Ironheart

by N. J. Layouni

  Their travels took them far and wide, even to the town of Edgeway on occasion, when they felt particularly bold, but they never lingered there. The past was too powerful a deterrent for them both. Fortunately though, their favorite hunting spot lay much closer to home.

  Half a day’s trek over the steep mountain pass lay the village of Mullin. Nestled between the mighty arms of two great hills, a small cluster of dwellings sat huddled beside the banks of a fast-moving river.

  The village was as familiar to the boys as their own, for they had often accompanied their parents there. For Mullin had something special—something only a few villages could boast: a watermill.

  The ancient mill had long been a source of fascination to the boys. Wide eyed with wonder they would watch the huge wooden wheel as it turned its endless cycles. Round and round it went, plowing tirelessly through the foaming water which gave it life. If they stared for too long, the motion made them quite dizzy.

  Even from the inside, the old mill proved to be just as fascinating—though Seth and Sylvie would not allow the boys to wander, and always kept a tight grip on their hands to stop them wandering too close to the dangerous tangle of moving machinery.

  Oh—and the sound of it! Such terrible—wonderful—grumblings and rumblings that made their teeth chatter in their heads. ’Twas as if the very earth were vibrating beneath their feet.

  As Seth conducted his business with the sour-faced miller, the two men had to shout to be heard over the constant deafening racket of the millstones. Hands clamped over their ears, the boys never wearied of seeing the wondrous alchemy of grain being transformed into flour.

  Of course, they had a quern stone at home, as did all houses where someone lived with the strength to turn it, but it was only used to grind up the small amounts required to make their daily bread. Being allowed to use the quern stone was a much fought-over treat in any household that had children. But querning, as the boys discovered, was not as easy as it looked. It was extremely tough on young muscles, and their strength for the task usually faded long before their enthusiasm.

  The bulk of the harvested grain—the grain destined to be either sold at market or that needed to see them through the long winter months—required that they make the trip to Mullin.

  But for all that he provided a vital service, John Miller was not a popular man. He charged twelve silver coins per cart load, and Seth would frequently quarrel with him over the quality of his flour. According to Father, if John Miller was not watched closely, he would help himself to a share of their grain then bulk up the flour sacks with floor sweepings.

  So Anselm and Vadim often found themselves posted as miniature guards. Not that they minded. Seated upon a pile of dusty flour sacks, they were quite content to watch the machinery go round.

  The years slowly turned, and as the boys matured and approached full manhood, the mill had lost much of its appeal. But the same could not be said of Mullin, however. Suddenly they became aware of the village’s other, hitherto unnoticed, attractions.

  By some happy circumstance, Mullin had very few sons. It was, however, blessed with a proliferation of beautiful daughters. So many maidens, mostly of them of marriageable age, and all of them eager to accept the attentions of Darumvale’s most handsome sons.

  If Anselm was vain, it was not without just cause, for his mother’s polished hand mirror provided daily evidence of his square-jawed male beauty. Set in the masculine lines of his face, a pair of silver-gray eyes peered back at him, twinkling in acknowledgment of his fair good looks. A tousled golden mane of hair framed the pleasing symmetry of his features, and by some good fortune, he had inherited his mother’s high cheekbones as well as her eye color. The slight cleft in his chin was from his father, but everything else was his own.

  Around the time his voice broke, he suddenly grew taller and broader, and hard muscles developed in his previously scrawny limbs. Almost over night, he had become a man, and with it came the appetite for female company.

  Although Vadim had entered full manhood the year before, he seemed not to notice when the village maidens fluttered their eyelashes at him, and treated them with the same teasing affection as he always had. One day, he happened across Anselm in the midst of a particularly passionate embrace with one of the Darumvale girls.

  To Anselm’s dismay, Vadim had stood there with his arms folded, refusing to go away, glaring at them with silent disapproval until, at last, the pink-cheeked girl had hurried off in embarrassment.

  “Well?” Anselm snarled, adjusting the aching discomfort in his trews.

  “Lesson number one: never shit where you eat, little brother,” Vadim replied softly.

  “So what am I supposed to do about this?” He nodded, indicating the obvious swelling of his manhood, straining beneath the fabric that was supposed to conceal it. “Would you have me become a holy man?”

  “You?” Vadim chuckled. “I think not.” He placed a careless arm about Anselm’s shoulders. “Come with me. I know of a place where you might... ease your itch.

  And so their trips to Mullin began.

  Vadim introduced him to Annie, a plump and amiable woman who worked at the village tavern. When she was not busy serving beer and food, Annie was known to provide a secret and far more valuable service for her customers. In exchange for the two silver coins Vadim had given her, Annie led Anselm to a back room and locked the door behind them. There within that dusty storeroom, crushed in Annie’s voluptuous embrace, Anselm entered a realm of pleasure he had never known before.

  Minutes later, he emerged from the storeroom, staggering on legs that were almost too weak to support him. From where he sat nursing his tankard in a dark corner of the tavern, Vadim looked up, the merest hint of a smile playing about his lips.

  Anselm grinned back at him, relieved that at long last he could finally consider himself a man.

  His visits to Mullin continued, but as much as he enjoyed his time with Annie, he soon ran low on the funds with which to pay for the delicious trembling moments spent between her welcoming thighs. So while Vadim occupied himself with a pretty young widow he had recently taken to visiting, Anselm wandered about the village, basking in the adoration of Mullin’s female population, which seemed to follow him wherever he went.

  Being so admired was a pleasant distraction, and one of which he never grew bored, and so, in time, he gradually forgot about Annie, the gentle teacher who had introduced him to the mysterious delights of carnal love. For every time he visited Mullin, there always seemed to be another bright-eyed, blushing maiden eager to secure his favor and secret kisses.

  Although Vadim kept reminding him of the peril of deflowering innocents, it was hardly necessary. Despite what he might have—deliberately—led Vadim to believe, Anselm was not the terrible rogue his friend imagined him to be. The truth, had he ever cared to admit it, would have satisfied even Vadim’s abnormally inflated sense of honor.

  As pleasant as the village maidens were, not one of them had ever come close to touching his heart.

  No one until Isobel.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ’Twas during the spring of Anselm’s seventeenth summer that Isobel first arrived in Mullin, conveyed in a peddler’s cart.

  Anselm was sitting upon the bridge at the time, his legs dangling over the river, enjoying the company of three pretty maidens who were all vying for his attention—an experience he found most gratifying. At the sound of the horse and cart they looked up to see who had arrived, not that they were really interested; people were always visiting the mill. Sparing the peddler and his companion a brief disinterested glance, the maidens looked away again, keen to continue with their previous sport of wild flirtation.

  But suddenly Anselm was no longer in the mood to play.

  Or talk.

  Or even move.

  All he could do was stare, slack jawed with wonder, as the peddle
r helped a young woman down from his cart. Despite the mildness of the day, she was wrapped head to toe in a ragged brown blanket so that only her face was visible. Her eyes were red and swollen as if she had been weeping for a long time.

  Perhaps the girl felt the weight of his stare for, as the peddler turned to unload her trunk from the back of his cart, she slowly raised her head and looked straight at Anselm.

  His heart stumbled, and he suddenly could not remember how to breathe. The meeting of their eyes had hit him with all the force of a physical blow. ’Twas a good thing he was already seated, or he might have fallen into the river. His head began to spin as though he had taken too much wine.

  Poleaxed. That was an excellent word to describe it.

  Despite her bedraggled and travel-weary state, Isobel was—although he did not yet know her name—the very embodiment of perfection in female form. So pale. So lovely. A goddess amongst mortals, as beautiful as the dawn and twice as fair. ’Twas as if he already knew her, perhaps from a life lived long ago. Whatever it was, during that brief moment of connection, Anselm felt a shifting of some previously unused mechanism within his heart, responding to the presence of its mistress.

  And so, he fell. Hard. Although he and Isobel had yet to exchange a single audible word, it mattered not. With just one look, his heart was already, irrevocably lost.

  The transformation in his nature was astonishing, even to himself. From that moment on, every other maiden lost their appeal. Isobel was the sun, and beside her, everyone else was but a pale and insubstantial shadow.

  Even so, as difficult as it was, he forced himself to be attentive to the other women, especially when Vadim was about, for these new and tender feelings were much too raw and precious to be discussed with anyone, even with his best friend. And so, because it was expected of him, Anselm continued to supply Vadim with details of his amorous conquests, albeit imaginary ones.

  Throughout the spring and on into the summer, the boys continued their visits to Mullin, and gradually Anselm’s hungry heart became acquainted with all the details of the Isobel’s tragic past. Her parents and siblings were all gone, snuffed out by the terrible plague that intermittently afflicted the highly populated towns to the south, particularly during the warmer months.

  Alone in the world, with neither wealth nor connections to protect her, Isobel suddenly found herself dangerously vulnerable to the circling crows. An unmarried girl of fifteen summers, especially one in possession of such uncommon beauty, had but few options open to her—and none of them were pleasant. Coming to Mullin to live with her only living relatives proved the least noxious of her limited choices. Unfortunately for her, John the miller and his equally loathsome son, Jack, were now all the family she could boast.

  Poor Isobel. Whichever way she turned, the dice of life seemed determined to roll against her.

  If Isobel’s cup of choice tasted like poison to her, that same bitter chalice seemed, to Anselm, to contain the sweetest of all nectars, albeit tainted by a couple of flies. But as much as he disliked her relatives, he was grateful that the surly miller had taken Isobel in and given her a place to call home.

  Of course, ’twas the miller who benefited most from his uncustomary act of charity. Within only a few hours of her arrival, he sent Isobel to help Jack—his son and apprentice—with the mill. Once his niece had been dismissed, the miller had settled his well-cushioned rear on the bench outside, basking in the sunshine, a flagon of ale clutched in his plump little hand, bragging of his good fortune to anyone with the time or patience to listen to him.

  It was no secret. Everyone in Mullin knew that the miller’s wife had left him.

  The poor wretched woman had stolen away from the village under the cover of darkness several years back, without saying word of farewell to anyone, not even her son. Not that the villagers blamed her. Any woman having to share the miller’s roof had their sympathy. Even back then, young Jack was already his father’s son, the seed just as noxious as the matured fruit.

  And so, in exchange for her board and lodgings, Isobel brought order of the female kind to her uncle’s house. When she wasn’t washing, cooking, and cleaning, she was drudging away in the mill as an unpaid laborer.

  From safe within his flock of admiring maidens, Anselm continued to worship Isobel from afar. She was timid at first, as cautious as any young deer as she ventured from her uncle’s house and hurried about her daily errands. For many days she spoke to no one, much to the frustration of the other village girls.

  Outsiders seldom settled in Mullin, so any new face was a rare treat; but the miller’s niece was extra special, for she had come from so far away: the capital, no less! ’Twas only natural that the maidens should yearn to know her better, for with Isobel lay the opportunity for a different kind of conversation, something beyond the mundane. Far more interesting than the regular fireside debates on crops and livestock.

  They longed to hear her speak, to learn the tales of her life in the capital, a life so far removed from their own. Distant towns whose streets they would never walk, and the names and stories of people they would never know.

  But Isobel shunned them all. She never smiled, and her eyes still bore evidence of her private grief. Invitations to leave her chores for a while and walk in the sunshine were all refused, and in this way she continued until the arrival of full summer.

  The zenith of the sun wrought changes in Isobel that no one ever expected to see.

  Creeping at last from her timid shell, Isobel finally showed some interest in her new world. Her neighbors, of course, were delighted and rewarded her courage with kind words and friendliness, finally welcoming her properly into the fold.

  But as Isobel gained in confidence, Anselm found himself in uncharted territory. For the first time in his life, much to his consternation, he knew not how to proceed.

  Shyness was not an affliction that had ever troubled him. Even as a child, he had been blessed with a surfeit of confidence that had landed him in many a dire scrape—much to his poor parents’ dismay. But now something strange was happening. As Isobel’s courage bloomed, his own bravery faltered.

  In her presence, even though he never dared to address her directly, he found himself stuttering and stammering like a halfwit, provoking knowing smiles and raised eyebrows from those who knew him best.

  ’Twas most vexing.

  While Isobel was all brightness and merry laughter, charming to everyone she encountered, Anselm found himself increasingly tongue tied in her company. He tried to speak to her, to smile and say the right things, but her beauty dazzled him into insensibility until he could barely put together a coherent thought, let alone muster the ability to speak to her. Eventually he lapsed into silence whenever Isobel was around, and she, in turn, began to ignore him too.

  ’Twas better to have her think him ignorant rather than some kind of bumbling fool.

  And so they continued until, at last, Vadim noticed Anselm’s odd behavior and took pity on him. They were sitting by the stone marker post in the village square, one day, waiting for their friends when Isobel happened to walk by. Giving Anselm a hard stare, Vadim shook his head and said, “It is time the two of you were properly introduced.”

  Leaping to his feet, Vadim detaining Isobel with a warm smile and a polite bow, performing the introductions with an ease Anselm could only envy. The best he could manage was to sit there, smiling and nodding like an amiable simpleton.

  Isobel bowed her golden head and bestowed Vadim with one of her perfect white smiles. Anselm was grateful to be seated, for at such close range her smile was truly formidable. He could only wonder how Vadim was managing to remain so steady on his feet when his own knees felt as weak as water.

  “What is wrong with you?” Vadim hissed over his shoulder. “Get up!” He gave Anselm a swift kick to aid him on his way.

  As Anselm scrambled to his feet, after sparing
him but the briefest glance, Isobel continued to speak with Vadim. The sweet alchemy of her voice was so powerful it transformed even the dullest topic into a subject of the most intense fascination.

  How long they stood there, Anselm could not later recall. But at last, perhaps unnerved by the imbecile grinning at her from Vadim’s side, Isobel finally turned to look at Anselm again. As she did so, her smile gutted like a candle in the wind.

  Her eyes really were extraordinary. The most unusual shade of violet, with a black sooty ring framing each iris, and a fringe of long, dark lashes that swept her cheek whenever she blinked.

  With slow deliberation, those wondrous eyes looked him up and down until they had taken him in from head to toe. “So the two of you are brothers?” Isobel asked in a voice tinged with the accent of her past.

  Anselm heard himself sigh.

  With a tut of irritation, Vadim jabbed him sharply in the ribs. “Indeed we are, m’lady.” He need not sound quite so regretful about it.

  “Brothers in all but blood,” Anselm replied at last, rubbing his aching side and subjecting Isobel to his most winning smile. “And I am entirely at your service, m’lady.” As he spoke, he swept her a deep bow, but he might as well have saved himself the effort, for Isobel seemed completely unmoved by his charms. Instead, she turned to address Vadim again.

  “It seems we none of us can choose our family,” she said, “not even when we are entirely unrelated.” With a smile, she added, “And although I am sure this will be of little comfort to you, m’lord, you have my heartfelt sympathy.”

  Vadim gave a snort of amusement while Anselm just stood there, gaping like a fish out of water. Had his goddess just insulted him? Yes, she most definitely had!

  Bidding them a hasty “good day,” Isobel picked up her basket and hurried away toward the mill, the sound of her tinkling laughter trailing behind her.

  CHAPTER TEN