The Blooding

by Luke Sky Wachter

“I read about that in the Chatelain’s Defense,” she said, feeling suddenly excited. The name of such a door within a door was on the tip of her brain. It wasn’t a Postern or a Sally Port, she decided instantly; those were for sneaking out of the castle, or alternately going or ‘sallying’ forth to crush your enemies in strength. Then she snapped her fingers. She had it; the door within a door was called wicket, “It’s a Wicket Gate!”

  Feeling triumphant over recalling this seemingly unimportant bit of trivia, she grinned. At least, it had seemed fairly unimportant back when she had first read about it. Seeing it in person, even in the moonlit dark, gave the door an imposing menace completely at odds with the dry words on a dusty page of her sister’s book.

  With a creak halfway through its motion, the door swung open. “Who seeks entrance into the Fortress of Lord Richard Lamont, Overlord of the Greater Lamont Fief, Lord of Lamont Keep and surrounding Desmeses, and Master of over a dozen knights and over 500 sworn fighting men?!” said the important sounding voice of the wide set man standing in the Wicket doorway of Lamont Keep. If Falon was any judge, he sounded a little full of himself right at the moment—more than she would have expected for a man tasked with answering the door in the middle of the night.

  Illuminated by the torch he held, the man stood in the entrance with the flaming brand held high. Impressed almost despite herself, Falon took in the scene. The high castle—her head snapped back, and she quickly corrected herself, ‘Keep’ walls! The darkened passage behind the doorway was lit only by the torch in his hand. It was all quite dark, and strong, and more than a little majestic.

  Seeing the man’s tongue snake out to the side of his mouth to snag a small bit of flyaway whisker, Falon’s rising sense of stepping into a folktale withered. That was just disgusting, she shuddered. Why a man would chew on his beard as this man was now doing was also beyond her.

  “Well, what’s your name lad?” the man in the Wicket doorway demanded gruffly, “I haven’t got all day.” The bit of beard in his mouth seemed to escape him, and his tongue shot out in a sweeping motion to once again shove the bit of flyaway at the edge of his mustache into his mouth. This time though, he didn’t seem to get enough of the mustache in his mouth because his tongue swept out twice more, even though the bit of beard was still in his mouth. Finally satisfied, he just stood there looking down on her and…chewing on his beard.

  When he started tapping his foot and scowling, Falon snapped back to reality. Realizing she hadn’t introduced herself, she coughed and suppressed the urge to blush.

  Her mind scrambling, she quickly opened her mouth, “Falon Rankin, the uh, Second Heir of Squire Justin Rankin of, uh, Twin Orchards,” she said, feeling pleased that she hadn’t fumbled it too bad.

  “Falon Rankin of, uh, Twin Orchards,” he blinked at her, as if unable to believe that was all, and clearly unimpressed with her verbal stumbling.

  This time Falon did color, her face flushing. Why she felt embarrassed right at the moment was beyond her, she only just met this man and anyone who treated his beard this way had no right to look down on…She shuddered as he lost the bit of flyaway in his mouth and decided to switch sides, his tongue swiping out to snare a bit of mustache on the opposite side of his face.

  When I have a husband, such gross behavior will be completely forbidden, she decided in an instant, stamping her foot for emphasis.

  Then man’s eyes narrowed and she blinked. “I’m the,” at this point she resisted the urge to say ‘uh’ again with all her might and swallowed instead, “Leader of the East Wick and West Wick Militia.”

  “That’s all?” he asked with such a droll lack of concern that Falon frowned.

  Falon shrugged, her actions saying louder than words. What more does this man want? she wondered.

  “What, no claims to greatness through distant family ties?” he all but scoffed in disbelief, “at the very least you must have some stirring nickname?”

  Stung by his words, Falon scowled and switched her gaze to the ground. The last thing she needed was to offend the man and be unable to complete her task.

  “I suppose they also call me the Boar Knife sometimes, on account as I happened to kill a boar single-handed,” she reluctantly admitted, her voice no higher than a loud mumble. Even as she said it, Falon could not quite believe she was actually owning up to that stupid nickname. It was such a terrible and wretched thing to have attached to her person! If anyone ever found out Falon was impersonating a fictitious brother, she would never be able to live it down.

  Rolling his eyes, the man stood aside and gestured for her to enter the main gate his arms moving into a flourish. She couldn’t tell if he was being mocking or if this was standard behavior for welcoming guests into the Keep, although she suspected it was a little bit of both.

  “Duncan Weatherbee,” the man said as her foot caught on the raised door stop.

  “What?” she asked almost falling flat on her face, only able to arrest her forward movement by grabbing hold of the door frame.

  “Of the Weatherbee Village, Weatherbees,” he said, shaking his head and closing the door behind her before throwing the cast iron bar up to relock the gate. Turning to lead the way deeper into the fortress, he didn’t look back to see if she was following; he just held his torch high.

  “Right,” she said, and then it dawned on her that the man had just told her his name, “are you a Gate Keeper then, Mister Duncan Weatherbee?” she asked, hurrying to catch up and just hoping she’d got his style as a mister down right. As she had just learned with the Dirty Maid, things out here were most certainly not the same as back home in the Wicks, By the same token, things didn’t always fit into the neat little holes presented in the family books.

  “The Night Gatesman,” the man corrected gruffly, still moving forward with long strides.

  Making sure to keep at least half her attention on her guide, Falon could not help but turn the rest on the Keep itself. She had never actually been inside an actual Keep before, only ever a couple of fortified Manors. That had been back when one of the nearby Landed Knights would invite Papa and the other nearby Landed Gentry to a feast, or get-together of some kind.

  Unfortunately, back then Falon had been considered too young to go to most of them. She had been forced to watch with jealous eyes whenever Papa and Christie would go with her brothers but she, Falon, had to stay home.

  “Eat your heart out, Krisy,” she muttered under her breath as the corridor took a sharp turn. Most of the walls were covered with banners and flags sporting the coat of arms of House Lamont. However, one of the smaller banners was not hanging right, and behind it she spotted a murder hole.

  Eyes widening with fear-tinged awe, she quickly looked around again. Taking in the strategically placed wall hangings, she started counting on her fingers the number of openings for archers, slingers or crossbowmen. Quickly running out of fingers—and then realizing she was lagging behind—she hurried to catch up.

  A smaller set of ironbound oak doors were at the terminus of the hall with two guards standing beside them.

  “The hall is shaped like a ‘V’ so that anyone breaking down the front gate with a battering ram is forced to abandon it before reaching the inner doors,” Duncan Weatherbee, of the Weatherbee Village Weatherbees said, speaking out of the blue.

  Surprised to be addressed by the wide-bodied man, Falon was more than willing to learn everything she could about the Keep. After all, she decided, how many chances will I have to see a real, live Fortress like Lamont Keep?

  “It’s quite grand,” she wholeheartedly agreed. It was grand, if a little dour looking with all the cut gray stone. And even though as far as she was concerned the little jog in the middle of the hall that the man was calling a ‘V’ was far too gentle to really qualify for the title, she held her tongue. One simply does not go into someone’s house and insult them. That was the kind of thing that feuds were built on.

  “The Lord personally trains with his armsmen, to assu
re the strength of their arms and the skill of their blades,” the Gatesman said pointedly.

  Looking back at them men standing guard over the inner doors even in the middle of the night, Falon was struck by their perfectly polished armor. The way it gleamed in the torchlight gave them a slightly menacing look, and she shivered appreciatively. This is what warriors are meant to look like, she supposed with a lingering look at their wide shoulders and thick muscular arms.

  The Gatesman cleared his throat, and she realized she had been caught staring. Ducking her head in embarrassment, she ignored the warriors, except for a last look out the side of her eye at the gauntleted hands attached to the wooden shafts of their steel headed spears.

  “This way,” the Gatesman said, producing a large, cast bronze key and inserting it into the giant lock on the inner doors.

  Falon was surprised that the door was locked with these two guards stuck on the outside. What if they needed to use the water closet? She figured she might as well ask.

  “Why bother having two guards stationed outside a locked door?” she inquired somewhat hesitantly.

  The Gatesman who had been in the process of pulling open the door, stopped partway and looked over his shoulder.

  “They stand the last part of the outer defenses of the Lord. If anyone should be so foolish as to try and break and open these doors, they can give the hue and cry, selling their lives dearly in the service of their sworn Lord,” he said flatly.

  “Oh,” Falon replied taken aback. She had only been thinking about the inconvenience of it all for the guards. As a part of the Keep defenses it did make a sort of gruesome sense. She also took note of the way he had basically said the guards were dead if anyone made it in this far.

  She was glad that the Rankins didn’t have the sort of enemies that they needed a fortress to live inside, just to protect them while they slept. Clearly the business of being a Lord was less romance and more grim, gritty reality than she had assumed back when she was younger. She wasn’t sure if she liked learning that part.

  Reminding herself that she was a fifteen year old woman, not a snot-nosed little child anymore, she quickly adjusted her face into what she hoped was an impassive mask. It didn’t matter if real life was as gritty and mud-splattered, just like the back of her clothes right now after falling down in the wet dirt outside the gate. The important thing was to understand the reality of things, and make sure that her sisters and brother back home were taken care of. If that meant pretending to be a boy, riding—or, in her case, walking—off to war and learning how to avoid the advances of prostitutes, or dealing with dour-looking Gatesmen, then so be it.

  With these thoughts in the front of her mind, Falon followed the Gatesman through the last doorway into the Keep proper. She was determined to be as quiet and proper as possible. Her hope was to remain pass through here relatively unnoted and unnoticed and disappear back into the midst of the village militia.

  Chapter 15: Reporting in: Seeking the Lord

  Keeping her mouth firmly together and refusing to gape at the lavishly appointed foyer, or the open doors of the great hall directly in front of her, Falon simply and deliberately lifted a single eyebrow.

  Hoping it made her appear world wise and sophisticated, instead of rough and uneducated, Falon did her best imitation of a cocky, boyish strut. This, combined a stiff refusal to leave her mouth hanging open, she hoped would be enough to make a good first impression. She didn’t even make it four steps before she quickly abandoned the strut as not only inappropriate to the situation, but a completely dumb thing to do in the first place. Feeling pretty stupid for having even attempted it, and shaking her head over how foolish she felt for those first two steps, she wondered why the boys even bothered to act that way in the first place?

  Taking in the deep, chestnut varnish of the antique furniture lining the walls—at least, she assumed it was antique—she smiled and took a deep breath. Savoring the smell of old wood and varnish, she decided that this was much more like what she had been expecting.

  Elegantly carved desks and high back chairs lined the walls of the foyer, along with a beautiful bench with swan heads etched into the arms and an elaborate wing structure in place of the traditional, smooth backrest. And oh, the tapestries! They came in all sorts of hues and colors, with weaves and thread so fine they almost took her breath away.

  But it was the silver candlesticks set into the walls resting on some of the furniture that really drove home how much higher above her family the Lamonts sat. Her sister’s single, cherished candlestick would have looked small, stunted and definitely out of place amongst just the ones she could see here in the foyer.

  All of which was to say nothing of the greenish-tinged mage flames flickering above every other candlestick set into wall. The candles adorning the remainder without mage flames had been deliberately sculpted into fanciful images of Knights, Lords, Ladies and ferocious-looking beasts. When even the half-melted candles came equipped with a masterwork of paint and fine sculpting, Falon realized she was a much longer ways from Twin Orchards than a few days’ march.

  As it was, she snapped out of it when she looked over and saw that she had been lagging behind. A few extra-long steps and she once again caught up even with the Night Gatesman.

  Stepping up to the large double doors leading into the main hall of the keep, the Gatesman stopped and rapped the door.

  “A visitor from the greater Fief for his Lordship,” declared Mister Weatherbee, once again sounding more pompous and self-important than anyone Falon was used to dealing with. Even Madesto, the Lord’s Reeve, never sounded half so full of himself.

  Shaking her head while the Night Gatesman wasn’t looking, Falon peered into the main hall of the keep with fascination, wondering what new exciting sight would catch her eye. To her surprise, she saw people sleeping in, on, around and under the long tables of the main hall, as well as just about every patch of ground space on the stone floor.

  Seeing the same silver candlesticks on the walls inside the hall as were out in the foyer, Falon observed that the mage flames were much dimmer in this room.

  After the knock, a number of heads lifted in the room, only for most of them to be lowered once again as their owner lay back down. One side of the room was filled with grown men and their accoutrements of war, while the other contained boys of various ages.

  As she watched, one of the boys made for a chamber pot set against the wall and, after removing the lid, proceeded to lean his head against the wall and make water. Averting her eyes, once again she had observed to herself how lacking of manners most males of the species seemed to be.

  A boy of twelve or thirteen detached himself from his bedroll approached the door when it became apparent that no one else was interested in responding.

  “Yes, Duncan?” the boy asked, sighing like a martyr.

  “That’s Gatesman to you, Page,” the Gatesman frowned, “and take this Squire’s son to see the Lord,” he finished on an imperious note before turning around and returning the way he had come.

  Looking over her shoulder, Falon watched as the Night Gatesman headed out the inner doors—presumably to return to his post—without so much as a second look in her direction.

  When she turned back around Falon saw the boy frowning up at her and tapping his heel against the floor.

  “If you’re ready, Mister,” he said with a cheeky tone in his voice, as if she were going out of her way to inconvenience him. Like that was the sole reason she tramped over here in the middle of the night.

  “You’re a short one aren’t you, Page,” she responded, and since she didn’t like the manner in which he was speaking to her, she decided that twitting him about his height was the ideal response.

  The Page scowled. “Thanks for rubbing it in,” he snapped, pushing past her even though there was more than enough room to go around and making his way past her. Shrugging to herself, Falon turned to follow.

  Grabbing a candlestick off one of the
antique tables, the Page turned around and headed right back the way he had come. With a sigh of her own, Falon went to follow.

  Stepping down the relatively clear path down the middle of the floor, the Page led her to the opposite end of the main hall. Her nose wrinkling at the odor of so many unwashed male bodies, Falon just did her best to avoid stepping on anything or, in a few cases, anyone.

  Pushing open the door at the end of the hall, the Page led into a darkened hall. “This way,” the Page said gruffly, or at least, as gruffly as a boy whose voice suddenly breaks at the end of his sentence was able to. Suppressing a grin, Falon tried to solemnly nod her head instead.

  Still, despite the antics of the little Page, Falon’s eyes were devouring the various rooms and stone walls they passed. She feared that come tonight—at least, assuming she was able to complete her task and return to her spot under the lead wagon—her dreams were going to be filled with scenes from the Keep.

  She almost shivered with anticipation, until she remembered the main hall full of unwashed bodies. After that she just hoped that that particular scene was stricken from whatever dreamscape she happened to fall into.

  She fingered ‘her’ Shri-Kriv, more for something to do with her hands than because of anything else as they walked down the darkened corridors of the Keep. The candle’s flickering mage flame made sudden and disturbing shadows on the wall as they passed each one.

  Seeing a particularly nasty looking shadow seemingly jump at her, she gasped and stumbled backwards her hand clutching the pommel of the Shri-Kriv in a death grip.

  “Don’t worry, the mage flames are always like that,” observed the Page boy.

  “Like what?” she said more sharply than she had intended. Feeling more than a little embarrassed at literally jumping at shadows.

  “Casting spooky shadows,” the boy said with a shrug, “don’t worry about it none; they cast a light different from normal candles.”

  “How do you know that?” she asked, feeling curiosity outweigh her embarrassment.