azrudaur

Let it be remembered - I gave her a choice.

I place my pen down, push the stopper back into the blue-black ink bottle, lean back into my chair. The lad quietly takes away my papers, placing them neatly to one side. He gathers them reverently now, as though anything I touch is imbued with some vital essence.

No time to think of what I have sown there. It is done.

But what is sown now?

The young man lies limp in my arms. His head rests on my broad chest as trusting as a maid, rising and falling with the ebb and flow of my breath. He smells as sweet as a girl, for all his twenty years. The low light from the dim brazier picks out the curl of his eyelashes, as the herb mixture pushes him deeper into sleep.

My right hand lies loose over the back of his bruised neck. My left limp over the curve at the base of his spine. I am mindful of the weals of the injuries striping him.

I am not a brute.

And so - it is done. The course is set, and even the loss of my fine horse cannot dampen my elation. The stone winnows as it will, but winnows not I.

I return triumphant to my men, alive, exultant. My blood taken and accepted. No taint of madness behind my eyes, not driven wild by the raging powers within the stone like a lesser man. My own men congratulate me while they look on sidelong. What may I yet become unsettles them, warring with the tantalising question... how high will they fly, in my train? Confident that my rise must now be assured.

The horses powerful haunches bunch beneath them as they attempt the steep descent. The loose grey slates and scree slither beneath their hooves, clattering together as the unstable hillside slowly begins to slide.

My men are tense, alert to the shifting rocks. Words are short and pointed. This descent tries even a skilled horseman. It is well that my men are almost as assured a-horse as I, the presence of the northmen in their  bolt-hole forcing us in this wide arc around them, onto this difficult mountainous route.

The last hours before dawn, when even the night is dead. My Hound pushes into the tent the shambling near-wreck of the filth's sport. Dark haired, broad chested; a great bull brought down by the merciless taunting of the pack.

His swollen eyes slit further, wincing in the comparative brightness of the tent as he stumbles before me, hands bound tight behind him. My Poppinjay gasps unwittingly at the sight - orc tooth and claw evident in the frenzied rips and shreds of his skin - noisome bites that will fester ... should he live.

His chair stands empty in the corner of my prison.

I see the high back, covered in tooled red leather. A suggestion of his form remains firmly pressed into the cured skin - thigh, muscled back, a shoulder. The graceful arcs of the wooden arms are covered in a  rich pattina from long use, polished by the repeated caress of his dark skin.

How many days in this chamber?

I watch the thin golden sliver of sunlight move as slow as honey across the walls. Each moment an age, watch the tiny motes of dust caught in its light, dancing as innocent and ephemeral as may-flies in a summer evening. Gold gives way to silver, and the dimmer light of the moon traces time over the same tracks. The same and same and same.

He is gone.

The very stones of this place sigh out in weary relief. The imperceptable lightening of the burden of the few captives in chambers far below me. I feel them, the endless, endless misery ... like a thread of smoke rising forever in some darkling tribute.

I watched him depart in the dawn, looking down from this dizzying perch set amongst the high towers. That I could do so ... I hate that I am so piteously grateful. To be so reduced by my own need - or as he would have it - by my own desire unfulfilled.

Tavern - voices rumble up through the floorboards. The indistinct muffle pierced again and again by a bellowing laugh, some snatches of a merry fiddle-tune, friendly cat-calls.

The heavy canvas flap is lifted aside. Without announcement or preamble the bulk of my Hound appears inside my great tent. I permit this honour to no other than him.