The Painting (Rise of the Witch Guard Book 2)

by Luke Sky Wachter

  “I’ll draw up a statement with my signature and send it over for your perusal,” Falon said, feeling sick at the heartless words of the Prince. She hadn’t cared for the Baron one bit, but this went beyond that into something colder than a snake and darker than a moonless night, and she wanted no part of it. But that choice had been taken from her; silence was not an option, and one crossed a Prince at her own peril.

  “Excellent, I’ll let you know if there is need for any changes after you send it to me,” William said, his eyes boring into hers.

  Falon nodded her head jerkily but felt compelled to say one thing, to make stand on a single point, if only for her own piece of mind, “I will only be able to comment on what I saw when I came in here. It all points to an attack by the savages, but I came late,” she warned.

  The Prince looked dissatisfied but then shrugged and nodded his agreement. “So you did.”

  Falon sighed and took a step back, searching for escape and freedom from this tent.

  “It will suffice,” he then gave her a searching look, “your assistance in this matter will help me greatly. So…” he said leadingly, his voice heavy with a freight of meaning, “is there anything I can do for you?”

  “All I want is return to my men,” Falon said, taking another step back.

  “Surely you aspire to more than that,” William sounded put out, as if he’d expected something more from her.

  “My current position is higher than I’d ever hoped aspire; I would not dare to presume,” she said carefully. She was very much aware that thwarting the Prince in anything could be a very deadly proposition. That was true before this incident with the Baron, and doubly so now.

  The Prince seemed to find something in what she’d just said to his liking because the tension left his neck and he appeared much happier, if a little on the thoughtful side, as he waved her toward the exit.

  “Another man might think you had something to do with furnishing the savage his weapon…I mean, lurking around outside the tent as you have,” the Prince said and Falon froze, hardly daring even to breath, “but fortunately for you, you assisted me in the forest, so I think a little benefit of the doubt is in order. If you had designs on the lives of the leadership of our Kingdom, you’d never again have such an opportunity as you did last night.”

  Falon felt as if she’d forgotten how to breathe as sweat literally broke out on her forehead.

  “You may go out, and pray cry out the guard when you do,” he said negligently, “I have much to think on.”

  The gasp that escaped her upon hearing those words filled her with the sweetest tasting air her lungs had ever tasted.

  “With your leave,” Falon said, for the first time in a long time almost forgetting herself and bobbing a curtsey instead of the bow of a man. It was the instinctive response of a young girl in trouble with the ultimate authority figure in her life coming back to her at the most inopportune moment. Then she was turning and running out the tent.

  Fortunately, if he noticed the slight bend in her knees before she caught herself, the Prince gave no indication and she escaped the tent with her life, liberty—and new, dark secret—intact.

  She paused a moment within the shadow of the tent opening, her face turned down, her shoulders shuddering and tears of mixed fear and relief rolling down her face. She was certain that if her muscles weren’t so sore and abused from the previous day’s activity, she would have been wracked with tremors.

  No one would ever know how close she came to death inside that tent. No one could ever know. Death, or worse—so much worse—had stared at her with the eyes of a noble Prince of the realm, and Falon rued the day she ever believed in him: the enchanting, charming, noble Prince of the Realm. The Prince who had embarked on a beautiful Flower War for the love of a Princess in Pink was a lie.

  She knew the truth.

  She knew, because the dagger in the belly of the Lord of the Frost March was bronze with a carved wooden handle, but dagger she’d seen sticking out of the good Baron when he fell across the threshold of his tent had been of plain wood with an iron blade.

  Quickly wiping away the tension-relieving tears on her face, she raised a tremulous voice in the hue and cry. As the Prince had said the Guards need summoning, for whatever little justice they would deliver.

  Chapter 47: Smythe and unexpected gifts

  “Mister Falon, good, you are here,” Sir Smythe said as she scratched on the outside of his tent before stepping inside.

  “Just following orders, Captain,” Falon said formally, glad that the events of yesterday with the murdered Baron were finally behind her. She had never felt more like a church mouse than when answering questions for the Knights and Lords tasked by the Prince with the investigation of the Baron’s death, and never had she been so glad as when she’d been freed to escape their clutches and go back to hide inside her own tent—and release more than a few additional, silent, tears into her bedding.

  “I just wanted to touch bases to see how your men are doing, as well as give you my personal thanks for the way you and your men came through.” At these words Falon smiled perfunctorily, feeling like a fraud and murderer, after so many of her people were hurt. “You saved a lot of lives two days ago and I know my thanks are belated, but as you know the camp was in something of an uproar yesterday what with the murder of the Baron,” Smythe said. “Still, thank you all the same for your actions; hard as I know they were, they saved lives.”

  Falon’s expression turned wooden. “The remainder of my band was overrun,” Falon observed distantly.

  “Your band?” Smythe said, mulling the words contemplatively as if he found something mildly distasteful about it. “Let me remind you that ‘your band’ is a part of the greater Swan Battalion and that their actions—your actions, which of course included sacrifice,” he lifted a gauntleted hand, “saved the lives of many more than were lost. The number of wounded men we would have lost permanently, if we’d been forced to concede the field of battle, are easily twice those who fell with you.”

  “Even still,” Falon protested, “if I hadn’t gotten lost in the woods, or had I given a different order, maybe we would have arrived earlier. Maybe more men would be alive. Maybe—”

  “Maybe this and maybe that,” Smythe said scornfully, “we don’t live in ‘maybe’s’ and ‘what if’s’ and ‘could have beens.’ One thing you need to learn, if you’re going to be a warrior by profession, is that losses are going to happen. We don’t live in a perfect world and though your detachment was overrun by superior forces, from where I’m sitting you did a danged fine job of it, Lieutenant—a very fine job.”

  “Thank you for the words, Sir,” Falon said, looking away.

  “I see I haven’t yet reached you,” Smythe said disgustedly. “So how about this? For your heroic action in attacking an enemy force with your vastly smaller unit, thereby saving the greater part of your Battalion, I have recommended you as a candidate for Knighthood.”

  Falon had started to open her mouth for the usual dull platitudes but this last was beyond anything she had expected.

  “What?” she said with unmitigated shock.

  “You heard right,” Smythe said in a no-nonsense voice.

  “You think I should be a Knight…after that?” she said with stunned disbelief.

  “Mark my words: I was recommended for Knighthood over a dozen times before the Prince finally roped me in for the job. A Lord doesn’t like to elevate a commoner—and yes, I know you’re lower gentry—but they don’t like to raise a commoner to the spurs without the recommendation of half a dozen other Lords,” Smythe said, sitting back with a smile now that he could see she was paying him full attention. “Sure, our Lord here is a Prince so anything is possible, but I seriously doubt he’ll make you a Knight just on my say-so—even after your little stunt in the forest.”

  Falon blinked uncomprehendingly.

  “Oh yes, I’ve heard of that little escapade. But even that by itself—I don
’t know all the details yet, but I soon will—won’t be enough on its own. So I wouldn’t start worrying about where to buy your plate mail, or how to find a heavy warhorse just yet,” the battle-tested Captain said mirthfully.

  “So you didn’t really think I earned a Knighthood in saving the Battalion,” Falon said with a vast feeling of relief. A woman sneaking into a spot as a Lieutenant—a position open to noble and commoner—and even that of a Squire, whose main job was ‘supposed’ to be simply polishing armor and training for combat at her age was one thing.

  But being elevated to the Knighthood meant she would become a member of the peerage—again, at its lowest rung—in her own right. Such would bring all the rights, duties, privileges and obligations associated with the station. That would be another thing entirely, and it was something far less easily swept under the rug than what little she’d done or accomplished so far. She breathed a little easier at the realization that she was in no danger of actually becoming a Knight.

  “Now, I didn’t say that,” Smythe frowned and pointed a finger at her, “what I said was that without extensive training or a blood connection, you’d need upward of a half dozen to a full dozen recommendations, and a Lord that thinks highly of thee, before they’ll take the chance and make you a Knight. I just put in your first recommendation.”

  “So…you do think I should be a Knight,” Falon said, fear flashing through her middle as her relief evaporated.

  The Captain gave her an exasperated look. “Give it a few years and I think maybe you’ll be worthy, but for right now all you’re being is a thorn in my side. Is that clear?” the Captain growled.

  “Yes, Sir,” Falon said bracing to attention.

  “Stop your moping and straighten up your act, Squire,” Sir Smythe said, calling upon his full authority as a Knight to glare down at her.

  “But Sir!” Falon protested weakly. Her hardheaded desire to make sure he knew the truth about her failures withered and died under his implacable look.

  “I’ll tell you when you mess up so bad you can’t be trusted with command of fighting men, never you fear,” Smythe said flatly. “I’ll probably even take a few stripes off your back to help you remember the day for the rest of your life. So rest assured,” he continued, his eyes boring pitilessly into her own, “today is not that day. You made a hard choice and did half decent job of it. So. Let. It. Go. Hear me?”

  “Yes Captain—I mean, yes, Sir Smythe,” Falon said, once again feeling very small in the face of the man’s overpowering attitude. But at the same time it almost felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. It couldn’t all be her fault if the Captain not only knew what she’d done, but actually took responsibility for putting her in command and thought she’d done well.

  She loosed a breath that left her entire body feeling weak and tingling from the palpable release of tension.

  “First I want you to tell me everything that happened the day of the battle, and then we’re going to work on a series of joint exercises. It’s clear to me after speaking with you that what we need to work on is merging your half of the Swans back into the rest of the battalion,” Smythe said seriously.

  “Merging the men in my company?” Falon asked in surprise. “But…why, Sir—I mean, why now?” she continued rambling, despite the Captain’s darkening face.

  “Under your leadership the men in your detachment have proven themselves steady in battle and thus worth investing in. More importantly, before now we had limited time to train and only a few experienced under-officers to do that training,” Smythe said, meeting her gaze without a hint of shame.

  Falon tried to hide her surprise at the revelations. First came anger at the idea that her men—and thus her personally, along with her command team—hadn’t been worth the effort before today. Then came outrage at such a callous way of seeing them.

  “With this battle, that has changed. Not only do we now have the time to train them as more than just a scratch company, but since we broke these Ice Raiders we also have the equipment to outfit them. Swords, shields and armors are now available to us in quantities we didn’t have before,” Smythe explained.

  Outrage was grudgingly replaced with greed at the idea of better arming her men so they would have an improved chance of living through the next battle. But the Captain rolled on relentlessly, uncaring—if not unaware—of the emotions flitting across her face.

  “And if not in our hands as of this moment, at least we have the goods for trade and coins to purchase those weapons and still have profit left over to fill our own pockets. We might even manage to send a few coins back to Swan Keep.”

  “Send coins back?” Falon said with surprise. The idea of lining her own pockets with the fruits of her recent labors wasn’t hard to swallow. After all, she’d earned it, but sending coins back to the Keep had never occurred to her. She had only ever thought before about coins flowing one way: to them while they were out here.

  “His Lordship isn’t doing this out of the goodness of his heart,” the Captain said sardonically. “Like any good vassal pressed by the son of his overlord, he provided troops and now, having provided them, he could have left us to rise and fall with the good graces of the Prince. Our only resources would likely then be scrounged off the battlefield leavings,” Smythe laughed at her look of shock, “but he didn’t have to do that. He didn’t have to provide coins for arms and equipment, yet he did. He could have just taken the break on his taxes to the crown until we were all used up, and then mustered another Company if the Prince pressed him. That he didn’t do this shows that he cares about the Swan Battalion and the men he sent out here.”

  Falon had to bite her tongue on any one of half a dozen choice replies which were coiled there. The most prominent point was that she and her half of the Battalion had seen precious little in the way of coins or other support on the long trek up to this frozen wasteland. They had already been scrounging and grifting for everything they hadn’t carried away from the Flower War.

  “Now, like any Lord who does more than he must, Richard Lamont wants a return on his investment,” the Captain said sternly. “This is why you and your men will set aside one fourth of your plunder, to send home to his Lordship, and another fourth for new armor and equipment.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to be very popular with the men,” Falon said with concern. “We’re already giving half of what we took to the Prince.”

  “Turn them upside down and shake them until the coins fall out of their pockets,” Smythe said grimly. “A man pays his due to his liege-lord—in our case, the Great Swan.”

  Falon noted he hadn’t said anything about giving the Prince his full and complete share. “Alright,” Falon said, struggling to hide her doubt at the fairness of the situation, let alone her ability to carry out the Captain’s orders.

  “Now, tell me about your sojourn in the woods,” Smythe said.

  Falon blinked and started to relay the tale. She had gotten to the part where they were through the woods and meeting the Prince, and had backtracked to her part of the battle and how she was sending Ernest to tell the Captain of her attempt to take the enemy in the rear when they were interrupted.

  Smythe’s nephew, Doolie, cleared his throat.

  “Yes?” Smythe said irritably.

  “A message from the Prince,” the youth piped in, shooting her a superior look.

  Falon looked away to hide her eye-roll at this attempted bit of petty, young, male one-ups-man-ship.

  “Well, bring it here, Doolie,” Smythe growled after a short moment of inaction on the part of his page.

  “Sorry, Uncle,” Doolie said, jumping and then hurried over.

  “Sir Smythe, or Captain, is good enough when we’re entertaining,” Smythe said scornfully.

  “Sorry, Sir,” Doolie ducked his head shame-facedly.

  “Children these days,” Smythe shook his head and turned to her. “Not that you’re technically outside the household,” he said flashin
g her a false smile, “but it’s good for them to learn the right way first. Even,” he turned to growl at his nephew, “if you have to pound it into their heads through their ears.”

  “Of course, Sir,” Falon said neutrally.

  “Well, give it here,” the Captain said when the page, his nephew, started hovering at his shoulder. Snatching up the scroll, the Captain checked the seal before breaking it. Falon watched as his lips moved while he was reading and she saw the delighted smile, as well as a flash of anger, cross his face before he froze.

  “You know what’s in here?” he barked, looking up at her with a dangerous gaze, causing Falon’s eyes to widen.

  “Me, Sir?” she asked in surprise then hastily answered the question, “No, Sir. Not a clue.”

  “Doolie, my map,” Smythe growled, standing up and going to his campaign desk where he swept everything set there onto the floor.

  The nephew grabbed a map case and hurried over to unroll it across the desk.

  Smythe traced his fingers over the map before leaning back with a loud harrumph. Out of the blue he thumped the man with the Prince’s scroll.

  “He means to place me in the sticks?!” he all but shouted.

  “Captain,” Falon said, wide-eyed and fighting the urge to back away from this powerful old war veteran, “what are you saying?”

  “It seems that because of my invaluable service to the Crown—it actually says that,” Smythe turned to her, his face dark with barely-contained emotion, “I’m to be pensioned off.”

  “What?! He can’t do that!” Falon cried.

  Smythe chuckled darkly. “Your defense of me does you credit—a credit I wasn’t prepared to extend you before this moment,” he said, looking at her with narrowed eyes. “So…you’re saying you know nothing of any of this? You didn’t plot this out with the Prince, or ask him for some boon?”