“Brother Reandu, speaking for Father Jerak of Chapel Pryd, takes pains to find kind words for this rogue,” Fatuus said as he perused the remainder of the long letter.
“Laird Delaval would not likely see things in that manner,” said Malskinner, and he waved Honig away. “Nor will Laird Panlamaris, who will face the wrath of Laird Delaval for allowing the ships of Bergenbel to sail unladen with Delaval’s men and supplies. Find this man if he remains within Palmaristown, and if he does not, find out where he went. Perhaps if we offer him to Laird Panlamaris, that he might offer him to Laird Delaval, our failures will be forgiven.”
Bransen didn’t show up at the Chapel of Precious Memories before Parvespers that night, of course, and indeed, word came back to Father Malskinner even before the twilight ceremony that the man and his two female companions had exited the city through the northern gate, on the road to the central highlands.
Where lay Chapel Abelle.
The next morning, Brother Fatuus rode out that same gate, spurring his horse to the east with all speed to deliver Father Malskinner’s warning to the brothers of Chapel Abelle.
So hasty was Fatuus’s ride that he didn’t stop to inquire about the curious Highwayman at the scattered farmhouses he passed, and so it was on his second morning out that as he rode hard down the lane past a small barn, three sets of eyes stared out at him.
“The one who tried to heal you with the gemstones,” Cadayle said.
“He rides as if powries are chasing him,” Callen added.
“Powries? Or the Highwayman?” asked Bransen.
SEVEN
Tedium Undone
Every day’s one and the same,” Mcwigik lamented, dipping his paddle silently into the water beside the small craft. “Weren’t for the changes in the damned moon we’d not know that time’s passing.”
“Yach but she’s passin’,” said Bikelbrin, sitting opposite him. “Feeling it in me bones, I be.”
“And meself in me broken nose,” Mcwigik agreed and brought his hand up to touch his flat, wide nose, a bit flatter and wider still from the smash he’d been dealt twenty-eight days earlier. He had put a piece of white, gummy sap from the small, wide-leafed trees common to the islands across the bridge of his nose to secure it while it healed. He hadn’t worn that gum bandage for a few days, but had put it back on just before the scheduled return to Chapel Isle. Pragganag and the others understood the reminder to be for Pragganag’s benefit.
“Are ye to babble all then way, then?” said an irritated Pragganag, who was sitting in the back, testing the balance of his wooden-handled metal-bladed hatchet- one of the very few implements of metal still left intact after a century on the steamy lake. “Ye’re to let the whole o’ Mithranidoon know we’re about, and won’t it be the kitten’s mewl to be chased by a fleet o’ barbarian longboats?”
“All with sense’ve gone to bed,” Bikelbrin replied.
“Which is saying what for ourselves?” asked Mcwigik, and Bikelbrin and three of the others in the small and stout craft laughed, the fourth being Pragganag, who narrowed his eyes so much so that his bushy eyebrows pretty much stole them from view as he glowered at Mcwigik.
Mcwigik took no note of him, and reached up to grab his bandaged snout.
“Yach, but that monk smashed ye good, what?” said Bikelbrin, and he and the others turned to Pragganag.
“Aye, and me nose’s still for hurting when I’m laughing,” Mcwigik said.
“Good thing yerself’s the one what’s telling the jokes then,” Pragganag deadpanned, and the laughter began anew, Mcwigik joining in most heartily. As fierce a race as walked the world, powries typically relished these moments of ribbing, even if the best jabs came at their own personal expense.
The boat quieted then as the powries went back to paddling.
“We should build ourselves a barrelboat,” Mcwigik said after a short pause, referring to the open-sea powrie craft, which resembled huge casks and kept most of their bulk beneath the surface. The interior of a barrelboat consisted of a series of benches set before pedals, and the tireless dwarves propelled their craft by pumping legs, with the pedals geared to turn an aft screw. Many a ship’s captain had blanched white upon spotting a barrelboat, or even flotsam resembling such a craft, whose primary attack mode was, with typical powrie finesse, the ram. “Put her out on the lake, and wouldn’t that make all the men shiver?”
“Ye can’t be thinking it,” Bikelbrin replied. “Ye might be making the trolls happy, but ye’d be startin’ a war for winning, and not just for playing, don’t ye doubt.”
“Aye,” one of the others chimed in, “ye send a barbarian boat to the bottom and give her crew to the trolls, and all the islands’d join against us and come a-calling. Our rock of Red Cap ain’t that big.”
Mcwigik offered an exaggerated nod to show that he wasn’t being serious. He knew as well as any the agreed-upon protocols of the islands, and primary among those was the edict that no combatant, not powrie nor Alpinadoran nor Abellican alike, would be dropped under deep water. For Mithranidoon’s opaque gray waters hid terrible things indeed behind her constant wall of tiny bubbles. Great fish and serpents had been spotted often, and the glacial trolls seemed to know immediately whenever someone went under.
No one survived Mithranidoon’s deep waters for long, and the civilized “warfare” between the islands demanded certain rules of engagement.
“It’d be good to feel the screw beneath me feet again, is all,” Mcwigik replied with a tone of concession.
“Aye,” Bikelbrin and one other agreed, for only they and Mcwigik among the six on the boat had ever experienced such a thing, or had ever seen the world beyond the banks of this lake. The bloody caps had been on Mithranidoon for more than a century now, and though their numbers had dwindled a bit, from eighty to seventy-six, they had been fortunate to recover the hearts of almost all of the more than forty who had been killed-fallen to trolls and storms and barbarians-in the early days, before the silently agreed-upon protocols. The heart was key to an untraditional and magical form of powrie reproduction. Using it, an appropriate mass of stone (and the plentiful lava rock of Mithranidoon was perfect for the task), and a month of ancient magic in the form of sacred songs, the powries could create life itself, giving “birth” to the fallen dwarf’s successor. Not often practiced on the Weathered Isles, where female powries were plentiful, Sepulcher, as this magical rebirth was called, had kept the strength of the community of powries on the lake, though they had but three females remaining among the lot of them-for Sepulcher, for some reason that no dwarf had ever figured out, almost always led to a male child, whether the hosting heart had come from a male or female.
Returning from their last trip to Chapel Isle, they had prepared and buried Regwegno’s heart and some rock and begun the process. This very afternoon, right before they had departed, they had felt the first rumblings from the Sepulcher (the term also was used to describe the physical grave-womb). Regwegno’s son would climb free five months hence, and judging from those initial trembles all expected this one would prove a scrapper to make his sire proud.
“I’m hardly for remembering it,” Mcwigik admitted, “for I been a hundred five of me hundred thirty right here on the lake.”
The dwarf behind him, the only one other than Bikelbrin who had come to Mithranidoon beside Mcwigik, gazed wistfully out to the northwest, toward the towering glacier wall, and lamented, “I make me brother Heycalnuck paddle out to the ice, just so I can feel the feel o’ cold water. Never thinked I’d miss the dark chill of the Mirianic, did I.”