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).

I know, it's been too long again. I'll try to do better, but I have some other projects that are going to be eating up a lot of time over the next few months, so that might be difficult. We'll see.

Lukkai: Yup, the question of who the rebel knights swear allegiance to is an interesting question. Part of the answer is here, but only part... The Halflings, at least, have an advantage when it comes to charges of treason against their lord. It could be argued that Lord Brance wasn't their lord. They fled his lands, after all, their families are all in Photius. The Men that joined them can't make that argument, but good luck sorting them out of the mass of peasants that fled, especially if the Church whose lands they'll be settling on doesn't cooperate.

Natalie-E-G: I'm glad you're still enjoying these. And yeah, wrapping things up. Like my "A New Future" series, to tell the full story would take a lot of stories. It would take another two stories just to get to what I would consider the end of the beginning.

As Sir Morgan watched the pair of knights walking across the castle's drawbridge toward the small party standing on the road a few paces from the drawbridge's end, quietly enough that only those close could hear, he said to Blind Lars, "This is going to play hell with your next song, isn't it?"

"Why would you say that?" the wandering bard murmured back without turning his head.

"Doesn't any great epic require a great battle to cap it off?"

Blind Lars chuckled. "The battle at the ford is climactic enough for any bard to work with. A desperate struggle to hold a vital ford against overwhelming odds by a band of mostly young women called to the moment by a prophetess? The sad pride of the families left behind for their fallen heroines? The survivors' salvation at the last moment by their fathers and brothers, with the final victory achieved by a glorious charge of the King's knights followed by an epic duel between the King's foster brother and the pretender to the throne? Oh, yes, there is more than enough to work with. The fact that there were additional battles after that epic struggle are just ... what was your Christian saying? Ah, yes, kicking against the pricks."

On Sir Morgan's other side Ranma laughed. "Yeah," the currently-redheaded female said, "give all the credit to the good-looking girls. What was that story Nabiki told us, about the green Roman sentry nervous about the German barbarians coming through his gate? How after the sweating kid manages to keep his cool when the glaring, muttering, masses of muscle walk past, the old-timer sharing guard duty assures him the men aren't any worse?"

Miyo, standing next to Ranma, mock-pouted. "My Scouts are hardly 'masses of muscle', more like sleek, agile cats. If you want the hulking, muscle-bound brutes, check out the pikes."

Blind Lars burst out laughing at the prophetess's rare moment of levity, and Sir Morgan caught the glowers on the faces of the approaching knights now close enough to hear the laughter. He hissed for everyone to be quiet, the last thing he wanted was for those knights to resume a hopeless resistance because they thought they hadn't been proper respect. As the others fell silent he glanced out of the corner of his eye at the apparently empty spot of open meadow where Genma had said he would be watching, and from which he could launch another attack like he and Ranma had during the massacre at Denton. Sir Morgan still couldn't see anything. Of course, he couldn't see the effeminate young man that had brought word of the peasant revolt—the uprising in the King's name—anywhere in the empty field on the other side of the approaching knights, either. And they say they aren't mages.

He set aside the pointless thought as the approaching knights finally reached the waiting party. Though he resolved again to ask what a young man that had always been at Ukyo's side and left with her when she left the Keldara with Master Myrddin, and that he assumed had left with her when she was sent to the Baroness Bronwyn, was doing in Oakwood. Or maybe he wouldn't ask, he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

At least the approaching knights' expressions had smoothed out as the rest of his party abandoned their moment of levity—or rather, they had resumed the blank faces of men very unhappy but determined not to let their enemies see it. He'd seen that lack of expression more than once in his career as a soldier, on the faces of both enemies and his own superiors. The knights' eyes looking past his party to the the men standing in still ranks with their pikes upraised and the Scouts with crossbows at the ready on both flanks said those expressions weren't likely to change anytime soon. Not that those Pikes and Scouts alone would have been enough to bring on this moment, the castle's defenders didn't know what the "door knockers" with him could do and he didn't have anywhere close to enough troops for an assault. But their very presence in front of the castle gate was enough to announce how the game had changed.

Now that the knights were close enough he stepped forward away from his escort, Ranma stepping forward to join him. (There had been some discussion who should be his partner in this informal ceremony, and he'd been surprised how forceful the prophetess had been pushing Ranma forward. But her points about the need to keep stories about miracles and prophecies from spreading as long as possible—at least among the movers and shakers of Empire and Church—and how rumors of her own claims would already be spreading were well made, but he had to wonder why she was pushing the martial artists onto the stage so vigorously ... and why she'd insisted that Ranma be in his female form. Or why she was with his small party at all, for that matter.)

One of the two knights stiffened, his expression tightening, undoubtedly offended at an (apparent) maiden dressed as a commoner (and a male one at that) joining the parley. The shortsword at her side probably didn't help. But that knight was young, his tabard clean and new and his chainmail bright and unmarked, and Sir Morgan assumed the absent sword one hand was grasping for and finding only empty air was equally bright; his companion was considerably older, and from the wear of his tabard and chainmail considerably more experienced, and his own glance saw past Ranma's female exterior to the experienced warrior within.

"What is she—"

The younger knight broke off his building tirade when his companion reached up to grip his shoulder. "I am Sir Felix, this is Sir Paullus."

Sir Morgan nodded. "Sir Morgan, appointed Kildar of the Keldara, leader of their warriors taken into the service of King Conall for this year." (Soldiers, now, really, the only real soldiers in the kingdom, whatever their sex.)

"Mercenaries."

The older knight's grip on his companion's shoulder tightened at the young man's muttered comment. "Are you empowered to speak for him?"

"Enough to offer terms for a local garrison that faithfully served their sworn lord." The two knights relaxed, and Sir Morgan silently wished once more that Conall I, the first king of an independent Caithness, had had the imagination to do the same as the conqueror or England that Nabiki had read to him about, back in his keep overlooking his village—the one that had required all the knights to swear loyalty to him, not just their local lords. It was too bad that King Conall couldn't follow that example now, but with the main excuse of the civil war being the King's supposed tyrannical designs ... though now that he thought of it ... "I will demand no penalties or hostages, all that are not guilty of particular crimes committed in the course of the rebellion—" his thoughts flashed to a town destroyed and its inhabitant massacred, and Lady Bronwyn and a beheaded Grandmaster of the Hospitallers "—will be free to return to their holdings ... once the King arrives and takes their oaths of fealty."

The two knights stiffened. "Not to our new lord?" Sir Felix asked carefully. "I am certain you have heard of Lord Brance's death without issue—his lady widow has already left for her family's holdings. But surely the King will appoint another in his place?"

"I'm sure he will," Sir Morgan agreed, "and you will of course give your oaths to him—or her—as well. But your oaths to the King will be paramount. If you again choose to follow another lord in rebellion, you will be held accountable."

The two knights stared at him for a long moment, and then Sir Felix began to chuckle. "And of course we are unlikely follow into rebellion a lord that the King has chosen."

"Yes, it does seem unlikely," Sir Morgan agreed blandly.

"But the precedent will have been set."

"Yes."

Sir Felix's chuckles turned into a barked laugh, but he nodded. "We will take your generous, if unusual, terms to our fellow knights. I have no doubt they will be accepted, after some discussion."

From Sir Paullus's thunderous expression, Sir Morgan suspected that it would be a lot of discussion, with a fair amount of shouting involved. But he also had no doubt of Sir Felix's ability to eventually deliver. He'd met a number of men like him—both during his imperial service and in Caithness—the men that kept both Kingdom and Empire from sinking into a despond of corruption and incompetence (or at least, in the case of Megalos, enough to allow it to function). So he simply nodded his agreement. "We'll await your word."

The knights turned to return to the castle when Ranma spoke up. "Do you speak for all of Lord Brance's knights?"

Sir Morgan's hand twitched as he suppressed the urge to facepalm (a gesture that was becoming common among the Keldara, since the arrival of the refugees)—he really should have asked that himself.

The two knights stiffened, then Sir Felix sighed and turned back around. "No, we aren't all here. Some of Lord Brance's sworn knights have gathered their men-at-arms and pursued the fleeing people of the villages that rose against their lord."

"I see," Sir Morgan stated, his mind racing as he considered time and distances. "And you didn't join them?"

"We'd heard rumors of invasion from the north, and felt that to avenge our lord on peasants only to return to find his castle held against us would be ... unwise. That it would be better to hold the castle and await support from our lord's allies."

"Good decision, that support isn't coming, the rebellion is over. While you make your decision whether to accept my terms or wait on the King and Lord William's army, you may wish to send messengers to those knights with word of my terms. The terms will hold, so long as they break off their pursuit immediately. Or they can deal with the King on his arrival, as well."

/oOo\

Sir Abraham clenched his gloved hand around his scabbarded sword's hilt, his mount shifting nervously under his tense seat as he watched the rapid approach of one of the few foresters that had accompanied his small vengeful company—too small, and he found himself gritting his teeth again at the thought of all the knights that had stayed behind at Oakwood Castle. If even half of them had joined him, he and the other knights that had joined him could have run down the fleeing rebels ... with their families slowing them down, they could never have escaped the righteous vengeance.

But with only the handful of knights that had joined him, if they had pursued them alone the sheer number of crossbows facing them would have taken down half of the knights before a charge could be carried through and the surviving knights isolated enough that they be swarmed. So those knights that still held to their duty to their murdered lord had had to return to their holdings to call up their own liege men and march them in the peasants' wake. Now as he lifted his eyes from the approaching forester to the reds and yellows of the distant autumn forest beyond him into which the road vanished, the burning fury filling his gaze should have turned the trees lining forest's edge into blazing torches. But it was a hopeless fury, because he knew what that forester was going to tell him.

The dark-haired man in green homespun and brown leathers dropped from a trot to a fast walk as he turned and walked alongside Sir Abraham's still-pacing mount. Sir Abraham waited for a moment for the man's gasps for air to settle to more regular breathing, then asked, "Well?"

"They're all into the woods, m'lord, all of 'em, nobody broke away from th'main pack," the man reported. "An' now that they're in there, me'n the other foresters will be waitin' out here. They're watching, you can feel the eyes on you. If you want to get you and yours chopped up an' left for wolves you can, we've lost enough friends over the past weeks to add more to th'list."

Sir Abraham was gritting his teeth again. He forced his jaw to relax as he swept his gaze along the approaching tree line. He couldn't see anyone, but he wouldn't. No, once they followed the road into that green they wouldn't see anyone until the quarrels started flying ... and considering so many of those they were pursuing were Halflings, maybe not even then. Oh, if his men-at-arms plunged into the trees away from the road they were bound to get a few, but nowhere near as many as he'd lose. And the knights would be next to useless.

Finally, he raised a hand in signal and reined in his mount, then circled around to look behind him at the column stumbling to a halt. Sir Cuthstan, the closest of the other knights, trotted forward to join him. "What's wrong?"

"What's wrong is that we're too late. If we follow them into the woods most of the blood that will be spilled is ours."

Sir Cuthstan looked past him at the distant trees and sighed. "Why couldn't this had been a few weeks later, when the leaves are falling. What now?"

Sir Abraham sighed as he turned his horse to ride back along the column and get everyone turned around. "Now, we go home. I'll be grabbing what little I can load on a pack mule and heading across the border to Craine. You're free to join me if you wish, or face me across leveled lances in a few years when I and the others that still oppose the tyrant return with the legions."

/\

Armstan watched the halted column, and the knights riding along its length, heard the distant shouts of what he assumed were orders, then sighed in disappointment as the Men he could see turned around to march back the way they'd come. "Well, damn. For a bit there I thought they were really going to stick their dicks into the millstone."

All the Halflings and Men within hearing distance but one winced at the imagery, and the single holdout was the only one of the handful of females with the band close enough to hear him. Bungwina just laughed softly, shaking her head. "Looks like not even they are that stupid. So, what now?"

He watched the men-at-arms slowly grow smaller as they marched away, then sighed. "We go home to our families. It's over."

/oOo\

King Conall stared at the rebel baron kneeling before him with head bowed. In fact, he had been staring at him for some time as he struggled to find something to say. Finally, he managed, "What?"

Without lifting his head, Baron Cabble repeated, "Your Majesty, I request that you grant my petition to travel with you to Adseveration Cathedral, that I may beg the Archbishop's indulgence to enter holy orders."

"I heard you the first time, I just didn't believe it." The King glanced at Nabiki on the left of his chair and Lord William of Wallace on his right to find them as confused has he was, looked around the confines of his tent with its walls glowing with the light of the noontime sun, then waved a hand. "Rise, rise." Baron Cabble raised his head to meet Conall's gaze, but remained on his knees. Conall waited for a moment, then shrugged and continued, "Really, I have trouble believing you're here at all. You aren't stupid, you must know the rebellion has failed. I expected you to be halfway to Megalos with everything in your treasury by now."

Conall was surprised by a chuckle from his petitioner. "I imagine that is just where my wife and children are. As soon as I abdicated my title my son ordered everything be packed and they left the next morning. I expect they will have arrived at Donlis by now, and will be taking a boat across the border to the Duchy of Craine with Baron Deneral and Lord Marsden. You will not be catching up with them."

Conall sighed, disappointed though he couldn't say he was surprised. "Cabble, if all you wanted to do is see the archbishop you would have left at the same time as your family. True, you would have had the Kildar's force in the way until they passed through Photius on their way to Oakwood, but you must have known where they were going and could have just followed behind them. Why are you here?"

The apparently former baron's brief flash of humor vanished and his eyes dropped. "Because I have sinned, against you, the kingdom, and my own people, by helping foment this civil war. Oh, I could make a pretty speech on your assault on baronial liberty, but all I really cared about was increasing my wealth and power. Now I need to beg forgiveness from you, from the kingdom, and from God, for the wealth that has been wasted and the blood spilt out of petty greed and ambition."

Conall stared at him for a long moment, eyes wide, until Nabiki began to giggle. When he turned his head to look at her, she said, "He met Miyo." He turned back to find Cabble had raised his head to stare at the maiden, cleared his throat, and raised an eyebrow when Cabble turned his attention back to him. "Did you?"

"If Miyo is a young dark-haired maiden of exotic beauty, then yes, I did," Cabble agreed, his expression softening into serene wonder. "When your mercenaries marched through my barony I summoned my knights and hurried to catch up with them. Just short of the edge of my holdings I did so, and fought the shortest battle of my life—they formed a square, we charged through the hail of crossbow bolts, the two mages you hired stepped out and cut down half our line with two spells, the survivors capable of moving scattered to the winds in a panic, and they broke ranks and marched away."

"They weren't mages," Nabiki broke in to say, and Cabble's eyes shifted to her, his gaze sharpening—Conall assumed due to the similarity of her features with the prophetess, he had been so focused on the king that Conall doubted he'd even realized that Lord William—his former ally—was standing across from him. The maiden was committing lèse majesté by inserting herself in the conversation without his permission, but Conall merely leaned back in his chair and exchanged a glance with Lord William. He doubted she'd done it intentionally, and she was almost frighteningly cunning (unless you were her target, when there would be no 'almost' about it); better to give her her head and see where she went.

Nabiki continued, "My people—a very few of my people—have learned to make use of the very breath that God breathed into us. It isn't as flexible as magic and takes many years of training, but ki adepts are as powerful in their own way as any mage. Though it isn't anything that Miyo learned, hers came from hours on her knees before a statue of the Virgin Mary asking God why."

Cabble held Nabiki's gaze for a long moment, then rather than asking the question Conall expected—ask God why what—simply stated, "And she received an answer."

"Yes. It wasn't an answer we liked, but an answer nonetheless. And from the Prophetess Deborah, no less. It came with marching orders."

"A fighting prophetess ... how appropriate," Cabble mused with a chuckle.

"So if the battle was so short and the Keldara simply marched away after it was over, how did you meet Miyo?"

Cabble's gaze seemed to turn inward, the serene wonder returning to his face. "I was in the center of our charge, the spells, whatever you may call them, passing me on either side so that I was neither dismounted nor beheaded. But that didn't prevent the suddenly headless corpse of Sir Raymond from falling into me and knocking me off my charger. I landed badly, and all I could do was watch as my knights fled in all directions and my enemy broke ranks to march away, while trying to writhe with legs I could no longer feel, much less command."

He paused for a long moment, staring at a memory. The others waited until Nabiki gently coughed, making Cabble jerk as he was yanked from his thoughts. "And then?" she quietly asked.

"And then a small group of what looked to be men-at-arms at a distance came out onto the battlefield, moving from body to body. I believed they were killing the wounded and thought that at least my end would be swift and not after long pain-filled weeks in bed or by being drawn and quartered if you followed ... as you have."

His gaze began to again turn inward, until Nabiki cleared her throat. "Right. They finally reached me and I was shocked to learn that they were maidens-in-arms, for the most part, some of them as tanned and fresh-faced as any Caithness freeholder, but others with dark hair and skin of a darker shade, and oddly shaped eyes revealing a nonhuman heritage ... such as you, milady." He grinned when she choked. "You cannot deny it, milady, it is as plain as your beauty." Sobering again, he continued, "They realized I yet lived and one of them, undoubtedly your Saint Miyo, reached down and laid her hand on my chest ..."

"And she healed you," Nabiki all but whispered.

"Nay, milady, she did not," Cabble firmly disagreed, "but God through her. It seemed as if through her touch His light flowed through me and His gaze saw into the depths of my soul. Never had I imagined such love ... or such disappointment." He turned his gaze back to his king. "And that is why I wish to ask Archbishop Siccius if he might find a place for me in Holy Orders. I have wounded Him who loves me most, and have much to atone for."

Conall sighed. "So do we all. Sir Charles!"

One of the knights standing guard at the tent's entrance turned and stepped into the tent. "Yes, Your Majesty?"

"Find ... Sir Cabble, I guess ... a tent, he is to be guarded at all times. Sir Cabble, you may go."

"Yes, Your Majesty," Cabble responded without a hint of hesitation at the only title he had left, rising to his feet and joining the guard at the entrance, only for both to pause when Nabiki again spoke up.

"Sir Cabble, you will find that in Sahud north of Zarak most of the Heavenking's subjects have eyes and skin tone like mine. There is nothing nonhuman about us, only a different humanity."

He gazed at her for a long moment, then dipped his head. "As you say, milady." With that he was gone.

Conall sighed and slumped in his chair, then murmured. "Maid Nabiki, what was that about?"

"What?" Nabiki twitched, her gaze shifting from the tent's entrance to the king and lowered her voice to match his. "Oh ... I didn't think he should leave believing Miyo to have nonhuman blood. He might eventually doubt the source of his experience."

"I doubt that," Conall disagreed dryly, "but I meant earlier—the bit about your family not being mages."

"That? I knew your guards could hear everything and didn't want rumors spreading that we're mages—other mages on their little plots of land might decide we'd broken the unspoken truce and intervene. At this point I doubt they'd change anything, but it would be an unholy mess. Now instead the gossip will be about Cabble's conversion."

Conall shuddered. While some of the mages scattered around Caithness on the small plots of land where mana flowed with its normal strength were like any mage of Megalos and so almost helpless when away from their lands where mana's currents ran sluggish and shallow, most were very aware of the nature of the kingdom in which they lived—which meant rather than spreading out their research they delved deep into the nature of magic itself. That meant their selection of spells might be much more limited than mages from more civilized realms, but they could use the spells they knew even within the kingdom proper ... and that they were absolute terrors to fight on their own lands. Nabiki was right, that would be an unholy mess. Still ...

"That wasn't all they could hear, they also heard you insert yourself into the interrogation without my leave."

Nabiki paled. "Uh ... oops?"

Conall chuckled. "No harm done, people often allow obvious foreigners more give in such matters. Just don't do it again, at least not until we get back to Carrick Town and Sir Galardon can instruct you in the art of proper court etiquette ... and when you can ignore it."

" ... Right, you got it."

Author's Note: So, one more chapter to wrap up this story, though it'll be a big one. After that ... I was planning to start the final story arc for Ranma, the Naive Succubus, but I'm not ready—I need to reread all the previous stories first, make sure I'm not missing any hanging plot threads. So instead I'm going to try my hand at writing a short story-length or, much more likely, novellette-length story (up to 20,000 words), a follow-up to my Star Wars story taking place maybe a year and a half later.

Oh, and the chapter title comes from the American Civil War, which kinda ended with a whimper.