Chapter 2

5 Noel 1061

Prins Bastion told himself that his decision to sit away from his father was because he wanted a break. For for days he suffered through the attention paid to the Dux’s table. Dozens of eyes fixed upon him, dozens more that glanced frequently, searchingly. Every time he rose, eager dignitaries intercepted him with subtle supplications and pliant praise. Bastion saw through it and thought less of those who tried it against him. He recognized the polite yet undignified attempts ply his father’s secrets from his lips. He’d brush them off only for the persistent ones to further raise the stakes. Offers of gifts, insinuations of pleasures. Bastion tired of the role. Principally, he found it inefficient and galling. Every night he complained to his wife something of the sort, “They’ve lost the point and only care about the profit.” She listened and nodded and Bastion felt like she agreed inasmuch as a Princis from the hills could.

So that night, he wanted to hide amidst the crowd. He chose to sit where he would be avoided, the table for the delegation from Neeklow. And he was proven correct. He ate in peace. His wife managed all the conversing. He didn’t even need to pay attention. He let his mind wander. Until he felt his father watching him. He wouldn’t look up, scared to meet his gaze.

His father was small but his personality projected large and looming. And he did it in an unusual way. In the swirl and sounds of a soaring party, his father sat calm, intense. He was a sink. All the energy of the party fell to him, and collected in those piercing eyes. He then returned it through an intense, focussed stare. Wherever he looked, people froze, anxiously ranged through expressions, seeking the correct response to give back to this cold, stern man.

Bastion felt Naeldric’s large, half closed eyes assess him. He didn’t look up, fearful to risk inviting his father’s attention. He wasn’t ready for it. He believed the confrontation in the courtyard earlier that day took place for reasons other than his interest in scholarly pursuits. His father said words like a cloak over the meaning he wished for them to carry. The words themselves, and their strict meaning, were nothing but a vessel to push Bastion this way or that. And his father liked to put on a show.

Naeldric had found great success as a general. He’d led Fael to eighteen straight victories. He negotiated shrewdly. He had to. Peace won at the point of his spear evaporated quickly without strong impediments to taking up arms again. Men as small as Naeldric weren’t fit for front lines, so he commanded from the rear where his genius shined. Bastion concluded that genius alone failed to satisfy Naeldric’s ego. He wagered it bothered his father that no one feared steel in hands, so Naeldric put steel in his gaze, and in his voice. He bludgeoned you with the only weapons that fit his grip.

Bastion disliked his father’s misdirections. Naeldric even transmuted this Noel, a sacred feast of the gods (even if these were the gods Bastion refused, they were still gods and due their course), into a sumptuous feast laced with insinuation and command. Bastion watched how Naeldric lured these nobles here to feed them into submission. He thought it unnecessary. Why collect lords when he could just unify them?

That morning he saw how his father walked stiffly and his eyes had more red then white. He heard him complain of a pounding in his head and demanded the priests mix up an elixir to relieve him of his aches. All the signs pointed to an unpredictable and dangerous day ahead.

Bastion turned to his wife, Kathe, in the morning and informed her they would sit at another table.

“As long as it’s not at Raban’s table,” she said with an eye roll as she straightened her dress.

Bastion denied the impulse to ask why. He knew the answer. Raban was a Held (Hero) of Fael and Naeldric appointed him to tutor Bastion. At first, Bastion hesitated to accept Raban. He worried Raban was another figure in the mold of his father but worse, one who could also pummel you physically.

Naeldric openly admired Raban, and praised his prowess on the battlefield. Even as a young man, Bastion had the wisdom to notice that being a Dux didn’t mean you were an elevated form of man. His father had all the faults of other men, just more strengths. And like many people, his father admired those who had traits the gods failed to impart upon him. Held Raban held steel in his hand and made other soldiers freeze in fear. Something Naeldric only dreamed of.

Raban surprised Bastion. He bore no resemblance to his father. He spoke plainly. When given the moment, he spoke freely and effusively. He thought deeply. He questioned everything without prejudice or malice. He forged curiosity and action into a sharp point that pierced all conversations. And he did it with the calmness of a tree. He bent under the great winds of Naeldric, but always returned to his upright posture. Unyielding and pliable.

Not long after, Bastion found himself loving this man. He shared more and more. He trusted Raban. It was a few years ago when he put to words the nature of their relationship in a conversation with Kathe. “I go to him in the way others go to their fathers.”

“Men never go to their fathers, that’s all nonsense,” quipped Kathe.

Bastion was in a mood. Rather than enjoying the haven of his relationship with Raban, he only saw how it poorly contrasted with his relationship with his father. Kathe listened with a soft expression, as was usual for her. “Men go to the person who tells them what they want to hear. You’re a prins, that’s a dangerous power to give a soldier your father sees no fault in.”

“He’s not what you think,” countered Bastion.

“He’s appointed by your father. Understand that first.” And that was all she said on the matter, and all she would say in the intervening years.

So when Bastion decided he would sit elsewhere on that Noel and Kathe said they shouldn’t sit with Raban, Bastion didn’t need to engage the argument. For a few years they had both staked out their positions on this topic. He had no intention of sitting with Raban, but when she said that, it made him want to. To create time to consider this before he spoke, he asked her to walk with him. He took her hand, and they went out to the courtyard. “I could use some cold air,” he said. She smiled at him, and pulled his hand to her chest.

They found the courtyard dusted by snow. It was an early snowfall, a month ahead of the usual winter. He led her out into the midst of the activity in the courtyard. The market stalls were being set up for the final day of Noel. Cakes, breads steaming in the cold air, small straw soldiers in their wooden suits of armor, bundles of winter blossoms, all memories for purchase for the visitors to the keep. People teemed everywhere. Bastion stepped into the throng and like a big fish among a school of minnows, the crowds parted naturally, effortlessly. Kathe and Bastion stood in the center of the courtyard, head cocked back, staring up at the curtain of falling snow. “When Tuelal is a new moon, I worry,” began Bastion. “The new moon is a portal for the dark gods behind this mirage to reach through and touch us. Don’t laugh, I’ve read much on this matter. Yet a snow like this! This is a good omen! A curtain of white to hide from the darkness” He squeezed her hand, insisted that she look up at the flakes drifting down from the skies, “It’s bits of heaven trapped in cold little crystals, the cold tears of Ilsa.” Bastion was giddy with excitement. He didn’t know his father watched from the portico.

Bastion carried on unaware. “I have found that book I told you about. Actually, Raban found it. If it contains what I think it does, I’ll know how Larynisis governed with --” Bastion was interupted by his father.

“A man learns from looking into the eyes of another, not from the scratchings of bent old men wielding a reed over wax. Don’t give me that dopey expression. Get mad. Try that for a change. Go on. Let’s see blood move in your veins.” Naeldric stepped forward, into Bastion, and forced him to step back. Bastion hands raised.

Naeldric swatted his hands down. “Where’s the warrior in you? Huh?” Naeldric’s big eyes were wide. His spoke in a forceful tone. “Where? You think battles are fought in here!” He tapped hard on Bastions temple with a stiffed finger. Then abruptly, he turned and walked off. He said one last thing, at a volume loud enough to be overheard by all those around them, “Only warriors go on the Hunt. You will remain behind.”

When Bastion and Kathe arrived at the Waes Langhaus (Great White Hall) for the Noel celebration, Lothar greeted them and then asked if the confrontation was why he wanted to sit away from his father, Bastion said “No, Noel taxes me. That’s all.”

Lothar challenged this excuse directly and this is how Bastion answered, “Talking, talking, talking. It is valuable but costly. A mere hello on Khalday may better a request made on Godsday. But how many hellos do I have at hand? Some like you can speak endlessly and effortlessly. But me? Each chat is a chip taken from my charge. And I am chargeless this day.”

Lothar: his placid expression, his neatly combed hair, his prim tunic, embroidered with silver and gold, all seemed to stare blankly back at Bastion as if nothing he said had been heard and he was still waiting for something of merit to be said.

Bastion rolled his eyes at himself, “I sound like a child.”

“You sound like a prins. Your father wishes you to sound like a Dux. Your father has his surprise planned for tonight, so long as you don’t distract from that, I imagine he wouldn’t care if you chose to sit in the stables. But my dear prins, remember you are his heir.” Lothar straightened Bastion’s cloak, his shirt. “And as his heir, he wishes to shape you to suit the rule he requires. Your duty is but to be shaped.”

“And what shape does he want?”

“Something quite a bit steelier than this,” Lothar said with a mocking smile. “Pick your table carefully. Everything you do is read like a message. Better to write your own messages than leave it up to others to write for you.”

Bastion told Kathe, “We will sit with Neeklow.”

“Your father won’t be happy,” she said.

Bastion saw a strange kind of hope in her face, like someone pleased with what they heard but carefully trying to conceal it. He liked that. He kissed her on her forehead.