Quests and Kings

by Robert Adams

  For all that he had eaten far more lightly than the Bean-Righ or, indeed, any other personage at the high table, Bass felt stuffed—so very uncomfortably stuffed that he fleetingly regretted that the ancient Romans never had invaded Ireland and introduced the practice of the vomitorium—and, despite the hideous quantities of food he had forced himself to consume, he felt very tiddly and not a little drowsy. He now could easily understand how the filid and not a few of the more mature men and women of the court of Airgialla had gotten so fat, and he wondered how long the young king and his queen would retain their youthful slenderness on such overabundance of food and drink.

  Although the sun was not yet fully below the horizon for more than a very few minutes, the serious drinking commenced immediately all of the ladies had departed. Bass drank as little as he could; in courtesy to his royal host, he had to drink some. When he saw a man of about his own age—he could not recall the terribly scarred and fattening man's name, but did remember that he was a half-uncle of the Righ—wave frantically at the waiting line of cupmen and be quickly presented with a container that looked a bit like an oversized chamber pot, into which he noisily regurgitated, Bass saw his salvation.

  Once his own straining stomach was empty of its unaccustomed burden, he felt so much better that he actually could enjoy the next sips of strong Spanish wine, and an herbal cordial with an undertaste that hinted of spearmint was most refreshing. However, when Wolfgang, Righ Ronan, and certain others of his companions at the high table began to imbibe of mixtures of various wines and brandy, he decided it was high time that the Duke of Norfolk retired, and he made his goodnights, citing as excuses the long ride up from Lagore and certain old battle wounds that often plagued him of nights.

  Escorted by a youngish knight of about the age of the Righ, in point of fact a quasi-legitimate half-brother of the new-crowned monarch, who had been awarded the singular honor because he remained sober enough to walk and speak coherently, Bass and his party—four squires, two pages, and his two Kalmyks, Nugai and Yueh, these last being combination bodyguards and body servants and both most accomplished at either task—were led up stairs and along corridors to a suite of rooms large enough to accommodate them all. While palace servants who had come along behind bearing the baggage set themselves to striking fire and lighting lamps and tapers, Nugai and Yueh, looking very grim and businesslike, padded around and about all the rooms, especially the largest, wherein their lord would abide the night.

  Their jobs done, the servants would have departed, had a word from Bass not sent several racing off to fetch back water, both hot and cold and in such quantities that they began to silently wonder if the foreigner nobleman was not either drunker than he seemed or a little mad or both.

  In their absence, two of the squires set themselves to unpacking, brushing, and otherwise caring for Bass's clothing and effects, while the other two began to undress him. Yueh took the pillow sword from its sheath, checked the point and both edges for sharpness, then resheathed it and put it in the sword rack built into the bedstead, before going about the making of the bed with Bass' sheets and blankets and pillows.

  By the time the palace servants had returned with buckets of cold well water and lazily steaming caldrons of hot, two of the squires had brought up their lord's copper bathtub along with the small chest containing the lengths of cloth he used for washcloths and towels and the casket of fine milled soap that Sir Peter Fairley had had manufactured for him in York; the stuff did not lather very satisfactorily, to Bass's way of thinking, but neither did it take off skin and often burn it as did much of the contemporary so-called soap, and the scent of the fresh crushed lavender with which it was infused reminded him of the aftershave he once had used years ago in another world and time. The very innovative Sir Pete was now working to formulate a decent shampoo, but had not yet gotten it to the production stage, he had averred when last he and Bass had talked.

  "Bass, it ain't as if I ain't trying, see, but it's just so many hours in a day, too. And right often, too, I got plans to do suthin' of the next day and bang, I wakes up with a idea's been slipping away from me for weeks and I knows if I don't git on 'er pronto, she'll be gone under again."

  "See, from the time I's just a kid, I read whole bunches of books and all 'bout old guns, muzzleloaders and cap-and-ball revolvers and cannons and I don't know what-all. Then, after I come back from the Nam and was trucking and had me some money to spend, I bought some reproductions—both percussion and flintlock, too, and even a minychure cannon, a Napoleon twelve-pounder that shot a fifty-caliber ball—and shot 'em alone and at matches with a muzzleloaders' club. That's why I knows so much about old guns and how they was made and all: but Bass, old buddy, knowing it, having it somewheres in your head, and being able to remember it when you wants to is two diffrunt things . . . and it don't all the time work out and come up when I want it and what I need to remember when I want it."

  "Like them friction primers for cannons, see, I knows they had the bastards back around the time of the Civil War and I knows they was a whole lot simpler to make and use than what I done come up with here, but I can't up to right now remember just what the damn fuckers looked just like exac'ly or exac'ly how they worked, so I just had to play around till I come up with somethin' that I know is I too damn complicated and all, but at least it works mosta the time.

  "So you and me and Buddy, we'll just have to wash our hair with the soap until I gets the time to work on mixing up the right stuff to make shampoo. I got me a idea, too, on making up a batch of paste to go underneath armpits, stuff like they use to make before sprays and sticks come along; if I can put powdered talc in it, it might cut down on sweat-staining shirts and all. Then too, ol' Carey Carr, he ain't worried 'bout no shampoo, 'cause he's losing his hair fast, but he does want some kind of shaving soap that'll lather up stiff and thick, and I'll work on that one, too, whenever I got the time or can make time."

  When he had made use of the chamber pot, bathed, and been dried and draped in his silken nightshirt, Bass sat on the edge of the high bed, sipped at one of his cordials, and chatted with Yueh, wondering idly just to where the usually faithful Nugai had wandered off with the young knight who had guided them all up from the feasting hall. At length, when he had finished the sweet, spicy draught, he bade Yueh good night and slipped under the bed coverings, his damp hair bound up in a quilted silken drawstring cap. He composed himself and was teetering upon the very verge of sleep when he heard a soft noise just outside the door to this room, where Yueh and Nugai would sleep each night that they remained here.

  After a few moments, Nugai opened the door and padded in, trailed by a smaller, slighter figure draped in a voluminous hooded cloak. Since first he had been given to Bass' service by Reichsherzog Wolfgang, years back, Nugai's English had vastly improved, although his accents of German and his own harsh guttural language still surfaced on occasion, especially in his construction of phrases and sentences.

  His yellow-brown face split in a white-toothed smile, he said, "Pliss, Your Grace, custom iss here to giff guest bedwarmer. When to refuse I tried, the Irischer knight to misunderstand did and offered his own bed services for His Grace this night, so better I thought it to accept young woman. She called Ita. So long in coming we were because to wash I made her to do, as Nugai knows His Grace wants womans to be. Nugai also to examine her hair and body and find no fleas or lice on her, also no sores she hass and teeth not rotten. Cannot send her away, Your Grace, or Righ Ronan offended will be iss said."

  "Oh, all right, Nugai, put her over on the other side of the bed—it's wide enough to sleep me and four or five women in. But sleep I mean to do, and sleep only and that damned soon. Get you to sleep, too . . . unless you brought up more of them for you and Yueh," said Bass, a little exasperatedly.

  Again, he was almost asleep when he felt hesitant, starting and stopping movement on the rope-springed bed. Then a soft, warm body was pressed against his back and a tiny hand crept over his hip to se
ek between his legs and find what it sought there. He willed himself not to respond, but his body knew its needs far better than did his conscious mind. His duties in King Arthur's service had kept him much apart from Krystal, his wife, and, of recent months, whenever they had been together and had tried sex, she had not seemed to take much if any enjoyment from it, so it had often been unfulfilling for him as well. And so, hating himself, but uncontrollably driven, he rolled onto his back and drew her slim, light body up onto his own.

  Taking her head between his hands, he kissed her eyelids, then her silken-skinned throat, then at last her lips, soft as rose petals, teasing the sharp tip of her small tongue with his larger one. Leaving her head, his seeking hands found first her breasts, now pressed between them, then her creamy-soft buttocks, which he kneaded powerfully, as the kiss lengthened and deepened and both of her own hands kept up their maddening work between his trembling legs.

  At last, she tore her lips and mouth away from his, then slid down the length of his body, pulled up his nightshirt, and began to apply her tiny tongue and soft lips and little nibbling teeth to his penis and scrotum, all the while pulling at his chest and pubic hair, pinching his nipples and rolling them between her fingers.

  Bass' agony was exquisite. He felt as if he had been suspended in boiling lava, and it took the still functional, still rational part of his mind long seconds to realize that the man he could hear groaning . . . in pain? . . . was he. And when, after short, endless, eon-long minutes of suffering unbearable pleasure wrought upon his flesh by this so-welcome torturer, he ejaculated, it seemed that, he feared that, he prayed that, it never would cease, that all his blood and life and being would escape in pain and joy through his spasming urethra.

  But even after the last spasms had died away, the girl's mouth continued to enfold him, her tongue and lips now working gently, lingeringly, up and down and around, while her palms caressed his sweat-soaked, trembling body in circular motions. And slowly, ever so slowly, his utterly spent body began to recuperate and he felt a feathery tickle of desire returning to his damp loins.

  The girl became aware of these developments, too, and commenced again her earlier activities, but Bass pulled away from her in a swift, abrupt movement. Rearranging her slender body and limbs, he knelt between her splayed legs, grasped her buttocks in his two hands, and lifted her up to where his tongue and lips could have easy access to the tangle of curly blond hairs and the red-pink labia that they failed to conceal.

  Oblivious to the girl's moans—first soft, then loud and still louder—whimpers and, finally, piercing screams he busied lips and tongue and now-nibbling, now-pinching teeth upon her hot, wet flesh. When at last he lowered body to the bed again and drew his shoulders out from beneath her legs, she just lay there, eyes tight shut, gasping and breathing in great, ragged breaths, the entire length of her jerking with muscle spasms.

  He allowed her the time to recover to a point at which she was once more breathing almost normally and had all but ceased to jerk and gasp, then he once more lifted her flat buttocks, but this time to place a pillow beneath them. Her eyes came open—pools of tears misting over dark-blue irises—as she felt his weight upon her, and her mouth opened as if to speak, but by then he was slowly entering her body, damp and hot as live steam to his swollen flesh. Not until morning did he recall how she had whimpered and sobbed, gaspingly, that first time he entered her, tensing her body and sinking her blunt little nails into his shoulders.

  Bass was awakened at dawn by Nugai, who had borne in a tray which held Bass' specially made teapot, softly steaming with the familiar herbal tea that the talented Kalmyk brewed so artfully that Bass found it not much dissimilar to the green teas of his own world and time and relished it and its sovereign restorative powers.

  Grinning so widely that it seemed his broad face must surely split, the short, powerful man said, "Good girl, yess? His Grace much less tense seems today."

  "Mind your own misbegotten business, you grinning yellow ape!" snapped Bass, then he relaxed, smiling himself, and said, "Sorry, Nugai, I didn't mean it, you know that. Yes, a good girl. You know, since the Lady Krystal and I . . . well, I'd forgotten until last night just how good and satisfying it all can be. There is simply no substitute for good sex shared with a willing and responsive partner."

  Nugai nodded, still grinning, though not so widely as earlier. "Nugai will wake up girl and take her back below-stairs, yess?"

  Bass shook his head. "No, Nugai will go into the other rooms and waken my squires and tell them to set up the bathtub in here again, then Nugai or one of them will go slow and get servants up here with enough water for two baths. For food, his Grace will have bread, cold bacon, cheese, and some hard-boiled eggs, this gray dawn. Enough to feed His Grace, four squires, two pages, two Kalmyks . . . and one small female."

  As the door softly closed behind the cat-footed Kalmyk, Bass slipped from beneath the coverings and fumbled for the chamber pot . . . and that was when he took notice of the profusion of dried bloodstains adorning the front of his nightshirt.

  "What the hell . . . ?" he thought. "Did the little minx really bite me? Or did I . . . ? Wait a minute, that first time that I . . . that we . . . and she . . . God in heaven, don't tell me she was a virgin?"

  Affairs of his bladder forgotten, he raised his gown and found more dried blood—his public hair was matted with it—but not one break in the skin anywhere on him to account for it. That was when he gently peeled back the sheet and blankets from off the still-sleeping Ita. There were streaks and smears of blood on the backs of her thighs and on her lower buttocks, all of the lower parts of her body he could see, since she was sleeping curled up on her side. However, the sheet just beyond her and his third pillow looked as if someone had been slaughtering hogs on them.

  Weak-kneed, he sank down onto the edge of the bed once more. "My sweet Jesus," he muttered to himself, "what kind of a ravening beast has living in this world made of the Bass Foster that used to be? How old is this poor child, sixteen? Maybe only fifteen? And last night I . . . but wait a minute, if she was a sheltered virgin, how the hell did she have her fellatio down so pat, huh? How . . . ?"

  Then there came a knock upon the door, and he hurriedly drew the covers back up over the stirring, naked, bloody girl and over his own bloodstained lap as well, before he bade the knocker enter.

  Righ Ronan seemed a little puzzled by Bass's words, and had they two not been speaking English, Bass would have thought he had said the wrong thing in the Gaelic and Mediaeval French he was trying hard to learn quickly. He repeated himself.

  And Ronan replied, "Your Grace of Norfolk, I have no bonaghts, this is the principal reason why my borders are ever so vulnerable to the inroads of that unhung bandit and oath-breaker who chooses to style himself King of Ulaid these days. The Airgialla army, such as it is, is all in Connachta, with that of my patron, the Ard-Righ. I would have thought you knew, since you serve him too."

  With a sinking feeling, Bass began to wonder just what the over-jovial Brian VIII was up to with him and his squadron. Did the Ard-Righ really think that he was dumb enough to try to take on the whole Ulaid army—said to number a couple of thousand, foot and horse—with only an unsupported squadron of galloglaiches, a hundred and twenty Kalmyks, and six light field pieces? It would be suicide, pure and simple. Before he'd do it, he'd reboard his ships and head back to England, and if Arthur wouldn't have him for deserting Brian, he'd sail to the Empire and look up Emperor Egon and lay claim to his Mark of Velegrad and to bloody hell with Ulaid, Brian, Arthur, and their bloodthirsty games of statecraft.

  Later, after he had left the Righ, he voiced some of these same bitter thoughts to Wolfgang, Sir Ali, and Baron Melchoro, where he had found them all lounging in the reception room of his suite, dipping cups of wine from out a keg they had found and appropriated somewhere in the palace or the town below.

  "Be not rash, mein gut Freund und Vasall," said Wolfgang, shaking a big forefinger at Bass. "Brian a m
ost devious man most assuredly iss, but gut troops he still values, and to fritter them avay he vould not. No, a gut mind he knows you haf, Herzog Bass, and to use it he thinks you vill, faced with such an impossibility, militarily."

  Melchoro put in, "Bass, this Ulaid cannot be attacked from the sea without anticipation of far heavier losses of ships and men than we could endure, nor can we do more than hit-and-run raiding with our available land force, all mounted, as it is. Despite the impression left you by Brian's words, Airgialla has no available foot to support us. Therefore, we must devise some other means to achieve the ends desired by our employer. Yes?"

  Bass thought to himself, "Von Clausewitz of my world and time called war diplomacy by other means . . . or was it Bismarck? Anyway, if that's so, then isn't diplomacy war by other means? Maybe if we have no way of shooting this chicken-raiding fox, we can trap him or go into his den and smoke him out."

  To Sir Ali, he said, "Go find my squires, will you. Send one to fetch those two Italian knights up here, tell another to seek out Nugai, and yet another to try to find Sir Conn and Sir Colum. As for the fourth . . . Melchoro, do you know where Don Diego might be just now?"

  The column crossed from Airgialla into Ulaid northeast of Armagh, near to the southern shore of Lough Neagh, taking the road that skirted the lough and following its way through croplands and wastes. Although gates of small castles and hilltop palisades slammed shut and hastily armed men appeared on wall walks, with the smoke spirals of slowmatches plain to be seen, no one of the mounted men made any move toward these pitiful defenses, for this was not a raid they rode, but a diplomatic mission.

  When the road crossed another which led away to the north, they followed the new one, still skirting the lough, which looked gray and cold under a soggy, lowering sky full of rain clouds.