The Witchwood Crown

  “One does not need to know about sin to enjoy it,” said Sir Astrian.

  “Please, my lord,” said the young woman on Astrian’s lap. She was struggling hard to stand, but having no success. “I will be punished if I don’t get back to my work! Let me go.”

  Astrian did not loosen his grip, and kept her on his knee with small adjustments of balance. “What?” he demanded. “Would you return to the shocking boredom of the ostler’s wagons?” He reached up and pulled at the girl’s bodice until her bosom threatened to overspill.

  “My lord!” She snatched to hold up the fabric, and his hands, unchecked, strayed elsewhere.

  The tent flap jiggled but did not open. Something good-sized was caught in it, and the poles of the tent swayed as though in a gale.

  “The heir to all the lands of Osten Ard appears to be tangled,” said Sir Astrian. “Somebody set him free and be rewarded with a sizeable estate.”

  “I will give you a sizeable boot in your arse,” said the voice whose owner was writhing in the flap like a butterfly trying to escape its cocoon. “As soon as I find you.”

  “Someone go to our noble prince’s aid—make haste!” cried Astrian. “I would myself, but at the moment I am engaged in fierce battle.” He finally managed to pull down hard enough to overcome the young woman’s resistance and her bare breasts sprang into view. Instead of surrendering and trying to cover herself, though, the girl redoubled her efforts to escape, cursing and flailing.

  “The bubs, the bubs!” sang Sir Astrian. “The bubs, the bubs, in all Nabban did ring! On the day they hanged our Redeemer, though no hands did pull the cord, The bubs in every tower tolled, to prove Aedon our lord!”

  With help from dour, black-haired Sir Olveris, Prince Morgan finally emerged from the tent flap. Morgan’s hair, a shade too brown for golden, clung in strands across his face, damp with melting snowflakes. His brows, a shade darker and thicker than his hair, rose in slow, slightly distracted dismay as he saw the serving girl fighting to free herself. “God’s Eyes, Astrian, what are you doing? Let the poor girl go. And someone pour me a cup of something strong.” He looked around. “What? No succor for your lord? I call you traitors.”

  “We have finished the last, Highness,” said Porto, guiltily wiping his upper lip. “The place is as dry as the dunes of Nascadu.”

  “God curse it!” Morgan seemed genuinely upset. “Nothing to drown a night of foul dreams? Ah, well—distract me, then, Astrian. You owe me another game and I am ready to take my money back. And this time we are not using your dice, you cunning near-dwarf.”

  “Cruel words,” said Astrian, grinning. The ostler’s maid was still trying to get off his lap and looked ready to weep. “I am not the tallest man in this kingdom, true, but I am not so low as you make me. My head reaches Olveris’s neck, and since there is nothing of much use above that point, he and I are as good as even.”

  “Sweet Aedon!” Morgan lowered himself carefully onto a wooden stool, scowling ferociously. “Are you still mauling her? I said let the girl go, Astrian! If she doesn’t want to be here, let her be on her way.” He kicked at Astrian’s leg, then folded away his frown to show the young woman a smile made slightly less courtly by the extreme redness of his face. “He begs your pardon, lass.”

  “Of course I do, my prince.” Astrian released his prey just as she was straining away from him, so that she would have fallen to the ground if Olveris had not caught her and held her up until she gained her balance. The tall knight said nothing, as was his wont, but rolled his eyes at Astrian as he returned to his own seat atop a wooden chest.

  “My apologies for Sir Astrian,” Morgan said to the girl. “He is a rude fellow. And what is your name, my dear?”

  She was as red-faced with exertion as the prince was with drink and her eyes were wide as a frightened horse’s, but when she had pushed herself back into her bodice she did her best to curtsey to Morgan. “Thank you, your Highness. I am Goda, and I only came here to tell these . . . men that Lord Jeremias said they were to have no more wine. As it is, he said, they have already drunk much of what was meant for the return journey.” Despite the angry force of her words she was near tears.

  “It is a good thing that there will be mead in Hernysadharc, then.” Morgan waved permission for her to go. She lifted her skirts and almost ran from the tent.

  “If they ever let us into the city.” Porto’s voice was doleful as a funeral bell. “Soon, we will die of thirst here in this field.”

  “I must say, Highness,” Astrian said, “you look as though you’ve already found a bit of something to ease this sad journey. Did you bring it back to share with your brothers of the road?”

  “Share?” Morgan shook his head. “I had to spend the longest evening of my life at the royal table with my grandmother and grandfather, having my sins . . . my sins and yours, that is . . . listed for me in exis . . . excu . . . exquisite detail. Then I tried to sleep, and . . .” He scowled and waved the idea away with his hand. “It matters not. I deserved every drop I could guzzle, and it was still nowhere near enough.” He sighed. “Still, if there’s nothing left to drink, we might as well gamble.” With the young woman now long gone, Morgan let himself slump, revealing what he truly was—a very young man who had drunk too much.

  “So you bring us nothing, Highness?” asked Porto.

  “I swallowed everything I could reach at my grandparents’ table. But it wasn’t enough. No, they all just kept talking. And it was about nothing—the bloody Hernystiri king, and the royal blacksmith’s need for scrap to turn into horse nails, and the complaints of the local Hernystiri farmers that their lands are being pillaged by the royal progress. And after putting up with that all evening, I am beginning to be sober again. I do not favor sobriety.” He looked to Astrian. “By the way, speaking of pillagers, I cannot help noticing a haunch of something on the spit over your fire. It looks rather like the remains of a fat farm pig.”

  “No, no, a free wild boar of the hills, Highness,” Astrian said. “Isn’t that right, Porto? He led us a fierce chase.”

  Porto looked more than a bit shamefaced. “Oh, aye, he did.”

  “All over his pen, I have no doubt.” Morgan frowned. “God save us, the boredom!” But the prince looked more haunted than bored. “Oh, and there was a messenger arrived from Elvritshalla right in the middle of it all. The Rimmersmen beg us to make good speed after we leave Hernystir. It seems the duke is not dead yet.”

  “But those are excellent tidings!” said Porto, sitting a little straighter. “Old Isgrimnur still lives? Excellent news.”

  “Yes. Huzzah, I suppose.” Morgan gave Astrian a hard look. “Why are we not dicing, fellow? Why is my money still in your pocket?”

  “My lord,” said Porto, “I do not mean to scold, but Duke Isgrimnur has been one of your grandparents’ greatest allies. I fought with him for the Hayholt more than thirty years ago, and again at the cursed Nakkiga Gate.”

  “You still call it ‘fighting’?” Astrian smirked. “I believe the name for what you did was ‘hiding’.”

  Porto scowled. “My dignity does not allow me to respond to such wretched untruths. Were you there, sir? No. You were a mere imp of a child then, vexing your nursemaid, while I was risking my life against the Norns.”

  Astrian’s loud laugh was his only reply.

  Porto struggled to his feet, scraping his head against the top of the tent. It was said that of all the knights who had ever fought to uphold the High Ward, only the great Camaris had been taller than Porto. However, that was where the comparison ceased. “What is this, then—laughter?” the old soldier demanded. “Shall I call you Sir Mockery? What is this?” He pulled a pendant out of his collar, a smooth female shape carved in rounded blue crystal. “Did I not take this from one of the fairies after I slew him? This is Norn stuff, the true article. Go ahead, mock—you have no such prize.”

 
Sir Olveris said, “I doubt not that you took it from one who was face-down and dying, old man. And then finished him off with your sword in his back.”

  Prince Morgan jumped in surprise. “By the bloody Tree, Olveris, you are silent so long, then you speak from the shadows without warning. I thought for a moment we were haunted!”

  The black-haired man did not reply. He had exhausted himself with such a long speech.

  “Enough with tormenting Porto,” the prince said. “Come now, Astrian, is it to be Caster’s Call or Hyrka? I will not let this day end without some good result, and beggaring you would make me very happy. I have not had a good day with the bones since we crossed the border into Hernystir.”

  “There are no borders out here,” said Astrian as he gave the prince’s dice a good, long look, weighing them on his palm and then letting his fingers probe the pips for boar’s bristles or painted lead. “These will do,” he said, handing them back.

  “What do you mean by that nonsense?” the prince asked. “No borders?” He rolled his first number. “A ten, sir—two hands. You may bid as you explain your remark.”

  “It is only this, Highness,” said Astrian. “We crossed into Hernystir days ago. Rimmersgard is still twenty leagues away. Who do you suppose lives in Ballydun, the walled city just to the east?”

  Morgan shrugged, watching Astrian make his point with a six and a four. Everything the knight did had a compact grace to it, most definitely including his use of a sword, where his speed and nimbleness more than made up for his small stature. He was frequently named—and not least by himself—one of the best swordsmen in any land. “Hernystirmen, I suppose,” Morgan said. “Knights, nobles, peasants, all the regular sorts of people.”

  “Rimmersmen, your Highness. They settled there after some war hundreds of years ago and never moved again. Most of the folk there are of northern blood.” Now it was Astrian’s turn, and he immediately rolled stones—“ballocks” as soldiers termed it, a pair of ones. He swept the small pot from the chest serving as a table. “I do like your dice, my prince. Now, did you notice that village we passed this morning? Not that you looked as if you were seeing much.”

  “My head was pounding and ringing like your damn Nabbanai bells. Yes, I suppose I saw it. Some children and others came out to wave at us, yes?”

  “Exactly. And do you know what language they speak there?”

  “No, by the eternal Aedon, how would I know that?”

  “They speak Hernystiri, of course—we are in Hernystir, after all.” Astrian grinned. “But their blood is that of Erkynland, just like yours, and there are many Erkynlandish words in their speech. Do you see?”

  “Do I see what?” Morgan had lost the second throw as well, and his improved mood was beginning to fail again. “That nobody here seems to know what language they should speak? ‘S’bloody Tree, man, how is that my concern?”

  “Because it shows that borders are nonsense, at least most of the time. There are a few—such as the boundaries between Northern Rimmersgard and the Nornfells—that mean something real, because they are fiercely defended on both sides. But here on the Frostmarch all are mixed up together—Hernystiri, Rimmersmen, Erkynlanders. The people here speak a jumble of different tongues. They remember feuds that go back hundreds of years, but they speak in a way that would make their ancestors see blood before their eyes.”

  “Do not jest about the Nornfells,” said Sir Porto. “You were not there at Nakkiga. You did not see those . . . things, or hear them singing with voices like sweet children, even as they killed and died.”

  “I do not jest at all,” said Astrian. “God grant the White Foxes stay in the north where they belong. But the rest of the peoples of Osten Ard are mixing like the wax of different colored candles, melted and swirled together. Soon there will be no difference between a Rimmersman and a Hernystirman, or between a Nabbanai lord and a Thrithings barbarian. That is the curse of peace.”

  “Peace is no curse,” said old Porto.

  “I would love to do some deeds worthy of a prince,” said Morgan sadly as he watched another pile of coins disappear into Astrian’s purse. “Not a large war, perhaps but it has been more than a score of years since we fought the Thrithings-men and I see no threat to hope for. It is a bad time to be young.”

  “Porto would say it is never a bad time to be young,” said Olveris from the back of the tent. “He would also say it is never a good time to be old.”

  “I can speak for myself, sir,” said the tall knight. “I am not so ancient, nor so drunk, that I must be interpreted like a Naraxi island-man.” His face drooped a little. “Nevertheless, Olveris is not wrong.”

  “Will there ever be another war?” Morgan asked.

  “Oh, I rather think so,” said Astrian. “Men do not manage well with too much peace. Someone will find a quarrel.”

  “I can only pray that you’re right,” said Morgan. “Hah! Look at those beauties—a pair of ale wagons! This pot is mine.” He swept the coins toward him, but one slid off the chest and onto the dark ground. He got down on his knees to search for it.

  “To be honest, Highness, I grow a little bored with dicing,” said Astrian.

  “Of course you do, now that I am beginning to win my money back!” Morgan straightened up in triumph, the wayward coin in his fist. “What else have we to do, in any case? It must be rising midnight, and you told me the wine is all gone.”

  “Perhaps,” said Astrian.

  “Perhaps?” Morgan grimaced. “Anything but ‘yes’ has an ugly sound, for I could happily drink more.”

  Sir Porto stirred. “I marvel at your stomach, young master. It must be from your mother’s side. Your late father, I recall, never drank anything stronger than the weakest, most watered wine . . .” His eyes widened in distress. “Oh, Highness, forgive me. I forgot what day it is.”

  “Fool,” said Olveris.

  Morgan shook his head as though in anger, but said, “Don’t chide old Porto. What should I care? The dead are dead—it does no good to think on them too much.”

  Porto still looked shaken, but now a little surprised as well. “Ah, but I am sure he watches you from Heaven, Prince Morgan. If it were me . . .” He fell silent, caught up by a sudden thought of his own.

  “Only you could so deftly crush a conversation, ancient fool,” Astrian told him. “We speak of wine, then you chime in with death and Heaven, the two chief foes of a man’s drinking pleasure.”

  Morgan shook his head again. “I said leave him be, both of you. If my father is watching over me, it would be the first time. No, truly—I will tell you a story. Once when I was but young, I went to his chambers to tell him I had saddled and rode my horse all by myself. When he came to the door, he said I must tell my master he was not to be disturbed.”

  “I do not understand,” said Porto, frowning.

  “He thought I was some page boy sent by Count Eolair.” Morgan smiled at the joke but did not seem to find it truly funny.

  “Perhaps he had the sun in his eyes,” Porto said. “I am all but blind when the sun shines in my face . . .”

  “It wasn’t the first time he did not know his own son, nor the last.” Morgan looked down for a moment, then turned to Astrian. “We were talking about wine. Why? Do we have some left after all?”

  Sir Astrian smiled. “As it happens, a few local girls we met promised they would meet us tonight in the birch grove at the edge of the field. I told them if they brought wine they might even meet the true prince of all Osten Ard.”

  For a moment Morgan brightened, but then an unhappy shadow passed over his face. “I can’t do it, Astrian. My grandparents want to be ready to ride into Hernysadharc tomorrow morning as soon as the invitation is received. They told me to be in my tent by the end of the second watch.”

  “They want you rested, am I not right? So you may present yourself to the Hernysti
ri as befits a prince?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Then what do you think would be better, to go sourly and soberly to bed after I have finished taking more money from you, or to have an enjoyable time with some local wenches and to wet your dry throat enough to allow you a happy, peaceful sleep?”

  Morgan laughed despite himself. “By God, you could argue the Ransomer down off the Holy Tree, Astrian. Well, perhaps I will go along for a little while, then. But you must promise to help me get back to the royal tents. My grandfather is already furious with me.” He made a face. “He had adventures. He slew dragons. But what does he expect of me? Endless, horrid ceremonies. Sitting still all day while fools drone on about justice and taxes and hides of land, like the buzzing of bees on a hot day. It is enough to send anyone to sleep, whether they have drunk any wine or not.” He stood, brushing the worst of the dry grass and dirt from his clothes, although it was hard to tell by lamplight whether he had improved his appearance much. The sleeve of his jerkin had a woeful tatter, and the knees of his hose were both now damp and darkened with mud. “Olveris, Porto, are you coming?”

  Olveris appeared suddenly from the shadows like something lifted from a box. Porto only shook his head. “I am too old for this foolishness, night after night,” he said. “I will remain here and think about my soul.”

  “That is the part of you least worth exercising, old man.” Astrian rose and stretched. “And now, Highness, if you’ll follow me, I believe some ladies await us.”

  “It amazes me how such a short fellow cuts such a figure with the women,” the prince said, looking on his friend with more than a little pride.