Orphan: Book One: Chronicles of the Fall

by Lee Ramsay

  She blushed and smoothed her skirts as she peered down at the hems brushing her ankles. The russet fabric flowed loose from the hip, where it grew snugger and curved inward to the waistline. A brown leather bodice clung tight to her ribs, the lacing along the front gaping open to reveal the bleached white linen of the shift beneath.

  “I grew out more than I did up,” she said, tugging at the bustline of the bodice. She stopped fidgeting with the fabric, her smile revealing a crooked front tooth and slight dimples. “I ate a bit too much, I think.”

  “You look grand,” Tristan stammered, dragging his eyes up to meet hers. Her golden-brown eyes crinkled as her smile broadened, and he forced his eyes to the thick chestnut braid spilling from beneath the brown wool hat on her head. “Is that a new hat?”

  “It’s a new style from Caer Pethros. The merchant called it a muffin cap,” Jayna said as she straightened the headband and adjusted the body’s excess fabric to tilt to one side. He tried not to ignore the way her breasts lifted as she did so and the way they strained her bodice’s knotted cordage. “It was expensive because it’s felted wool. I think we can make something like this from linen for the summer, or some loose-knit ones from the wool we spin. It could be a good trade item by the next Harvest Festival, or perhaps even sell. I’m going to ask Mama and Grandmama to let me try my hand at them this year.”

  She turned from one side to the other, the hem of her skirt belling out to brush his shins. “It can be worn in different ways, too. Do you like it?”

  “It looks good,” Tristan said, fumbling for words.

  “I hoped you’d say so. It’s good to be home, though. I was afraid I wasn’t going to get back here before I had to buy clothes.” Eyes sparkling with laughter and her hands on her hips, she stepped closer. She gave him a critical eye, then reached out to adjust his jerkin. “It looks like we could both do with something new to wear. I’ll tell Mama, and we’ll measure and cut cloth once everything is situated with my part of the workshop. You have muscles across your shoulders that you didn’t have before. What have you been doing all winter?”

  Tristan straightened his shoulders from their comfortable slouch. “Working. How was the Harvest Festival?”

  “Not as fun as last year’s. There were a lot of people talking about a war in or with Troppenheim. I’m not sure which – I wasn’t listening until they started telling stories about some warlord they’re calling the Horned Knight. He’s supposedly from Merid and making life miserable in Troppenheim.”

  “Why is he called the Horned Knight?”

  “I’m guessing he has horns on his helmet,” Jayna said with a smirk and a shrug. “The rumor is that he and his raiders might be the source of tension between the Hegemony and Troppenheim, since he’s raiding both sides of the River Ossifor.”

  “That’s a long way from here. I’m surprised people this far south are talking about it.”

  “Oh, you hear plenty of things, and see plenty of things, too,” she said, reaching up to touch her hat as a reminder. “The Harvest Festival is the largest of all the festivals in Shreth – short of those held in the cities. People come from all over to sell, trade, and tell stories. You should come – I think you’ll enjoy it.”

  Tristan’s mouth twitched into a sour smirk. His smile grew genuine, though, as he remembered he would reach his majority by the coming autumn. “I will.”

  She gave him a wink and a laugh, which made the fine hairs on his nape stand on end. “We’ll ride together, then.”

  “Jayna!” a woman’s voice called from the far side of the commons. Sasha – who looked like a younger, less heavy-set version of Karilen – stood in one of the houses’ doorway. “Jayna!”

  “It isn’t like she hasn’t seen me all winter,” Jayna said, rolling her eyes with a sigh. She brushed past him, leaving a dusty warmth on the back of his hand as her hip bumped it. Her cheeks dimpled as she twirled around with a shrug, then turned and hurried toward her house. “Coming, Mama!”

  Tristan sighed, his eyes moving down to the sway of her hips beneath her skirts as she trotted toward the house she shared with her mother. His hand still tingled where her hip had brushed it. Though he suspected it was more his imagination than truth, her scent still lingered in the air. The feel of her tugging on his clothes set his skin on fire and left him feeling like lightning danced across the fine hair covering his body. Something stirred within him, and he clenched his hands as his wandering mind supplied the feeling of her clothing beneath his palms despite not having touched her.

  As she disappeared into the shadows of her house, he turned away to return to his chores – and froze as he spied Dougan leaning against the corner of the barn. The older man’s bushy eyebrows quirked upward as his eyes dropped to the front of the youth’s britches. His bearded lips twisted in a smirk. “Told you I would guess.”

  Humiliated and hoping Jayna had not noticed, Tristan cursed his fair complexion as his cheeks burned.

  Chapter 9

  Days grew longer and warmer as spring pushed winter’s chill aside. Birdsong turned into a full chorus as leafy trees took on their green mantle. Fruit trees, bushes, and grass exploded with a riot of fragrant flowers tended by droning insects.

  Dougan selected a few pigs, sheep, and cattle to be slaughtered and taken to the smokehouse, where the meat was prepared and preserved. Hides went to the tannery, and for days a foul stench competed with sweet smoke filtering through the hamlet. The smithy operated from morning to well into the evening, Jakkan working beside his father to learn the trade that supplied Dorishad with building materials and tools.

  Once the veteran pronounced the ground thawed enough to till, every capable man and youth set to the plows across fields not set for fallow. The women took the sheep down to the stream to wash before sheering, then disappeared into the different workshops to start the picking, dyeing, carding, spinning, and weaving. Younger children were assigned the duties of feeding the flocks of ducks and geese or tending the chickens, their chores often interrupted by games of tag or playing with litters of puppies or kittens; older children looked on with envy as they milked and fed larger livestock.

  Dorishad was a sizable hamlet and a working farm; there was often more work than hands to do it. Several women gave birth and took lighter duties while the woodsmen disappeared with their bows and traps to collect pelts, further lessening the hands available for the chores which needed doing.

  Tristan’s dissatisfaction with life reasserted itself. The distractions of the long runs and other training Dougan provided over the winter disappeared. He avoided the smithy, and Jakkan with it. With one hundred and sixty-four people, it was difficult to avoid one person – or, in his case, several. Much as he hated the work necessary to keep the farm productive, it had the benefit of keeping him away from people he preferred to avoid.

  True to her word, Jayna and her mother cut fabric and made him well-fitting albeit drab clothes. It was fortunate that Sasha was a quick seamstress, as she provided several new shirts and britches that allowed Tristan enough clothing that he did not have to wear the same filthy, smelly clothes as he plowed and sowed fields or worked with a pruning hook in the orchards. Jayna gave him a muffin hat made from the wool she dyed, spun, and knitted, which kept the sweat on his brow from burning his eyes and his shoulder-length auburn hair under control.

  Spring was his least favorite season, as it meant waking well before dawn and working the fields until long after sunset. His hands grew raw from handling the plows dragged behind the draft horses and from the poles of the pruning tools, blisters bursting before they toughened into callouses. Sweat and dirt clogged his pores, the inevitable pimples hurting worse with the persistent sunburn on his winter-pale face. His clothing was always filthy, and his boots caked with dung.

  Where before he had found at least a modicum of comfort in not having to spend time working with Anthoun on Dorishad’s ledgers, he now found the interruption of his studies annoying.

  S
ome days he completed his chores early, which allowed him at least a little time before sleep snuffed him like a candle in a strong wind. Unfortunately, the other young men – like Jakkan – often finished their work before he did and claimed the bathhouse once Anthoun was no longer using it. This left Tristan little option but to take a bar of old Geren’s lye soap with him to the fields, wrapped in rough cloth and stowed in a belt pouch. Bathing in the stream was cold but possessed the virtue of privacy.

  Skin stinging and tender from scrubbing after one such dunk in the cold water, he carried his filthy shirt and cap in one hand as he made his way back toward the manor house. The afternoon sun bathed the fields and trees in a yellow-orange haze of late spring heat, forcing him to squint against the glare reflecting from the houses’ windows. He gave the bathhouse a sour glance as he crossed the wooden bridge spanning the stream and longed for the cold, deserted depths of the winter where he could enjoy a hot soak. No doubt Jakkan lounged within with his closest friends, the twins, Mikken and Beren. Out hunting and trapping with his father, Ryjan would not be back for weeks – which suited Tristan fine. His absence meant one less person he had to avoid.

  He paused, breath held as he ignored the breeze rustling leaves in a nearby tree. Women’s voices came from the bathhouse – younger ones from the pitch and tone, with no children or babies.

  Tristan’s green eyes flicked around the commons. Smoke rose from the manor’s kitchen chimney and several homes, carrying with it the smell of dinner. Tucked back behind the manor house near the sheep barn, the doors to the fabric workrooms stood open; he occasionally spied movement from within their shadowy interiors. On the commons’ far side, the smithy doors stood open; he spied Jakkan’s father sitting at a work table. There was no sign of Dougan, Anthoun, or anyone else; had they been in the barn or the stable, he would have seen them through the open doors.

  His head tilted as several feminine giggles caught his ear. Decision made, he strolled behind the bathhouse and slipped out of sight of the commons. He ducked beneath the small tree growing on the stream’s bank and squinted toward the nearby fields but found nobody.

  He dropped his clothes beside the pipes through which the building’s pumps drew water from the creek. He ran his finger along the stones forming the bathhouse’s foundation where they met the wall’s wooden planks, searching for the knot he had overheard the other young men mention. It ought to be easy to find it in the whitewashed wall. He was unsure of its exact location, but as Dorishad’s other young men were shorter than him, logic suggested it would be lower than eye level. Any higher, and its purpose would have been obvious, as it would necessitate having something to stand on. Nobody would miss the sight of one of the boys carrying a crate or a stool behind the bathhouse.

  He paused as the young women’s voices grew clearer. If the knot existed at all, it would most likely be...here. His fingertip found a rough patch in the whitewash; a small lip jutted out from the knot’s edge, large enough to hook with a fingernail. It was small, little more than the size of an Arch coin, but sufficient to the rumored purpose.

  Tristan glanced around to ensure he was alone and unseen. The sun struck the building’s west side, and he was on the east beneath the short tree. The shadows ought to be enough to reduce the chance that anyone inside the bathhouse would see any light after removing the knot.

  His lips grew dry, and his heartbeat raced as he hooked his fingernail under the knot’s edge. The wooden plug worked free and dropped into his palm. He blinked as he pressed his eye to the hole and cupped his hand to block out sunlight. Except for black shadows and the fire glowing in the room’s heart, he recognized nothing at first. The large tub’s shape came into focus as his vision adjusted; rippling water reflected candles scattered around the bathhouse. His ears caught muffled voices and indistinct words, but he was less interested in what they said than what he might see.

  His patience paid off, but not the way that he hoped as Rhynna waded past his line of sight. Though scarcely a year his senior, the young woman looked older than her eighteen summers. Short and thick boned, she had always been told she had childbearing hips; those hips, however, had begun to spread after an autumn and winter spent in Dresden Township. Her wet, dark brown hair clung to the folds of flesh on her back, and though her breasts remained large and firm, they rose over a belly grown portly. Even in the bathhouse’s dim light, Rhynna squinted; the roundness of her cheeks made her eyes seem smaller than they were. He shifted his eye against the hole to see who else was in the bathhouse as she sat on the tub’s edge and swung her legs over the side.

  Beside the knothole, he spied a bare shoulder and a breast capped in a dark nipple. He followed the curve of Lyona’s long neck and angled jaw and spent a moment enjoying her profile. Her high cheekbones and the sloping, curved bridge of her nose glistened with sweat. Ryjan will be a lucky man if he ever realizes Lyona has eyes for him, he thought as his eyes moved past her.

  Alazne reclined beside Jayna against the tub’s far end. He had hoped the latter would be in the bathhouse. The water buoyed both young women’s breasts, and though Alazne’s were fuller, Jayna’s shapelier bust commanded his full attention. The slope of her shoulders and collarbone, normally teased by the cut of her shift and bodice, were as well-drawn as he always imagined. With her hair secured in a bun, he was surprised at her neck’s length. It made the lines of her face seem sharper; the last of the girlish curves of childhood had melted away to reveal the more refined planes of womanhood.

  Jayna finished whatever she was saying and started to rise. Water streamed down the curve of her breast to drip off the dark disks of her nipples. Glistening rivulets ran down the flatness of her belly as her navel cleared the water’s surface, accentuating the hourglass shape of hip and thigh curving up to the slenderness of her waist. His breath caught as the dark triangle of hair between her legs—

  His vision exploded in painful color, and his ears rang as his head snapped to the side beneath a vicious blow to the left cheek. Staggering, Tristan’s heel caught the pipe running down to the water and sent him tumbling. The whitewashed knot flew from his hand and bounced across the ground, coming to a stop against the bathhouse’s stone foundation. He rolled onto his back and squinted at the blurry figure looming over him, and shook his head to clear his swimming vision.

  Jakkan loomed over him, flanked Beren and Mikken. Each of the boys was a wall of bone and muscle, with Jakkan the more powerfully built of the three. Unlike the others with their round heads and clean-shaven faces, Jakkan’s square jaw and rugged features sported a short, heavy growth of beard beneath wavy chestnut hair. Two years his senior, Jakkan had led Tristan’s tormentors for as long as he could remember, with the twins providing additional muscle.

  The blacksmith’s son flexed his hand to ease the sting of the blow. “Having a gander, were you?”

  Tristan rolled to an elbow and spat out a gob of blood. Iron saltiness stung his tongue from where his teeth had cut into his cheek. “Like you haven’t?”

  “They’re not for the likes of you. I don’t much like the thought of you looking at my girls.”

  The youth gave a humorless snort as he pushed himself to a sitting position. “They’re not your girls. Lyona wouldn’t touch you—”

  Jakkan’s boot lashed out and caught him below his sternum. The blacksmith’s son moved to Tristan’s side and squatted, balancing on his toes with his elbows on his knees as the youth coughed for breath. “Stay down, you idiot; nameless whoresons like you belong in the dirt. They are my girls, if I want them. Lyona, too, should I crook my finger at her.”

  “Ryjan wouldn’t like that much,” Tristan said when he managed to suck in a breath.

  “Ryjan doesn’t know, and you’re not going to tell him. Besides, she’d forget about him after I tumbled her.”

  “You’re a pig.”

  “That is more valuable than a worthless orphan.” Jakkan smoothed his mustache and beard with his fingers. “I am going to expl
ain this to you once, and you’d best remember it. You are nothing but the unwanted by-blow of a whore and a swineherd. I don’t know where Anthoun found you, but I can guess why that old sodomite brought you here.”

  A wild impulse surged in Tristan’s chest, emerging as a breathless chuckle as his green eyes flitted between Beren and Mikken. “Familiar with buggery, are you? Who sticks his cock up your arse, or is it the other way around? Do you reach around and—"

  He did not see the blow that laid him out, striking him so hard that he flipped onto his belly and rolled down the dirt embankment toward the stream. Dazed, he pushed himself to his hands and knees. The right side of his face blazed as his eye throbbed and began to swell. Droplets of blood from his split lip spattered the dirt between his hands.

  Jakkan wrung his hand and rose to his feet. “I know a bit about buggery, yes. I rode Rhynna plenty over the winter, and she does like it in the rump.”

  “Probably the only hole you could find, aside from her mouth. From the looks of her, she filled that with food more than your cock.”

  The larger young man took a long step forward and delivered a solid kick to the smaller’s gut. Falling on his side with a grunt, Tristan wheezed for breath but managed a taunting laugh. “Did you have to use a meat hook to spread her thighs? I’d say you probably had to roll her in flour to find her cunny, but she likely licked it all up before you were ready.”

  Jakkan grabbed a handful of Tristan’s hair in his left hand, pulled him to his feet, and slammed his fist into the young man’s jaw. The youth dropped to the ground with a thump as the blacksmith’s son let loose of him, raising a cloud of dust.

  “I fucked Rhynna because I could. I could bed her morning and night, and have any woman I want in the between times. I will be the richest man in Dorishad when my father dies, and she’ll be the richest woman.” Jakkan placed his foot on Tristan’s shoulder and kicked him over. “I laid with Alazne this winter, before I gave her to Mikken. She’s good, too, and sweeter on the tongue than the pastries she makes.”