The Fulcairn

Dolan’s shoulders felt like they were made of wood. Every day, three times a day for two hours at a time, ever since he had left the warm death of his sick-bed, The Fulcairn had been battering him across the practice yard with sword or lance or pollaxe or even his empty hands. Cathal had told him he was getting better, but he would be damned if he could tell. Despite their astounding victory, the young lord had taken his fall at the hands of the Awnsheglien as a personal loss. Dolan understood how he felt, but not the reasoning. Eldric the fair had been a big bastard, with a fuck-off big sword. Lord Cathal was no withering daisy himself, but Eldric had been more than human. The fact that the mad bastard had escaped with his skin mostly intact was a miracle as far as Dolan was concerned. Had it not been for the pretty wizard, they would all have been worm food.

FUCK

Cathal had feinted a blow from the tiller guard, as he had called it, then voided Dolan’s counter and domed the ex-sellsword with a twisting, overhead cut Dolan had never seen before. He could not be fully sure he had even seen it then. He had blinked and found himself with wet dirt leaking through the air-holes in his visor. Third rain this month. Autumn was certainly on its way.

“I think that’s well enough for today, m’lord.” Dolan grunted as he rolled onto his back and opened his visor, letting the rain spatter against his face and into his open mouth. Always been something about sweating in the rain that made him uncomfortable. Should have gone to Khinasi, he thought to himself, found some dusky merchant’s daughter to make fat little brown babies with.

“Aye,” came his lord’s cold reply, tinny and hollow under his own helm, “dawn tomorrow then.”

Dolan groaned.

***

Light from a dozen candles flickered and danced among the shadows on the walls of the council chamber, fighting with the light from the hearth. Castle Fulcairn slept, but her lord leaned over a broad table scattered with ledgers and maps. Abandoned mines in the Seamists. Elves murdering Wilders in the Aelvinnwode. The Duenes trying to snake the Dodge from under his nose in the south. A dozen other things, small and large, threatening the tenuous welfare of his family’s realm. Threats from without and from within and barely a drop of silver in their coffers. Cathal recalled a tale the Houndsjaw had once told him, of a fisherman named Olaf whose boat would spring two new leaks for each one he plugged. Olaf, so the story goes, was still there, on the bottom of the ocean, trying uselessly to plug his boat for all eternity. Cathal expected there was some lesson to be learned in the tale, about trying to fix something one could not fix, but he refused to believe that about Wilder’s Gorge. There was a path forward, he just had to find the right one.

The door creaked open and the Baron Fulcairn barely looked up to see Mara Bersk, apprentice to Harald Khorien and one of two reasons his heart still beat in his chest, glided smoothly into the room. The way she moved, as though she had no physical presence or weight, troubled him, when he had time to ponder it. In point of fact, it was not long ago that there was nothing about her that did not trouble him. But, she had fought literally shoulder to shoulder with him and helped him avenge the poor farmers whom that blackguard, Eldric, and his band of cutthroats had slain. She was not far gone from family now, as far as he had any say about it. And his word carried quite far, as things stood. He would not get used to that, he expected, until the day Haelyn claimed him. He was Baron now, when all he had ever wanted to be was a knight, valiant and true.

“Cathal, you need to sleep.”

No “my lord” or “Baron”, never with Mara. It had ceased to bother him, and even when it had it was more about keeping the confidence of his people than any kind of hubris. If it would make no difference, folk could call him a stoat’s ballsack for all he cared. But, it did matter, especially with the house on the dark precipice it had been.

“Those words and numbers won’t change or move just by your will.”

“I’m aware of that Lady Bersk,” he said struggling less now to keep the edge out of his voice, “I’ll be done shortly."

Mara narrowed her eyes at him, skeptically.

“I’ll be back in half an hour,” she replied, “and if you’re still here I’m going burn all of your lances.”

And then she was gone.

Lances. He needed those. He’d been riding at both quintain and his men at arms at least two hours a day since he had recovered. The Rjurik were fine fighters, but when it came to chivalry, they left a fair amount to be desired. He was catching back on very quickly. It struck him that it might be prudent to hire a new master at arms. He would never be as good a rider as his brother had been, and neither of them could have hoped to match Lady Reynhild, but when he lowered his lance, it struck like Cuiraecen’s clenched fist.

Lady Reynhild. He grumbled mild frustration as he collected what few small things he desired to return to his chambers with. It seemed an inevitable thing now, that his thoughts would eventually lead back to her, no matter what he tried to distract them with. Cathal shook his head clear and collected a map of Goshawk pass and an ancient slab of a book filled with very old, exceedingly dull trade tariff ledgers. He picked up a small lamp and exited the council chambers into the cool night beyond.

The rhythmic song of crickets broke the stillness of the night beyond the walls of the keep, and the milk-silver beams of the moon weeped through open windows to splash on the walls behind. Flames flickered from sconces every twenty or so paces. Cathal came upon no guards as he walked the hall; it seemed that other than Lady Mara he was the lone waking figure in the Castle. There would be armsmen and militia patrolling the walls and bailey, but he could see none. He reached the spiral stair that ran the height of the keep and began to ascend. He passed the chapel and servants quarters on the fourth floor and then came to fifth floor, in which both Lady Reynhild and Merrec, the Seneschal, kept their quarters. There was candle light flickering out under Reynhild’s door. He almost started toward it, but halted himself. They had been distant since the Battle, he believed each for the same reason. His brother’s bones rested beneath the keep. Whenever he thought of her he could swear he could hear them rattling, but again his mind was filled with her…

… hair shining like embers in the dawn, her soft lips pressed to his, a perfect moment of freedom from thought or strain or pain or longing. His heart so full of warmth and light it threatened to burst from his chest. The feel of hers, beating, through his mail and gambeson. Looking upon her of a time, he had thought her cold and distant, but when she had embraced him she had been so warm…

His feet had carried him almost to her door when he clenched his fist around the spine of the trade volume he held in his right arm. What could he say? What could he do? She was his brother’s widow. What had passed between them had simply been the fire of the battlefield, no more. He had to marry and marry very well in order to preserve the future of his house; something he wanted about as much he wanted an ague. He turned on his heel and quietly returned to the spiral stair, climbing the remainder of the floors quickly so he could not have time to convince himself to go back. His rooms were on the seventh floor of the keep, and boasted a small balcony in addition to the four post bed, armour and sword racks, and large writing desk.

Cathal tossed the book and rolled up map onto his desk and strolled out on to the balcony, left open in the waning heat of the summer. The moon was even brighter here, and washed him in light. He leaned on the balcony railing and looked up at the stars, wondering if, thousands of leagues northward, his blood-brother Fulgrim saw the same sky, the same stars. Fulgrim would know what to do about… well everything. Cathal felt every day as though he were a man juggling knives, and that one of these times a blade would fall and cut him. He just hoped the wound wasn’t too bad, or that it wounded anyone else. Above all else aside perhaps from the longing in his heart, he tired of sending good folk to their doom.

He looked out over Fulcairn under the waxing moon, its tendrils of light illuminating the thatch roofs of the castle town. It was a few hours to dawn, and another day of training and of ledgers and petitioners, but right now there was peace. Peace he had not had within waking memory.