David Farland - Brotherhood of the Wolf

Roland studied her face. A few freckles, a straight mouth, a delicate nose. He wanted to kiss her, just behind her small left ear.

To fill the silence, the girl began to chatter. “I’ve been washing you since I was ten. I...in that time, I’ve come to know your body well. There is kindness in your face, and cruelty; and beauty. I sometimes wonder what kind of man you are, and I hoped that you would awaken before I married. My name is Sera, Sera Crier. My father and mother and sisters all died in a mud slide when I was small, so now I serve here in the keep.”

“Do you even know my name?” Roland asked.

“Borenson. Roland Borenson. Everyone in the keep knows you. You are the father of a captain of the King’s Guard. Your son serves as bodyguard to Prince Gaborn.”

Roland wondered. He’d had no son that he’d ever heard of. But he’d had a young wife when he gave his endowment, though she would be getting old by now. He had not known when he’d given his metabolism that she carried a child.

He wondered if this girl spoke aright. He wondered why she was attracted to him. He asked, “You know my name. Do you also know that I am a murderer?”

The girl drew back in astonishment.

“I killed a man,” Roland admitted. He wondered why he told her that. But although the man had died twenty years ago, for him it had happened only hours ago, and the feel of the man’s guts in his hand was still fresh on his mind.

“I’m sure you had good reason.”

“I found him in bed with my wife. I slit him open like a fish, yet even as I did, I had to wonder why. Ours was an arranged marriage and a poor match by any measure. I did not care for the girl, and she hated me. Killing the man was a waste. I think I did it to hurt her. I don’t know.

“For years you have wondered what kind of man I am, Sera. Do you think you know?”

Sera Crier licked her lips. Now she began to tremble. “Any other man would have lost his head for such a deed. The King must have liked you well. Perhaps he too saw some kindness masked by your cruelty.”

“I see only waste and stupidity,” Roland answered.

“And beauty.” Sera leaned forward to kiss Roland’s lips. He turned his head a bit.

“I’ve given myself,” he said.

“To a woman who disavowed you and married someone else long, long ago....” Sera answered. Roland felt certain that she knew what she spoke of when she mentioned his wife. The news saddened him. The girl had been another butcher’s daughter and she’d had a wit sharper than her father’s knives. She’d thought him stupid, he’d thought her cruel.

“No,” he answered, feeling that she did not see the deeper truth. “I’m not given to my wife, but to my king.”

Roland sat up in his cot, gazed down at his feet. He was dressed in nothing but a tunic—a fine red cotton garment that would breathe in the moist air. Not the old work clothes he’d worn twenty-one years ago when he gave his endowment. They’d rotted away.

Sera fetched him some trousers and a pair of lambskin boots, then offered to help dress him, though he needed no help. He had never felt so completely rested.

Though today was the second time in a week that Roland had wakened to a kiss, Sera Crier’s lips had been far more desirable than Baron Poll’s.

As Roland ate, a young knight in splint mail came in through the front door. “Borenson!” he shouted in greeting. At the same instant, Baron Poll had just come down the stairs and stood at the landing. “And Baron Poll!” the fellow said in dismay.

Suddenly the room swirled in commotion. The two lords beside Roland dove to the floor. The knight at the door pulled his sword, ringing from its scabbard. The squires in the corner shouted variations of “Fight!”

“Blood feud!” One of the lads flipped a table over and hid behind it as a barricade. A girl who was serving the peasants threw a basket filled with bread loaves into the air and ran for the buttery shrieking, “Baron Poll and Sir Borenson are in the same room!” The innkeeper ran out from the kitchens, face pale, as if hoping to rescue his furniture.

Everywhere Roland glanced, he saw frightened faces.

Baron Poll just stood on the landing, studying the scene, an amused smile playing on his lips.

Roland enjoyed the joke. He furrowed his brow, drew the half-sword, and eyed Baron Poll menacingly. Then he chopped a loaf of bread in half and plunged the sword tip into the counter, so that it stood there quivering.

“It appears the stool beside me has been vacated, Baron Poll,” Roland said. “Perhaps you will join me for breakfast.”

“Why, thank you,” Baron Poll said courteously. He waddled over to the stool, sat down, took half the loaf, dipped it in Roland’s trencher.

The whole crowd gaped in wonder. Roland thought, They’d not look more astonished if Baron Poll and I were a pair of toads flying about the room like hummingbirds, chasing flies with long tongues.

Horrified, the young knight exclaimed, “But you’re not to be within fifty leagues of each other—by the King’s own command!”

“True, but last night, by mere happenstance, Borenson and I were thrust into the same cot,” Baron Poll replied contentedly. “And I must say, I’ve never had a more cordial bedfellow.”

“Nor I,” Roland offered. “Not many a man could warm your backside as well as Baron Poll. The man is as big as a horse and as hot as a smithy’s forge. Why, I suspect he could warm a whole village at night. You could fry fish on his feet or bake bricks on his back.”

Everyone stared at them as if they were daft, so Roland and Baron Poll loudly discussed such mundane topics as the weather, how the recent rains had aggravated the gout that Poll’s mother-in-law suffered from; the best way, to cook venison, and so on.

Everyone watched them warily, as if at any moment the truce might break, and the two men would go at it with knives.

Finally, Borenson slapped Baron Poll on the back, went outside into the early morning light. The village of Hay was aptly named. Haycocks stood everywhere in the fields, and black-eyed Susans grew huge so late in the summer. The margin of the road out of town was a riot of yellows and deep browns. The countryside was flat, and the grass had grown tall in the summer, but now was sun-bleached white and dying.

At the front of the inn, the pigs had wisely fled. A couple of red hens pecked in the dirt by Roland’s feet. Roland waited while a stableboy went to fetch his horse.

He stood looking up into the hazy sky. The air was moist with wisps of morning fog. Volcanic ash drifted in the mist like flakes of warm snow.

Baron Poll came out, stood with him a moment, staring up and stroking his beard. “There’s mischief in this volcano blowing, and powerful magic,” he predicted. “Raj Ahten has flameweavers in his retinue, I hear. I wonder if they’re mixed up in this?”

Roland thought it unlikely that the flameweavers had anything to do with the volcano. It had blown far to the south, and Raj Ahten’s soldiers were converging on Carris a hundred miles north. Still, it seemed ominous.

“What is this about the King’s command?” Roland asked. “Why are you not to get within fifty leagues of my son?”

“Ah, it’s nothing.” Baron Poll grinned with embarrassment. “Old news. I’d tell you the story, but you’ll hear some minstrel sing of it soon enough, I imagine. They get most of it right.” Baron Poll sheepishly glanced at the ground and wiped some fallen ash from his cloak. “I’ve lived in mortal terror of your boy these past ten years.” Roland wondered what his son would have done if he’d wakened in this man’s arms. “But dark times can make even the worst of enemies into friends, eh?” Baron Poll said. “And men can change, can’t they? Wish your son well for me, if you find him.”