by J. S. Crews
In families such as Lord Wendel’s, it was customary for second-born sons—who would not inherit lands and title—to be invested as rector of the local manor temple. The Lord or Lady of the Manor acted as the temple’s patron, and as such the temple denomination was decided by the preference of that family. House Baedon gave prayer to Thalem, goddess of the summer, the daytime, wealth, and sovereignty. Ansel, on the other hand, worshipped Iadara, goddess of nature.
He harbored no ill will toward Thalem or her followers, but failed to see the fairness in allowing offerings left at a site created by his goddess to find their way into the coffers of a temple dedicated to another. And that was despite his feelings of distaste toward taking money at all. What tiny sums he had reluctantly accepted thus far had been for the sake of his hungry child, not his own greed or that of his goddess. Iadara did not insist on her priests and priestesses dressing in silk and drinking from bejeweled goblets. Wealth was a topic that rarely came into play, and it was that very simplicity that made Ansel love her so dearly.
The bursar had listened quietly as Ansel had spoken, though his demeanor told the true tale of his feelings. Everything—from the smug condescension in his less than genuine smile to his obvious indifference to Ansel’s opinion—made it obvious there would be no give-and-take today. Ansel was wasting his breath, and he knew it even before the man answered, "Be that as it may, the law has spoken and you, Mr. Wood, have been informed."
And there was Lord Wendel, perhaps the loudest oaf Ansel had ever had the displeasure of meeting, sitting quietly as an observer, while his pampered little servant carried out the actions that were his responsibility by rights. Strange, that is. What game’s he playin’ at? Such thoughts, however, were better kept within a man’s own counsel until he had time to mull them over. Either way, this discussion, if that was what it was going to be called, was obviously done.
Ansel took a deep breath and tamped down his anger long enough to say, "If m’lord has no further need o’ me then?" And, after a curt nod from Lord Wendel, took his leave. He had other more pressing matters just then, hoping to survey the roadside on his way home in hopes of finding discarded treasure that he knew full well was but a fool’s dream.
Chapter Three
“The Young Lord”
Life was hell.
Their arrival in Newport more than a moonturn past had been greeted with both court pageantry and familial affection, but those pleasantries were short-lived. Beginning with the very first morning after the welcoming banquet held in their honor, Jonas and Alastar had been saddled with a steady daily routine of work, exhaustion, and more work.
As expected, they were squired to their two new liege-lords; Jonas to the Duke and Al to Prince Valdic. Although Jonas, by right of birth, was a prince of the royal house himself, he would no longer be referred to or treated as such until his service was complete. In war, a squire attended a knight by caring for his equipment and horses, making camp, and sometimes even fighting by his side; but in peace-time, they were little more than glorified body servants. It seemed the latter would be their fate.
Rather than have the boys attend them day-and-night and get underfoot, however, tradition held that lords organize squires—which included most every high-born young man within their respective realms of influence—into a castle staff under the supervision of their steward. This was a system well-practiced throughout the kingdom, since it was understood that those destined to wield power benefited from exposure to the world beyond what were sometimes isolated home castles. The practice of fostering children in each other’s households also allowed bonds to be strengthened between noble houses that might otherwise languish, considering distances were often too great for regular visits even between family.
Lesser vassals lords would usually send their children to serve at the seat of their liege-lord, so a baron’s children would serve at the castle of his earl, an earl’s at the castle of his duke, and so on. This could begin as early as the age of twelve with boys acting as castle pages, eventually promoted to squires. As for female children, it was a great honor for daughters of noble houses to be invited to serve as chambermaid and companion to the wife or daughter of their father’s liege-lord. In fact, leaving home to go to court was an established right of passage, and it was a primary way in which a daughter might be exposed to potential suitors for marriage.
For their part, Jonas and Alastar had reported to the Squire’s Assembly for duty bright and early on the morning of their second day in Newport, and it seemed that they had been steadily toiling since that moment.
Both were clad in tunic, breeches, and boots, head-to-toe in black. Upon their chests was the gray gull and lighthouse sigil of Newport, but each wore their own home standards upon their left bicep: Jonas, the wizened old oak trees of Glendon that were known as “The Lovers,” intertwined in their life-long embrace, braced on either side by daggers pointing hilt up on a silver backdrop; and Alastar, a black chough—a kind of crow with red feet, legs, and beak—on a white field. Upon their upper-right breast, near the collarbone, rested the squire’s badges that identified them as different from the soldiers of the garrison, who wore the same basic uniform minus the noble House symbolism.
Alastar grunted loudly as he stacked the heavy crate with the rest. Wagons from the Duke’s iron mines in the southwestern hills had arrived days ahead of schedule, and Baron James had rousted help with a few hearty shouts. Those hearing the call had fallen to the task of unloading and stacking the crates of metal ore near the storehouses. Other staff would later sort what would remain at Newport Castle for use by the Duke’s own smiths and what was destined for the docks for shipping to cover business contracts.
Stopping for a moment to catch his breath, Al could see Jonas approaching with a particularly heavy looking crate, and he could tell from his face that he was having trouble. Rushing over, he took control of one side of the load, and an audible sigh of relief escaped his friend’s lips.
As they placed the crate atop some others, Jonas gave Alastar a grin of thanks between heaving breaths.
Just then, some member of the castle staff noticed the two boys resting, and yelled, “You two! Git back t’work!”
With a disheartened gaze shared between them, they did as they were told.
* * * * *
A commotion in the courtyard drew the boys’ interest, their work in the stables quickly forgotten. As they emerged from the barn, the light outside was troubling, but through squinting eyes they could see a group of mounted riders coming through the gates. They numbered perhaps twenty, and in the vanguard rode Sir Eadred. He was leading the reins of another horse behind him, upon which sat a man with bound hands and a black hood hiding his face.
They rode at a canter toward the keep and the boys followed, curiosity winning out and pushing aside thoughts of the work they had been doing. By the time they caught up, a crowd had gathered before the steps of the keep. The Duke, his son, and several of his advisers were present.
After dismounting, Eadred reached up and roughly pulled the prisoner from the saddle, allowing him to fall hard on the ground with an audible thud and a muffled cry. He then yanked him up by his bound arms, snatched off the hood and gag, and deposited him onto his knees before Valdimir.
"The brigand, Your Grace," was his only greeting. “He was found guilty in Baron Timothy’s court.”
It was not customary for a baron to try a case involving crimes as serious as murder, those holding the rank of earl being the minimum class to hold the Right of Pit and Gallows in the name of the Crown. Explanations for the origin of that phrase had differed depending on which of Jonas’s tutors was giving the lesson. The mention of Gallows obviously signified that these nobles were empowered to execute those convicted of certain crimes, but the part about the Pit apparently evolved either from jailing the convicted in a ‘pit’ or dungeon or from the practice of drowning females in a ‘pit’ rather than hanging them. Apparently, some believed drowning pre
served a woman’s dignity more so than dangling from a rope.
Ideally, the accused would have been arrested and held by the Baron but sent to a higher court for judgment. In the lightly populated north, however, things were not always ideal. Each of the Northern Realm’s two duchies should have been parceled-out into many different earldoms, each then split into baronies made up of manor estates. The problem had always been that the north had never boasted the population needed to support such structure.
When people in the north spoke of the frontier, they were referring to either the furthest kingdom holdings in the north—where the Border Fortresses guarded against the wild barbarian Wodonni—or to the as yet unsettled Westerlands. When those in the south mentioned the frontier, however, they were just as likely speaking of the Northern Realm itself. It was a wild land of mountains, river valleys, and untamed forests; good land, but hard to tame.
It was colder in the north than southrons seemed to be bred to handle. No orange or lemon trees flourished as they did along the southern coasts. Peaches and grapes would grow in some of the more temperate areas, but the fruit was inexorably smaller and less sweet than those grown in the south. As a result, northerners were more accustomed to drinking mead and ale in place of wine, the notable exception being those varieties produced from grapes grown in the limestone-rich soils around Arborvale.
Worse than issues of climate and comfort, however, was the fact that a smaller population meant settlements were fewer and more distant than in the older, more populous Southern Realm. Much of the land between such settlements was wild and sometimes dangerous. Even fields cleared and planted could sometimes be a mile from the village claiming them, the people having been pushed to sow scattered, irregular plots because some of the land was just too rocky. This created a lot of opportunities for banditry. Roads were best traveled in strength to avoid highwaymen and rural farmsteads were sometimes attacked, such as in the crime perpetrated by this condemned man and his compatriots. Danger became even more evident the further north one traveled as the barbarian Wodi sometimes stole across the border to raid settlements.
The nobles did their best to keep the land safe with regularly patrols and rotating guard garrisons stationed in the wilder areas, but it was a simple case of too few men and too large a country. Duke Joran spoke often of one day raising new lords, especially in the Westerlands most closely bordering Glendon. Those vast lands were claimed by the Northern Realm as yet without dispute, but only because the nearest organized nation was on the opposite side of the great western mountains. Those were a vast swath of grasslands and rivers, thought to be inhabited by extended tribes of Voronni and probably more than a few outlaws. There simply had never been sufficient numbers willing to relocate and settle those territories on a viable scale. It was a cruel irony that many did not wish to live in the north because of the dangers, when much of that danger could be abated if only more would make the move.
It was the sparseness of civilized settlements that had led to the long ago dictated royal decree allowing barons in the north to try more serious criminal offenders, so long as they had been granted a writ by a higher court. Sir Eadred had ridden from Newport with just such a writ, but it had explicitly stated that the sentence was not to be carried out by the lesser lord. Duke Valdimir was not one to have other men carry out the ugly side of justice that was, by rights, his responsibility.
"Only one? Reports spoke of a whole band of outlaws."
"Most evaded capture, Your Grace. There were eight others taken with this one." He paused. "They resisted."
There was laughter at that among the men who had ridden with Sir Eadred. The mirth died quickly, however, with a disapproving glare from the Duke, his eyes lingering longest on Eadred himself. Valdimir’s attention then fell on the man at his feet. He was ragged, having obviously been abused either during his capture or later; it didn’t matter much either way. He could barely open his eyes against the light after being so long hooded.
"What is your name?"
In place of a reply, the man on the ground balled up his face in an expression of rage and spat toward the Duke’s feet.
Eadred set to viciously kicking the brigand, until Valdimir yelled, "Enough!" Leaning forward, the Duke looked hard into the eyes of the man on the ground before him. "Now, won’t you tell me your name?"
"Aelfrid," was the pained reply. “Aelfrid Plowmanson.”
"Would that you had followed your father into the honorable trade reflected in the name he gave you," the Duke said, standing now erect once again, towering over the criminal. "Do you have any words to say in your defense?”
To Jonas’s utter surprise, the pitiful-looking creature actually seemed to laugh at that thought. "Will an’thin’ I say matter? Ya gonna let me go? Will it bring back the ones I had a hand in killin’?”
Duke Valdimir looked on, almost sadly, and answered, "No. Your guilt has already been decided. The punishment for that guilt is all that remains."
"Then git on with it," was the reply. "Send me t’Hell where I belong."
The Lord seemed only to nod. “Aelfrid Plowmanson: for the crimes set forth against you, chief among them murder most foul, and in the name of Haelid of House Calleron, the fourth of his name, King of the United Galenni peoples and Lord Protector of the Kingdom of Galennor; I, Duke Valdimir of House Calleron, Lord of Newport and Guardian of the Northern Realm, hereby sentence you to death."
The condemned man said nothing more. In fact, he had no reaction whatsoever to the news that he was about to die. The Duke motioned toward Eadred, who picked him up and dragged him away in the direction of the gallows.
The Duke and the others began to follow, but Valdimir paused. Searching through the crowd with his penetrating gaze, he found the two whom he sought and motioned for them to follow. Alastar and Jonas did as bade.
When the two boys reached his side, Valdimir started again in the direction that Eadred had taken the prisoner. "You should both see this as part of your education," was all he said, and in fact was the only thing uttered by anyone throughout the entire walk.
The gallows stood behind the keep in a small yard surrounded by a tall wooden fence. The area within was large enough to house twenty or thirty people besides the executioner himself in the event witnesses were prudent. The mere fact that the area was sequestered said something of the Duke’s feelings toward it all. Public executions of the variety seen elsewhere, which often took on almost a festive air, were not practiced in Newport. Jonas noted this and felt a sudden affinity for his new master’s attitude toward justice. His own father had always preferred beheading by the sword within a holy grove for the rare executions in Glendon.
As they entered, two guardsmen pushed the gate closed and latched it. Jonas could see the prisoner on the gallows, bound at wrists and ankles with a dejected look on his face, the noose tightly around his neck. Standing no more than six feet from the condemned, the Duke looked hard into his face for what seemed like an eternity, then gave a quick nod.
With that silent order, a soldier relayed the signal to the executioner positioned behind a blind to the far left of the platform, and the panel below the man’s feet suddenly dropped. The condemned man’s neck did not snap, and so he struggled vainly against his own weight for several long moments. Jonas felt as though he might vomit. Suddenly, though, Al steadied him with a hand on the shoulder; he was gesturing toward something.
Jonas looked and saw the curtain enclosing the executioner’s booth swaying in the breeze. What they could see through the small opening amazed them. There, Eadred stood watching with a hard-edged intensity. It was obvious he had relieved the soldier that had been randomly chosen to wear the black hood of the executioner, performing the deed himself.
He was completely rigid, his chest heaving with quick, short breaths, and his hands clenching and relaxing almost convulsively. The strangest thing, however, was the look in his eyes. Almost an identical shade to the black of his hair, they burned with
an animalistic intensity. He continued in this frightening manner until the figure in the noose went still, regaining his composure as if waking from a dream.
Duke Valdimir turned and started away, Prince Valdic hard on his heels. All those present took cue and did the same, with the exception of Eadred who would oversee the soldiers in disposing of the body. Just then, the older nobleman paused and looked at the two boys. Perhaps he had seen something in their expressions or simply noticed they had not immediately turned to leave with the others. He paused as if considering, then asked, "What is it? The question in your minds?"
Both boys looked at each other, not sure how to answer. Both knew better than to think they had the option of not voicing a reply. The Duke was their master, besides also being a senior kinsman, so begging off would not suffice. Yet neither wished to give voice to what they had just seen of Eadred.
Then, suddenly, Alastar thought back to something he had been wondering briefly before the ghoulish behavior of the older Knight had chased it from his mind, deciding that question would be far more politic. "That man," he nodded toward where the body was being dealt with, "the condemned, why did he not seem interested in saying any words? Not even to curse you, Grandfather? He just seemed resigned to his fate."
The Duke paused again, whether to consider the best way to frame his reply or for effect they could not be sure. He glanced briefly at his own son Prince Valdic, who had remained at his father’s side and seemed now to nod back at the older man with a knowing expression. When the reply came, Duke Valdimir sighed sorrowfully, shrugged his shoulders, and spoke in a fatherly tone. "Which of us can truly know what is in a man’s heart? What demons he faces?"
He continued, "I know each of you understands that it will one day be your responsibility to give your people peace and justice in the name of our lord the King. That is part of every lord’s duty. Perhaps, if you seek a lesson from what you have seen today, let it be that many over whom you will sit in judgment are not monsters. They are not necessarily the acts they have committed, no matter how despicable those may be. They are simply people."
