King's Champion

by Peter Grant

  KING’S CHAMPION

  by

  Peter Grant

  Sedgefield Press

  Copyright © 2017 by Peter Grant. All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters

  and events portrayed in this book are fictional,

  and any resemblance to real people

  or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Cover art and design by Cedar Sanderson:

  http://www.cedarwrites.com/

  This book is dedicated to my wife, Dorothy,

  without whose support, I’d never be able to do this.

  For other books by Peter Grant,

  see his Amazon.com author page

  I

  Owain straightened as he entered the clearing, feeling his breath rasping in his throat and the blood pounding in his temples after the exertion of the long uphill climb. The scrub grass was sprouting green after the long winter. Darker green weeds and a couple of small bushes intruded around the cairn of stones. The big, brindled dog sniffed at the ground around its base, then raised his head, looking all around, whuffing the air through his nostrils. Finding no scents worth worrying about, he looked at his master expectantly, his tail wagging slowly.

  The man chuckled tolerantly. “That’s right, Gerd. It’s peaceful up here, isn’t it? That’s why Sigurd wanted to lie here; that, and the view.” He glanced back down the valley. On a clear day, the vista stretched for many leagues, almost to Kingsholme itself, capital city of the Kingdom of Avranche. On a wet, cloudy day like this, he couldn’t even see a hundred yards down the almost invisible game trail he’d used to climb up here.

  He shrugged out of the straps of his pack and set it down, laid his metal-tipped staff next to it, and took off the baldric supporting the sword on his left hip, leaning the weapon against the pack. The war hound stalked over to the pack, circled warily, and lay down beside it as the man took out a trowel, a sickle and a hand-rake. He carefully dug the weeds and bushes out of the soil around the cairn, flinging them into the rocks and brush around the small clearing. He spent an hour trimming the grass, resetting a few stones from the cairn back into their sockets, putting everything into good order once more. He had to stop now and again, to stand up and stretch his aching back and knees. Despite the chill, perspiration began to bead on his lined forehead and trickle over his graying, close-cropped hair and beard. It formed rivulets that ran down the two jagged scars marring both side of his once-handsome face. As he worked, the clouds thinned. Blue sky showed through in patches, and beams of sunlight bathed the mountainside here and there.

  Satisfied at last, he wiped his hands clean on the seat of his kilt. Sitting down on a conveniently-placed flat rock in front of the cairn, he took a small skinning knife and a couple of pieces of iron-tough dried meat from his pack. He tossed one to Gerd, who half-rose, seized it in mid-air and lay down again to chew on it, tail wagging. Owain shaved small pieces of meat from the meat in his hand with the skinning blade, chewing each one slowly, softening it in his mouth with sips from a waterskin. He poured a little into a small bowl for the dog to share. As he chewed, he breathed the thin, cold air with enjoyment, taking in the scent of mountain heather, listening to it rustle in the slight breeze. At one point, he heard the faint scrabble of claws against rock as something made its way through the brush behind them. Gerd turned his head warily to look, but didn’t bark an alarm. Both he and his master knew that any predator trying to sneak up on them would make no noise at all.

  Owain brushed crumbs from the front of his tunic, took a pipe from a chest pocket, rummaged in his pack for a pouch of tobacco, and filled its bowl. Tamping it down, he struck flint to steel to send a spark into a small clump of tinder. He cupped the kindling in his hands and blew the spark into a small, flickering flame, then took a twig from the ground and lit it, using it to ignite the tobacco in his pipe. When it was glowing red, puffs of smoke emerging from the bowl and from his mouth, he trod firmly on the twig and the tinder, grinding them beneath the heel of his boot to eliminate any possibility of starting a wildfire.

  He replaced the tobacco pouch in his pack and sat down again on the rock, stretching in the warmth as the low clouds parted to let the sun through. He smoked in silence for a while, eyes running over the crossed sword and battle-axe carved into the big square stone on top of the cairn. There was no name or date.

  At last he took the pipe from his mouth and spoke, addressing the gravestone as if it were someone listening to him. “It’s been a hard winter, sword brother. The snow came early, and piled up high and deep, and stayed longer than usual. It’ll be nice if the summer was longer to compensate for that, but I’ll not hold my breath waiting. In fact, a short summer would be better for us, I’m thinking, because the Graben are stirring once more.” He shook his head. “I thought we’d finished them for good and all at Tarbon, but it seems killing their army and most of their nobles didn’t destroy their appetite for preying on their neighbors. It’s taken them decades to rebuild and rearm, but now they’re probing our borders again.

  “It’s worse this time. They’re not just sending scouts, but marauding patrols. Farms and villages near the border have been plundered. They leave no survivors, and their captives die slow and very hard. You know what I mean – we saw it often enough, you and I, when we found the bodies of our soldiers they’d taken prisoner.” He made a wry face and spat, as if to clear his mouth of a sudden foul taste. “They’ve got help, too. They’re said to be using some of the black arts now, which they never did before. If that’s so, I fear they may have allied with the last of the sorcerers of Karsh, the few who escaped when we sacked the place. They were foul, evil beings, but that wouldn’t worry the Graben overmuch. Anyone who hates us would be a friend in their eyes.

  “The problem is, the Kingdom’s not ready for them. We wiped out the Graben threat – or thought we did; then we took care of the Black Coast and its pirates; then we squashed Karsh. Last of all, we fought the Qitharan League to a standstill, and forced them into a binding peace treaty. For the past twenty years, we’ve not had an enemy worthy of the name. You can guess what that’s meant. The army and navy have been starved for money and equipment, and their numbers have been slashed. Neither is ready for a war; yet, in spite all the evidence, many nobles and merchants resist any attempt to build them up again.

  “Anyway, that’s enough about the world.” Owain hesitated, then drew a deep breath. “It’s been three years since Mair died. She was a rare woman – but you know that, of course; she was yours first. I hope I brought her at least some happiness after the pain of losing you. She never forgot you, you know; but I didn’t mind that, because I couldn’t forget you either, although in a different way, of course. I hope we honored our memories of you in our lives together, and I hope it was given to you to see our children grow up. They’re all doing as well as these troubled times allow.”

  He fell silent for a while as he puffed at his pipe. At last he knocked it out against the stone beneath him, ground the embers beneath his heel, and slipped it into his tunic pocket. He looked down at the ground for a long moment, then back up at the cairn.

  “I’ve got a feeling in my bones, old friend. I don’t know what’s coming, but it’ll be soon, and it’ll be bad. I’m well over fifty now, an old dog. Most of our friends are long dead.” He stretched. “Remember what it was like when we started out, Sigurd? We were invincible, invulnerable and immortal… at least, we lived that way. No challenge was too big, no danger too great. We both learned the hard way that we were wrong.” He instinctively ran his fingers over the great seamed scar on his right thigh, feeling it as a line beneath the kilt and the warm leggings that shielded it from the cold. “I remember how you saved my life by kill
ing the man who put this there, before he could finish me off – then you saved me again, by nursing me through the infection his dirty blade left behind.

  “I was in my prime when the King named me his Champion, to succeed you. Now I’m older and slower, with too many scars to count. My joints sometimes feel like they’re full of sand and gravel. You were spared that. You died before age could slow you down.” He smiled wryly. “I wish you’d been spared. I’ve missed you over the years – your ready smile, your sense of mischief, your sword covering my back, my axe covering yours. We made a good team, didn’t we, sword brother?”

  Owain looked for a long moment at the flat, inscribed stone, then patted the sheath on his right hip. “I still have your dagger. It’s come in handy over the years. I’ll take it with me into whatever awaits. I’ve never found another sword brother, but I’ve a feeling in my water that I’ll need one this year. I wish you were still here, and your sword, to go with the dagger.”

  He shivered as the sunlight suddenly darkened. Glancing upward, he could see a line of storm clouds gathering over the peaks on the far side of the valley. “I’d better be going. The time for snow may be past, but there’s rain in those clouds for sure. It’s an hour’s hike to where I left my horse, then two more to ride to the inn at the foot of the valley.” He spat. “It’s a ghastly place now, filthy and run-down, worse than it ever was in your day. The new innkeeper’s a surly bastard, too. He had the gall to object when I refused to sleep in one of his rooms last night, even though I could see the fleas jumping on the mattress! I soon set him straight. Gerd and I slept in the hay in his stable, under horse blankets. They were much cleaner than his bedding!” He wrinkled his nostrils. “It was a bit smelly, but no worse than many bivouacs you and I shared together.”

  He rose, his face sad. “This may be the last time I can come up here and set your grave to rights. If so, I’m sorry. I hope you’ll rest easy here, where you wanted to lie.” He half-grinned. “You certainly made me sweat, carrying your urn, the shards of your sword and your headstone all the way up here on my back, then gathering stones to build your cairn! If there’s a hereafter like the priests promise us, I bet you were laughing out loud as you watched.

  “Perhaps some traveler will chance upon this clearing one day, and clear away the grass and bushes from your cairn, and say a prayer for you. I hope so. I’d like to think that someone may do the same for me, too, but I don’t know when or where my end will come. The old crone – remember her? – she foretold we’d both die in battle, you in ‘a great clash of armies’, I in ‘a fight against the darkness’. She was right about you, so perhaps she was right about me, too, although the Gods only know what she meant. Perhaps no-one except my enemies will know of my fall. They’ll not build my pyre, or speak the last salute over my ashes. That’s not a happy thought.” He paused for a moment. “If there’s no-one else to do it, sword brother, and if it’s possible wherever you are, would you please say the words for me? I’d take that right kindly.”

  Owain slung his backpack over his shoulders and picked up his staff. “Goodbye for now, Sigurd. Perhaps the next time I greet you, it won’t be on this mountainside, but in some very different place, one far beyond my imagining. I hope the priests are right. It would be very good to see you again… and Mair, too. If she’s with you, greet her for me.”

  Turning, he walked away without a backward glance. Gerd stretched, then loped after him.

  II

  Owain rode slowly out of the valley’s mouth towards the inn. It sat sullenly at a bend in the King’s Highway, the main building looking tumbledown and worn next to the newer stable beside it. He rode up to the stable, dismounted, and led his horse inside. There was no ostler, so he removed the saddle and slung it over a partition in an empty stall. The inn’s run-down horse snorted at him as he removed Ned’s bridle and hung it on the wall. He took an old horse blanket, rubbed down his steed, then set to work with brush and currycomb. Ned whickered softly, enjoying the attention, nibbling companionably at his arm whenever it came within reach.

  He heard the crunch of footsteps approaching along the path. The innkeeper came in, looking sour. “See you’ve taken care of your horse, Master Owain.” He spat into the corner of an empty stall. “You going to need more oats? That’ll be a copper, plus another for you to sleep in here again. By rights I ought to charge you a third for your dog.”

  The older man straightened and looked at him impassively. “Anytime you want to charge my dog for anything, you go right ahead and tell him so – but if I were you, I wouldn’t tell him too loudly. He’s a trained warhound.”

  The innkeeper blenched and backed hastily away. “Then why’d you bring him into a place like this, where he can hurt poor innocent folk like us?”

  “He won’t hurt anyone unless I tell him to. Don’t tempt me.” The traveler reached into his belt pouch and took out two copper coins. “Here, that’ll cover tonight. I’ve brought my own food.” He gestured at the deer haunch hanging from his saddle. “I’ll be along in a while to roast it over your kitchen fire.”

  The other caught the tossed coins and backed hastily towards the door, eyeing the dog warily. “Don’t bring him inside with you, you hear me, Master Owain? I don’t want him around my younglings. No telling what he’d do to them!”

  “He’ll wait here. Don’t worry about your children. Gerd caught the deer this afternoon, so he’s eaten well. He’s had enough raw meat and red blood for one day.”

  As the innkeeper hastened back to the main building, Owain shook his head. He wouldn’t insult him by adding that his dog preferred cleaner, fresher meat than his children would provide… but it was a tempting thought.

  He finished grooming Ned, gave him a nose-bag of oats, and was about to head for the kitchen to cook his supper when the entreating whickers of the inn’s horse made him turn back. Grinning, he strapped a nose-bag of oats to its head as well. From the look of its protruding ribs, it didn’t eat very well here. Idly he wondered what the innkeeper would say when he saw, next morning, how the level of oats in the bin had dropped… then decided that he didn’t really care. He’d paid for the oats, after all. It wasn’t his problem if the innkeeper had forgotten to specify how much he could use, or the number of horses that could receive them.

  He glanced at the dog. “Stay here, Gerd. I’ll be back soon.” Whining softly, giving him a reproachful look, the dog headed for the pile of straw where they’d slept the previous night.

  Owain took the haunch from his saddle and went out, closing the double stable doors behind him. He glanced up at the sky. Rain was falling softly from the leaden-gray clouds, turning the already soft ground into a muddy trap beside the graveled roads and paths. He shivered. It would be a cold, damp night. He knew his joints would rouse him from time to time with their complaints.

  —————

  Owain woke shortly after midnight, jerking bolt upright in his bed of straw. Eyes wide, sweat pouring down his face, he was disoriented for a moment, until he realized where he was. Cursing, he threw back the blankets. He’d had the weirdest dream… something black and bulky, a big stone of some sort, from which countless pairs of eyes stared out at him, as if in despair and pleading for his help. Behind them, flames had flickered.

  “Damn all dreams like that!” he swore softly to himself as he stood, trying to ignore his aching back and knees. He knew he wouldn’t sleep well until his head cleared of the images he’d seen in his nightmare. He was already fully clothed for warmth, and pulled on his boots to protect his feet from the chill of the stone floor. He walked over to the stable’s double doors and opened one half very slightly, looking out. The rain had ceased for now. The light of the half-moon was visible through a few holes in the clouds.

  His horse snorted, stamping softly on the straw covering the earthen floor of his stall. The traveler turned and grinned. “Are your old joints complaining, Ned? Aye, mine too. We’re both getting on enough in years to feel the damp in our bone
s now.” He fetched another horse blanket from the pile in the store-room, shook it out and spread it carefully over Ned’s back. “This’ll help to keep you comfortable for the rest of the night. I –”

  He froze as a distant screeching, wailing cry echoed faintly down the valley. The hair on the back of his neck rose as his eyes widened. He hadn’t heard that sound in almost three decades. “It can’t be!” he whispered, only to be given the lie as it came again. Beside him Gerd sensed his alarm and growled softly.

  “Quiet, boy!” he whispered urgently. He hurried to the wall, unhooked the bridle and fitted it to Ned’s head, working in frantic haste, then tied the horse to a ring set into the stone wall of his stall. He patted his head. “Sorry, Ned, but there’s deviltry afoot. You stay here where you’ll be safe – unless they rip the roof off, of course; but if things get that far, we’ll all be done for.” He glanced across at the stall occupied by the inn’s horse. It had heard the sound too. It was stamping nervously, tossing its head, eyes wide. He wouldn’t have time to secure it too.

  He slung the baldric bearing his sword over his right shoulder, the familiar weight settling on his left hip. His dagger’s scabbard was still belted on his right hip. He reached for the blade where it had been lying next to his head in case of need, sheathed it, then hurried back to the doors and peered through the narrow opening.

  Two huge black-winged silhouettes were visible in the faint moonlight, arrowing down towards the inn. The closest was already back-winging to slow its flight, preparing to land next to the main building. Two huddled figures sat atop saddles on its long neck, two big, bulging saddlebags strapped between them.

  “Gruefells!” the man hissed. “I was right about that cry.” He laid a restraining hand on the dog as it tensed beside him. “Not a sound, Gerd. They’d kill you in a heartbeat, and me, too.” The well-trained warhound obeyed, crouching down at Owain’s feet.