Fred Saberhagen - An Armory of Swords

Reeve smirked into his cup. Lord Landry had been loud in the praise of his younger son’s willingness to run down and slay the helpless boys and old men who’d guarded the enemy camp.

Reeve was strong, Derina thought, and Norward weak. What had her own feelings to do with it?

Landry put the sword in its sheath, then hung it behind his chair, above the great fireplace, in place of his old blade. He turned and looked over his shoulder at his family. “None of you touch it, now!”

As if anyone would dare.

The banquet was over, Lord Landry’s soldiers dozing in their chairs or stumbling off into dark comers to sleep on pallets. Only the lord’s family remained-they and Nellda-all frozen in their chairs by his glacier-blue eyes, eyes that darted suspiciously from one to the next-weighing, judging, finding everyone wanting.

Derina looked only at her plate.

Landry took a long drink of plundered brandy. He had been drinking all night but the effects were slight: a shining of the forehead, a slow deliberation of speech. “Where is the son I need?” he said.

Reeve looked up in surprise from his own cup-he had thought he was the favored one tonight. He swallowed, tried to think how to respond, decided to speak, and said the wrong thing.

Anything, Derina knew, would have been the wrong thing.

“I’ll be the son you want, Father.”

Landry swung toward his younger son, every bristle on his head erect. Slowly his tongue formed words to the song,

“See the little simpleton

He doesn't give a damn.

I wish I were a simpleton -

By God, perhaps I am!”

Reeve’s face flushed; his lower lip stuck out like a child’s. Landry went on: “Perhaps I am such a fool, begetting a child like you. You? D’you think killing a few camp followers makes you a man? D’you think you have the craft and cunning to hold on to anything I give you? Nay-you’ll piss it away in a week, on drink and gambling and girls from the Red Temple.”

Reeve turned away, face blood-red. Landry’s eyes roved the table, settled on his older son. ‘‘And you-what have you to say?”

Nothing, Derina knew. But the old man had him trapped, obliged him to speak.

“What d-d’you wish me to say?” Norward said.

Landry laughed. “Such an obedient boy! Bad eyes, bad tongue, no backbone. Other than that-” He laughed again. “The perfect heir!”

“Perhaps-” Kendra said, and made as if to rise.

Landry looked sidelong at his wife and feigned surprise. “Oh-are you still alive?” Laughing at his joke. “Damned if I can see why. I’d kill myself if I were as useless as you.”

“Perhaps it’s time to go to bed,” Kendra said primly.

“With you?” Landry’s eyes opened wide. “God save us. God save us from getting another son such as those you gave me.

“It isn’t my fault,” Kendra said.

She had been pregnant with a dozen children, Derina knew, miscarried five, and of the rest all but four had died young.

“Whose fault is it, then?” Landry demanded. The red bristle on his head stood erect. “Blame my seed, do you?” He beat his looted silver flagon on the table. “I am strong,” he insisted, “as were my sires! If my children are milksops, it’s because my blood is commingled with yours! You had your chance-” He gestured down the table, to where Nellda, unnoticed, had begun quietly weeping. “And so did yon Nelly! She could have given me a son, but she miscarried-damnation to her!” He shouted, half-rising from his seat, the powerful muscles in his neck standing out like cable. “Damnation to all women! They’re all betrayers.”

Edlyn’s little girl, startled out of her slumbers by Landry’s shout, began to wail in Edlyn’s lap. Landry sneered at the two.

“Betrayers,” he said. “At least your worthless husband won’t be siring any more girls, to eat out my substance and shame me with their snivelling.” Edlyn, cradling her child, said nothing. Her face, as always, was a mask.

Landry lurched out of his chair, tripped over a sleeping dog, then staggered down the table toward Derina. Her heart cried out at his approach. “You haven’t betrayed me yet,” he mumbled. “You’ll give me boys, will you not?” His powerful hands clutched at her breasts and groin. She closed her eyes at the painful violation, her head swimming with the odor of brandy fumes. “Ay,” he confirmed, “you’re grown enough-and you bleed regular, ay? We’ll find you a husband this winter. One who won’t betray me.”

He swung away from her, back toward his brandy cup. Derina could feel her face burning. Landry seized the cup, drained it, looked defiantly down the table at his family-frozen like deer in the light of a bull’s-eye lantern-looked at Nelly weeping, at his soldiers who, no doubt roused by his shouting, were dutifully feigning slumber.

“The night is young,” he muttered, “are all feeble save myself?” Edlyn’s child shrieked. Landry sneered, poured himself more brandy, and lurched away, toward the stair and his private chambers.

Kendra turned to Reeve. “I wish you hadn’t provoked him,” she said. Reeve turned away mumbling, pushed back his chair, and stumbled for the door to the courtyard.

“ What was that you said? ” Kendra called. Her voice was shrill.

Reeve, still muttering, boomed out into the fresh air. Derina hadn’t heard but knew well enough what her brother said. “No one provoked Father,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what we do. Not when he’s in these moods.”

We should try to make his time here easy,” Kendra insisted. “If we’re all good to him-”

Derina could still feel the imprint of her father’s fingers on her breasts. She rose from the table.

“I’m going to bed,” she said.

Her sister Edlyn rose as well. Her little girl’s screams were beginning to fade. “Daryl should sleep,” she said.

Edlyn and Derina made their way up the stairs to their quarters. They could smell Landry’s brandy fumes and followed cautiously, but he was well gone, off to drink in his suite at the top of the stair.

Edlyn paused before Derina’s door. Edlyn looked at her, eyes flat and emotionless. “Your turn now,” she said. “To be his favorite.”

Your turn, Derina knew, to be married off unknowing to some coarse stranger-to learn, perhaps, to love him, as Edlyn had-then to have his child, to have him die in one of Landry’s wars and be left, scorned, at her father’s house with an unwanted babe in her arms.

Derina, a lump in her throat, could only shrug.

“ Good, ” Edlyn said, malice in her eyes. She turned and went to her own door.

You bleed regular, ay?

Numbly, Derina fumbled for the latch, entered her room, and locked the door behind.

The courting had already begun, and Landry home only three days. Any number of Landry’s peers, soldiers, and retainers were happening by, all with oafish, sullen sons in tow.

Few of them bothered to acknowledge Derina. They knew who made the decisions.

Derina fled the sight of them, went for a long ride to the high uplands, the meadows where the summer pasture was, the close-cropped grass already turned autumn-brown.

She did not expect to find her brother there. But there he was, gangling body in saddle as he rode along the low dry-stone walls that separated one pasture from another. Nearsighted, Norward didn’t see her until she hailed him.

“Inspecting the walls,” he said.

“No point in doing that till spring.”

“I wanted t-to get away.”

“So did I.”

He shrugged, pulled his cap down against the autumn highland wind. “Then r-ride the walls with me.”

They rode along in cold silence. Derina looked at the splashes of lichen coloring the stone walls and wondered if Norward, with his poor vision, could see them at all.