Себастьян Кастелл - Traitor's Blade

‘Ah, pay the tax you will, boy,’ the Duke said amiably. ‘But keep your little silver pieces. In this case, it’s the cow that pays the tax!’

Another round of laughter, and now one of the Duke’s soldiers who obviously knew how this joke ended came forward and took Aline’s arm. That was strange. All of a sudden there was a stick in my hand, and it was pointed at the soldier’s eye.

But before even the Duke could act, Aline shook off the soldier’s grip and slapped me hard across the face. I dropped the stick in shock. ‘Stupid boy,’ she said. ‘Don’t ever stand in the way of my happiness!’

The Duke laughed and waved down his archers and I realised she had just saved my life. ‘Look there, the little harlot thinks she can be my wife!’

Everyone was laughing, even Aline. The Duke bellowed something about the wine and one of his men began digging through our meagre supply. Aline grabbed my head with both hands and spoke into my ear. ‘Don’t you dare, Falcio,’ she whispered fiercely. ‘I know you love me, and I know you would fight for me, but not here, not now. I will do this thing, and I will pay the price for both of us. I will not scratch or claw or scream, but I will instead make this tiny man feel like a giant. It’s well known the Duke only beds any woman once. And when he does, he will leave us and go with his filthy men and his filthy King, and you and I will grow old together and laugh at the day these silly birds came to rest in our fields.’

She pushed me away and walked towards our cottage, beckoning the Duke to follow her. At the front door she turned back and called to the Duke’s men, ‘Be gentle with him, will you? I hate it when he cries at night.’

The Duke’s men laughed, and even King Greggor chuckled as he spat out a piece of the lamb we had planned on eating for supper. And I waited and prayed and I hated myself even as I thanked Love for giving me a wife as wise and brave as the one who was even now being raped by a man I would kneel before and thank in a few minutes.

True to her word, she had him grunting and moaning, and in a few minutes, he gave out a great bellow and stopped. For a moment, I feared Aline had put a knife in his genitals, but the chuckling of his soldiers told me this was the Duke’s way.

Aline came out first, hair flying free and doing up her blouse. ‘Gods bless you, my Lord. I am a new woman!’

The Duke came out of the cottage. His clothes were carefully done, but his hair was dishevelled, and he was red-faced and still sweating like a pig.

‘Saints smile on you, boy. You’re a rich man indeed. I should up your taxes next year!’

I swallowed my pride and my honour and whatever other forms of dignity I had left to me and knelt down on one knee and said, ‘I am grateful to you, Lord, for your generosity and protection.’

‘And for finally satisfying that woman of yours, eh?’ The Duke laughed in the grunting way pigs do right before you cut their throats.

‘Yes, my Lord, and for doing what I myself have been quite unable to do.’

‘Hah!’ the Duke shouted. ‘You’re a toad, boy, a rank little toad. But you know your place, and that’s the best we can hope for in a peasant. Don’t worry; we’ll leave, and I’ll tell my men not to put your cottage to the torch.’

The thought hadn’t even occurred to me before then, but I bowed and scraped gratefully regardless. The King and Duke mounted their horses and their men followed suit – all except one, a tall man with a great scar running from his forehead down past his lips. He carried a war-axe on his back. ‘My Lord Duke,’ he said, looking straight at me, ‘should we not bring the woman, in case you happen to be hungry again later on? The fare is unlikely to be so sweet at the inn where we stay tonight.’

The Duke barely turned his head. ‘What’s that you’re blathering about, Fost? You know very well no woman satisfies the Duke twice.’

‘Yes, my Lord, but wouldn’t you say this one was different? She seems an especially fine cow to be left to a boy who can’t properly milk her.’

The Duke was about to wave him away, but King Greggor spoke up. ‘Hells, Yered, just bring the damned girl. Your men have had to listen to you grunt away enough times – perhaps they see something in her that you don’t.’

As much as I despised the Duke with all my being, I believe he would have left us, had it not been for the King’s rebuke. But he was stung by the comment. ‘I have no further use for her, Majesty – but Fost, since you seem so keen on her, you bring her. She can entertain the men while I’m “grunting” with finer fare.’

Fost never took his eyes from me, and he never stopped smiling, the scar on his face crinkling in response. He motioned to his men and two of them took Aline while two more aimed arrows at my chest. Then he mounted his horse and followed his men down the road while I stood and stared like a peasant. Like a toad. Like a boy who knew his place.

Aline was a good girl, and she was wise too, but even she had the limits the Gods place on our sanity, and so by the time I had walked to the next town and found her on the floor of the tavern, she was two days dead. She had fought, my brave girl, and there were bits of skin under her fingernails and bruises on her arms, and her beautiful face was cleaved in two, as if by a great war-axe.

I felt very strange. I seemed to be in the caravan market of Solat, standing over the axeman, who appeared to have gone and died of something. It looked as if what he died from was having swords thrust into both of his eyes and into his neck. I wondered for a moment who would do something like that and then noticed that I was shaking. Kest pulled me away from the man.

Feltock’s hand was on his weapon and the girl Trin was crying into his shoulder.

‘Damn, Falcio,’ Brasti said, looking at the corpse. ‘You were only supposed to wound him.’

‘Shut up, Brasti,’ Kest said. I thought that was very funny, and so I laughed out loud, but for some reason no one else thought it was funny. I also noticed that my face was wet. Oddly, that only made me laugh more.

‘All right, so he had to kill him, but why did he have to draw that scar down the man’s face after he was already dead?’

‘Speak again, and I’ll put you down,’ Kest said. Kest was a very scary man when he said things like that, and it made even me stop laughing. He was rubbing my arms, which was pleasant but seemed somewhat inappropriate.

‘Do you remember Aline?’ I asked him. My voice sounded strange – creaky, like when I was a boy. ‘I don’t know why, but I just started thinking about her.’

Kest put his hand on my face, just for a moment. Then he motioned for Brasti to come and watch over me and stood in front of the carriage. The caravan captain stepped in his way and put a warning hand on his chest, but Kest ignored him. ‘We have our deal. One man dead and one injured. I mark that one-and-a-half men’s pay for the work of three.’

‘My rigger’s not going to be good for much with a broken leg, Trattari,’ the captain said. ‘Just be off and pray I don’t get the constables on—’

‘One man dead and one man useless,’ I heard the woman in the carriage say, her voice cutting through the noise. ‘I mark you one man paid and three men fed.’

Kest looked over at me, but I was still looking at the bloody gash I had put down the axeman’s face.

‘Marked,’ Kest said. ‘One man paid and three men fed.’ Then he turned to the other caravan guards. ‘And mark you all: any man wants revenge for one of these best remember that it was five men to one, and Falcio was injured at the time.’

‘Yeah,’ Brasti said, ‘and he wasn’t even very angry yet.’