“Well, the fare was—”
“Nay.” King Eckhardt chopped a hand furiously. “The fare was shit despite your brother’s attempted pleasantries. And Father Gregorius’s pronounced sycophancy. I speak of what transpired. How poor a shadow me and mine cast. By the book. Or perhaps it was solely me.”
“It was refreshing.” I shrugged. “Most couples are more concerned with looking like they have a happy marriage than actually having one. You two, though…?”
The King massaged his brow.
I shrugged. “My father once stabbed one of his vassals in the eye during dessert.”
“It wasn’t von Madbury, perchance?”
“Sadly, no.” Upon the misted wind came screaming, far off, contorted, muted by distance, degree. “Could be arranged, though.”
“Hmmph.” His smirk was wry, grim, bare. “Don’t tempt me.”
“I was only half-joking.” Or quarter. Maybe eighth. I grimaced. “Man like that’s a cancer. To the bone. Even if he doesn’t kill you, he’ll cripple you. Everything around you.”
“The long walk…” the King murmured.
“He got something on you?”
“What? Hmm… Nay.” He rubbed his throat. “Still, I must apologize for my family. For my wife. For myself.”
“Kings need never apologize.” I stared off, half-listening to him, half to the screams.
“Aye, to be sure, but even so.” His fingers wandered through his wispy beard, gripping it, nearly tearing it out. “I was not raised to be king, you see? I was to be a wandering hedge knight. Bereft of claim. Of duty. The yoke of responsibility. The freedom of the open road, adventure, the whole world lain bare before me. All for the taking.”
“Cold nights. Empty belly. Lonely beds,” I countered. “And it’s usually from you that the taking goes. The world’s a set of shackles, Your Majesty, with a fit for wrists of every shape and size.”
“And is there a key?”
“Yeah, sure. Wine, women and—”
“Song?”
“No.” I squinted him up and down. “Was gonna say a pine box about six foot by two.”
“Aye. Truth.” The King took a sip, gesticulating with a splayed hand. “You toil your whole life trying to hold something together that begs so desperately to be torn apart.”
“At least you give a damn,” I offered. “I’ve known a few who didn’t.” More than a few, but I was in a politic mood.
The screams came again from below.
“I was the fourth-born son.” King Eckhardt took a drink. “My brothers died young. And so responsibility was thrust upon me. My shoulders. It required some time to ‘take’ as they say, and I don’t know for certain that it ever truly has. I waver between times where I am either far too lenient,” he shook his head, “or abominably cruel.”
“Where lies your current mind?”
He scowled sidelong.
I shrugged. “Just getting the lay of the land.”
The screams drowned away, deposed by another sound that started at a sharp staccato dissonance, slowly morphing into something regular. Rhythmic. Recognizable. Leaning out over the wall, I scanned the wretched town.
Someone was pounding nails. A lot of someones. A lot of nails.
“Alas, Sir Luther, I fear it’s too soon to tell.”
“A devil’s balancing act.” Down in the town square, surrounding the bale-fire, stood some half-dozen crucifixes. “Not that I’d know. I have elder brothers as well, though none of us were to be kings. And all still draw breath, as far as I know.” Unfortunately.
“You hail from Asylum, I’m told.” His breath steamed in the cold.
“No. Just my last stop.”
“And what was it you were doing in Asylum?”
“Same thing I do everywhere.” I side-armed an old roofing tile into oblivion. “Trying to not get killed.”
“Was it that bad?”
“No,” I said, “it was worse.”
The moon had risen and a chill taken the air. Frost would cover the ground come morn.
“King… T’is but merely a word.” King Eckhardt crushed the remnants of tears from his eyes. “Y-Your father is a knight? A lord?”
“Yeah.”
“A man of power.” King Eckhardt sniffed. “And how much land does he possess?”
“A breadth of land some ten leagues by twenty, give or take.”
“Hmm. Look at my land, Sir Luther.” He held a splayed hand out to the great beyond. “The whole of my domain encompasses as far as you can see on a clear day. Perhaps a quarter of your father’s lands. And mine are not bountiful. Mostly wood and swamp. Few arable fields. Trees are our only solace. My people and I? We live upon the trade up and down the river. And with the plague…”
“Trade’s dead.”
“Yes. The Schloss has stores, but they run thin.” King Eckhardt gazed out toward the campfires burning within the Grey-Lark Forest to the north. “How my people survive I know not. Sir Alaric and you toured the camps in the old keep today.”
“Toured?” I said. “We were stalking a murderer.”
“Even so,” the King waved a hand, “what did you see?”
“They’re surviving on dregs, Your Majesty.” I held up a hand. “Wait. Did I say survive? I meant subsist. They’re starving. Sick. Squatting in a derelict keep. A hardy folk, but they’re being ground to dust. Day by day. Inch by inch. Piece by bloody piece.”
“Sir Alaric says you performed admirably.” King Eckhardt pursed his lips.
“Technically, the blackguard got away.”
“Yet, I’m told he suffered grievous wounds. Killing wounds.”
I nodded with certainty. “He’s somewhere wearing dirt.”
“Because of you.”
“Yeah. I suppose.” Karl and Sir Alaric had done their fair share, more than, but screw them.
Below, scourgers filed into the town square, one after another, gathering about the bale-fire, hurling in lengths of wood within until the tops of the dancing flames outstripped the roofs of surrounding buildings.
“Just when we are laid so low.” King Eckhardt bowed his head. “Those fiends. It started with my Jews. Those brave enough to remain faced a pogram. And when they were gone, the fiends began stalking the streets at night, burning good Christian homes, shops, everything. They held trials in the very streets.”
“I heard.”
“Meting out justice. My justice. Usurping my divine right—” King Eckhardt hurled his flagon into the night then wiped his chin with the back of his hand. “There are worse things, to be sure.” He ground his teeth. “You understand what I want?”
“No. Not even a little.”
“I want these devils gone. Punished. I want order restored. I want…”
“Blood-simple slaughter?”
“It pains me that this has come to pass, you see? That these abominations have infested my lands. My people. I feel as though…” King Eckhardt paused a moment, considering, a rarity for a king, even a hedge one. “Ceding control to such madmen. Aye, and yet still here I stand. A King. Impotent as a gelded horse.”
“What happened to your fighting men?” I asked. “Greener pastures?”
“If such exist in these fell times.”
“And why me? You don’t even know me.”
“Yet I remember you. And Sir Alaric vouches for you.” King Eckhardt took a breath. “He is a loyal fellow, you see? But aged and slow, his soul shackled nowadays to drink and melancholy. And those that remain…?” He rubbed his throat. “Gustav represents the flower of the Haesken court.”
“Sometimes all a job calls for is a heavy hammer.”
“Tell me that after you’ve spoken with him at any length.”
“I’ll pass.”
“Aye. A wise choice. And von Madbury? The man’s a blackguard. At best. He and my—” His hand shivered into a fist. “Did you catch the passion play at dinner?”
“Palatine’s song seemed to vex him.”
&nb
sp; “Aye,” King Eckhardt said. “Rumor, you see? It trails that man like a fume.”
“Yet you keep him around?”
“He has … ingratiated himself to the Queen. Her queens-guard, she calls him.” He stared down at his hands. “It … It matters not.”
“Your son’s brave.” I wisely changed tacks. “You’re proud of him.”
“I’m proud of both of my sons,” King Eckhardt said curtly, “though Palatine did indeed make me proud this night. It’s your children’s strengths that make you proud. And their weaknesses that cause your heart to ache fit to crumble.” He shook his head. “Forgive my candor, I sound like a woman.”
“Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.”
King Eckhardt cocked his head, lips twisting in a sour smile.
Below, the chanting rose, punctuated by screams.
“I want them gone.” King Eckhardt’s grimaced. “I want Haeskenburg mine once more.”
“How many are there?”
“Fifty or so when they came. But … with the madness? The despair? It’s nearer one hundred now.”
“A hundred…” I whistled low. “That ain’t nothing.”
“No. Indeed. It is not.”
I did the math. It didn’t take long. “It’ll get ugly.”
“You said blood-simple slaughter…” King Eckhardt ran a hand through his thin hair. “I would wish it not so. I would wish you spare my small-folk. They are good folk. Staunch folk. Merely led astray in time of strife by a wayward charlatan bearing hollow promises. This man,” King Eckhardt licked his lips, “this Nazarene, I would have you…”
“Cut the head off the snake?”
King Eckhardt rubbed his hands. “In my youth, I fought alongside the Teutonics and Sword Brethren. Outside the town of Wolmar. And Ragit. My father sent me north for ‘seasoning,’ as he called it. An old familial tradition. It was the butchery of old men, women, children, and little more.”
“What war’s all about.”
“Ragit was bad. Very bad. Like your Crecy, perhaps.” King Eckhardt stood ramrod straight for a time. “I cannot claim any vast expertise in the art of warfare, but I understand such matters can rarely be so simple as merely ‘cutting off the head of the snake,’ as you say. Yet, if it ever were possible, I should wish it so.”
“And he’s the one killing your folk? You’re certain?”
“Look, Sir Luther.” King Eckhardt stepped aside, pointing toward the square. “Yet not to the flames. Let the light wash from your eyes. Do you not see? The crosses lining the square? A dozen now, perhaps.”
And there was one poor bastard crucified to each.
“Have you proof against such poison, Sir Luther?”
The scourgers erected another burdened crucifix.
“Proof, your Majesty? No,” I said, “but I have an idea.”
…their wanton females. They alone were in some instances pleasing to the eye, with their long arms and fecund forms, their fierce gazes alluding to some other, baser quality beneath. Thoughts of my nubile, young bride so far away fettered my mind with an unnerving and pervasive constancy.
Once again, I was forced to find succor where succor there was to…
—War-Journal of Prince Ulrich of Haeskenburg
Chapter 17.
THE AFTERIMAGE mirage of loaded crosses supplanted the darkness before my eyes, the beat of hammer on nail pounding through my heart as I opened my bed-chamber door. It was little more than a broom closet at the end of the hall. No window. Room enough for a bed and dented piss pot. Barely. Cell would’ve been more appropriate. Still, my gob was salivating in anticipation of the promise of impending sleep despite my designs for the morrow.
The door struck the bedpost, and I slid around it.
“You don’t remember me, do you?” a voice whispered from the deeper dark.
“Jesus—” A fistful of dagger sprouted in my fist and at the speaker’s throat. Poised there, pressing cold steel against warm flesh, I froze. The scent of perfume and wine struck me as I yanked a woman into the tepid glow of light trickling from an old tin lantern dangling in the hall. “Lady Mary, what the—?”
But it wasn’t Lady Mary.
“Jesus Christ…”
It was the Queen.
“I, err, ahem…” I glanced out into the hall. A ghost town. Thank Christ. I could see weeds tumbling in the yawning wind. A gallows rope twitching in the breeze. I swallowed, sheathed my dagger. Mentally composed my will and last testament. “Apologies, Your Highness. For … ah … nearly knifing you.”
“Apology accepted.” Her eyes glowed.
“Your Highness, if we—” I glanced at the open door.
“Close it,” she said. “I won’t bite.”
“Ain’t your teeth that worry me, Your Highness.”
“Your Highness? Oh, no. Please. That’s my husband.” The Queen wrinkled her nose. “And fear not, he’s toothless as an old hound.”
“Toothless hounds can still howl. And you watch the ones come running. They’ll have teeth and then some.”
“Very well.” She leaned in, reaching past, and pushed the door closed. The wine on her breath was strong. “We’d best keep quiet, no?” She pressed a finger to her lips.
I winced, swore beneath my breath, swallowed, trying to fill the empty void yawning wide in the pit of my gut. “How … ah … can I be of service?”
The Queen laid a bejeweled hand upon a bedpost. “Is Lady Mary your lover?”
I froze. “Huh—?”
“You thought I was she when first you opened the door, yes?”
“Oh. Yeah. That.” I winced. “No. Not even close. I just assumed…”
“Does she harbor carnal feelings toward you?”
“I…? No.”
“And you’re certain?”
“She’s commented on multiple occasions that I disgust her.” I stiffened as voices echoed down the hall. “Physically. Emotionally. Spiritually, whatever the hell that means…”
“Even so, I hesitate to wonder if you hold such feelings towards her.” The Queen cleared her throat. “Excuse me. It’s only she’s so beautiful and that she need not try to be so. Whilst we others flounder and fight and prim and preen all to garner a lesser result. Perhaps it is merely age. Hers. Mine. The disparity between?”
“You do alright,” I almost bit back but didn’t because I’m stupid and make bad choices, particularly with regards to the realm of women. “Now, my Queen, how is it I can serve you?”
“Very well.” The Queen brushed a stray lock of hair from her eyes. “I’m merely trying to ascertain whether Lady Mary might be a suitable match for Young Eventine. A mother’s duty. He seems enamored. And finding a match who shares no branches of one’s family tree can be quite a challenge here. What is her character?”
“She’s suitable, and then some,” I said. “Tough as nails. Smart. Honest. She did say she’d join the first convent we came across, though.”
“Hyperbole?”
“I don’t know what that means.” I reached for the doorknob.
“I thank you, Sir Luther. I … I must confess my visit concerned not only Lady Mary.” She smiled shyly. “I also wished to reacquaint myself with you.”
“Your Highness,” I let out a deep breath, “I’m afraid—”
“Sir Luther, please, relax.” The Queen laid a warm hand to my rough cheek and leaned in close, her eyes gleaming, and something struck a chord. “Breathe.”
A memory, decades-old, of a girl nigh on unrecognizable except for those eyes. Those clear blue eyes. Where they’d been ablaze with scorn at dinner, leveled at her husband, they now shown with a soft somber glow.
“Blue as an autumn sky,” I smiled.
She was Elona, Sir Alaric’s eldest daughter. I studied her face, her azure eyes, seeing past the years, a young girl of fifteen who’d always been around, always watching, always waiting, always praying. I remembered her perched on a warped bench in Sir Alaric’s painting chamber, hands on her
lap, head down, clutching a kerchief, tears rolling as she wept, surrounded by a stoic, silent, two-dimensional audience. “I remember now.”
“That brings me no small measure of joy.” The Queen clasped her hands on her lap. “How long has it been? Lord above, I hesitate to count.”
“You were little more than a girl.”
“And you were naught more than a boy.”
“A newly minted squire.” I thumped my chest. “Ready to take on the world.”
“You were kind to me.”
“Yeah…?” I chuffed a laugh. “You met me before my downward spiral, Your High—”
“Elona.” She grimaced, digging her nails scritching into the bedpost. “Call me by my name. Please.”
“Elona.” I bowed. “Apologies. It’s been a long day. A long decade. I’m sorry, I don’t—”
The Queen cleared her throat. “You’re working as a sell-sword?”
“A lowly sell-sword. For your father. And your husband.”
“And how is my dear father?”
“You saw him tonight.”
“We … forgive me.” Queen Elona looked away, “We’ve not spoken for some time. He finds my lack of—” she worried the fabric of her dress, “it is a private matter, festering, from a long while past.”
A pregnant pause to the sound of me sweating buckets.
Then it hit me, all the pieces, all the parts, all came flooding back. Jesus. Lady Catherine, Sir Alaric’s wife. Elona’s mother. Her disappearance was the reason we’d trekked here so long ago. Twenty years? Twenty-five? Sir Alaric had begged, cajoled, practically bribed my Uncle Charles to come, to hunt down her supposed murderer. And so we had. Come, anyways. Nigh on three seasons in the hunt we killed, but nothing else. “I’m sorry we never found anything,” I said. “Did you ever learn aught of her? Did your father…?”
“Nay, and there lies the crux.” She leaned forward, hands clasped, fingers interwoven, and for a moment, that sad little girl had returned. “My mother had been a great beauty. With wit and charm and a grace … unsurpassed. Did you know? She was to have married the King of Bohemia had she not fallen in love with my father.”
“Well,” I admitted, “he is dreamy.”
“Imagine,” her eyes shined, “she turned down a chance to be queen of a significant kingdom. A kingdom of weight. Of consequence. Substance. A kingdom that could change the world. So unlike here. So unlike…” She shook her head. “And she? She was everything that I am not. When she—”
The Last Benediction in Steel Page 11
