by Karen Miller
In his iron-banded chest, his heart beat hard and too fast.
“Wine!” he said, snapping his fingers, and wine came in a jewelled silver goblet. Scarwid playing servant this time, bowing and scraping. A tiresome tick, he was, his welcome worn out. The petty lordling would’ve been dismissed from this dull northern court long since, had his wife not been such a good fuck.
Harald drank deep, thinking of Gisla. He’d grown weary of her, too. There was nothing new there, he’d ridden all the tricks out of her. And of late he’d spied a possessive glint in her fine brown eyes. Her fingers, taking his arm, clutched him tight as though she owned him. Like all women she was a fool, thinking she held more worth than a pair of honey tits and the hot, wet hole between her legs.
But there was no need to worry. Roric would rid him of Gisla and cuckolded Scarwid when he returned from his errands. Neatly, discreetly, with a sweet smile and a gentle touch to belie the sting of dismissal. Good at that, was dependable cousin Roric. Harald smothered sly pleasure, thinking of it.
Perhaps I’ll make him a baron, one of these days.
Or perhaps he wouldn’t. Bastard-born, barred from ducal inheritance and lawful marriage, Roric relied on his duke for the clothes on his back–and everything else. As a baron he’d be granted property, have the means to provide for himself, and therein lay the key. Dangled prizes kept a man keen. A promise unfulfilled was a promise fat with power to guarantee loyalty.
Still sweating, Harald willed his thumping heart to ease. Tucked safely out of sight in his chamber was a cordial to aid him, and a thrice-incanted charm on a thin gold chain. But he could dare neither, not even in this lightly lorded court’s glare. No stink of weakness could taint Harald of Clemen, with his two dead wives and five dead sons and the future of his bloodline yet in whispered doubt.
Tipping the goblet of wine to his lips once more, he stared over its beaten rim at his duchess, Argante. She claimed she was breeding again. She should be, the times he’d had her on her back since Liam’s birth. Relief at the news of a second pregnancy hollowed him. For Liam was not enough. One ill breath and his infant heir was meat for maggots. Though this son was strong, not a sickly babe like the others, he wouldn’t be at ease until the succession was made doubly safe. Fate was a fickle bitch. She’d toyed with him all his life.
She toyed with him now, her cruellest trick yet.
The leech he’d summoned in secret from distant Lepetto, trained in ordinary medicine–and certain arts more arcane–had left him the foul cordial and the charm and a stern-faced warning against every manner of gluttony.
“Duke, not even you with your sharp sword can defeat death,” he’d said, a thick foreign accent mangling his seldom-spoken Cassinian. “It comes. You must accept it. But if it comes creeping or flying, that is your choice.”
A fortune in furs and precious stones, the leech had cost him. That meant another tax. Clemen’s lords would groan at it, but let them. He was Harald, their duke. Their lives belonged to him, and their treasure chests. That was the order of things. Dukes ruled. Lords asked what they could give and then gave it, smiling.
Well. If they knew what was good for them, they did.
Masking temper with a smile, he drained the goblet of wine and held it out, upside down. Enough. Obedient hands took it from him. He sat back, breathing more easily, the iron bands clamping his ribs loosened now to mere discomfort. Because he was always watched, he rested a benevolent gaze upon Lord Udo, taking his turn at dancing with Argante. Ah, but she was a hot little bitch. His cock stirred in his hose at the sight of her tits swelling above her low-cut velvet gown. He could fuck her now, before his court in this Great Hall, creeping death be cursed, and not a man would gainsay him. Even had one of the Exarch’s sour grey celibates attended him here, he could fuck her. Rulers did that, if they wished to. Rulers were not ruled. The Potent of Khafur, he had as many concubines as shone stars in the night sky and he fucked them where and when he liked and any man who raised his right eyebrow lost his head before ever he could raise his left to comment more.
Harald and the Potent of Khafur, rulers and cock-brothers.
The thought made him laugh.
“Your Grace? Might I trouble you?”
And here was Lord Bartrem. Amusement fading, Harald looked at the man, an unimportant local noble recently widowed of a rich Eaglerock merchant’s only daughter. He knew already what Bartrem was after. Some four desperate letters had paved the man’s road to Heartsong Castle. He’d been tempted to deny the nagging fool an audience, but prudence outweighed irritation. Bartrem’s cause was lost when his wife drew her last breath, but there was no need to needlessly inflame the man, or his fellow northern lords. Not when the court must soon return to Eaglerock, at the other end of the duchy.
“Be brief, my lord,” he said, courteously enough. “We dance and make merry tonight. Serious matters belong to the morning.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” said Bartrem, spindle-shanked and chinless, with watering eyes and bulbous nose. Lucky for him he had a proper bloodline. Without it he’d never have caught the merchant’s daughter. “Your Grace, I must speak on the question of Thania’s wardship.”
“It’s not yet decided into whose care your child will be placed.”
“Your Grace—” Bartrem took an impetuous step closer to the ducal dais, then stopped himself. He was trembling. “She is too young for wardship. My child is not yet three.”
“Infant wardships are commonplace, Bartrem.”
“Your Grace, they are cruel!”
Harald stared until the man took a step back. “Not as cruel as a household in want of a wife. Or do you tell me you’ve wed again? Strange. I don’t recall granting you permission.”
“No, Your Grace,” said Bartrem, losing colour. “Of course not. I know what’s right and proper.”
“So you say.” He inspected the emerald ring on his thumb. “And yet you’d leave your precious daughter without womanly guidance?”
“No, Your Grace. My late wife’s mother dotes on the child. With my parents dead, she would gladly—”
“You expect I’d allow a child of noble birth to be raised by common hands?”
Bartrem swallowed. “Your Grace, after me my goodmother is Thania’s closest kin.”
“And common.” He let his voice chill. “As Clemen’s duke I have a duty to protect noble blood. I would no more hand your child to a trinket-trader for raising than I would gift a staghound puppy in my kennel to a passing peddler.”
“Perhaps Your Grace is misinformed,” said Bartrem, fingers clenched nearly to fists. “My late wife’s father, Master Blane, is a merchant of high standing. His purse could buy half the lords beneath your roof this night and scarce show its loss of coin.”
That was true. Harald looked again to his ring. The question to be answered was this: did Bartrem’s goodfather Blane hanker after the girl because she was his dead daughter’s child, or did he see her as a thing of value to be traded? It was possible. The man was a wealthy merchant, after all.
If his care is genuine and I gift the girl’s wardship to a lord other than Bartrem, then I might well be strewing stones in my own path. But if I gift the girl to myself…
It was a tempting thought. Liam would need a wife one day. Or if not Liam, then the next son Argante gave him. Surely Master Blane wouldn’t cry foul to see his daughter’s daughter in the care of Clemen’s duke. Such an alliance would sate any crude ambition–or deafen him to Bartrem’s cries, if family matters were his only care.
And a rich merchant made family by advantageous marriage would surely be most convenient.
“Your Grace.” Bartrem’s voice was dropped to a pleading whisper, almost lost in the minstrels’ music and the dancers’ merriment. “Thania is all I have left of my dear Mathilde. I beg you, be merciful.”
The man was a fool. Harald flicked his fingers. “Very good, Bartrem. I shall think on what you’ve said. For now you should forget your sorrows and join us i
n a dance.”
Defeated, Bartrem bowed. “Alas, Your Grace, my heart is too heavy for dancing.”
“Then find a more smiling face in a cup of wine. We are merry here. Would you spoil that?”
“Never, Your Grace.”
As Bartrem withdrew, Harald looked for his wife. Tired of Udo, and who wouldn’t be, Argante was dancing with Scarwid. Feeling his gaze upon her, she dropped Scarwid’s hand. Smiled and trod the minstrels’ spritely music towards her husband.
Harald felt his body stir anew. Young enough to be his daughter, Argante, but what did that matter? It was her youth that gave him Liam, and would give him Liam’s brothers. Youth gave her firm tits and silken skin and lust enough to ride him to a bull’s roar. His heart, which yet beat too fast, beat faster still as her youth and her tits and her lust danced her to him, hands reaching, eyes dark with sweaty promise.
“Your Grace,” she said sweetly. “You’ve not yet danced with me. For shame. What will the court say? That I am wilted, and you are tiring?”
He cursed his heart, unreliable, and the stern-faced Lepetto leech. He wouldn’t fuck her now, but he would dance with her… and in the dancing every man and woman here would see the fucking to come later. They’d see their duke virile, the father of many living sons. The whispers would fall silent, the wondering gazes shift to someone else. Abandoning his chair, Harald caught Argante in his arms, held her in the proper way of the jaunty craka, away from his chest so she couldn’t feel his cursed, stuttering heart.
She was laughing, her long honey-brown hair beneath the gold wire-and-pearl headdress bound tight to the fine bones of her skull, shimmering in the light of one hundred burning candles. Her almond eyes, tip-tilted and dappled hazel, shone brilliant in her fashionably pale face.
“Come!” she cried, dropped-pearl earrings swaying as her be-ringed fingers beckoned to the near-score unimportant northern lords and their ladies who ate his food and drank his wine, who owed him whatever he decided to take. “We haven’t yet danced our joy for the duke’s son, and we must, else we anger whatever mischievous spirits yet dwell here. Those who’ve not been chased away!”
Their obedient laughter answered her, and soon after the soft sound of heels kissing the Great Hall’s red-and-white tiled floor. Harald laughed too, because he was watched, because–despite the cordial and the dangerous charm–his chest pounded with a dull pain that never quite ceased. He danced for his heir and wished that Roric danced with them. He could pass Argante to his scrupulous, agreeable cousin and not a man in the hall would blink.
High above them in his nursery, in his charm-covered cradle, little Liam slept. Heart thudding with pain, with love as keen and sharp as a curved Sassanine dagger, Harald danced and dreamed days of glory for his son.
Night. Star-pricked, meagrely moonlit, and crackling with frost. Hiding in a copse of saplings and shadows, Roric pulled his rabbit-lined cloak closer about his ribs and listened to the distant, derisive barking of foxes. Winter might be on the turn but there was life still in the stubborn old man, one cold, miserly fist clutching fast to Harald’s duchy. Waiting for the arranged signal from the castle, shivering, he breathed in ice and breathed out smoke.
It’ll come. It must. Belden’s with us. Save a handful, everyone in Clemen will stand with us. Love for Harald is dried up like a sun-scorched puddle.
Where he stood, at the copse’s fringe, the deer-rutted, rain-pooled ground before him ran away in a long, lazy slope towards the castle’s bright green lawns. Harald owned twelve such strongholds, scattered across Clemen like thrown knucklebones. This one, fancied Heartsong by some long-dead duke’s lady, curtsied prettily to the surrounding countryside. No raised hackles here, no growling threats uttered in counterpoint to the singing of a naked sword. Heartsong was a fretworked white stone jewel. A woman’s castle, more manor house than fortress, lacking high, wide curtain walls and treacherous moat and impassable drawbridge. Argante’s castle, where she held court over wellborn ladies twice her age and older, and in triumph wielded Harald’s infant son as though the babe were a blade made of soft, swaddled flesh.
And so he was, in a way. Poor noble brat. Poor Liam.
Thinking himself safe here, safe everywhere, his monstrous arrogance a helm with its visor hammered shut, Harald debauched himself within Heartsong and without, never noticing, never dreaming, that—
The damp crack of a twig breaking underfoot heralded someone’s approach. A familiar tread. A trusted friend, who’d taken a trembling, owl-eyed boy of seven as a page and guided his journey from childish tears to knighted manhood.
“My lord Humbert,” Roric said, not turning, his voice pitched low. “You should remind Vidar that patience is an admirable virtue.”
For all Humbert possessed his own castle and a wealth of land, and armour scratched and dented in scores of confrontations since the day he won his spurs, Harald’s most leaned-upon councillor had of late become yawn by yawn more fond of a close ceiling than an open sky. Not weak, never weak, but attached to his comforts, there was no denying. Padded beneath his heavy mail with fat these days; more than a linen-stuffed jambon. Even so, despite his changes, he still boiled with courage. Offended, as most were, by Harald’s greedy, vindictive ravagings, he was prepared to be called traitor, to risk his life that those ravagings might be ended for good and the duchy’s happiness restored.
“Oh ho. So I’m Vidar’s squire, am I?” Humbert retorted, his own voice conspirator soft and teasing. “Come to bend my knee with querulous demand?”
Turning briefly from Harald’s moonlit Heartsong, Roric clasped the older man’s shoulder with leather-gloved fingers. “No, my lord. If there’s knee-bending wanted it will be me in the mud, not you.”
Humbert’s untamed, black-and-grey beard trembled as his jaw worked against emotion. “Don’t be a fool, Roric. Knee-bending? You? Never. You’re Berold’s grandson.”
He couldn’t long look away from the castle, for fear he’d miss the signal. “So is Harald,” he said, turning back. “More truly than I am.”
“Harald.” Humbert spat at their feet. “That for Harald. Your grandsire would never know him. I could believe yon Harald was a cradle-snatched changeling, so far from the great Berold has your cousin run his course. Bastard or not, Roric, you are Berold’s true heir. Not that bloat who wears the ducal coronet, breaking the heart of every man who should love him.”
“So you’ve said, many times. But—”
“Give me none of your buts!” Humbert said, fierce. “It’s the truth, boy, and so I’ll remind you till the maggot doubt stops its gnawing of your guts.”
The barking foxes fell silent. Roric pressed the heel of his hand against the aching scar across his left thigh, where once a swinging blade had caught him. Not even his heavy cloak could keep out the cold and its torment of old, healed hurts. In the deeper gloom behind him, the muffled thump of horses’ shifting hooves and a clinking of bits and stirrups.
“Roric…” Humbert stepped closer. “You stand a stone’s throw from your heart-rotten cousin, sword ready to defend Berold’s duchy. At your back stand Clemen’s best nobles and their men, pledged to fight in your name. Would you shame them? Shame me? Shame the lord Guimar?”
As ever, the mention of his dead father was salt rubbed in an open wound. “Humbert, do not—”
“He was friend to me like none other, Roric. A count of such renown, the minstrels still write songs of him. And that brave man died full of fear, knowing his brother for a craven lumpet and his brother’s child for much worse.”
“Even so.” Roric swallowed a sigh. “It was my uncle Baderon born Berold’s heir, not my father, and Harald born his heir with no taint of bastardry on him.”
Humbert growled his displeasure. “Boy—”
The fisted blow, when it came, rattled Roric’s teeth and left a burning pain in his arm, even through the charcoal-hardened links of his mail. In the moon-silvered darkness Humbert’s glare showed fear and fury.
&n
bsp; “I see the maggot’s in your brain, not your guts! You say this rumption now, as we stand ankled in mud with our sharpened swords thirsty for blood? You–you gormless bull-pizzle! You tribbit! What ill faery flapped its dust in your dreams that you’d spill—”
Roric raised a calming hand. “First changelings, now faeries? I hope you don’t speak of such things where an exarchite can hear you. Our pagan days are behind us, or so the Exarch holds.”
“I’ll spit on the Exarch, and I’ll spit on you after,” said Humbert, his barrel chest heaving. “But first you tell me truly, Roric. Are you wishing you’d not started this?”
“Did I start it? Or did you? I scarce remember.”
Humbert snorted. “What does it matter? The end is all. Harald’s end, and his vileness with him. Are you feared, Roric? I’ll not believe it. You’ve served your time in the Marches, your sword is blooded a dozen times over. Don’t ask me to believe your courage fails you.”
“It doesn’t. But Humbert, don’t you feel the weight of this? No duke of Clemen has ever been deposed.” He shivered. “Making history gives a man pause. So I’ve paused, my lord. I’m thinking.”
“Thinking?”
He loved Humbert almost as much as he’d loved Guimar, but love didn’t kill less kindly feelings. “You’ve known me seventeen years, my lord. Tell me when I didn’t chew over my choices like a hound chews gristle.”
Another blow, fist to his back this time. “Your chewing time is done, Roric! It’s weeks you’ve had to chew this bone. What’s changed? Are you telling me this whoreson Harald sings a sweet tune now, and you’re the only man who hears it?”
If only he could say that. If only Harald had come to his senses. Instead, he looked at Humbert and shook his head. “No. My cousin’s voice is as ugly as ever.”
“And his deeds so foul they’d shame a soul-eater,” said Humbert, giving no ground. “Let history tend itself. It’s right we do here. Stiffen your sinews, boy. You swore to me, you swore to them—” His thumb jerked at the shadows behind them, at the men who’d pledged themselves to this night’s dark task. “—and all those lords waiting down south in Eaglerock, that your heart was in this. Are you Guimar’s son, Roric, or are you the cursed changeling?”
