Beast

A hot bath, a good meal, and a vigorous whore were all Philipe longed for, in that order, as his horse pounded down the frozen road. Knowing that such luxuries were unlikely didn’t stop him from wanting them. He’d been riding hard for three days, his father’s men at his heels like dogs on a fox.

“We’re but a mile from Clatterbuck,” Jessop, Philipe’s companion, once captain of his palace guard, called to him over the thunder of hooves. He was breathless from the ride, and red-faced, and Philipe knew that he might as well have been staring into a mirror. An exhausted, unshaven mirror.

“If Lord Fueil has not forsaken us, I may make it out of the kingdom alive.” He gripped the reins tighter in his swollen fingers, the cold leather of his gloves creaking.

It was a strange position he found himself in, that of the fugitive crown prince. His father, once Albart the Wise, King of Chevudon, had become Albart the suspicious, Albart the confused. Albart the paranoid and vindictive, who’d driven his own son from the palace with allegations of treason.

Philipe plotted the route in his mind. Shelter for the night behind the walls of Fueil’s fortress, then to the border and beyond, where his father’s men could not seek him. But as they rode on, his own suspicions deepened. The hovels on the outskirts of Fueil’s land showed no signs of life. Further into the village, not a chimney smoked nor a babe cried.

“It’s deserted,” Philipe said, scanning the low rooftops. His exhausted horse nickered and stepped restlessly.

“I don’t like this, Your Highness.” Jessop looked over his shoulder. “I think we may already be trapped.”

He’d barely finished his sentence before a thump widened his eyes and he fell from the saddle, an arrow protruding from his chest. Philipe ducked and tugged the reins, bringing his horse around to shield the fallen man. For but a moment, he considered trying to save Jessop. Another arrow sliced through the air, striking his horse in the neck. The animal reared back, spilling Philipe to the ground. He caught the reins of Jessop’s horse. The man lay on the ground, unmoving, as the hooves of Philipe’s wounded, maddened horse struck the mud around him. Jessop was dead, that much was clear, and Philipe did not intend to waste such a noble man’s death. He put his heels to Jessop’s horse, freeing the animal to carry him wherever it may, so long as it was out of this place.

Fueil, you bastard! When this was finished, when Philipe returned to his kingdom to inherit his throne, he would have the traitorous lord’s head on a pike.

Something struck him in the shoulder. A stone? He was nearly unhorsed, but righted himself in the saddle, arm aching. Only when he tried to lift it did he feel the sharp, shattering pain of splintered muscle and bone. The shaft of an arrow protruded from his shoulder, and hot blood wet his arm inside his sleeve. He cursed and reached for his sword, but the pain of the motion made him scream as the world blackened, only for an instant. He fought to clear his head. If he were to fall now, it would be over. He would wake in father’s dungeons, awaiting execution, or perhaps he would not wake at all.

Snow drifted through the treetops as riders pursued him, back the way he’d come, farther from the border that would be his safety. In his mind, he conjured a map of his father’s kingdom. It was thirty leagues to the border, and his horse was good for a few miles, at most. If he could have burned Fueil’s lands with the fire of his rage, he would have.

Fire. The word branded the map in his head with another, wholly unpleasant option. To the northeast lay Hazelhurn. The one place in the entire kingdom he might trade for the underworld. But it wasn’t death that frightened him so. He had to live, so that his father’s throne would be inherited by someone with reason and sanity, not some power-mad courtier who would be worse than the feeble-minded old man.

He would go to Hazelhurn, and the gods help him. But first, he had to lose the men following him. Plunging his horse headlong into the trees, he kept low and prayed that the lord of Hazelhurn would be far kinder to him than he deserved.

* * * *

It had been hours since the arrow had pierced his flesh. The pain had spread, like ripples in water disturbed by a stone, to the rest of his body, which cried out in anguish. The dark shapes of the mountains that had once seemed welcoming now stood before him like magistrates, weighing his actions of long ago against his desire for safety. They would, he feared, find him wanting, but he clung to the neck of his mount and prayed he would not freeze or fall dead from his saddle before he reached the castle gates.

The valley was not as welcoming as all those summer visits before. The snow was deep enough to give the horse trouble, and the wind that howled all around him seemed an angry spirit trapped by the mountains themselves. Through the flakes that stung his face, he spotted faint light from Hazelhurn. He wondered who burned the light, and feared he already knew the answer.

Once, the gates of Hazelhurn stood proud and gleaming white. Now, they were crumbling, gray, and covered in lichen gone brown for the winter. The gates of the fortress were thrown wide, no guards stood ready to defend. Cautiously, he urged his horse ahead, down the road that had once been lined with barracks for Köneig’s army, market stalls, homes of the northern lord’s subjects. If traces of those long ago structures remained, they were not visible beneath the snow.

He’d begun to fear that the light he’d spied was phantom light, that he would find nothing at Hazelhurn but ghosts and cold stone, when he heard a voice from the dark grove of trees just outside the inner bailey wall.

“Halt! Declare yourself!”

He lifted one hand slowly, but he wouldn’t give his name until he was certain of the situation. For all he knew, Hazelhurn had been deserted for years, and the only inhabitants were his father’s men, stopped at a convenient shelter for the night.

“I am but a weary traveler, injured, looking for rest and something to bind my wounds.”

“Get your other hand up, where I can see it,” the voice warned.

Torn between wishing for relief from his injury and the near certainty that death would be more pleasant, he spoke carefully, lest he tip the odds in favor either way. “As I said, I am wounded. I have a rather long arrow protruding from my arm, if you cannot see it.”

There was a scrape of stone and iron that set Philipe’s teeth, already chattering from the cold, clenching at the back of his mouth. He thought he might vomit or fall from his horse, might have simply given up fighting to let it happen, were he not worried of falling and driving the arrow in farther. Boots crunched on the snow and gravel, and a knight stood before him clad in the black armor of Hazelhurn. Once, the black knights were of such a number that King Albart had feared their power, and conscripted many of them for his own royal guard, just to lessen their number. Now, only one stood sentry at the main castle gate?

Something was terribly wrong here. The legendary fire that had crippled Hazelhurn was fifteen years past, but nothing had been rebuilt. The stone had not been scrubbed white again, and the soot stains gave the black knight far better cover than the gleaming stone would have. By the time Philipe was able to track the figure, he was upon him. The knight stepped close, lifted his visor, and leaned in close. His breath came out a whisper of steam in the cold night air. “My god. Philipe, is it you?”

“It is.” There was no sense in denying it further. The knight should have recognized him, after all. “Wilhelm. You look well.”

“You see only the armor,” the knight replied grimly. Philipe remembered Wilhelm, the serious, studious son of Köneig, the twin who had survived the fire. He was older now; fifteen years would make a man older. Blond hair fell into his eyes behind the visor. He’d donned his armor sloppily. Did that mean…

“Wilhelm, is Hazelhurn deserted?” It seemed impossible to Philipe. When he’d visited all those years ago, Hazelhurn had been the largest keep in the north. There had been a market full of wonderful, impossible things, mummers and jugglers and exotic animals had prowled the feasting hall, and the girls…

His feeling of dread intensified tenfold. “My god. Is she…”

“My sister and I live here, alone.” Wilhelm took the reins of Philipe’s horse and let the animal forward a few steps. “She will not be pleased to see you.”

“I would not expect that she would.” The roiling in his stomach threatened to spill onto the ground. “You will aid me, then?”

“For now. When you are well, you must leave. Johanna is very fragile, and I would not have her upset, at least, not for long. As soon as you are fit to travel, you must.” Wilhelm’s generosity was a mark of his northern blood, another area where Albart and Köneig had clashed. In the northern culture, a man’s duty was to his fellow man first, himself second. Albart had seen the simple kindness as weakness.

I should tell him. The guilt nagged at Philipe as Wilhelm led the horse up the rocky road to the castle keep. Philipe could not chance telling Wilhelm that he was a fugitive prince. Philipe would not survive the wintry night or his wound, and if Wilhelm rescinded his offer of help, he would face both. You are selfish. You have always been selfish, and you have returned here to treat these people selfishly once more. It was horrible, but horribly true, too. By allowing Wilhelm to help him, Philipe made him a traitor to the crown, as well. He would do it anyway. His northern hospitality would demand it.
The horse stumbled, and Philipe clung to the animal’s neck for balance. “I do not recall the road being so rough before.”

He heard himself say the words, and could only listen as they rolled carelessly from his mouth. Before he could stammer an apology, Wilhelm said, without emotion, “The grain store exploded, in the fire. The paving stones cracked in the heat, and we did not have a means of fixing them before they became… treacherous.”

“I am sorry to hear of your difficulty.”

“You heard of it fifteen years ago,” Wilhelm said curtly. “You did not extend those condolences then.”

Philipe said nothing. His head hurt, his stomach protested, and pain lanced through his body. He had no inclination of salving Wilhelm’s wounds. He’d been foolish to try so halfheartedly.

They went through another gate, into a small castle yard with naught but a cistern and a few stacked burlap bags. When Philipe recognized his surroundings, he could scarce believe what he saw. The long, low great hall of Hazelhurn was naught but a single wall and the skeleton of a collapsed roof that lay propped against the stonework. The fanciful glass scenes of hunting stag and marauding ancestors had left behind gaping pointed arches that painted the shadow of a carnivore’s teeth on the snow. A haphazardly erected staircase reached to the balcony on the side of one of the castle’s three towers. His head reeling, Philipe looked up the tall columns that had once stood proudly over Hazelhurn like three sentinels. Only one still had a roof.

“Life is different here now,” Wilhelm warned. He reached up to help Philipe from his horse, and staggered backward under his weight as his legs refused to stand.

“Wilhelm?”

The feminine voice stopped Philipe’s feet scrabbling for purchase against the icy ground. He sagged against Wilhelm, almost certain he would black out.

“I am in the courtyard,” Wilhelm called out. “Johanna, go to your bed and stay there until I speak with you.”

“Do not order me around, brother! I will go where I please!”

Something in Philipe’s heart smiled, for but a second. Then, reality cruelly intruded, and he felt as though he were that younger man again, that boy, really, reading the letter through tear-glazed eyes, as his entire world crumbled around him.

It couldn’t have been different, he told himself. Though it had been fifteen years, he had not seen Johanna, the girl he’d promised to marry, the girl he’d kissed breathless in the soft grass beneath an impossibly blue sky. That trip had been the last time he’d seen her. But a month after they were parted, the ink barely dry on the marriage contract, the villagers of Hazelhurn had rebelled, and tried to burn the entire Köneig family line in their beds. Lord Köneig had angered his people when he’d agreed to the King’s terms and remained unified with the kingdom of Chevudon. A prince’s simple offer of marriage to a noble subject’s daughter had been the spark that had started the fire in Hazelhurn castle. His childish love for Johanna had cost the lives of Lord Köneig, his son Jacob, the very castle of Hazelhurn itself, and Johanna…

When Philipe had learned the extent of her injuries, laid out in gruesome detail by King Albart’s own surgeon, he’d panicked. He’d thought he’d loved her, but he’d feared facing her. With her beauty gone, he found it impossible to think of anything else.

It was better that he ended it then, for the both of them. He did not regret his choice. He would not have been able to keep up the pretext of marriage to a woman so scarred that her own servants cringed to look upon her.

Wilhelm, breathing hard under the weight Philipe could not support for himself, negotiated him up the stairs, which swayed alarmingly. When the firm stone of the balcony steadied the world, Philipe noted his surroundings. The tower room they had entered was simple. A scorched wooden bed served as storage for a few burlap sacks. On a long wooden table, a few meager root vegetables had been abandoned. A pot over the fire simmered violently, splattering sizzling bursts of liquid onto the coals.

“Your kitchen girl has run off,” Philipe slurred, forcing his eyes to come into focus.

Wilhelm leaned Philipe against the wall and set to clearing the sacks from the bed. A thin feather mattress gave up puffs of dust as Wilhelm wrestled the bags away. “We do not have a kitchen girl. It is just myself, and my sister, as I have said.”

“Sorry. I was preoccupied.” Philipe tried to lift his arm, but the pain stopped him. He staggered to the bed, not waiting for further invitation, and collapsed upon it.

Footsteps echoed outside the door as Johanna made her way down the stairs.

“Don’t let her see me,” Philipe begged, summoning the strength to grip Wilhelm’s arm.

Wilhelm shrugged off his hold. “She must see you. She is the only one who can help with your wound.”

“See who?”

Philipe turned his head, his vision swimming. He caught sight of a woman, clad like Death in a black shroud. Ghastly pink hands flew to her veiled face, and Philipe tried to rise. The movement made the edges of his vision flicker, and he slumped back, fighting for consciousness. Even as Johanna ran from the room, Wilhelm just steps behind her, Philipe tried to speak. He managed a ragged, “I’m sorry,” before darkness overtook him.