The Outlaw King: The Line of Kings Trilogy Book One

by Craig Saunders

  The witch of the Pale Forest wore a dark cloak about her person that looked too warm for the sun high in the sky. Winter had long since passed and spring was on its way to summer. The Thane didn’t wonder about the cloak. It was too heavy but a witch’s business was her own.

  ‘Then come inside with all haste. My wife sickens while we talk.’

  The Thane thrust the door open and took the steps two at a time. The witch followed quietly behind.

  At the top of the stairs there was a door leading to the bed chambers. The Thane held the door open for the witch and she entered, spreading her cloak wide to reveal a coat holding assorted implements of what looked like torture. There were callipers and scalpels, small vials of disgusting looking preparations, scissors and tongs, and wickedly curved needle of bone. She took off her cloak and the coat underneath fair shimmered with the silvery glint of hideous devices. She laid her cloak on a chair and turned to the Thane.

  ‘Leave me with her.’

  ‘But she is my wife.’

  ‘I work alone. That you must have heard.’

  The Thane looked longingly at his wife, where she lay on the bed, bleeding out in quiet misery. For those that have ever seen a child birthed, they will know that until the baby is safely in his mother’s arms there is nothing but misery and a gnawing fear, hope abandoned until the deed is done. Rare is the birth that starts in joy, although to be fair to Mother Nature the act preceding is often done with a hint of a smile, and perhaps a cheery slap on the behind. But this was childbirth, and it was another matter all together. The love that Dandred’s wife felt for him was all but forgotten in her pain, and by then there was little in her face but forlorn hope, and not a little fear.

  ‘Very well. Do what you must, but save my wife,’ implored the Thane.

  ‘I will do what I can, though I promise nothing,’ said the witch testily.

  She ushered the Thane to the door and closed it behind her.

  The Thane paced up and down the hallway outside his bedchambers. His leather boots clacked on the wooded floor and he could hear nothing from inside. He put his ear against the door but could discern not even a groan from the chamber.

  An hour passed, and then two, but fear of the witch, and fear for his wife, and their unborn child, unmanned him. He was loath to enter the bedchamber, and whatever horrors were there. He could not face it. He would not.

  Then, just as he was beginning to convince himself that his wife must have died inside, he heard the first gasp of a wail, then, the wail that followed it. He burst inside to find his wife sitting up, the blood covering the whole of the bed, and an infant, tiny, held in the witch’s arms.

  ‘Out man! I have not finished yet! Your wife still bleeds from the inside. Out I say!’

  Before a smile could reach his lips; a baby son! he worried for his wife. Reluctantly he shut the door on the witch and his pale wife, and thought about his son. It was his first son, and he knew he would love him all the more. But not should he lose his wife. That would be a pain unbearable.

  He waited and waited. The only sound from inside the room the wailing of the child. The child cried incessantly and he wanted to go in to give it a father’s comfort, to hold him in his arms. He wanted to hold them both in his arms but the witch told him to stay outside so he stayed.

  Eventually the witch came out holding his baby in her arms. She smiled sadly at him.

  ‘Is she alright?’ the Thane asked, holding his arms out to take his baby son.

  ‘She is sleeping. She has lost much blood but I think she will live. The sheets will need changing when she wakes and I will return in a ten day to remove the stitches I have placed inside her. She will live, I think.’

  ‘Thank you! You have saved both their lives and saved my only son.’

  ‘It was not for nothing. There is the payment.’

  ‘What payment could you ask? All my wealth would not be enough for all you have given me this day,’ the Thane said gratefully, an almost childish grin on his face.

  ‘That will not be necessary. I ask only this: that you make me the finest cauldron, with your own hands. That is the price. And I give you this advice. The next time you ask for my assistance, I beg of you do not ask. The price that time would be too high for even you to pay. Remember this. Do not ask again or you will weep tears for a lifetime.’

  But the Thane was so happy that day that he paid no heed to the witch’s warning.

  After a ten day, the Thane had delivered to the witch a cauldron of the finest making. Together, working with the blacksmith, he had wrought a fine cauldron from the finest iron, and emblazoned upon it his own crest of a dancing horse. The cauldron was delivered and the Thane thought nothing more of it.

  Ten years passed as though in a dream. The Thane brought his son up to be a good man. He loved his wife and son all the more for nearly having lost them, and the Thane was a happy man. His people loved him and the Thane became, if anything, even kinder to them. His council was wise and the decisions he made were for the good of the people, never for himself.

  One day his wife spoke softly to him in the bed chamber.

  ‘I am with child again,’ she said, and Dandred thought his heart would burst with happiness. For all the time he spent loving his wife and son he dearly wanted another child.

  But for both of them there was a hint of fear. They tried to ignore it, as couples are wont to do, but it festered within, until they could not lay side by side anymore. The Thane took to leaving his wife alone at nights, and often sat reading to his son, even after the boy had fallen asleep. He almost forgot the gift given to him. But by then, he had forgotten much.

  Months passed and the Thane watched his wife grow large with child.

  Then, on the ninth month, when his wife was about to go into labour, a messenger came riding in.

  ‘My lord, you must come quick. I fear there has been a terrible tragedy. It is your son, Theodric. He has fallen from his horse.’

  Loath to leave his wife as she was soon to go into labour, he mounted his own horse. Sick with worry he rode out to the plains, where he found his son, head bandaged and feverish. His horsemen surrounded the young heir on a litter.

  ‘He is unconscious, my lord. He fell while riding this morning. I rode as hard as I could to find you. I cannot make him wake.’

  The Thane did not know what to do. He could not leave his wife for long.

  ‘Bring my son back home,’ he said, sorrow breaking his once strong voice. The boy’s face was deathly pale.

  He had an idea then, and perhaps the idea had been there all along. No one but the Thane, and the gods if they are truly wise, will ever know. There is one more person who knew, and she knew from the very beginning, from the day Theodric born. She was the one who handed the mewling babe back into his mother’s arms.

  Dandred understood what he must do. He would find the witch.

  Mere hours passed before the horsemen returned home with the boy. Theodric arranged in his bed, where he shook from fever, and the Thane’s wife entered labour for the second time in her young life. The finest physicians could find no physical malady with his son and told those waiting that his time was short. It looked as though Theodric had been doomed to death, from the day he was born.

  The Thane, furious that this should come to pass on that day, which should have been full of love and joy, did the only thing he could think to do. He left his family alone, and with tears of sadness wetting his face, and sorrow clouding his heart, rode out to the Pale Forest.

  For hours, he rode, mind blank with grief for his young son, whom he had nearly lost so long ago.

  His back was sore when he arrived, and unconsciously he knuckled the small area above his rump as he led his stallion deeper into the forbidding forest. The sunlight seemed to fade from up above, and just as he thought he would never find the witch in time, there she was, waiting for him upon a fallen tree, a deer on her right, eating berries from her hand.

  The cauldron he
had made for her sat beside her feet.

  Before he could speak she bade him dismount.

  ‘My Lord. I told you once. I beg of you not to ask me.’

  ‘My son lies dying. I need your skills. You must save him.’

  ‘I cannot. I fear what affects him is beyond even my skills to heal.’

  ‘There must be something you can do.’

  ‘The price is too high.’

  ‘I will pay any price.’

  ‘Truly? There are some prices too high for even a man of your wealth to pay.’

  ‘I will pay any price.’

  ‘Then take this to the side of your wife. I will meet you there.’

  The Thane rode on, holding the cauldron to one side.

  When he reached his home, as before, the witch was waiting at the doorstep for him.

  ‘The price always comes after the deed. You know this. I beg you one last time. Do not ask this of me.’

  ‘I ask and you must save my son. You are born to serve those in need, are you not?’

  ‘I am, my lord.’ The witch looked at him with the heaviest sadness he had ever seen in her eyes. ‘Take me to your son.’

  ‘He is upstairs.’

  ‘Your second son. I must see him first.’

  The Thane thought it strange but allowed the witch her whims. ‘Very well. I will take you to my son.’

  He led her upstairs to his bedchamber. His wife was sitting up on the bed. Her belly large with child and from the bed he could tell that the child would be coming soon.

  ‘You must leave me with your wife. The price, I fear, will be too high for you, but I will save your son, as you have asked.’

  He set her cauldron down beside her.

  With the door shut the Thane prowled the hallway as he had ten years before. No sounds came from within. He waited for the sound of his mewling baby – a second son! Joy tempered with fear for his first son. All his love was been invested in his first son. He could not die now. He would not allow it.

  The first breath hitched, and then it finally came, a great yowling cry, one that brought happiness to his heart, if only for a moment. This time he knew better than to barge in. The witch would call him when she was ready.

  The bawling stopped after too short a time. The silence came as suddenly as the sound.

  Dandred worried that he could hear nothing. He waited outside for an hour and the only sound to come from within was a steady chanting. Darkness settled into the house, and the Thane felt a deep chill following in the gloom.

  Eventually, the witch emerged, her face grey with strain.

  ‘It is done. Take me to your son.’

  ‘Where is my son?’

  ‘I will show him to you after I have saved your Theodric.’ She held a bubbling cauldron by her side.

  He took her down the hall to where his first son was laid up. He was sweating with the fever and mumbling. His bandaged head was soaked through and bloody.

  The witch knelt beside him and took a ladle from the bubbling cauldron. She gently placed the ladle to the young boy’s lips and bade him drink. Even in his unconscious state the boy drank heartily. He drank the whole ladleful and then to the Thane’s surprise his eyes opened.

  ‘Theodric!’ cried the Thane in joy. ‘You are awake!’

  ‘Father! I had the most terrible dream.’

  ‘No more dreams now my boy. You must rest.’

  The boy smiled and lay back down.

  ‘I cannot thank you enough, witch of the Pale Forest. Your price. Name anything.’

  ‘The price has already been paid.’

  The Thane looked confused for a second. Until he looked down into the cauldron. It still bubbling. There, in the murk, bobbed something small, cherubic. It turned its head toward him, and recognition of his deeds came too late.

  Dandred put his head in his hands and howled his anguish to the night.

  The witch watched him with tears in her eyes, but her tears had fallen long ago. Some people are sad because they know too much, some are sad because others know too little. Witches know both kinds of sorrow.

  *

  ‘That’s a horrible story! I shan’t sleep tonight,’ the boy asserted with a strange kind of glee.

  ‘As it should be son, as it should be. Now you know. That is the reason most people fear witches. One small part of us, which we do not wish to acknowledge, knows the truth. No matter what we do, or what we learn, or how much we are blinded by love, know this, child; witches are wiser than any man.’

  ‘Well, now I know why I should be afraid of witches.’

  ‘Don’t fear them, child. Instead, pity them. That, I think, would be more fitting.’

  With that, the boy’s father kissed the child on the cheek, and tucked his cloak around him, proof against the chill growing on the air. But he was a kind man. He built up the fire in the clearing, and left it burning against the night, and all that lived within.

  The End

  Bonus Material: The Thief King (The Line of Kings Trilogy Book Two)

  Sample

  Prologue

  Roskel Farinder tried to get the louse in his moustache between his teeth. His beard was long enough, but the mite was just out of reach. He longed to scratch his face, or even better, shave the growth off with some hot water and lather. Better still, have a fine barber do it.

  He allowed himself one of his many fantasies. Sitting in a chair with his head tilted back, propped upon a soft head rest. His hair freshly washed and cut, his body bathed and scrubbed and sweated in a spa. The soothing sound of the barber’s blade stropping. Not so long ago he’d been able to afford the finest barbers in Naeth, the capital city of Sturma. He’d been an important man, for a time. Before that he’d been a bandit, before that a thief of no little renown.

  Unfortunately, the name he’d made for himself back then had gotten him into trouble now. The only blade he’d ever used, the one between his legs, had got him into hot water more times than he could count. If only he used his head instead of his…well…he’d certainly learned his lesson this time. No more dalliances with powerful lord’s wives. He’d even steer clear of their mistresses…oh, but that soft, pale flesh…the sweet smell…his mind wandered again. He allowed it free reign. He had done since his incarceration. It kept him sane. A man had to have dreams. A prisoner had even greater need of them.

  A man could go insane, chained in a dank dungeon, unable to scratch his own beard, unable to urinate except when the guard came and brought the bucket. It was a matter of learning control, or sleeping in your own soil.

  Roskel was a fast study. He still had some shred of dignity, even in this dark corner of the world.

  Ulbridge town. Twice damned. His bane.

  Why, oh why, had he ever thought to return? He had the whole of Sturma. A kingdom he had once run. And he’d left it all behind on a fool’s quest.

  Now he was that fool.

  The thief turned his mind once again to the matter of getting free. He had worried over the problem for the last three months. He had to get free. Too much rested on his success. And yet he could hope for no aid, for nobody knew where he was. It had been a necessity at the time. Now he wished he’d taken a companion with him. His only hope, he knew, was that someone else would break him out. A witch, perhaps, who could transform him into a stealthy cat. Then he could squeeze through the bars and creep past the guards, out into the fresh air and the cool night.

  To see the stars...he sighed.

  To stalk the rooftops once more…happen upon a lady, by chance, lonesome while her husband was away on business…perhaps a merchant’s wife…no. He shook his head - the little movement he could manage. No more lonely wives. He had learned his lesson. He had.

  He chaffed from the constant irritation of the iron shackles that bound his arms to each side. He had learned to tense and ease his muscles periodically, but when he slipped into his uneasy sleep his arms lost all feeling. Every time he woke his arms screamed as the blood rushed b
ack where it belonged.

  In truth, the life of a prisoner was a sorry one. He tried to be thankful for his small mercies…a more inventive captor might have cut of his offending article, or had him hung…but his captor knew who he was. A public humiliation would not work. The Council would hear of it and his captor would be hung himself.

  But for all his past glories and power, it availed Roskel little. He could not imagine a more useless past in such a situation. He might be a thief but he sorely wished for some modicum of magical talent like wizards of old tales.

  The first of Rythe's two suns was rising outside. He couldn’t see it, but the first birdsong of the day drifted to him through the crack in the wall. Cracks through which blew a sadistic autumn wind.

  Be thankful for the small mercies, he chided himself. At least it carried his own stench away on the windier days.

  No breakfast was forthcoming.

  He allowed his mind to drift. Like the fool he was, he went over his mistakes in his head, as he did a thousand times each day.

  If he had just forgotten all about the crown. If he had just left and become a thief again…

  Not for the first time, his mind turned to thoughts of death. Would it be a relief? In truth, his dreams sustained him, but more and more he wondered if it wouldn’t just be better to be allowed to die.

  His eyes misted for a moment. If he hadn’t listened to Tarn, he wouldn’t be here. But then who could deny a dying man’s wish?

  And the last king, at that.

  *

  I.

  Hearth and Home

  Chapter One

  The King had been dead a year. Many people no longer recalled when there had been a king.

  Tarn, the dead king, had ensured that none should take the crown with his dying wish. Roskel Farinder cursed his friend for his wishes and his last and only edict. It meant he was stuck in the throne room, wrangling with a man he hated, yet shackled by duty.