·         Stephen Wormwood here. Thank you for clicking. Feedback and constructive criticism are always welcome at stephenwormwood@mail.com. As always hope you enjoy reading this and please consider donating to Nifty if you can (https://donate.nifty.org/), it's more than merited.

 

·        You can find a map of the fictionalized setting of this novel here: https://imgur.com/JtpD8WU (this is my first time using Inkarnate so it might be a little rough!)

 

·        If you end up enjoying this, please read some of my other stories on Nifty: The Dying Cinders (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), Wulf's Blut (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Harrowing of Chelsea Rice (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Dancer of Hafiz (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Cornishman (gay, historical), A Small Soul Lost (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), and Torc and Seax (transgender, magic/sci-fi).

 

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Chapter Eight: The Road North

 

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Repose – Captain of the Guard – The King's Progress

 

**********

 

Temple of St. Jehanne, Dragonspur, Kingdom of Morland

11^th of Autumn, 801

 

Sentries guarded the temple archway, silent swordsmen bearing pikes and the livery of the Thormont viscountcy. They crossed their polearms at the entranceway as a carriage wheeled to a stop at the temple forecourt, but quickly uncrossed them once they spotted the well-dressed foreign dignitary climbing down from the cab with aide in tow – the Wallish Ambassador, Gustavius von Roschewald – in a huffing fury.

 

The guards courteously lowered their faces as Gustave brushed past them into the marbled antechamber, his angry footsteps echoing up to its rib vaulting. Fran did not follow immediately. He gave orders to the two halberdier outriders accompanying their carriage not to send for either of them until their business was concluded, then quietly bade them dismount before the temple grounds lest it be seen as an act of rudeness. Afterwards, when he sought out Gustave, he found his master a few corridors away in the presenting hall, where upon the centremost of a series of swathed catafalques, laid the recumbent body of Lord Piers Comwyn, the Viscount of Thormont.

 

Dead.

 

The air musted with the residue of burnt sage and incense as torchlight flickered in the sconces, casting hundreds of long beauteous shadows from images graven in the likeness of St. Jehanne: stone busts of her in the transepts, marble statues of her between the columns of the circular arcade, gilt ironwood effigies of her suspended from the domed ceiling.

 

No one stood vigil. No one attended the body save for his paramour, Lady Eleanora of Stafforth, weeping softly at the foot of his raised bier. Gustave (and Fran soon after) made the sign of the saints and knelt beside her in prayer for Lord Comwyn. Prayers and whispers.

 

"How did this happen?!" Spat Gustave, quietly.

 

Lady Eleanora knelt beautifully in a funerial gown of darkest black, her face obscured by an ebony veil tracing down from a silver coronet studded with rubies. She stifled a sob, then spoke coldly and calmly of the matter. "He woke in the night, bade me tend to his stiffened member, worked up a thirst and a hunger, bade me fetch him chicken and wine, then ate well of it until he choked to death. A bone in the throat. Tightly lodged. The doctors had to remove it with pincers."

 

Gustave's clasped hands shook. "And you did nothing to save him?!"

 

Ever since news of Lord Comwyn's death reached him two days ago, Gustave had been in a foul temper, but there were too many engagements on his itinerary for him to have come any earlier – by Fran's design, of course. And Fran kept his silence as Gustave's ravings found another pair of ears to grace.

 

"He was the royal liaison to the guilds and one of our few allies at court...! The list of contacts at his beck and call could have been of invaluable benefit to our cause! How could you let this happen?!" A sneer. "Answer me, Lothar!"

 

"I was not abed with him when he died," said Eleanora, atonally. "Once I brought him his food, he sent me away to my own chambers. There was nothing I could do."

 

As they bickered, Fran reviewed the Thormont viscountcy's holdings in his mind. `Two burghal properties – Wharton House and Laud Hall. 900 acres of land. 556 tenants. 600 cattle. 800 sheep. 1100 pigs...' Piers Comwyn was without issue and without relatives, both his younger brothers died fighting rebel townsmen during the Greyford Manse riots that Thomas Wolner put down four years ago. In such cases it was for the crown to retain his titles and estate, and for the crown to re-allot them. The crown... or a well-placed Duke.

 

Fran looked to Comwyn lying in repose, dressed in great fineries with his hands clasped together in peaceful prayer, skin burnished with resin, veins fortified by formaldehyde, all of him so neatly primed for saintly embrace.

 

To behold the Lord Viscount then one would not know (or think to know) of the carnal vices that man practiced upon Eleanora or made Eleanora practice upon him.

 

`He had me suck him in all places,' Lothar once told him, as himself, not as `Eleanora'. `His fingers, his toes, his tongue, his nose, his yard. He put me in leashes and walked me across his bedchambers. He worked upon me with phallic devices of wood and iron and put my buttocks to the crop. He would rut me nightly, and on occasion, make me rut him. All the servants knew. He did not care. And I know I am not the first.'

 

Fran felt the urge to spit at his well-tended remains. `Damn you and all like you,' thought the clerk. `We did the world a service in ridding it of you. And if St. Jehanne yet retains your foul soul, then damn her too.'

 

"You will withdraw from court as `Lady Eleanora' and return to my household once Comwyn's corpse is dispatched to Thormont for burial," said Gustave. "Our preparations for the King's progress are almost complete. I will assign other duties to you along the road north."

 

"Understood," said Lady Eleanora.

 

Fran breathed a sigh of relief. He hated to think of Lothar trapped in the embrace of that pervert, subjecting him to the same assaults and humiliations that Gustave delighted in rendering upon him. Now at last Lothar could be free of this feminine façade and its labours.

 

Things were moving well now. The Viscountcy of Thormont, after seizure and appraisal by the crown, was free for assignment. Edward was now well-installed in the household and soon Lothar would return to it as well. `Finally,' thought Fran. `My plans are finally coming together.'

 

Gustave offered one last prayer for his fallen ally, then uprose and departed. Fran gave Lady Eleanora a quick squeeze of her satin-shrouded shoulder. He made his way to follow.

 

"Wait...," Said Eleanora.

 

Fran paused in step, eyed the surrounding corridors for any lingering shepherds, then returned to his kneeling position at the foot of Comwyn's corpse. "My lady?"

 

Lady Eleanora kept her position – knelt down, head low, hands clasped in prayer – but shifted aside slightly at the carpeted red steps of the podium. A folded letter rested where once did her knee. Fran plucked it up as soon as he spotted it.

 

Eleanora shut her eyes, whispering. "It's a missive from Marquess de la More to Comwyn, sent four days ago. The King is in secret talks with the Masters of the Realm – barring the Duke of Greyford – to draft a proposal for the Earl of Harcaster."

 

"That's hardly news, Loth-" He paused. "Lady."

 

A faint smile appeared beneath Eleanora's lace black veil. "It is a bill. A bill to create a new seat upon the council, The Lord Admiral, which would be offered to his lordship the earl."

 

Now that was news.

 

Fran's mind ran the numbers. A new seat upon the Council of the Masters of the Realm meant a sixth vote at the table – no doubt with King Oswald as the tiebreaker in such instances that called for one. If the Earl of Harcaster accepted the Lord Admiralty, then Greyford's faction would be neutralized, with or without de la More. It all but guaranteed that Gustave's proposals would pass the vote.

 

Fran scuppered a grin. "King Oswald is a far shrewder ruler than any of us gave him credit for."

 

"But Greyford is the horse you have backed," said Eleanora. "This will enrage him. But if it came from you-"

 

The clerk frowned.

 

He understood Eleanora's meaning – Let this be another morsel of intelligence you feed to the Duke to further ingratiate yourself to him – but danger lay in that plan. Lord Comwyn's death was too fresh for Fran to send the Duke his secret missives without raising his suspicions, worse still, tipping him off about the Lord Admiralty might move Greyford to interfere in the coming negotiations – assuming he hadn't already had plans to do so.

 

Fran put the letter away. "This complicates things. I need time to think about the implications of this."

 

"Do with it what you will," said the lady.

 

A deep Wallish voice bellowed his name from an echoing vestibule. Gustave. It was time to go and make ready for the long road north.

 

"I shall see you anon," uttered Fran as he rose up and followed his master out into the forecourt. Gustave was already at the carriage doors, climbing in. Fran raced around and boarded from the left as the accompanying halberdiers remounted their horses. A meaty hand reached through the lowered glass window to bang the side of the cab, signalling the coachman to return to Manse de Foy. The carriage barrelled away amidst roaring wheels and pounding hoofbeats. Words could be uttered safely here.

 

"Fool of an espial," said Gustave. "Thormont is a tremendous loss. We shall have to use His Majesty's progress as an opportunity to find new allies. What of de la More? Did he except my invitation to dinner?"

 

Fran shook his head no.

 

"Saints damn him. Still in Greyford's pocket! How can I convince him to vote my way if he will not meet with me?"

 

A tut. A sigh. Then Gustave pulled a missive from his doublet and commanded Fran to read it.

 

 

Uncyphered.

 

`Another thread in this fucking skein,' thought Fran. "When did you receive this, master?"

 

"It was delivered at daybreak by a hooded rider calling himself `Hotfoot'," said Gustave. "Once we return to Manse de Foy, I want you to burn it. My position with the King is tenuous at best. I will not risk further insult by meeting with a rabble-rouser, not until Harcaster backs her down."

 

Fran nodded dutifully, pocketing it, and promising to throw it into the hearth as soon as they were delivered home. `But what a waste that would be,' thought the clerk. `Perhaps the Duke of Greyford could find a better use for it?'

 

**********

 

Manse de Foy, Dragonspur, Kingdom of Morland

11^th of Autumn, 801

 

The Halberdiers of the Wallenheim Delegation arrayed for their new captain, Edward Bardshaw, in four rows of ten along the dirt tracked training yard outside their barracks. (the remaining ten either standing sentry at the gates and across the manse grounds or accompanying Gustave's carriage into the city). Forty surly Wallishmen clad in padded grey gambesons, peacock-feathered morions, and sparkling steel breastplates embossed with the sigil of House Roschewald. With their gleaming halberds and distinctive basket-hilted short swords at the ready, they certainly looked the part of a foreign dignitary's armed retinue. They were every bit as impressive as the Bannerets of the Bloom.

 

But as Edward surveyed them, slowly walking through their ranks with his morion tucked beneath his arm, it wasn't their arms or armour that impressed him – it was their discipline. Tight formations, superb posture, strong focus. These were well trained men with actual combat experience from the Wallish Rebellion. They kept their form, fixed their faces into blank stillness, yet there was no doubt in Ed's mind that some of them resented him.

 

He was younger than most of them, with no experience of the battlefield. Their late captain Wolfrick was not merely their countryman he was their compatriot. According to Fran he'd fought side by side with these men in the thick of war.

 

That was why he joined them in sparring that morning. Not merely to test their skills but to demonstrate his own. And he'd put three of them in the dirt with naught but five strokes.

 

`If I am going to lead these men then I must earn their respect,' thought Ed. `So here we go.'

 

He turned to face them at the head of the formation. "Before you resume your posts, I wish to say only this. I mourn with you in the loss of your captain. I did not know Master Wolfrick personally, but I hear he was a renowned and stalwart warrior. He cannot be replaced. But I mean to continue his good work with your help. We must continue to defend his excellency Ambassador Roschewald, his goods, and all the staff of his household, with our lives if needs be. And saints willing, we shall. To that end? Edrick, come forth."

 

The halberdier blinked then stepped forward. He was the sole man Edward knew of their score, the one he'd saved from those Morish thugs in the city centre.

 

"Yes, captain?" Said he.

 

Ed pointed out the men. "Whilst his excellency travels north, some men must stay behind to protect the manse and its property. Choose the ten men you think best suited for this task."

 

Edrick listed their names one by one, and one by one Ed called each man out to form up a new line – the remaining thirty scrambling into a new formation of three rows of ten. The Morishman cupped Edrick's shoulder and gestured to the ten separate halberdiers. "I want you to take charge of these remaining men. Their rotas, postings and training will be yours to oversee until we return."

 

"Yes, captain." Said Edrick.

 

"Good," Ed addressed the thirty. "For those of us bearing north, pack your things and ready your horses. We depart at daybreak tomorrow. Disperse."

 

The halberdiers broke formation and silence, whispering and grumbling amongst themselves as they scattered to set about preparations for the King's progress. Edward left the remaining ten guardsmen to Edrick then made his way from the barracks through the water gardens and hedgerows to the front gates to await Fran and Roschewald's return. Two halberdiers were posted there. Ed greeted them and they acknowledged him with grunts of affirmation before stolidly returning to their duties.

 

Ed sighed.

 

He did not... hate this work. He'd spent half his life standing guard and outriding after all. But it didn't nourish him the way protecting the old man did. Whether it was taking him into the city or cooking him food or helping him into bed or helping him wash or washing his clothes, Ed's work felt important because Stillingford was important.

 

But this?

 

This was not a warm evening by the hearthfire, mugs of ale in hand, dreaming up ways to improve the country. This was not the warmth and camaraderie of the Old Lioness.

 

This... did not feel important.

 

Manse de Foy sat cosily upon the wealthy side of the river with its sculptures and tapestries and rose gardens: the lofty trappings of the realm's elite. This place felt wrong somehow. It felt cold.

 

Perhaps it was only nerves. Perhaps he still needed time to adjust to his new role.

 

And yet, Edward felt like a stranger when he patrolled the halls of Manse de Foy. Every polished suit of armour, every plinthed bust, every fresco, every banner grated him. He felt dwarfed by its echoing halls. Every chambermaid, footman or cook he sought to befriend seemed to shrink from him and huddle away in hushed whispers.

 

When Fran spoke of how lonely it felt growing up as a ward of House Roschewald, it made a bitter kind of sense.

 

`But this is for Fran,' he thought to himself. And Fran was all he could think about as Gustavius von Roschewald's gilded carriage returned from the city.

 

Edward ordered the guards to open the gates and the coachman guided his team of horses into the crunching gravel tract of the manse grounds. Hoofbeats came to a stop. The horses whickered as the guards shut the gates and Edward went to the coach doors, opening first Roschewald's then Fran's – exchanging a secret smile with him when he did. Edward took him by the waist and helped him down – and his thoughts flashed back to the prior night when Francis snuck into his chambers and climbed into his bed.

 

"Are the men ready to go?" Barked Roschewald.

 

Fran quickly separated from Ed.

 

"Almost," said the swordsman. "But I've spoken with Perrin, and he assures me your train will be ready for the morning, all your papers and goods."

 

Roschewald adjusted his gloves. "What about Wolfrick's body?"

 

"I've spoken with the wharfinger on your behalf, and he's agreed to send a muleteer to fetch it from the embalmer at the Temple of St. Thunos. It will be returned to Wallenheim on the morrow's first ship."

 

"Good. Visiting his grave will be the first thing I do when I finally leave this saints-forsaken country."

 

Ed frowned.

 

"Fran," said the Wallishman. "Burn that missive and gather up your things. When later we dine, we shall discuss the king's chosen route."

 

Perrin the Steward, one of the few Morishmen amongst the ambassador's household (and a habitual brownnoser by the looks of things), scurried himself out of the main house to greet his Wallish master.

 

Fran took the opportunity to ask Edward to escort him to his chambers. Ed agreed, smiling softly, and the two young Geadishmen quickly left the manse forecourt for the antechamber, up the steps of the left wing to the third floor and down the corridor to Fran's garden-facing room.

 

They were at each other's lips the instant the door sealed shut.

 

All between them the sounds of rustled clothes, a rattling sword, a deep sigh, the smacking of lips. Fran's back slapped the wall and rattled its wall hangings as Edward took him by the cheeks and pressed their mouths together, thrusting his thigh between the brunette's legs and feeling his stiff sudden hardness rubbing up against it.

 

Fran broke the kiss, catching his breath, smirking. "I missed you too, Ed."

 

A grin. "You're in no position to fault a man for his lusts, looking like you do."

 

Fran blushed.

 

"Saints be, Fran. I hate all this sneaking about. I hate the way Roschewald barks orders at you, like some dog at his beck and call. And the way he looks at you sometimes-"

 

"Peace," said Fran, cupping Edward by his trim blonde beard. "This is not forever. My circumstances may change very soon and when they do, we can be together properly, with none of this skulduggery. We need only be patient."

 

"Aye." Edward could've lost himself for hours in the green of those doe eyes. "If ten whole years without you couldn't break me, this won't."

 

**********

 

Old King's Way, The Midburghs, Kingdom of Morland

12^th of Autumn, 801

 

At dawn on the 12^th of Autumn 801, crowds gathered and cheered by the hundreds to watch a tremendous procession depart the city of Dragonspur for the distant north. At its helm rode their sovereign, King Oswald II, clad in exquisite golden robes fleeced with spotted fur and pinned by a string of pearled buttons and a brace of emerald-set silver broaches. At his side rode his queen, Annalena of Gascovy, similarly robed and similarly crowned, waving to her roaring subjects with the slightest of bulges beneath her corset – the realm's unborn heir.

 

And behind them?

 

Behind them, by either horse or carriage, rode the brunt of their court. First the Queen Dowager, Emma of Wuffolk, summoned from her de-facto exile at the Greyford Manse; then came the stone-faced Duke of Greyford alongside his fellow counsellors – the Lord Seneschal Robert Mountjoy, the Lord Justiciar Ser Howard Frogmoncke, the Lord Sergeant Ser Symon Shakestone, and the Lord Treasurer Marquess de la More – the Masters of the Realm fully assembled – for the business of state would not conclude in the King's absence.

 

And behind them rode others of note, the King's Sergeant Surgeon, Ser John Goodwyne; the King's Master of the Hunt; Ser Fynn Glenyster; the King's Spiritual Director and High Shepherd of the Midburghs, Aldwyn. Behind them ambled the lesser nobles and dignitaries of the King's court; the Earls of Wrothsby, Gainsley, Edgemore, and Huxton; the King's close friend and courtier Ser Richard Mountjoy, and so forth. The court's noblewomen were not spared the journey either. Placid ponies and gilt carriages ferried along the Duchess of Greyford, the Countess of Wrothsby and the Marchioness of Gead; along with their many daughters, granddaughters and nieces, Lady Cecily and the other `young doves', the ladies-in-waiting for both the Queen and the Queen Dowager, their dressers and dressmakers and chambermaids.

 

Further behind them came the dignitaries and their delegations; Ambassador Georg Ludolf, his wife Lady Clarabella, his lumbering secretary Matthias, and their household staff. The Wallish Ambassador Gustavius von Roschewald brought with him his clerk "The Lost Lord" Francis Gray, his new captain of the guard, Edward Bardshaw, along with more than half his halberdiers and 3/4s his obligatory household staff. They, and the Gasqueri Ambassador, the visiting Scrivener of Kurghan, the Emissary of Gopesh, the exiled Princess of Xenobyria, and more besides from reaches of the world no common Morishman would know by name for centuries to come.

 

Even further behind them followed the King's household staff; his many secretaries, clerks, footmen, valets, dressers, falconers, stablers, kennel-keepers, cooks, bakers, brewers, poulterers, mummers, fools, musicians, and launderers. And at their humble backs followed a mile-long baggage train of goods for their monarch's great expedition; mule-drawn wagons bulging at the brim with sundry chests full of clothes, decorations, banners, herbs, oils, cups, cutlery, plate, parchment, tools, tents, weapons, and gunpowder; as well as dozens of barrels of refreshment – ale, cider, malmsey, etc. Hundreds of pieces of furniture were lashed to the back of carts and covered over with tarp and palling, along with caged mastiffs and greyhounds, birmans and bobtails, hawks and falcons, macaques and capuchins, even a lion (Lord Huxton's pet lion to be exact) in a wailing menagerie of barks, meows, caws, whoops, and roars; fur and feathers flopping off into the dusty clouds the procession left in its sundered wake.

 

The King's banners flocked high from the polearms of the Bannerets of the Bloom, 200 of them, all mounted and sworn to defend king and court from the threats of the road. Smaller retinues of armed men also accompanied the progress; Greyford's sixty outriders, Huxton's hundred men-at-arms, Roschewald's forty halberdiers, the Princess of Xenobyria's twenty golden cataphracts.

 

King Oswald's progress began at the capital's northern gatehouse verging onto the ancient thoroughfare known as the Old King's Way, the oldest of its kind in the realm. Slowly and surely the city behind them, with all its ancient stone and smoke, with all its vices and clamour and trappings, receded into a backdrop of wind-swept pastures and meadowland. Marshes. Forests. Morland at its most Morish.

 

The countryside bent before its King as he led his court along the beaten path that winded with serpentine surety through its greenswards. The Old King's Way took them through villages and townships and everywhere they went Morish people young and old flocked to see a sight they would recall for the rest of their lives. Maidens threw flower petals before the hooves of their King's horse. Gentlemen doffed their caps. Wives blew kisses to the queen and wished her a healthy birth. Similar pleasantries were not extended to the Duke of Greyford nor the Queen Dowager, however.

 

And Fran noted it.

 

Their first stop, which the procession made shortly before noontide, was Bretherwood Manor, the ancestral abode of the local burghal lord, the stooping and mutton-chopped Ser Howard Wynstock. With his two sons and six unwed granddaughters he received King Oswald at the gates of their domicile, expanded and rebuilt from the ground up to accommodate their monarch's great host – new wings added to house, its barns repurposed as barracks, impermanent kitchens erected around dozens of quickly fashioned mudbrick ovens to prepare for the coming two nights of feasting and festivities the Wynstocks prepared.

 

The court set out again at daybreak of the 14^th of Autumn, the road bending northeast around the Lake of Epps until the next burghal border was crossed at Epps Village. Town elders brought baskets of fruit and bread and wine to the Bannerets of the Bloom guarding the procession and begged them to give the King their gifts, welcoming him to his throne and expressing their dearest hope that the next ten years would be kinder to them than the previous ten.

 

"Saints have mercy, my good people!" Cried their King, fist in the air amidst the roars of his subjects. "Show me to the lord so undeserving of you all!"

 

It was the local ealdorman who took the privilege of leading King Oswald to the burghal high seat. Cuthryke's Keep, as it was called, was a castle almost as old as Staunton, built during the reign of Edwulf III as a training ground for soldiers fit for posting to Wallenheim (then a province of the Kingdom of Morland) to keep the peace with its natives. During the Morish Civil War it was besieged by ducal troops and half-destroyed by collapsed siege tunnels and fire. Thus these days it was a fraction of its former self; its moat drained, its walls fractured, its rotted ironwood hording still clinging to its guard towers. These days the castle belonged to the de Pallasch Family, a house of both Morish and Wallish blood, `awarded' to them by King Osbert, Oswald's grandfather, for their loyal service during the Long Sea War. But Cuthryke's Keep was also known as something of a millstone – too vast and therefore too costly to fully repair, too ugly to repurpose as a palatial retreat, and utterly unnecessary as a fortification in these times of peace. And so, it simply sat there amongst the hillocks, a crumbling greatness of a bygone era.

 

And now her lights were out. No fires were lit. No smoke piped her chimneys.

 

No one emerged to receive their King.

 

The Lord Seneschal, annoyed, ordered the trumpeters to announce their arrival – but the drawbridge did not lower, and the portcullis did not rise. The wind whistled through the merlons of its empty battlements, beating at the burnt banners of House Wulfsson too high atop their spires to take down.

 

But Fran had a strong eyesight and spotted a few servants poking their sodden faces at the crenels. Perhaps Huxton did too, for the stout old Earl galloped to his King's side, drawing his longsword, gammon-faced and bellowing, "DE PALLASCH! IN THE NAME OF ALL SAINTS HERETOFORE AND THEREAFTER, OPEN YOUR FUCKING DOOR!"

 

But the castle remained silent.

 

"His Lordship Baron de Pallasch," said Ser Robert, to all who were close enough to hear, "would have us believe he is not in attendance."

 

A light smatter of laughter broke out amongst the courtiers. And the brief sun that dared poke its nose out of those thickened grey clouds that morning, it did not grace them for long. It began to drizzle. And that was when King Oswald decided to encamp in the fields beyond the castle boundaries, sending men into Epps Village for the food and victuals Baron de Pallasch was too absent (or too cheap) to provide.

 

The field was known as Edwulf's Verge: so called because King Edwulf I first raised his standard there to summon troops for the final push against the tribal territories that would one day become the Lowburghs. And within hours his descendant's court fashioned a more modern sort of encampment upon the soils he once he walked.

 

Across the hours hundreds of tents pitched up around a central marquee. Cookfires were lit, latrines dug, perimeters forged, stabling fashioned. Loyal villagers fetched water from the local streams and wells, the King's hunters returned with game from the surrounding forests, and by nightfall the King's camp was thunderous with song, dance, laughter, wine scent, and roasted meat.

 

On the 15^th of Autumn, shortly after daybreak, the encampment was collapsed, and the court re-joined the Old King's Way bound for the second visit of its itinerary (though it ought to have been their third). But yesterday's drizzle had worsened overnight into a hard rain that made a pebbled sludge of the roads, hampering their progress. Parts of the baggage train fell behind as whole wagon wheels were caught in the sinks and mudholes strewn about the trail. But the brunt of the procession pressed on through the woodlands, crossing into the next burgh by way of a forded dyke some six miles south of their destination – Faircliffe Hall.

 

This time its potentate, the aging yet spry Countess Ethelburga of Faircliffe, was ready and waiting to greet the King at her gates, along with sixty of her dearest attendants and guards. King Oswald climbed down from his horse and raced to her side; his groomsmen having laid down a carpet of red velvet to spare his golden shoes from the mud as he threw his arms about her whole person in a manner mostly unkinglike. A manner most warm. The Countess giggled. And later she was claimed to have said (with the frankest of tears in her eyes), "Were I now to die I would die in the arms of the son I had always wanted, if not the King I so love."

 

The Countess, as Fran would soon learn, was King Oswald's old matron and the first of his tutors, second only to Ser Robert in his esteem.

 

The unhappiness of the King's childhood was storied. As his father King Osmund's sole legal heir, then Prince Oswald's life and safety were of unquestionable paramountcy, and it was under this sentiment that the Queen Dowager raised him in a household of her own devices at Woollerton Green. He was forbidden from hunting, from jousting, from training with metal swords, from reading `inappropriate' materials, from associating with girls, from speaking with commoners, even from using the privy alone. His mother Emma had him watched at all times for signs of bad humours and authorized his tutors and instructors to `hit him gently' at every act of disobedience. Distempers were corrected with a bloodletting of leeches and when that would not work, food was withheld to calm him.

 

Oswald was an unhappy boy, and unruly in his studies as a result; that was until a sour-faced, yet cheerful matron took his liking, drafted in by the Lord Seneschal, Ser Robert Mountjoy, at the Duke of Greyford's request. The Countess of Faircliffe. An aging heiress who came recommended for her tempering of Lady Cecily, a similarly wayward girl-child, and at once she set about correcting the princeling's behaviour. And her method was rather simple.

 

She treated him with kindness.

 

When Queen Emma's cooks served him porridge without jam, Ethelburga might sneak him some – but only if he could tell her a certain calculation. With time she convinced his mother to begin lessons in horsemanship, to allow him the thrill of the ride and the race, but only if he could recite the history of his forebears – from Edwulf the Great all the way down to his lord father. Ethelburga might send for him in the night and call him down to the training grounds for an impromptu sparring session with his good friend and rival, Richard Mountjoy, a pair of metal sparring sword between them, but only if he could give her the three laws of every saint in any order.

 

Her regime worked, Oswald's education progressed, and when his father died in 791, the eight-year-old king requested the dissolution of his household in Woollerton Green for a new one under a new governess – the Countess. Greyford, mindful of his sister Emma's reluctance but impressed with Lady Ethelburga's good works, made the young king a compromise and allowed him a new household, not at Faircliffe Hall, but at Clemence Palace under the watchful eye of Ser Robert. And the final result was the man all who gathered saw today.

 

King Oswald's court spent three days at Faircliffe Hall. The Countess entertained them with a tournament of swords, first to three touches, which eventually was one by Ser Richard Mountjoy after a close final contest with Ser Humphrey Ashwick, son and heir of the Earl of Huxton.

 

On the evening of the second day a troupe of mummers performed a play for the court, a Black Age play about an ancient chieftain whose son was stolen from his father's ancestral seat by giants claiming ownership of him. The boy would have to use guile and cunning to free himself from their grasp, putting them abed with a flatulent sleeping potion and sneaking out of their kraal in the dead of night.

 

The young King and Queen found it most entertaining – the Duke of Greyford and the Queen Dowager did not – as, perhaps, was the Countess' intent.

 

The third day saw the fields behind the hall transformed into a massive racecourse similar to that of Clemence Palace. A series of races were held, not so much a tournament as a show of talent, and with Ludolf's silver-backed stallion (now named Stormwalker) beneath his legs, King Oswald won all five of his races.

 

Fran watched his master clap mutedly at each of the King's victories whereas his Imperial counterpart threw up his fists ecstatically, smiling from ear to ear.

 

The King loved horses because for him they represented freedom – or the closest thing he would ever come to experiencing it, at least by Fran's judgement. That was why Ludolf's gift was so poignant and Gustave's so stupid. Kings do not require prognostications. Their fates only ended in four variations of death – death by mishap, death by war, death by assassin's dagger, or, if they were lucky, death by old age.

 

But a horse? The wind's caress about your hair and flesh as you raced your beast proudly to victory? To a melancholy boy that was no simple thrill. To the King's boyhood-self it might have been his last incentive not to throw himself from a window. And that was a feeling Fran understood all too well.

 

A gaol is a gaol no matter how lavish.

 

King Oswald and his court left Faircliffe Hall and its beloved Countess on the 18^th of Autumn, at first light. The procession re-joined the Old King's Way from a juncture the locals called Eygham's Fork with only a light Morish drizzle to hamper them. Servants broke open tasselled parasols to save their noble benefactors from the damp, trudging through the mud alongside the horses with arms aloft. Across the hours they followed the muddy road north as it wound its way through sloped hillocks and sodden farmlands until the spires and rooftops of their next stop finally loomed over the horizon. Keeping to their schedule, they arrived shortly before noontide.

 

The Cenoby of St. Bosmund.

 

From what Fran knew, it was an ancient religious commune built up over the years around a central monastery nestled upon a hilltop overlooking a wide and leafy vale. It was a place of spiritual refuge for shepherds, shepherd-aspirants, and laypersons alike; people not taken with the unsaintly lives led by their Morish fellows; people who sought to repair their broken relationship with the will of the stars.

 

Money was forbidden there, as was alcohol, tobacco, acts of carnal knowledge and heretical materials such as the Tract of St. Hildes, but its founding principle was unchanged. The Cenoby sheltered all – vagrants, orphans, wastrels, lepers, harlots, the lame and the sick, the destitute, the dishonoured – all under one promise.

 

To dedicate thyself utterly to the stars and saints.

 

From the snowfields of the Highburghs to the marshes of the Lowburghs, dozens of these cenobies dotted the Morish countryside providing food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless and faith for the lost, but this was a commune closest to the King's heart. This was where his governess sent him for tutelage into the laws and precepts of the Kirk.

 

This waypoint was unlike any other on King Oswald's itinerary, because his purpose there was not pleasure or some spectacle of diplomacy. It was for the cleansing grace of the spiritual. Here was where Her Majesty the Queen and the growing heir in her belly would be blessed in saintly ceremony by High Shepherd Aldwyn.

 

As the King rode into the village communes surrounding the Cenoby of St. Bosmund, laypeople and shepherd-aspirants filed along the roadside to offer prayer, tears, fruit, and flowers. The baggage train of lavish furniture and wine barrels were left outside its red brick walls where the brunt of the procession pitched their tents and forged a new encampment for themselves, it was only the central figures of the court who were allowed entry into the temple grounds where they were greeted by the commune's leader, a cassocked octogenarian called Shepherd Baldhere.

 

The following morning, when the King and Queen of Morland and all their closest retinue re-emerged from the bowels of the cloister, Lothar returned from his overnight reconnaissance to ply Fran with the details of what he witnessed.

 

"The Queen was blessed as planned but Aldwyn butchered the ritual, a stumble of the tongue. Greyford and the Queen Dowager attended. The Earl of Wrothsby cut a sermon and prophesized a coming tide of Odoism. Light food only. Porridge, pottage, water. The King did penance and promised Shepherd Baldhere some masons and stonebreakers for repairs. Some boys were caught buggering in a transept, one amongst the King's staff, took some whippings both. Nothing more to report."

 

With his soul now cleansed King Oswald set out with his court on the cloudy morning of the 19^th of Autumn.

 

Since time had been lost with the debacle at Cuthryke's Keep, the mile-long retinue forsook one of its planned stops, Manse Blackburgh, and pressed on hard until dusk before finally reaching the King's old household and the high seat of House Mountjoy.

 

Clemence Palace.

 

From slatted roofs to red brick walls to looming belltowers, it was a prodigious house built in the `Pearlstone' style similar to Woollerton Green. Its grounds were lavished with babbling water gardens and dense gravel-tract hedge mazes, its inner corridors decorated with saintly frescoes and marbled tableaus, tassels and gilt thread through every curtain and wall hanging, its bricked chimneys piping with oven smoke for the abounding banquets to come.

 

When the King dismounted with his Queen in the forecourt, they and Richard Mountjoy bounded off ecstatically under Ser Robert's smiling visage. The court similarly dispersed and looked to Ser Robert's team of clerks for details of their lodgings. But Clemence Palace was not a poor hold, and its apartments were large enough to house the court in its entirety – no additional structures need be built, no barns or stables converted, all was waiting and ready for them.

 

The abode of the Mountjoys was by far and away King Oswald's favoured visit of this his first royal progress and the court spent almost five days there from the 19^th to the 24^th of Autumn. At the Lord Seneschal's behest, they were met with masques, feasts, duels, horseracing, jousts, football, and archery matches. Ser Robert was even resourceful enough to corral one of the King's favoured performers, a travelling bard from the other side of the world, Blackthumb Aba of the Sandsea Plateau. He even caught a bear to bait with his mastiffs. The King spent much of his time with Queen Annalena and Richard Mountjoy, his favoured courtier, but also took the time to conduct affairs of state; chairing council meetings with the Masters of the Realm, reviewing ordinances and burghal dues, signing charters, authorizing land grants, etc. Gustave was even called to attend a private meeting between the King and the Gasqueri Ambassador to discuss his trade proposals.

 

Only on the 25^th of Autumn in a chilly morning's gloom did King Oswald's court part ways with the splendours of Clemence Palace.

 

"I would sell Dragonspur to the Emperor if it gave me another night under this roof," the King was said to have declared, "but alas, our business presses us north."

 

The penultimate leg of the progress, the last visit due before their destined arrival at Fludding, took them to The Bordermounts, the historic natural boundary between the Highburghs and the Midburghs.

 

It was a mass of upland mountains and high hillocks honeycombed with dusky valleys and treacherous trails. Only Edwulf the Great had successfully marched an army through its dangers. Historically the safest route between north and south had always been by sea, save for two significant channels – Bunton Moor, a boggy wetland of stinking peat and buzzing flies unfit for human existence – and The Shepwoods, a massive ironwood forest blanketing the breadth of the highlands from the eastern Bordermounts to the shores of the Mandelsea. Through this dense forest ran the Old King's Way, and in the heart of those woods stood the ancient fortress that King Edwulf raised to defend his rear from the northern tribesmen on his push south.

 

Fort Caelish.

 

The original complex was fashioned with wooden palisades, staked moats, and earthen ramparts. As the centuries slowly eroded those fortifications, they were replaced by seven-foot-high stonework walls and crenelled guard towers and bulwarks. From a distance it was a deeply imposing site, looming darkly over the forest from its high slope, and it was said that one could see as far as the eastern coast from its central watchtower. But these days Fort Caelish served as little more than a well-defended trading outpost, a market-town for wheat, grain, livestock, pottery, tools, cloth, leather, fur, tin, iron, and timber. Only a small standing garrison of 100 men kept guard of the fort, often tasked with rounding up local bandits and highwaymen, or upon occasion, breaking up the odd drunken brawl between the tavern-goers.

 

Perhaps fewer than 800 people actually lived within its walls but most gathered at the windows of their jettied houses to wave and cheer and whoop as King Oswald's court made its royal entry. The King and Queen made their obligatory gestures, waving back with broad smiles through a shower of flower petals, all the way to the central square where Ser Warren Wyatt, the Sheriff of March awaited them; the fort warden and local burghal lord, with six spear-armed soldiers at his back.

 

As the King and Queen dismounted their horses, the Sheriff of March removed his feathered cap, took a hosed knee, flapped his velvet half-cloak back over his shoulder, and set a respectful hand to his breast. "Your Highness," he said. "Simple words cannot do justice to the esteem I presently feel. Welcome to Fort Caelish."

 

As the King and Queen were led upon a tour of the fort, and the other nobles and courtiers were assisted to their lodgings by the sheriff's stewards, the staff and lesser ranked courtiers set up camp in the surrounding fields beyond the dry moat. Porters and auxiliaries scrambled to pitch tents and gazebos, dig cooking pits, light bonfires, mount tables, set chairs, fetch water, raise flags, build fencing, nail rope, pluck chickens, joint ducks, mend linen, water the horses, feed the animals – a tempest of movement and action that surreptitiously sprung forth with another massive encampment in the space of only a few hours.

 

That night, the night of the 25^th, another large feast was had at the heart of the camp. But King Oswald and the seniormost members of the court did not attend, instead the Sheriff of March treated them to a banquet of swordfish, eels, mussels, and herring in Fort Caelish's keep. The lesser nobles and dignitaries made do with whole long tables filled with platters of roast pork, chicken, duck slices and goose meat, herbed potatoes and boiled carrots, baked bread rolls, grape-on-the-vine, apples red and green, blood oranges, fragrant cheeses, and ham hanks. The ewers sloshed with ale, cider, water, and wine. Drunken songs were sung. Men made bets, wrestled arms, played cards, and rolled dice amidst a booming din of laughter, chatter, shouting, farting, and chanting. Drumbeats and lute notes kept a tune in the air.

 

The clamour rang Fran's ears.

 

But as he sat to his pheasant's leg and sliced bread, wine cup in hand, he came to enjoy the festivities. The mood amongst the court was light and thus it lightened his own. He was tired of the road, but a cup of wine and good cheer went aways in accounting for it. Then he looked over his shoulder and found Edward standing guard at the billowing tent flaps, helm beneath his arm, frowning. The clerk set his cup down and took his plate with him as he went to his lover's side.

 

"How do?" Said Fran, a little worse for the wine. "Come and join us, the other halberdiers beat you to it."

 

Ed shook his head.

 

"Oh, why do you look so grim? Cheer up, Ed! By this time tomorrow we'll reach Fludding and be done of the road at least for a few days."

 

The swordsman held his frown. Fran watched his cold glance pass around the bawdy revelry. "There are hungry children in Dragonspur who would stab a man dead just for a scrap of all this food. I used to be one of them."

 

A sigh.

 

"The world is cruel, Ed. I know this. But perhaps it isn't ours to fix-"

 

"Stillingford could have fixed it," said Ed, sharply. "If the king had shown mercy."

 

Fran drew closer to him, lowering his voice so as not to be heard. There was a shirtless spear-bearer not six paces from them, groping and pawing at a giggling camp follower, her pert breasts spilling out of her bodice (by accident or design who could say?) as he moved to suckle them.

 

"I am begging you, Edward. You must be careful with what you say even in this drunken company," whispered Fran. "Nobles have a longer memory than you think."

 

Fran watched Edward but Edward did not meet Fran's eye. His very face was written with disgust, hard and relentless, as he spat a heavy sigh through clenched teeth and backed away. "Ignore me, Fran. Don't let me spoil your mood. Go and have fun, I need to piss."

 

Ed sauntered off down the length of the gazebo past the slobbery spearman and his half-naked whore. Fran watched him walk away, concerned but not worried. It had been a tiring journey to the north, after all. `All he needs is some ale,' thought Fran. He hadn't touched a drop since Dragonspur, it would cheer his mood. The younger man thought to fetch him one when he returned from the latrines, but when Fran turned back to the table a drunken Gustave was climbing back onto his seat with a nigh-empty flagon in hand. The Wallishman eyed the bibulous couple nearby, then waved for his aide to come to his side. Fran smothered his frown and complied, sitting down, setting his plate back down.

 

"Tomorrow, perhaps, you meet with Harcaster," mumbled Gustave. His specially tailored cap, cloak, vests, and hose were gone, too precious to risk a wine stain, now he sat in a simple belted black tunic. "Are you excited? You do not look it."

 

`You disgust me,' thought Fran. "Only nervous, master."

 

The table tremored with slapped cups and jostling elbows. Beneath it, a meaty hand slipped inside Fran's thigh. He tensed. Gustave's smile darkened. "A lady of the court came to me not two hours ago asking if a marriage match had been made for you yet. How popular you are, my little lost lord."

 

"I do nothing to invite the attention, mast-"

 

Fran jerked to a stop, mid-sentence, as Gustave took him by the bollocks and squeezed – hard. "I should hope not," said he, smiling yet sneering, "I do tire of these little hens flapping around you. Come."

 

The clerk swallowed a heavy breath as Gustave released him and launched out of his seat, slapping down his flagon and snatching Fran by his thin wrist. The smaller man asked him where they were going, and Gustave's only reply was – "Your little admirer put me in a bad mood, and you are going to improve it."

 

The festivities were too loud and raucous for anyone of importance to notice how roughly the Wallish Ambassador dragged his young clerk out of the gazebo, nor his captain of the guard who re-entered just shortly after they left.

 

Outside in the cold of night, only a few porters and half-sleeping billmen spotted the Morish lad trailing his master by the wrist. Some of them snickered, whispering that `the boy was in for a whipping after spilling the older man's drink or some shite'. Nothing about it caught anyone unawares. The mismatched figures weaved through the campfires and cooking pits until they reached the Wallish ambassador's own private tent where the racket of the raging feast lowered to a quiet thrum of music and laughter off in the distant background.

 

Gustave shoved Fran onto his feathered bed, stinking of wood rot after being caught in the rain at Edwulf's Verge. The taller man tore off his livery collar, unbelted his tunic, and kicked off his shoes.

 

"Take off your clothes," he said. "I like you better naked."

 

"Master, we shouldn't, someone might notice that we've gone-"

 

A hand, rough and heavy, snatched Fran by the throat and threw him back down onto the bed. The fall knocked the breath out of him, but the chokehold wouldn't let him catch another to replace it. And as Fran gasped for breath a thickened tongue took its chance and slipped cravenly into his mouth, wrestling with his own, conjoined lips smothering his startled cries into muffled moans. Gustave kissed him so forcefully Fran didn't notice the older man release his throat to seize his doublet by the breast-folds and tear it open, buttons popping over the sheets. A gasp. Fran's lips tore free. He rasped for breath.

 

"Wait," said he. "Gustave, please, someone might-"

 

HE, HE, HE, HE...

 

But he would not hear it.

 

LITTLE BOY stirred the Fiend. LITTLE BOY!

 

He was in that mood.

 

LITTLE HARLOT!

 

That hot rutting mood.

 

LITTLE WHORE!

 

That mood that said, `I care not a whit for what you think, for what you think is not my pleasure'. His pleasure was the bared breast, the pink nipple stiffened with cold that he longed to suck, the smooth neck that his teeth so longed to bite and mark, the little bellybutton with which his tongue was so fond of playing, the flaccid cock his rough hands tugged free from its golden codpiece, and that tight pink rosebud of a hole his stone-hard manhood could not begin to resist. And resistance floated away.

 

Fran grit his teeth, trapped beneath the bigger man's weight, a woolly black pelt of chest hair grinding coarsely against Fran's own as Gustave clumsily guided the bell head of his yard toward a puckering arsehole.

 

He knew to relax. He knew to breathe. And yet he cried a little scream as Gustave plunged into him, sinking deep until every fat inch disappeared into his sphincter.

 

Fran's mouth shot open. His nails dug into the muscled flesh of Gustave's shoulders. His back arched reflexively, his eyes were tightly shut, tightly shut until the humping started. Thick thighs slapping down on his buttocks, heavy grunts booming with each thrust, sweat dripping from flushed flesh by the bead, raw wooden bed feet scraping loudly against the Morish dirt.

 

Fran opened his eyes.

 

He saw Gustave's face leering back at him, eyes rolled into their very sockets with pleasure, cheeks reddened, lips ajar and drooling, nostrils flared, and he thought at once how utterly tired and angry and REVOLTED he was staring at that fucking face again. All the pain he used to feel was gone. Whatever wisps of pleasure he may have felt from time to time, they were gone too. Nothing was there except disgust.

 

Fran did not notice himself balling his fists or pounding them at Gustave's chest or even yelling at him to stop. He was aware of none of it, not until Gustave's face curdled, first with surprise and then with anger. A wad of phlegm caught Fran's eye. He flinched. Gustave, snarling, shoved the left side of his face into the pillow and rutted him all the harder.

 

With his face pressed down, feet flopping either side of the bed, shoulders pumping up and down at another man's labours, Fran's teary eyes drifted to a slit in the folds of the tent, a slight gap that peeled wider as the nightly winds caught it by the flaps. There was a figure in the dark watching them, its hands trembling with rage at the twin hilts of its double daggers.

 

`...Don't...' Thought Fran, tears in freefall now. `...Not yet... Lothar...'

 

It was over in a matter of minutes. Gustave spent himself quickly, growling like a dog and convulsing in stiff jerks as ropes of seed shot into a gaping rectum. His yard slopped out slick with it, speckled at the head with traces of blood and faecal matter. Panting, he leant back with a stiff grin and watched its whiteness ooze of out of Fran's raw red hole, the lily and the rose, clenching and unclenching as the boy shivered weakly atop the bed.

 

Gustave caught his breath, and then, a portion of his sanity.

 

"...I... I did not mean to be coarse with you," he said, huffing.

 

No reply.

 

"...Sleep, then. You have a long day tomorrow..."

 

Fran's bed was on the other side of the tent. Gustave went for the water basin by his bed side, cleansed himself, then climbed into the smaller cot and slowly slipped into a deep slumber, snoring off the tyrant of strong Morish drink. And Fran, wide awake, set his feet to the ground, scrubbing the tears from his eyes, and pulling on what was left of his clothes. He could not be bothered to wash himself, he just wanted to get out of that tent and away from that man at the earliest. The clerk sniffled and strode out into the night air.

 

Lothar, cloaked from shoulder to boot, stood by the tent opposite with an expression as close to rage as anything Fran had ever seen upon his stolid face.

 

"...Say the word..." whispered the espial, every syllable uttered with ice cold resolve.

 

Fran swallowed a breath, still shaking, eyes dripping with fresh tears. "...Not yet. I still need him alive..."

 

"You cannot keep this up, Fran. You are losing the stomach for it. I see it. Ever since your Edward appeared..."

 

"This is not forever!" As the cry escaped him half-a-tenday's worth of sallow semen seeped down his inner thigh, as if to defy the sentiment. "Once the viscountcy of Thormont is mine... his throat is yours to slit..."

 

**********

 

·        Thanks again for reading everybody! Stay tuned for more. Feedback and constructive criticism are always welcome at stephenwormwood@mail.com .

 

·        Please read some of my other stories on Nifty: The Dying Cinders (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), Wulf's Blut (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Harrowing of Chelsea Rice (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Dancer of Hafiz (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), The Cornishman (gay, historical), A Small Soul Lost (gay, fantasy/sci-fi), and Torc and Seax (transgender, magic/sci-fi).