Karak’s. ‘Drink it!’ he thundered.
Karak struggled weakly.
Then the soldier began to squeeze – slowly. The sergeant had
shoulders like an ox and hands the size of hams. He probably could
have made a rock bleed just by squeezing it.
Karak rose up on his tiptoes, squealing like a pig.
‘Drink it!’ the Sergeant repeated.
‘Your Highness!’ Carhein protested.
‘Shut up!’ Daran snapped. ‘You people will learn to do as I tell
you!’
The sergeant continued to squeeze Karak’s hand in that
overpowering grip of his, and the drunkard finally snatched the tankard
from my hand and noisily drank it.
‘Ah, Sergeant,’ I said to the soldier, ‘I expect that our young friend
here might start feeling unwell in a few moments. Why don’t
you take him over near the wall so he doesn’t splash all over
everybody?’
The sergeant grinned broadly and dragged Karak off to one side
where the sodden young man became noisily ill.
‘Lady Cellan,’ Daran said then, ‘would you be so good as to
approach the throne for a moment?’
Cellan obediently, though a little hesitantly, came to the dais.
‘Do you wish to return to your husband?’ Daran asked.
‘Never!’ she burst out. ‘I’ll kill myself first! He beats me, your
highness. Every time he gets drunk – which is every day – he takes
his fists to me.’
‘I see.’ Daran:s face hardened. ‘No decent man ever hits a woman,’
he declared, ‘so, by order of the throne, the marriage of Karak and
Cellan is hereby dissolved.’
,You can’t do that!’ Carhein roared. ‘It’s a woman’s duty to submit
to her husband’s chastisement when she misbehaves.’
‘It’s also a nobleman’s duty to submit to chastisement from the
throne when he misbehaves,’ Kamion advised him. ‘You’re pressing
your luck, Baron Carhein.’
‘Now we come to the question of the ownership of that parcel of
land,’ Daran said.
‘The land is mine!’ Garhein bellowed.
‘It’s mine!’ Altor countered. ‘It reverted to me entirely when his
Highness dissolved the marriage.’
‘Actually, dear chaps,’ Kamion said smoothly, ‘the land belongs
to the crown. The entire island does. You hold all your land in trust
– at the crown’s pleasure.’
‘We could probably argue the fine points of the law for weeks,’
Daran said, ‘but legal arguments are very boring, so, in order to
save time – and bloodshed – we’ll simply divide that disputed parcel
of land right down the middle. Half goes to Baron Garhein, and
Half to Baron Altor.’
‘Unthinkable” Garhein protested.
‘Start thinking about goats then, Garhein, or landless
vagabondage. You will do as I tell you to do.’ Then my nephew’s eyes
narrowed. ‘Now, just to keep you two and your assorted partisans and
kinsmen out of mischief, you’re going to build a fifteen-foot wall
right down the middle of that parcel of land. It’ll give you something
to do, and it’ll keep you away from each other. I want to see a lot
of progress on that wall, gentlemen, and I want to see both of you
out there carrying rocks, too. You’re not going to just pass this off
to your underlings.’
‘That’s twenty miles, your Highness!’ Altor gasped.
‘Is that all? You should be able to finish up in a decade or two,
then. I want you to go to opposite ends and start building. I’ll have
the sergeant here mark the exact center and you can think of it as
a race. I might even let the winner keep his head as a prize. Lord
Brand knows the name of every one of your partisans, and they’ll
be joining you in your great work – either willingly or in chains.
have I made myself clear?’
They glowered at him but wisely chose not to say anything.
‘I’d suspect that you gentlemen aren’t going to be popular among
your kinsmen,’ Kamion noted. ‘I suggest that you wear mail shirts
during the construction – just as a precaution.’
‘Now we come to that sick fellow over in the corner,’ Daran said,
rising from his father’s throne rather grimly.
By now Karak had pretty much emptied his stomach of everything
he’d eaten or drunk for the past several weeks. He was pale and
trembling violently when the hulking sergeant dragged him back
to the dais.
‘Decent men don’t beat their wives, Karak,’ Daran said, ‘so I’m
going to teach you decency right here and now.’ He reached behind
the throne and picked up a long, limber whip.
‘You can’t!’ Garhein almost screamed. ‘My son’s a nobleman!’
‘You and I seem to have conflicting definitions of nobility,
Garhein,’ Daran told him. ‘Since this sodden beast is your son, though,
I’ll defer to you in the matter. I’m either going to flog him or chop
off both his hands. Take your pick.’
‘Behanding him would keep him from hitting women, your
Highness,’ Kamion noted clinically, ‘and it might cut down on his
drinking, too – unless he’d like to lap his beer out of a bowl like a dog.’
‘Good point, Lord Brand,’ Daran noted. He reached up and took
down his father’s sword, which leaped joyously into bright blue
flame. ‘Well, Carhein?’ he said, ‘which is it going to be?’ He held
out the flaming sword in one hand and the whip in the other.
Garhein gaped at him.
‘Answer me!’ Daran roared.
‘Th-the whip, your Highness,’ Garhein stammered.
‘Wise choice,’ Kamion murmured. ‘Having a son and heir without
any hands could be so demeaning.’
Then the Master of the Guard, who’d obviously already been
instructed upon what to do, ripped off Karak’s doublet, kicked his
feet out from under him and seized him by one ankle. ‘Just to
keep him from crawling under the furniture, your Highness,’ he
explained, firmly planting his foot on Karak’s other ankle.
‘Thank you, Sergeant,’ Daran said. Then he hung the sword back
up, let his cloak fall to the floor, removed his doublet, and rolled
up his sleeves. ‘Pushing right along then,’ he said and proceeded
to flog the screaming, squirming drunkard to within an inch of his
life. Cellan, I noticed, loved every minute of it. Alorns are such a
simple, uncomplicated people at times.
After Daran had finished, he tossed his whip down and picked
up his clothes again. ‘I think that concludes our business here for
the day, my friends,’ he announced to the shocked assemblage. ‘If
I remember correctly, the archery contest begins this afternoon. I
might even shoot off a quiver of arrows myself. I’ll see you all there,
then.’
After the three of us had returned to Kamion’s study, I put it to
the two of them directly. ‘You had that flogging all planned in
advance, didn’t you?’
,of course, Aunt Pol,’ Daran grinned at me.
,Without consulting me?’
‘We didn’t want to upset you, Pol,’ Kamion said smoothly. ‘Did
you really find it too offensive?’
I pretended to consider it. ‘Not really,’ I conceded. ‘Considering
Karak’s behavior, it was more or less appropriate.’
‘We talked about some alternatives,’ Kamion said. ‘I thought it
might be sort of nice if I called that beer-soaked bully out, gave him
a sword and then chopped him to pieces, but his Highness decided
that might upset you, so we settled for the flogging instead – less
messy, you understand.’
‘And the threat to chop off his hands?’
‘I just made that up on the spur of the moment, Aunt Pol,’ Daran
admitted. ‘I think it might have gotten my point about wife-beating
across, though.’ Then he snapped his fingers. ‘Why don’t we enter
that in the criminal code, Kamion?’
‘You’re a barbarian, Daran,’ I accused him.
‘No, Aunt Pol, I’m an Alorn. I know my people, and I know what
frightens them. I don’t want to rule by terror, but I do want other
Rivans to understand that things can get very nasty if they do
something that I don’t like, and I really don’t like wife-beating.’ He leaned
back in his chair and looked speculatively out the window at the
bright sunny day. ‘That’s really at the center of all power, Aunt Pol,’
he mused. ‘We can try to act civilized and polite, but at the bottom
of it all, the power of any ruler is based on a threat. Fortunately,
we don’t have to carry that threat out too often. If I’d known I was
going to have to be a savage to sit in my father’s place, I wouldn’t
be here at all. I’d still be running, and neither you nor grandfather
would ever have been able to find me.’
I was so proud of him at that point that I almost exploded.
News of Daran’s handling of the feud between Garhein and Altor
spread far and wide throughout the Isle, and the Rivans began to
look at their youthful Prince Regent with a new respect. Daran was
working out just fine.
*cHAPTER 11
Anrak sailed into the harbor late the following summer. Over the
years I’d noted that Anrak moved around a lot. Most men settle