The Path to Power

by Karen Miller

  Not wanting to be caught sight of by her approaching customers, she hurried back to the inn. Her return to the public room raised a chorus of complaint from the handful of folk come to sup ale and eat bread and cheese. Every last man a local, though. They’d had no fresh news for over a week.

  “Where be Iddo?” she demanded, as they waved their empty tankards at her. “Oh, pipe down, ye cockerels. Ye b’aint in danger of dying parched.”

  She took their empty tankards and sloshed them full of more ale. Collected their copper nibs, locked the coins in her kitchen coffer, then went in search of Iddo. She found him out back of the Pig Whistle, in the vegetable garden, brawling with Willem. The imp was muck from head to toe, and so was her precious Benedikt.

  “—working, ye scabrous little shite, not ’ticing Benedkit to wickedness and throwing clods of dirt!”

  Up went Willem’s pointed chin, his scarred face tight with temper. “We was working, Iddo!” Scornful, he kicked the woven rush-basket half-full of dug up carrots and leeks, sitting on the grass between him and Benedikt. “See?”

  “Curl yer lip at me, would ye, ye thankless snipe? When there b’aint a scrap of food goes into yer mouth ye don’t owe to my sweat?” Iddo raised his hand. “’Tis no wonder Benedikt’s turning to the bad. Ye—”

  “No, I b’aint, Iddo,” said Benedikt. “And Willem didn’t ’tice me, neither. I wanted to throw the clod back at him and—”

  “Shame on ye, then!” Iddo shouted. “Ye should know better than to let this scunny—”

  Molly sighed. She’d heard enough. “Now then, now then,” she said briskly, clapping her hands. “Boys, take them carrots and leeks to the kitchen and see ’em scrubbed clean. Then ye can scrub the pots in the scullery, and the kitchen table too. Go on. And when ye be done there, romp off and see what Iddo’s rabbit snares have caught. There be traders on the road. I’ll need to cook some pie.”

  “Traders?” said Iddo, distracted, as the boys scuttled by him. It hurt her to see how he was afraid to be hopeful. “How many?”

  “Couldn’t say,” she said. “But there do be a mule-train. Best ye tell the stables. Then come in so ye can be useful, ’stead of bellowing at them boys.”

  Iddo’s face darkened. “Ye go too soft on that Willem, Moll. He be doing Benedikt a mischief. Ever since that Alys died ye do naught but find excuses for his muckery!”

  “I do not,” she protested, but she did, and because she knew it she couldn’t look Iddo in the eye. There was a worm of guilt lived in her belly and it never stopped gnawing. Because of that Alys. Because of Willem’s scarred face and crooked nose. No matter she’d hurt him to keep him safe. Every time she looked at the boy she remembered what she’d done. Imagined what he’d say if he ever learned the truth. The fear of it near stopped her heart, for she loved him near as much as she loved Benedikt.

  Iddo was shaking his head. “Moll…”

  “Never mind that,” she said, poking him. “Or being surly. Warn the stables. I’ve work indoors.”

  There was a new face in the public room. Lord Vidar’s man, Egann, travel-stained and weary. She didn’t mind Egann. Stern but fair, he was. And not a lord, so no airs about him. She filled a tankard with her best ale and pushed it across the bar to him.

  “We’ve not seen ye for some days, Master Egann.”

  He drank deep, belched, then wiped his sleeve over his mouth. “I did have business in Eaglerock.”

  “Ah.” Hearing a stir in the forecourt, she looked through the open public room door. The traders had arrived. “What tidings from Clemen?”

  The question made him scowl. In his leathery face, a harsh sympathy she wasn’t used to seeing. “Nothing you’ll want to hear, Mistress Molly. His Grace has closed the harbour.”

  She felt her mouth dry. “For how long?”

  “Till the pestilence has run its course.”

  “Oh.” Feeling sick, she fumbled for her cloth to blot some spilled ale. With the harbour closed there’d be no more traders coming to the Pig Whistle. Hard times had grown harder. How much more could they bear? “Well, then. ’Tis good of ye to tell me, Master Egann. Now I—”

  But she had no time to finish. The traders she’d seen on the road, four of them, were stamping into the public room. And she had to play the merry innkeep, ply them with ale and pie even though all she wanted to do was cover her face and weep.

  Shuddering, Balfre emptied himself with a shout of pleasure then pulled free of Izusa’s hot, wet clutch.

  “By the Exarch’s balls, woman,” he said, rolling off her. “You’re a fucking good fuck.”

  She smiled. “Thank you, my lord.”

  He sat up, wincing as the half-healed sword cut in his thigh caught him. His own fault, a mistake in training his men. “Fuck.”

  “Show me,” she said, and pushed him down again. Rolled him a little so his leg caught the candle light. “When did you last put my ointment on it?”

  “A few days ago,” he muttered, as her clever fingers teased at the scabbing edge of the wound.

  She slid off the rumpled bed. “A Marcher lord should know to take better care of himself.”

  Watching her cross to a cupboard against the cottage bedroom’s far wall, admiring the copper-red curls against her pale shoulders, her naked, dimpled buttocks and the seductive sway of her hips, he felt lust stir again.

  “Mind your tongue. I don’t come to you for scolding.”

  “I know what you come for, my lord.”

  He laughed, then caught his breath as she turned back to him, jar of ointment in her hand. She had glorious tits. He could fuck her for her tits alone. Two bouts already, they’d had, yet the blood was rushing again to his cock.

  “Curse my leg, you lusty bitch.” He snapped his fingers. “Come here.”

  “My lord—”

  “My lord! You’re needed!”

  And that was Waymon, banging on the cottage door.

  “Go,” Izusa said. “I’ll be here when you’re done.”

  “You’ll be sorry if you’re not,” he said, standing, and when she joined him bit her nipples to prove it. Her cry of pained pleasure made it doubly hard to scramble into his clothes and leave.

  Remounted on his horse and waiting, Waymon pulled an apologetic face. “Sorry, Balfre. But you said you wanted to know when next we caught Clemen scum trespassing.”

  “How many this time?” he demanded, untying his horse’s reins from the tree beside the cottage door.

  “Five.”

  He swung himself into the saddle, no longer caring that the wound in his thigh burned. Five more of Roric’s people, crept into the Marches. Skulking in Harcia’s Marcher lands like rats on a river barge. That made nineteen in nearly two months. It seemed Vidar hadn’t made Harcia’s position on the crime clear enough to his bastard duke.

  “Where are they?”

  Waymon’s eyes were alight with anticipation. “Dead Dog’s Pond.”

  Not so very far out of bounds, then… but far enough. “Fine,” he said, and spurred his stallion. “Then let us deal with them.”

  They rode hard to the pond, where a half-dozen men-at-arms held the trespassers at sword-point.

  Staring at the Clemen folk kneeling on the goat-nibbled rough grass by the pond’s muddy edge, Balfre shook his head. A family, it looked like. Husband, wife and three children. Hollow-eyed and thin with hunger, their clothes little more than rags.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Dipford,” the man said, his voice shaking. “My lord—”

  “Dipford is in Clemen. These are the Harcian Marches.”

  “We did never mean to trespass!” the woman cried, trying to shelter her snivelling brats. “We thought this was—” A hacking cough swallowed the rest of her excuse. When she lowered her hand from her mouth, it was blotched with blood.

  “Balfre,” Waymon muttered, as the men-at-arms stepped back.

  He was hard put not to step back himself. Plague. Aimery had told him in de
tail what to look for. How to know if a man was sick with it. Had commanded him to act without mercy if he had to.

  It was one of the few times he and his father had ever agreed.

  Looking more closely, he saw that the oldest Clemen brat had blood crusted in its nostrils. Its father’s knuckles were swollen, fingers twisted. His bloodshot eyes popped with fear.

  “Please, my lord,” he said, his voice strangled. “My wife’s touched with an ague.”

  Unlikely. More likely they’d been driven from Dipford to spread their pestilence somewhere, anywhere, else. Into the Harcian Marches and then Harcia itself. Rage kindled.

  “Waymon.”

  It was butchery, brief and brutal. When it was done, Balfre ordered the trespassers’ heads struck off. Sent one of his men-at-arms to the goat-man’s cottage on the far side of the pond, with orders to bring back two burlap sacks, rope, and lamp oil to burn what remained of the bodies. Waited in silence for the man to return and when he did, put the heads in the burlap sacks himself then secured them on either side of his stallion’s saddle.

  “What’s in your mind?” Waymon murmured, as the headless corpses were doused in oil.

  “A thought that it’s time Vidar was taught a lesson,” he said. “The fuck doesn’t seem to understand we’ll not be jostled like this.” He mounted his horse. “Make sure the bodies are well burned. Then go and inform Clemen’s Marcher lord there’s a gift waiting for him at the Pig Whistle. But make no mention of plague. Tell the men likewise, on pain of them losing their tongues. When Vidar comes to me, protesting, then I’ll break the news.”

  Waymon smiled, slowly. “Yes, my lord.”

  Mistress Molly of the Pig Whistle knew better than to keep Count Balfre waiting. Summoned, she hurried out of the public room and into her forecourt, wiping floury hands down the front of her apron.

  “My lord,” she said, her brows pinching as she caught sight of the bloodstained sacks tied to his saddle. “How can I help ye?”

  He could hear a rabble of voices coming from inside. “Call out your customers. And your barkeep.”

  Wary, she obeyed him. A moment later the rabble stumbled out of the inn. Marcher folk, they looked like. Or folk from Harcia and Clemen, passing through. Only four foreigners. Traders. Their golden skin and bronze eyes marked them as Zeidican. The inn’s customers stared at him, some still chewing bread like cows with their cud. A few clutched ale-filled tankards. He heard a muffled belch.

  “For those of you unfamiliar,” he said coldly, sliding his dagger from its sheath, “I am Balfre, heir to Aimery of Harcia. As a lord of these Marches, I am the law.” He flicked his wrist, left and right, and severed the ropes tying the burlap sacks to his saddle. His stallion tossed its head as they thudded to the ground. With a nudge, he sidled the animal out of the way. “Barkeep. Empty them.”

  The barkeep, Iddo, glanced at Molly. Insolent fuck. Then, his lips thin with distaste, he took a burlap sack in each hand and heaved until the severed heads tumbled out.

  “Spirits save us!” Molly shrieked, as the rabble gabbled its dismay.

  Dispassionate, Balfre looked at the rolling, gore-smeared heads. Then he lifted his gaze to the gibbering rabble.

  “Like vermin, they crawled their way from Clemen into the Harcian Marches,” he said. “They weren’t the first to trespass. But they were the first to die. Spread the word, Mistress Molly. And you men there, no matter where you call home. Spread the word and be warned. From this day forth every man, woman and child found trespassing will meet the same fate. Likewise any man, woman or child found harbouring such vermin, or breaking any Marcher law, shall perish. I am not a cruel man. In the past I have been lenient. But it seems leniency breeds contempt here. And therefore leniency ends.”

  Slack-jawed staring from Mistress Molly and her barkeep and the rabble. He heard someone start to retch.

  “Vidar of Clemen will come to collect the heads,” he said, sliding his dagger into its sheath. “Till then leave them where they lie, untouched.”

  “Iss, my lord,” Molly whispered. “We’ll do as ye say.”

  He shrugged. “For your sake, I hope so. Your life will be forfeit if you fail.”

  As she clutched at her barkeep, he spurred his stallion out of the forecourt and turned its head to the west. He was going back to Izusa, to fuck the bad taste out of his mouth.

  Iddo was a bastard, but he knew how to set a rabbit snare.

  With a grin at Benedikt, Liam bent to untangle the first of three dead coneys caught deep in the woods behind the Pig Whistle. Grinning back at him, Benedikt untangled the second. Then they wrestled each other to see who’d get the third. He won, because he was taller by a hand and he didn’t mind wrestling dirty. Benedikt did. Laughing, panting, he rubbed a handful of fallen leaves in his brother’s face, then leapt up to take the last coney out of Iddo’s clever snare.

  There was another snare set even deeper into the trees. But instead of doing what they were s’posed to, check it quickly and quickly get back to the Pig Whistle to help with the henhouse and the stables, they plopped the dead rabbits onto a tree stump and wrestled some more. After all that grubbing in the vegetable garden and the scrubbing in Molly’s kitchen, there was nothing better than running wild in the woods.

  Wriggled free like an eel, bounced to his bare feet, Benedikt snatched up a tumbled stick and waved it.

  “Ha! Ha! Ye be a villain there, Lord Willem!”

  They were Marcher brats, not duchy lords or sworn men-at-arms. They were strictly forbidden sword-play. But they were alone in the woods, not a soul to see them, and a stick wasn’t a sword so they weren’t really breaking the law. Besides. Willem of the Pig Whistle was only pretend. Really he was Liam, the rightful duke of Clemen, and that meant he was born to hold a sword.

  Hooting, Liam snatched up a branch of his own. “Ha yerself, Lord Benedikt! I’ll run ye through, I will!”

  Shrieking with laughter, they thrashed at each other with their pretend swords, slipped and slithered on dead leaves, swung on low-hanging branches…

  … until Iddo found them.

  “What be ye doing, ye mad goblins?” he roared, and his face was so terrible they near pissed themselves with fright. Not letting them speak, he fastened bruising fingers round their arms and hauled them back to the Pig Whistle, and Molly.

  The dead rabbits got left behind.

  Molly listened, dreadfully silent, while Iddo told his tale. Then, deaf to any excuse or explanation, she dragged them out to the inn’s forecourt and showed them five horrible, fly-smothered, cut off heads. Then she dragged them down to the ale cellar. Her right thumb and forefinger were pinched so tight on his ear Liam thought she was going to tear it clean off his head. He tried to see past her aproned bulk to Benedikt, but all he could glimpse of his brother was one flailing arm and two bare heels, kicking.

  Iddo thudded the cellar’s heavy wooden door closed, then hung his big lantern on its convenient hook. Shadows shifted across the windowless stone walls and splashed onto the inn’s supply of barrels neatly stacked around the walls, beer and ale and wine in three proper rows. Iddo ruled here and liked things kept in their place.

  The whipping barrel sat alone in the middle of the worn flagstone floor, fat with promise and fed on bad dreams.

  “Right,” said Molly, unpinching her fingers. “Who be first?”

  Rubbing his burning ear, Liam slid a look at Benedikt. I went first last time. That was how they sorted themselves. It was never about whose idea had tossed them in trouble.

  “Ma—” said Benedikt, his voice small. He was milky-pale beneath his freckles, one shoulder hunched a little as Iddo thwacked his leather-gaitered leg with the seasoned whipping switch. “Ma, please—”

  Molly shook her rough fist in his face. “Hold yer tongue! I be so thwarted with ye I could skin ye both and use yer hides for dishcloths! Now shuck yer hose, Benedikt, and take what ye’ve earned!”

  Liam watched, mouth dry, as Benedikt puddled
his mud-splashed woollen hose round his skinny ankles then shuffled to the whipping barrel. His teeth sank into his trembling bottom lip as he leaned over the splintered wood. In the friendly lamplight his skinny white arse looked like two hard-boiled plover’s eggs, freshly peeled.

  Still flinty, Molly nodded at Iddo. “Welt him proper. But don’t draw any blood.”

  With a whistling crack the switch landed across Benedikt’s twitching arse. He let out a choked squeal, his fingers cramping on the barrel. A livid line sprang to life where the switch had struck. Two more blows. Two more squeals. Benedikt’s arse was criss-crossed scarlet, each hot line swelling hard and fast. He started dancing on his toes, hopping anguished and whimpering from side to side as his fists drummed a protest on the barrel.

  “Hold still, ye little shite!” Molly snarled. “If it were Count Balfre’s men found ye, ye’d be run through on a proper sword for what ye did, and yer head cut off like them heads in the forecourt. That be what happens now for them as breaks Marcher law.”

  Benedikt tried to stop dancing but the pain wouldn’t let him. Iddo cracked him another one and on a howling shriek he burst into sobs.

  “Please, Ma, I’m sorry, Ma, I won’t do it agin, it hurts, Ma, please, Ma, please please please…”

  Liam watched Molly blink back tears. But a flick of her finger told Iddo to crack Benedikt again. Again. Again. Again. Benedikt sobbed so hard he was gulping for air, tears and snot running unchecked into his open mouth.

  “All right, Iddo,” Molly grunted. “That’ll do.”

  Iddo lowered the switch to his side and took a step back. Benedikt held his breath a moment, waiting. When he realised his whipping was done with, he hobbled away from the barrel, spread-fingered hands hovering over his bright red welted arse. He was blubbing like a girl. Liam, looking away, felt sorry and angry and could’ve cracked Benedikt himself. It was what Iddo and Molly wanted, to see him shamed and broken.

  “Right,” said Molly, pointing. “Willem.”