I claim no ownership rights to any of the works of Rumiko Takahashi, or anything I've borrowed and modified from the Banestorm setting published by Steve Jackson Games.

The mega-map of Yrth can be found at www. sjgames [.com] /gurps/books/banestorm/img/banestorm_world. jpg (remove spaces and brackets).


Sir Galardon slowly limped through the dusk-shrouded camp, doing his best to ignore the pain lancing through him from the stitched-up slice in his thigh that Lord Towne had managed to inflict just before he'd finally knocked the rebel lord's shield to one side and taken him through the bottom of the jaw. For a few minutes there, Sir Galardon had wondered if he'd bitten off more than he could chew.

It would have been just your luck if your chance to play the reckless plunger had proved as fatal for you as it always is for those idiots, he thought with a wry smile. I'll be glad to get back to playing a wenching, brawling drunkard—it's safer!

Safer or not, he couldn't pretend (to himself, at least) that he wasn't enjoying the newly-respectful nods and acknowledgments he was getting from knights he passed on the way to report to the king. That was the reason he'd traded his enchanted blade for Sir Luccius's normal (if Dwarven quality) one, and why he wasn't using the crutch he'd been offered; he wasn't going to undermine that newfound respect for his skills as a knight with a display of weakness—that reputation would remain even after he resumed his apparent hard-partying ways.

Don't lie to yourself, Galardon, you were happy to have a reason ... an excuse, really … to let the mask slip and you wish to God that there'd been someone else Conall trusted enough to be his spy master when he was crowned!

That was true enough, and his brief humor vanished as the canvas of the king's large tent glowing from within ghosted out of the dusk ahead. This time his report wasn't from the Hands he oversaw, but bad news was bad news. And from the lack of even a single guard his foster-brother was in no fit mood to receive it, not when he was pulling away from all human contact no matter how slight. Sir Galardon really wished that he could have been the one to go off on some unspecified errand and let Myrddin be the bearer of bad news.

/\

King Conall sat in the chair next to his collapsible desk, ignoring the susurration of the tent's canvas walls all around him as they undulated under the evening breeze. He stared down at the wooden cup in his hand half-full of beer. It was the strongest beer he'd had back at Carrick Town—since he couldn't bring much he'd brought something with a kick—and right now he was fighting the temptation to empty his cup over and over, until either his supply ran out or he could no longer remember the bloody field that had awaited him when he'd finally emerged from the woods north of the ford. So many dead maidens ...

He'd been able to keep busy through the rest of the day. First, there'd been pushing his army over the ford and past the battlefield on that side of the ravine until they'd only had to remove a few bodies cut down in flight. Then with his army settled there'd been going over that battlefield to separate the wounded from the dead, to do what they could for the first and bury the second. But since then, he'd had time to think ... to remember.

He straightened and turned toward the tent's entrance at the sound of footsteps outside, and a moment later the flap was pulled aside and his foster-brother stepped in. The king waved him toward the second chair, and worry curdled in his gut when Sir Galardon limped over and carefully lowered himself down. "You were just over with the wounded, why didn't Maid Miyo heal that for you?" He dug in his pack for another wooden cup, then filled it with beer from the keg on its stand to one side before topping off his own.

Sir Galardon hesitated as he discreetly eyed the quiver in his foster-brother-king's hands, but finally shrugged. "Apparently, even a prophetess touched by a saint has her limits. Maid Miyo was only healing those that needed her touch to live, and as soon as she dealt with the last that survived long enough for her to reach him she collapsed." At the king's alarmed start, he hastily added, "She should be fine. They told me the same thing happened the first time she healed someone. She just needs to sleep it off." He shrugged. "One of the newcomers that wasn't a scout had a neat hand with a needle. A comely woman, too, even if she's married." He grinned for a moment, only for the grin to vanish when his king didn't join in his merriment.

"How many died?"

"Con—"

"How many died?"

Sir Galardon hesitated, then sighed. "About a third. Another third are too badly wounded to be moved far, though that'll probably change once Maid Miyo has recovered."

"A third," The king repeated. He stared at his spymaster for a long moment before lifting his cup with hands that had gone from quivering to shaking and gulping down the contents. Cup empty, he dropped it and buried his face in his hands. "My fault. All my fault. When Myrddin mentioned that maidens would be marching to war I was so desperate I just accepted it. Sure, there would be some deaths, but they'd be scouts ... skirmishers! In battle they'd harass our enemies, then fall back while the infantry and knights pushed Lord Towne back into his castle. They weren't supposed to do the real fighting.

"But no, then I had to get fancy, had to try to suck Towne into a position away from his castle he couldn't retreat from, to end the war in an afternoon, and ... they weren't supposed to be the ones making the stand! All those dead maidens—"

"They aren't maidens—not here, not now." The two men turned to find the Kildar standing in the doorway to the tent. He sketched a bow. "Forgive me, Your Majesty, but there was no guard to announce me and Master Myrddin thought you might have need of my council. It seems he was right."

The king stared at him for a long moment then nodded and waved toward his cot. He dug into his pack for another cup and picked his own off the tent floor. As Sir Galardon filled all the cups from the pitcher, King Conall asked, "What do you mean, they aren't maidens right now? That isn't a status that they can just put aside for awhile, either they are or they aren't."

Sir Morgan accepted his cup and shrugged. "As to whether they are truly maidens, who's to know? Peasants are an earthy, practical lot ... though I pity the man that just assumes anything about those maidens. And as for the Suhadese—the Japanese—newcomers, they are mostly pagans. But whether they are truly maidens or not, what they are right now, are soldiers ... blooded soldiers now, the lot of them, and I could not be more proud to have them under my command. But not as proud as their families will be. Oh, the Keldara will grieve, and they can't afford to take those kind of losses among their young women-folk often if they're going to survive, but those soldiers' names will be honored for the victory they gave us for generations. As for the Japanese, they have their own history of famous warriors—samurai, they call them—and living with the Keldara has been reawakening their own memories."

He leaned forward on the cot, elbows on his knees, and gazed firmly at Conall. "And that is why you are going to put the bung in that beer keg, get a good night's sleep, and in the morning you will attend the burial service the Scouts intend to hold and honor those fallen soldiers instead of weep over the fallen maidens. And then you are going to go on and win this war."

Sir Galardon had stiffened with outrage at Sir Morgan's tone, and was just opening his mouth for a blistering response, when the king began to laugh—a real laugh, even if it still had a hard edge to it. The king shook his head and tossed back the last of his beer before set his mug aside on his collapsible desk. "It seems that the contamination goes both ways. You and these newcomers ... hard truths plainly spoken—and we Caithnessers call ourselves a blunt-spoken bunch ... take pride in it. At least you do it in private." He stared into the flame of his oil lamp for a long moment, before shrugging. "Still, you are right, and we have a war to win." Turning to face Sir Morgan, he asked, "You are sure that there is nothing in Caithness that can stop your pikemen?"

Sir Morgan straightened, his gaze sharpening. "Not right now, no. Once others know more about them, have a chance to adapt, yes, but not yet."

"Good. Then in the morning, once the the burial service is over and Maid Miyo has seen to the last of the wounded, we're all going to get back on the march and your pikemen and the scouts will be putting the speed you boasted of to work. When we reach Sterling they're going to keep right on going. I'll keep the 'doorknockers', the ... ki adepts?" Sir Morgan nodded, and Conall continued, " ... the ki adepts with me until we take Sterling, then they'll catch up with you ... before you reach Oakwood."

Sir Morgan's eyes widened. "Good God!"

The king knew what Sir Morgan was thinking: the Archdiocese of Photius wouldn't be a barrier, though with the Church's official neutrality in the civil war there wouldn't be any resupplies not paid for, but Denton ... But then Sir Morgan began to grin, and Conall knew what he was imagining, now: the scheming, greedy—and in this case blithely ignorant—Baron Cabble of Denton leading his knights and men-at-arms out to deny the pikemen passage through his lands to Oakwood, and paying for his lesson in the new military reality in blood that he could not afford to lose with the fall of Sterling putting the king's forces to his north and cutting him off from Wallace and Ferrier, and Oakwood to his east breaking out in a rebellion of its own. The only ally he'd have left able to support him would be Donlis ... and Lord Marsden of Donlis had been a reluctant rebel, joining only because if he hadn't he'd have lost his lording anyway, thanks to the Silver Hand proving that he had been supporting—and receiving a cut from—river pirates preying on Megalan merchants. And maybe if Caithness were really lucky, Baron Cabble would pay for his lesson with his life, like Lord Towne had. Not likely, the Devil looks after his own, which is why Towne is dead while scum like Cabble will live on.

Conall pushed aside that cynical—if possibly realistic—thought as he responded to Sir Morgan's exclamation. "Yes, God is good. He's given us the means to not only end the civil war, but to win it so thoroughly that we can keep Megalos's legions out of our southeast, for a few years anyway. And in a few years, who knows?" He rose to his feet, the other two rising with him (Galardon with a stifled groan). "So you two should look look to your bedrolls, tomorrow is going to be a long day."