron of Palmaris, will find the brothers of St. Precious accommodating.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” said Danube.
“At the least, they will come to understand that they are not enemies but allies in the war to reclaim the souls of Palmaris,” Je’howith went on.
“For Church or for Crown?” Constance asked.
Je’howith glanced back at her, and, surprisingly, he appeared wounded by her attitude. What was he about? she wondered. Did he seek alliance with her, and, if so, to what advantage for her?
“I must go and see about my duties, my King,” Je’howith quickly said. “I must begin the letters to summon the College of Abbots.” He bowed again and, with no objections forthcoming, hustled away.
Danube watched him go, shaking his head. “Never am I quite certain where that one stands,” he remarked to Constance, moving close beside her at the taffrail, “for Church or for Crown.”
“For Je’howith, more likely,” said Constance. “And with his mentor, Markwart, dead, and the Church turned hostile to his old ways, that path, it would seem, now lies with the Crown.”
Danube stared at her, nodding, admiring. “You always see things so clearly,” he complimented, and he draped his arm about her shoulder. “Ah, my Constance, whatever would I do without you?”
The woman nudged closer, liking the support from the strong man. She knew the rules, knew that by those rules she was not fit to be queen. She trusted that Danube cared for her deeply, though, and while it was friendship more than love, she could be satisfied with that.
Almost
satisfied, she reminded herself, and soon after, she led the King to his stateroom belowdeck.
P
rince Midalis watched the hefty Abbot Agronguerre come bounding out of the gates, huffing and puffing and wiping the sweat from his brow with a dirty kerchief. The man shook his head repeatedly, muttering prayers. He brought his right hand up before his face, then swept it down to the left and back up, then down to the right and out, the sign of the evergreen, an old, though now seldom used, Church gesture.
Glancing around at the carnage on the field, the Prince understood. Many goblins were down, most dead and some squirming and crying. And many men had
fallen as well, the Prince’s brave soldiers, most to Midalis’ right, and some of the Alpinadoran barbarians, over on the field to the left. Those monks who had come out before the Abbot, had gone to the right almost exclusively, moving to tend their own countrymen.
Abbot Agronguerre surveyed the situation briefly, then looked at Midalis, who caught his attention with a quick wave of his hand. The abbot nodded and rushed over.
“We have allies,” Prince Midalis remarked gravely, “wounded allies.”
“And will they accept our soul stones?” the abbot asked in all seriousness. “Or will they see our magic as some demonic power to be avoided?”
“Do you believe—” the Prince started incredulously.
Agronguerre stopped him with a shrug. “I do not know,” he admitted, “nor do the younger brothers, which is why they instinctively went to the aid of the Vanguardsmen.”
“Bring some, and quickly,” the Prince instructed, then he turned his mount and started at a swift trot to the left toward the barbarian line. The bulk of the Alpinadorans were on the edge of the field now, and many had gone into the shadows beneath the boughs in pursuit of the fleeing goblins. Several others had been left behind on the open field, wounded.
“Where is Andacanavar?” the Prince called out, then, trying to remember his bedongadongadonga, he translated. “
Tiuk nee
Andacanavar?”
A couple of whistles were relayed along the line, and the giant ranger appeared from the brush, mighty Bruinhelde at his side. The pair spotted Midalis at once and strode over quickly.
“Our debt to you this day is great,” Midalis said, sliding down from his horse and landing right into a respectful bow. “We would have been lost.”
“Such debts do not exist between friends,” Andacanavar replied, and Midalis did not miss the fact that the man glanced to the side, and somewhat unsurely, at Bruinhelde as he spoke.
“We did not know if you would come,” Midalis admitted.
“Did we not share drink in the mead hall?” Bruinhelde asked, as if that alone should explain everything and should have given Midalis confidence that the barbarians would indeed appear.
The Prince, taking the cue, nodded and bowed again. “I feared that perhaps you were delayed by yet another goblin force,” he answered, “or that our agreement on this morning’s tactics had not been clear.”
Bruinhelde laughed. “No agreement,” he started to say, somewhat sharply.
“We could not have hoped to sort through coherent plans,” Andacanavar cut in; and Midalis understood and appreciated the fact that the ranger was trying to keep things calm between the leaders. “We know little of your fighting tactics, as you know little of ours. Better that we watch you take the field, then find where we best fit in.”
Midalis looked around the field, taking note of the scores of goblin dead, and
he smiled and nodded.
He noted, too, that Abbot Agronguerre and several brothers were fast approaching, the abbot looking somewhat tentative.
“You have wounded,” the Prince said to Bruinhelde. “My friends are skilled in the healing arts.”
Bruinhelde, his expression unyielding, glanced over at Andacanavar; and the ranger moved past Midalis, sweeping the Prince and Bruinhelde into his wake, heading quickly for the nearest fallen Alpinadorans.
“Bandages alone,” the worldly ranger said quietly to Abbot Agronguerre. The two men stared at each other for a long moment, and then the abbot nodded. Agronguerre turned and motioned to his brethren, assigning each a fallen Alpinadoran, and then moved for the most grievously wounded man, who already had a couple of Alpinadoran women working hard to stem the flow of his lifeblood.
Andacanavar, Midalis, and Bruinhelde met him there, the Prince bending low beside the abbot.
“They are leery of magic,” he whispered to his monk friend. “Better that we use conventional dressings.”
“So said the large one,” Abbot Agronguerre replied, indicating Andacanavar. He ended his sentence with a grunt as he pulled tight the bandage crossing the man’s chest, shoulder to rib cage, trying hard to stop the crimson flow. “For the others, perhaps, but this one will not live the hour without the use of the soul stone, and may not live even if I employ one.”
Both Vanguardsmen looked up then to see Andacanavar and Bruinhelde looking down at them, the ranger seeming somewhat unsure but Bruinhelde with a determined stare upon his face.
“The bandage will not stem the blood,” Abbot Agronguerre remarked calmly, and he reached into his belt pouch and produced the gray soul stone, the hematite, and held it up for the two Alpinadorans to see. “But I have magic that—”
“No!” Bruinhelde interrupted firmly.
“He will die without—”
“No,” the barbarian leader said again, and his look grew ever more dangerous—so much so that Midalis grabbed Agronguerre by the wrist and gently pushed his hand down. The abbot looked to his Prince, dumbfounded, and Midalis merely shook his head slowly.
“He will die,” Agronguerre insisted to Midalis.
“Warriors die,” was all that Bruinhelde replied; and he walked away, but not before bringing over two of his other warriors and issuing instructions to them in the Alpinadoran tongue.
Midalis understood enough of the words to know that Bruinhelde would not bend on this matter, for he told his two warriors to stop Agronguerre, by whatever means, if the monk tried to use the devil magic on their fallen comrade. The Prince fixed Agronguerre with a solid look then, and, though it pained Midalis as much as it pained Agronguerre to let a man die in this manner, he shook his head
again slowly and deliberately.
The abbot pulled away, glanced once at the two imposing barbarian guards, then pocketed the gemstone and went back to work with conventional means upon the fallen warrior.
The man was dead within a few minutes.
Abbot Agronguerre wiped his bloody hands, then rubbed them across his cheek, brushing away his tears, unintentionally leaving light bloody smears on his face. He rose in a huff and stormed away, to the next brother in line working upon a wounded Alpinadoran, and then the next. Midalis and Andacanavar, and the sentries, followed him all the way.
Without a word to his unwelcome entourage and growling with every step, Abbot Agronguerre stalked across the field back toward the fallen Vanguardsmen, pulling out his soul stone as he went, showing it, as an act of defiance, to the Alpinadoran guards.
The barbarian warriors bristled, and Prince Midalis worried that his friend’s anger might be starting even more trouble this dark morning; but Andacanavar dismissed the two others with a wave of his hand, then motioned for Midalis to wait with him.
“The monk errs,” the ranger remarked quietly.
“It does not set well with Abbot Agronguerre to watch a man die,” Prince Midalis replied, a harsh edge to his voice, “especially when he believes that he might have saved that man’s life.”
“At the expense of his soul?” Andacanavar asked in all seriousness.
Midalis blinked and backed off a step, surprised by the stark question. He studied the ranger for a long while, trying to get a measure of the man. “Do you truly believe that?” he asked.
Andacanavar shrugged his huge shoulders, his expression vague. “I have lived for many years,” he began. “I have seen much that I would not have believed possible. Monsters, magic, and, yes, the demon dactyl. I have learned of several religions, your Abellican one included, and I know well the premise of the Abellican Church that the gemstones are the gifts of their god.”
“But your people do not view them that way,” Midalis reasoned.
Andacanavar chuckled, showing the Prince that his words were a bit of an understatement. “My people do not believe in magic,” he said. “Those practices that transcend the bonds of the elements—the magic of Abellicans and of elves, of demons and of yatol priests—are all the same to us, all wrought in the mystical world of illusion and deceit.”
“And how does worldly Andacanavar view the use of such gemstones?” Prince Midalis dared to ask.
“I was raised outside of Alpinador,” the man answered. “I understand the differences between the various forms of magic.”
“And yet you let the man die,” the Prince remarked, his words an accusation though his tone surely was not.
“Had your Abbot Agronguerre tried to use the soul stone upon fallen Temorstaad, Bruinhelde and his warriors would have stopped him, and violently, do not doubt,” the ranger explained. “They are a simple folk, a people of honor and resolute principles. They do not fear death, but they do fear the realm of the mystical. To them, it was a choice of Temorstaad’s body against the price of his soul, and to them, that is not so difficult a choice.”
Prince Midalis shook his head and sighed, showing that he was not impressed.
“Understand that this alliance is a tentative one yet,” Andacanavar warned him. “Your fears that Bruinhelde and his people would not come to the field this day were justified—for, indeed, had the majority of his warriors been given the choice, they would have turned north for their homes, trying to beat the onset of the winter winds. But Bruinhelde is a wise leader, a man looking past the immediate comforts and to the future welfare of his people. He desires this alliance, though he’ll hardly admit it openly. Yet if you or your Abellican companions try to force your ways upon us, if you insist upon foisting the realm of the mystical upon Bruinhelde’s warriors—even if you believe you are doing so for the good of those warriors—then know that the goblins will become the least of your troubles.”
“It pained me to watch a man die,” Midalis replied, “a man who could have been saved.”
Andacanavar nodded, not disagreeing.
“And it pained Abbot Agronguerre,” Midalis went on. “He is a good and gentle man, who battles suffering.”
“But does he fear suffering?”
Midalis shook his head.
“And does he fear death?”
Midalis snorted incredulously. “If he does, then his title of abbot of the Abellican Church is misplaced, I would say.”
“Neither Bruinhelde nor any of his warriors fear death,” Andacanavar explained, “as long as they die honorably, in battle.”
Prince Midalis considered the words for a long while, even glanced back over his shoulder to the fallen Temorstaad. The Alpinadoran women were working on him now, taking his valuables and wrapping him in a shroud. Midalis wasn’t thrilled with Andacanavar’s explanation or the reality of the situation, but he knew that he had to accept it. This alliance with the Alpinadoran barbarians wasn’t going to be easy, he recognized. Their customs and those of the Vanguardsmen were too disparate. Midalis’ gaze drifted about the field to the slaughtered, hacked goblins, to those Alpinadoran women walking among the goblin bodies, mercilessly slashing any that moved, even sticking knives into a few that did not move, just to be sure. A shudder coursed down the Prince’s spine. Not an easy alliance but a necessary one, he realized. He certainly didn’t want Bruinhelde and his bunch as enemies!
“And you brought your womenfolk along for battle,” Andacanavar remarked, noting that many women were also among Midalis’ ranks. “Never would Bruinhelde accept women as warriors. Their tasks are to comfort the warriors, to tend
the wounded, and to kill the fallen enemies.”
Prince Midalis couldn’t hide the grin finding its way onto his face. “And does Andacanavar believe this as well?” he asked slyly, for, while the ranger had made another good point concerning the differences between the two peoples, he had pointedly spoken for Bruinhelde and not for Andacanavar.
“I was raised among the Touel’alfar, and had more than one of the diminutive creatures—females and males alike—put me to the ground,” the ranger replied, and he returned the smile. “I speak for Bruinhelde and his followers because I understand them. Whether I agree with them or not, whether you agree with them or not, is not important, because they are as they are, and you’ll not change that. Nor will your Abellican companions, and woe to them if they try.”