DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) (98 page)

What a cunning plan! Braumin had to admit, and he found that he wasn’t upset
with Bou-raiy at all for such plotting; in fact, he found that he rather admired the man’s tenacity and political adeptness. Being father abbot was a matter of juggling the needs of the Church and the demands of the King, after all. It was a political position as much as anything else—despite Agronguerre’s refusal to work hard in any political role. Traditionally, most father abbots had kept close consult with the reigning King.

Having Jilseponie become bishop then—and thus pleasing Braumin and several others—would prove very beneficial to Fio Bou-raiy at the College of Abbots, especially if she did indeed become Queen of Honce-the-Bear. Though Jilseponie was no fan of Fio Bou-raiy, neither was she an enemy, and any wife of Danube would have to favor him over Abbot Olin and his many Behrenese friends.

In truth, Abbot Braumin didn’t much like the implications of Fio Bou-raiy’s scheme, and using Jilseponie in any way certainly left a bitter taste in his mouth. But he had to admit, to himself at least, that in many ways Bou-raiy’s plan seemed for the good of the Church and the State. At that point, despite any personal misgivings, Braumin could only look with favor at the appointment of Jilseponie to the position of bishop of Palmaris and his own transfer to preside over the opening and ascension of the Chapel of Avelyn.

“You will convince her?” a smiling and confident Bou-raiy asked, seeming as if he had watched Braumin wage his inner struggle and come out on Bou-raiy’s side.

Abbot Braumin paused for a long while, but did eventually nod his head.

Chapter 6
 

S
UMMER HAD PASSED ITS MIDPOINT
,
WITH THE EIGHTH MONTH NEARING ITS END
. The day was brutally hot, the air thick with moisture steaming from the many lakes nearby, Marcalo De’Unnero knew. The sun had been blazing hot every day; then, every day of the last week, great thunderstorms erupted in the late afternoon, shaking the ground and drenching the earth.

So it had been the previous day: a wild and windy storm. And thus, on this hot morning, De’Unnero—Bertram Dale—had to add considerable roof repairs to his chores. He had awakened long before dawn and had gone right out to the woodpile to do his chopping, trying to be done with that heavy work before the hot sun climbed high into the sky. Now, dressed only in his trousers, his lean, tanned, and muscled torso sweating in the midday sun, he perched atop a roof, tearing away the ruined thatch and working on the supports. He had to pause often to wipe the sweat from his brow, but still much slipped past the bandana he had tied there, stinging his eyes. Even in his superb physical condition, De’Unnero had to stop to catch his breath in the stifling air many times, often dousing himself with water. On one such break, he glanced around, and from his high perch, caught sight of a group of men—a pair walking and three riding—moving along the road toward Micklin’s Village.

Though the approaching band wasn’t close enough for him to discern features clearly, it wasn’t a group of huntsmen, De’Unnero knew at once, for none of his fellow villagers had gone out on horseback. Wary, De’Unnero rolled over the edge of the roof, holding the wall top, and dropped lightly to his feet. Not many strangers came this way, and those who did were more often running from something than heading toward anything.

De’Unnero found a sleeveless shirt and pulled it on, then removed his bandana and wiped his face. He moved steadily toward the end of town nearest the approaching strangers. His eyes darted side to side as he went, studying the area closely, picking potential escape routes or advantageous defensive positions, and looking for any other strangers who might have slipped into Micklin’s Village in advance of the approaching band.

He heard singing a moment later—from one of the riders, he saw, as they continued their approach. The bard sat comfortably in the saddle of the middle horse, strumming a three-stringed instrument and singing of faraway battles against dragons. A fairly good minstrel, De’Unnero had to admit; and that, plus the fact that this group was riding in so openly, gave him hope that these were not worthless vagabonds bringing with them nothing but trouble.

“ ‘The dragon’s eyes, they gleamed like gold,’ ” the bard sang. “ ‘Its fiery breath
licked at the stone. But Traykle’s sword was swifter still. Beneath the wing he found his kill.’ ”

“The Ballad of Traykle Chaser,” De’Unnero realized, a well-known old song about a legendary dragon hunter who had braved the winter of northern Alpinador to go and wreak vengeance upon a great dragon that had laid waste Traykle’s Vanguard village. De’Unnero had seen several different versions of the song in the library at St.-Mere-Abelle and had heard it sung many times by villagers who had come to the abbey for market. De’Unnero was still wary, though, for he thought it too simple a melody for a traveling bard to be offering.

Perhaps the rider wanted any villagers who might be about to believe that he was only a traveling bard.

Still out of sight, De’Unnero studied the group carefully as they neared, trying to gain a measure of this band’s formidability by the way they rode and the way they walked. A practiced warrior had a gentle and fluid stride, he knew, while a simple thug often walked as if his feet were attacking the ground with every step. So it was with both of those walking: a bearlike man whose bald head shone brightly in the sun and a smaller man with a grizzled face and reddish hair, showing his Vanguard ancestry. Both carried large weapons across their shoulders, an axe for the heavy man, a gigantic spear for the other. One of the riders appeared no more refined, a gap-toothed tall man with long black hair; though his sword, belted at his hip, appeared to De’Unnero a much finer and more dangerous weapon. The remaining two, including the bard, seemed more sophisticated still in dress and hygiene, both having short hair and clean-shaven faces. One was of medium build, around De’Unnero’s size, and he carried a short bow, strung and slung over one shoulder, with a quiver of arrows tied to his saddle, in easy reach. The other, the singer, was a tiny man with a falsetto voice and shining, light brown eyes that seemed all the more brilliant when he flashed his beaming, bright smile. He carried no weapon at all as far as De’Unnero could see; to the battle-hardened former monk, that made him the most dangerous of the group.

They were up to the nearest buildings by then, and still making no effort to conceal themselves, so out went De’Unnero, stepping in the path before them.

“Greetings,” he said. “Not often does Micklin’s Village see visitors, so forgive our lack of any formal greeting.” As he finished, he bowed low. “Bertram Dale at your service.”

“Fair greetings on a fair day!” the singer said exuberantly in an unmistakably feminine voice. Only then, looking more closely, did De’Unnero realize that the singer was a woman, with short-cropped brown hair. “We are wandering adventurers, out to see the world,” she went on with enthusiasm, “in search of tales to spin into great ballads.”

Then why do you waste your time with the songs of children?
De’Unnero thought. He wasn’t looking at the woman, though he found her appearance somewhat interesting, because he was more concerned with the two walking thugs, who had slipped off to the side and were muttering quietly to each other. They were looking
for other townsfolk, De’Unnero knew, and that told him without any doubt at all that this was no innocent band.

“We have food and drink to offer travelers,” he said, looking back at the woman bard.

“I could use some fire in me throat,” the tall man on the horse said in a peasant’s accent.

“Not liquor,” De’Unnero explained. “We have water, tortha-berry juice, and a fine mixture squeezed from blueberries and grapes. Nothing more. But if you will get down from your mounts, I will set them out to graze in the corral and then fix a fine meal for all of you.”

The three riders looked at each other. They neither accepted nor refused, but, De’Unnero noted, neither did they begin to dismount. The other two, meanwhile, pushed through the door of a nearby cottage and peered in.

“Pray tell your companions to adhere to standards of privacy and decency,” De’Unnero said quietly to the bard. “We are friendly enough folk, but some of our buildings are common and others, like the one in which they now seem so interested, are private.”

“Just looking,” the tall man answered.

“My fellows of Micklin’s Village will soon return from the day’s hunt,” De’Unnero went on, growing very tired of this polite posturing. If they meant to attack him or threaten him, then he wished they’d get it over with. “I am sure that they will allow you to stay as long as you desire. And they will wish to hear all your songs and tales, trading good entertainment for good food and warm beds.”

The bard, staring at De’Unnero in a curious way, smiled at his offer and, still astride, dipped a graceful bow.

“And perhaps they will tell me stories greater still, that I might put them to song,” she answered.

“All that I have heard you sing thus far is an old song known to every child in Honce-the-Bear,” De’Unnero dared to say, wanting to see if he could bring a scowl to her pixieish face.

He didn’t; she merely laughed and replied, “The world has gone quiet, I fear. The great wars are ended, and the plague is long flown.”

“Bah, but she ain’t no fancy bard,” the tall man remarked, and he spat upon the ground. “Fancyin’ herself the poet o’ the world, with all her pretty rhymin’ songs and big words, but she’s just Sadye. Sadye the whore, and no better’n any of us.” Even as the dirty man finished, the woman shot him an intense, threatening gaze, and De’Unnero found the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. He knew then, without doubt, that she was a formidable one indeed.

He couldn’t watch that continuing exchange, though, for movement to the side caught De’Unnero’s wary gaze. He noted the two men on foot now pushing into another building, this one the town’s common hall.

“In my homeland, such words are considered quite rude,” the former monk did say, and he turned back to find the tall man glaring at him from his high perch.
And it was high indeed, for the man’s horse had to be near to eighteen hands.

The tall man spat upon the ground again, near De’Unnero’s feet.

The former monk did well to control his anger. Not yet …

The two men on foot moved to the next house in line, but De’Unnero decided that the time had come to put his cards into open view. “You will go not uninvited into any house,” he called to the snooping pair. “We have a common room, which you have just seen and nothing more than that for any of you until the other folk of the village agree.”

“We are merely curious, and have been long on the road,” the bard remarked sweetly, her smile wide. “Be at ease, my friend, for we have come to hear the tales, not to make them.”

De’Unnero turned to her—or at least, made it look as if he had turned to her, for in truth, he kept his gaze to the side, to the two men on foot who were emerging from the house. He saw immediately that they had moved their weapons slightly to a more accessible position.

This time, the spittle from the tall rider would have hit De’Unnero’s leg had not the agile former monk shifted.

“We be five, you be one,” the tall rider said with a growl. “We goes where we wants to go.”

De’Unnero looked down and chuckled, then raised his face to look at the bard’s. “What say you, then?” he asked.

“She don’t say nothing!” the tall rider replied loudly, poking a finger at De’Unnero. “I’m talkin’ now, and I’m tellin’ ye to shut yer mouth!”

De’Unnero looked at the bard and shrugged, and she returned the noncommittal motion.

“Be gone from this place,” the former monk said calmly.

“Draggin’ yer carcass behind—” the tall man started to respond. He got no more than the first couple of words out before Marcalo De’Unnero exploded into motion, taking two running strides toward him, then leaping and somersaulting in midair, kicking his feet into the tall rider.

Off the other side of the horse he went with a great howl, and De’Unnero, his momentum slowed by the impact, fell lightly on his side but leaped back to his feet to meet the roaring charge of the two men on foot.

The bearlike man came in high with his attack—exactly as De’Unnero wanted—the great axe sweeping across to lop off De’Unnero’s head.

Down went the former monk, the greatest warrior ever trained by the Abellican Church. He dropped into a crouch so low that his buttocks touched the ground, then around he spun, extending one leg, sweeping his heel into the back of the big man’s ankle, taking him down to the ground with a huge grunt.

The man with the spear attacked the low-crouching De’Unnero, trying to impale him, howling with rage, excitement, and even glee.

And then howling with fear as De’Unnero, hardly seeming to move, got his left forearm up under the point of the spear and pushed it away so that it missed the
mark. The spearman cried for help, whining even, as the vicious De’Unnero leaped forward, before the man could reaim his cumbersome spear. The spearman wisely shoved the hilt across his body to block his enemy’s charge.