The Last Swordsman

by Benjamin Corman

  Despite the discomfort, however, when he had regained his footing, he gritted his teeth and approached the set of iron wrought doors that would take him to her.

  It was more of a trial than he would have imagined just getting to the doors. Then there was a battle of emotions rife with trepidation before he could bring himself to raise his hand and knock on the glass. There was no answer at first, so he raised his hand to knock again, but before his fist could fall, the doors parted. Karlene stood inside the dim-lit room in a light dress of white cotton, her auburn hair falling in small curls upon her shoulders.

  There was a look of shock and wonder on her face at first, quickly followed by curiosity and not a small amount of anger. She put a hand to her breast, and her eyes went wide. “Wh-what are you doing here?”

  “Can I come in?” Nikolis said, with a wince.

  “What? N-no. You can’t.”

  “Please. The only other way out is a long fall, and I’ve already managed to injure myself.”

  With those words she seemed to soften a little. She noticed his arm and leg and how he was favoring them. Realization seemed to dawn as to the only means he would have had to get onto her balcony. A look came across her face, one almost of concern and sympathy, and perhaps a little bit of amazement. Then her hands were on his arm, and she was helping him into the room.

  Inside it was warm. There was a fire blazing in the hearth, and after she had seated him on a small wooden chair, she went back and closed the balcony doors, and drew the curtains. The stark brightness of day was shut out, and the room was bathed in a cozy dimness, marked only by the reds and oranges of firelight. Karlene straightened herself and quite properly took a seat in a chair across from him, feet side by side, hands resting neatly in her lap.

  Nikolis looked at her, trying to imagine what she was thinking. She met his eyes momentarily. He couldn’t help but smile at those beautiful eyes. When she saw his smile, she looked away and coughed into her hand.

  “Well,” she said, breaking an uncomfortable silence.

  “Well,” he said, in response.

  “You may rest here. When you are well, I expect you will be on your way.”

  “Karlene…”

  The lady sat up straight in her chair. “You will not address me so.” Then she went on matter-of-factly, “you look chill. Here, let me get you something to warm yourself.” She went over to a massive four-poster bed. The bedclothes were of a pale pink color, and the canopy overhead was a light crème. Taking a quilt from the mass of pillows and covers on the bed, she moved over and wrapped it about his shoulders.

  “There. How foolish, going out in this weather without so much as a cloak.”

  “The cloak I have would have done me little good. It’s a poor guard against such rain.”

  “Still,” she said. “Something would be better than nothing at all.”

  “I wasn’t thinking. I had to see you.”

  “Yes, the former I believe. It seems your typical behavior.”

  “Did you receive my letters?”

  She glared at the change of subject, and replied casually, “some of them.”

  “Did you read them?”

  “There were a few that I received before I instructed the maid to discard any such correspondence without forwarding them to my attention. Those I gave a passing glance.”

  “It’s true,” he said. “What I wrote, I mean. I swear to you, it’s all true.”

  Karlene stared at him for many moments. It was almost as if she was trying to decide something. Then, as if she could take no more of her thoughts, she got to her feet and turned away from him. “I’d like to believe that.”

  Nikolis leaned forward, wanting to be closer to her, but not daring to stand. He did not want to frighten her. He did not want her to make him leave. “Believe it.”

  Karlene turned around and laughed. “I realize I am a lady at court, a sheltered little girl. But I am not daft.”

  “I’ve never thought you daft.”

  “Then why lie to me?” She balled her hands into fists, and her face grew red. “I thought you were different, I liked you because you were different. Not like the rest of them, intent on controlling my life, or wanting to gain my attentions for favor or gain, or to secure themselves a better standing with the King.”

  “I’m not lying!” he said, and now he did stand. The movement lit the fire in his shoulder and ankle anew. Gritting his teeth, he took a step toward her. “I would never lie to you.”

  “Nikolis, do not take me for a fool. Erad explained all of it to me.”

  “Explained what? What did he tell you?”

  Karlene looked angry at that. Angry that he was making her say it, almost as if he should already know. “He told me why you were toying with me.”

  “What?” Nikolis asked. The answer wasn’t at all what he had been expecting. “I wasn’t toying with you. I wasn’t–why would I? This is not play Karlene, I meant what I said, felt what I felt. None of it was pretending. None of it was false.”

  “Stop lying,” she shot back, banging her fist into the back of the chair in front of her.

  “I’m not lyin–”

  “Stop it!” she yelled, hitting her fist into the chair again, this time harder. With a yelp of pain, she drew the hand back and put it to her mouth.

  Nikolis moved over to her. There was doubt in her eyes now – he was starting to win her over. He took her hand in his and caressed the swelling that was developing there. “I never lied to you.”

  “But he told me –”

  “What did he tell you?” Nikolis looked at her, his eyes firm in their request that she tell him what he was asking.

  She looked up at him, her blue eyes so big. She was so pretty. Beautiful. Like a flower. “He told me about your father,” Karlene said, after a moment. “And your mother.”

  With those words everything changed. He hadn’t been expecting that. It had been so long since he had thought about his mother and father, so long since anyone had even mentioned them. They were ghosts of his past, their faces long faded in his mind. It was hard to even imagine them anymore. “What do they have to do with this?” he asked, his voice growing distant as his thoughts fell in one on top of another, rolling about in his head like so many leaves in the wind.

  “What about them?” he went on, when she didn’t respond. It almost hard to hear his own words, let alone her response. He sat back down in his chair.

  “How they got together,” she said. There was pity in her eyes. He never liked that look. “What your father d-did.”

  “What did he do?” Nikolis asked, with no emotion. There was nothing anxious or fearful or expectant about the question.

  “How he…your mother…” Karlene stumbled over her words; she did seem to want to say them.

  “Tell me,” Nikolis said. It was time he knew. There was no going back now.

  “How your father ran away with your mother. How she, she was to marry my uncle…King Alginor. But your father stole her away and defied the King.”

  “What?” asked Nikolis. Suddenly his senses were coming back to him. That was the horrible traitorous thing his father had done? Surely it was love that made his father do what he did. He loved his mother, that much Nikolis knew. Rushing to his feet, he stumbled over the legs of his chair.

  Karlene took a step back, as he approached her. It was clear she didn’t know how to read what he was feeling. “What?” she said, a tinge of fear in her voice.

  “That is what Erad told you?”

  “Well,” she began, “yes. It is known about the court. I asked. What happened with your father, that is.”

  “That is why you doubted me?”

  “Well, not exactly,” said Karlene. “I mean, he told me how you were only making fun of me. Using me to act it all out. Your revenge. On our family. For what…for what my uncle did to them.”

  Nikolis couldn’t take any more of it. He backed away from her, and as she went to follow him, he put hi
s hands up to hold her back. “I didn’t…I never…” he tried to speak, but words were coming hard to him, his mind too much a torrent of thoughts and emotions.

  Nikolis kept moving backward until he hit a wall. Karlene kept on him, she looked distressed, concerned, confused. “You knew, didn’t you?” she asked. “You knew?”

  He only shook his head in response. “I…I…”

  “You didn’t,” she breathed. “You never knew about them, about your father and moth–”

  Nikolis shook his head, as if to free her words from his thoughts. The truth that his world was built on shattered. As odd as it was, knowing his parents were traitors to the crown is what he had based his life around. What he had spent so much time devoted to moving away from, to proving he was not akin to.

  Now, to know that the disgrace that was his legacy was only that his father had loved his mother, a woman promised to the king, was maddening. That is the great offense that no one will speak of? That was the grand treachery that my parents committed? Years convinced that the king had some secret hatred for him all made sense now. The idea that he had made progress in convincing King Alginor that he was trustworthy was exposed for a grand delusion. How could the king do anything but despise him, if what he did not like about Nikolis, was the union that begot his very creation?

  “It-it can’t be!” he said.

  Karlene came toward him, but he pushed by her, scrambled away from the wall. He went for the door, fumbled at the handle, and then it was open. He was out in the chamber entryway, out in the hallway and then running down the stairs. He moved down another hall, he didn’t know which one, through a door, down a winding corridor, around a corner, and through another door. Finally, he came to the practice yard, where off in the distance loomed the field armory and the tower in which he lived for so many years.

  Looking at the structure he knew a moment of doubt, but then he took a deep breath, balled his hands into fists, and made his way toward it. When he came to the tower door he almost walked right in, old habits from when he lived there coming back to him. But before he did, he thought better of it, and raised his hand to knock.

  His hand never touched the bound wood. Anger came over him, anger over all that had been kept from him, and with steel resolve he pulled the door open and rushed inside.

  He ascended the stairs, not caring to mask his presence. He made his way to Drennen’s chamber and knocked on the door with as much force as he could manage without putting his hand through it. More likely he would have seriously injuring his fist anyway.

  There was no answer at first, so he knocked again. When he was about to leave, assuming the master was not in, he heard a groan. Footsteps sounded. With a creak the door opened, revealing a slightly disheveled Arthur Drennen.

  “Yes?” he said, pushing the wisps of hair he still had into place. He sounded weary.

  “I…I need to talk to you,” Nikolis replied.

  “Oh?”

  “Yes.” He pushed his way into the room.

  “What about?” Drennen asked, as he pushed the door closed and turned around. For some reason the man seemed older, more worn than when Nikolis had last seen him.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about my father?” Nikolis demanded.

  “Not this again,” said Drennen, with a sigh. “I thought we decided long ago, not to speak of this.” There was that old familiar demand, not at all what one would think of as a decision that might perhaps have been mutually reached by two parties. It was stated as a fact. He was actually saying that they would not talk about this. Now, though, Nikolis would not be swayed.

  “You decided that we would not talk about this. Not I.”

  “Are you not happy with your life?” asked Drennen. “Why are you dredging up the past?”

  “I want to know,” said Nikolis. “I need to.”

  “Is it worth sacrificing your future?”

  More threats. “I’ve heard the truth. You had little to do with where I am now.”

  “Is that so?”

  The master of arms self-assurance was still disarming. Nikolis found that too quickly, he was starting to doubt himself. He had to remain strong. “That is what I was told.”

  “Do you believe everything you hear?”

  “Some things. I believe some things, that is...” Nikolis faltered, searching for the right words. “The people I’ve talked to about such matters would not lie.”

  “Would they not?” Drennen asked, turning his back to Nikolis. He moved to a dresser, pouring water from a clay pot into a matching cup. “Perhaps you trust too easily.”

  “I believe them. They’ve told me how and why I am now a member of the King’s Shield.”

  Arthur Drennen spun around, his face hot, angry. “Even if that is the case, is that all the fortune that has come to you? Did I not take you in, when the King would have been happier throwing you to the dogs, or worse? Did I not train you in the sword? Make sure you learned your letters, to read, to think, to reason, had you attend the Steward to learn of trade and negotiation. I made sure you had everything you’d need.”

  “What of love? Guidance? Encouragement?”

  Drennen sneered. “The world is not a place of songs and dancing, for most us. It is a hard place, and the hardest survive. I gave you what you needed.”

  “Did I not pay for such things with the flesh of my back?” Nikolis spat. Now he was angry, he could feel the blood rushing to his face. “Did I not bleed for my lessons?

  “Some sacrifices must be made,” said Drennen, calming. He took a drink from his cup of water. “Some are demanded.”

  “That reasoning is an easy enough tonic to make a child swallow,” said Nikolis. “I am a child no longer.”

  “Oft times I wonder.”

  “Well,” said Nikolis, betraying impatience, “tell me why.”

  “Why what?”

  “Why you never told me that the great crime my father committed was loving my mother.” Nikolis felt a moment of relief when he said the words. The answer was almost unimportant in that moment.

  “As is my duty, I did not tell you as a matter of protection.”

  Nikolis stepped forward. He glared at his former master. “I do not think I needed that sort of protection”

  “I did not say I was protecting you.”

  Nikolis took a step back. “What?”

  “Are you so self-centered? Does your conceit know no bounds? The rule of this realm falls on the shoulders of one man – and that man’s power cannot be questioned. Do you not see the damage that such a tale would cause? You cannot cuckold a king and live to talk about it. Alginor Ryland knew what news that one of his most trusted guardsmen had run off with his betrothed would cause, and so, I’m certain, did your father. He chose to disobey the King, he chose to run off. Word of his abduction of your mother, your parents’ flight and exile, the pair of them reduced to hiding in the forests of that small village…that was the price they paid.”

  Drennen crossed his arms and leveled his most vindicated stare at Nikolis.

  “It still wasn’t right,” said Nikolis, defiant. “Not what was done to them before…or after.”

  “It is not for us to judge what is right and wrong,” said Arthur Drennen. “We are but servants, you and I. Servants of this kingdom, servants of the realm. Alginor Ryland knew what had to be done.”

  “And you followed him blindly in his decision?” Nikolis’ managed through clenched teeth. “You are weak.”

  “Perhaps. But perhaps one day you will do something as well, something you believe is right, is your duty, but that others do not understand. Tell me that day, whether or not it was weakness that drove your actions, or something else.”

  Nikolis shook his head. “Always a lesson,” he said, then he turned and stalked out of the room.

  It was only later, in the Ladies Garden, that he again found any measure of peace. Being surrounded by the aroma of the flowers, a myriad of colors, always soothed his mind for some reason. I
t was the flowers themselves in part, but it was also the memory they awoke – the memory of her. They had finally begun to speak again, to come to some terms, and he had left her, run off. What must she think?

  Word began to circulate about the keep that the king’s entourage would be leaving from Highkeep at any moment. Time was running out, but he knew what he had to do. Within moments he found himself climbing those old familiar stone steps and knocking on that door once again. Luck was with him, as she answered the door herself, her old grumpy chambermaid apparently absent.

  To his surprise Karlene took him in her arms and kissed him. Her soft lips stayed pressed to his for some time, before she let him go, standing back and smiling. Her face only brightened further when he held out the delicate white rose that he had plucked from the garden.

  She took it in gentle hands and breathed deeply of the fragrance. “I have something for you,” she said, and hurried out of the room. When she returned, she held a piece of dark, folded cloth.

  Karlene made him turn about and then she let out the cloth in her hands to reveal a magnificent new cloak, thick and long and of a fine stitch. She draped it about his shoulders and fastened the clasp at his neck. Then she straightened the cloak out, gauging its fit, smoothing the material down his chest.

  It was that feeling, even more than the kiss, the feeling of her dressing him in the fine new gift, that was strongest in his mind an hour later, as he departed from the gates of Highkeep in the midst of King Alginor’s procession south.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Timmer Garth was heated. Even through his thick, scraggly beard, Nikolis could see that the scout’s face was flush. “The way to go is down along the White River,” Garth insisted. “When we hit Riverfront we can take barges out the Fishmaw and sail around to Seaport through the Bay of Blood. Any further south along the High Road and we risk encountering all manner of brigands. They’re thick this time of year, and what with the road patrols so lax nowadays…”