Ulfin
Caymax House was not the ancestral home of the Baldwin’s, but, Ulfin reflected, as long as he was in it, it meant the Baldwins were the most powerful family in the northern kingdoms. Today, as he looked over the busy city streets, though, Ulfin Baldwin thought of the castle in North Hale, Summer’s Rest.
There was no castle less aptly name than Summer’s Rest. Indeed, Summer’s End would have been a more apt name. With black stone walls so long they covered the entire slope of two great hills, and so high they could have protected a city, its grim towers looked over the rolling hills of North Hale.
From Gofrem Tower, Ulfin Baldwin could always see the northern vale as it fell into the Lake Country. When he moved to the west in that tower room, he could see the Giants, the mountainous spine of the whole island, snow capped blue peaks rising from the trees that attempted to crawl up its sides. To the east was the grey sea, and the great Bite of Waymouth.
Today, Ulfin looked to the courtyard and could see Allyn, tall and fair haired, proud and magnificent. If only he could turn him into a lord. It was not by battle and blood, not by heart and pride that Ulfin had come to his great power, but by guile and cunning, the willingness to look small and the ability to wait.
Three months ago, Ulfin had left this place that had been home to the Baldwins for three centuries to return to Ambridge and the great house of Caymax. Caymax House was as large or nearly as the great palace, and while Edmund was gone, it served the people well to know who their true lord was, to see the Stag Banner of Edmund lowered—for the King was not in residence, and to see flying high the Three Eagles of House Baldwin.
It was in waiting that Ulfin had come to this power and wished to pass it to his son. When he was Allyn’s age, or younger, he had served Edward Ironside, Edward the Wise they called him, last of the House of Wulfstan and the great kings of Hale, though he did not know it. If he had known, perhaps he would have bowed the knee when Sweyn’s and Svig’s armies came from across the sea in Dayne. Edward had assumed they would be like the other Dayne leaders before whom the Hale, rallied together, had beaten back.
From Summer’s Rest, the Baldwin family had watched it all, but when Svig came, young and powerful, quick to join his Hale cousins to his northern empire, this had changed everything. He had made quick and murderous work of the North Hales, and then come into Hale and done the same. After killing King Edward, and intending to kill his children, he had married his widow and gotten three children on her. Sendic children, he had claimed, despite the fact that Emma was no Sendic, three children for each of the Hale kingdoms.
But until those children could come to age, they needed powerful lords to rule the land for them, Svig’s young son Sweyn would not do it, for he was a conqueror, and not much in the way of a ruler. He was a true corsair. He came to Inglad to see his queen only now and again, but preferred the rough women of the north.
There had been no lord with less, and therefore with more of a will to succeed and little loyalty to the House of Wulfstan, than Ulfin Baldwin. Baldwin had risen quickly, chiefly because he was quickest to serve the new kings, and it wasn’t that the Sweyn trusted him, though Baldwin thought he did, but that he knew Ulfin was willing to do anything to maintain the good graces of his new king. Baldwin knew, for sure, that the Queen distrusted him, but then everyone else distrusted her. Hadn’t she stood by and let her husband die? Hadn’t she allowed her children to be killed or to flee? Hadn’t she turned around and married their murderer and born him children. Some said she was only trying to survive, but Emma was a Dauman princess, and could have easily gone back home. Some, who pointed out she was the granddaughter of a Dauman king, were sure she was the pawn the Daumans were using to secure a foothold in Sussainy, and if this was true, they said, then the Queen was to be pitied. To Baldwin it made her more suspicious still, for it meant that one who had no right to Hale would sit on the throne. He kept secret even from his own thoughts the idea that a day would come when he might have to kill her along with the new children of this marriage.
But while those children grew, as Earl of North Hale, and later Earl of the West, Ulfin’s power grew. As Canute’s Empire expanded, so did the authority of his earls, and fifteen years into the king’s reign—or usurpation—Ulfin ruled as his suzerain over Inglad, Hale and North Hale.
The death of so hearty a king as Sweyn came as a surprise, and set into orbit much squabbling about his empire. His young children, the oldest was sixteen, were not only heirs to Inglad, but heirs to the Northland and Dayne far across the sea. When Sweyn had been sixteen he had been a warrior. Not so his sons. The Kings of the South came together to talk of divvying the remnants of the North now that Sweyn was gone, cousins of Sweyn prepared for war, but it was not long before Daumany and Edmund arrived from across the sea.
Many, including Ulfin, wondered if Emma had planned this all along. As northern longships of the hated Dayne came south, The Dauman troops came into an uneasy alliance with the Kingdoms of the South, the Ayl lands. It was true that long ago all of them had been one people, that centuries ago the Daumans had been Dayne, but the Sendics were civilized after a thousand years, and far removed from raiding corsairs, and the Dauman, putting aside those ways, seemed a sort of kindred race. Better to have them back the new king in the North than another war with heathen raiders.
And so Edmund had come to the Triple Throne. Various pretenders and would be pretenders from House Wulfstan and Thanwulfstan had been unceremoniously put down. Ulfin was only too happy to help. They could never have had their kingdoms back. The march of history was about strong people becoming weak until they lost what they had to the mighty remaining, lost everything, including their lives.
Ambridge
He had arrived at Port of Helar in the evening, and though his lords asked if he would remain the night, Edmund said, “I want Ambridge. I want my city.”
Was he getting soft? After thirty years of rule, he often felt he was. Baldwin had made him soft. His alliance with the Baldwins was a deal with the evil one, and he could never get out of it. There would be no Edith tonight. There was never an Edith. Did she prefer to remain a virgin rather than give him an heir?
The ship made its slow way up the river. Sails and banners down until it came to the city of Ambridge of the high walls, black in the night. So it was, in secret, Edmund King of the Hales and Inglad, returned to his chief capital.
Even at night, the city was impressive, the crescent of the moon shining through clouds over the rows and rows of high slate roves. Off of the main avenues, past the high peaked houses, city life could be heard. As they approached Castle Whitestone, he was mildly annoyed to see Baldwin banners flying from the towers. After winning three wars and defeating the usurper Sweyn, he himself was defeated by one dreadful little family.
“Have those taken down by morning,” Edmund said to a guard who had appeared to be drowsing and jumped to life at the approach of the royal party.
The guard nodded and went, Edmund supposed, to tell his superiors. Wouldn’t Ulfin Baldwin be surprised by the morning?
Edmund ordered a bath and had his page strip him of his armor and his clothes and then lead him to the wash room. Soaking in the great stone tub, he thought of the new king across the sea, of Rufus with every hand turned against him, and the weariness in him gave way to other feelings. He rang the bell at the side of the tub, and when a servant entered, he said, “Send Fritha to me.”
“Fritha sleeps, Lord. Shall I wake her?”
Edmund thought on this, then shook his head.
“No, send another. Any other.”
He sank deeper into the bath, savoring, after much uncertainty, the thickness of his cock, the growing desire in his heavy balls, the certainty of having what he desired before the night was over, of not being refused.
When Edmund entered his chambers she was already there. He had never seen her, but surely in his fifty years, nearly thirty on the throne, she had seen him. What had she thought? He stood there, wrapped in a towel. This was not Fritha. He would not unduly frighten her. He simply unwound his towel and said, “Attend to it,” pointing to his erection, bobbing up stiff before him.
She looked confused, and he said, “Are you a virgin, Girl?”
“No, my, lord.”
“Then you know what to do.”
As she went to her knees before him, taking his penis in her uncertain hands, he said, almost irritably, “Yes, that’s it.”
She took it into her mouth timidly—the only word was timidly—and he said, “Do it appropriately. I am the King. Do not displease the King. Do it like you’d do your favorite lover.”
She was not Fritha, not good enough to make him forget, and he wished to forget. In the end, angered by her lack of skill, her insipid mouth, he lifted the wench up, and ripped away her gown. Fascinated by her stifled cry of fear, he threw her down on the bed, turning her around and, mounting her. Her fear felt good while he fucked her, and the rutting he could not hold back was accelerated by her crying. Just a slap here, a punch here, made her whimper and excited him all the more.
“Don’t stifle your screams,” he told her while he plowed into her, his large hands fascinated by the daintiness of her throat as he choked her.
“I want you to scream. It excites me when you scream.”
And so she screamed as he fucked her, and the more she screamed, the harder he fucked her until, at last, undone by orgasm, his body writhed like a fish and the veins stood out in his neck as his back arched. But even in this he fucked her so hard she kept crying out as his seed spilled into her.
When it was done, he remained in her a little longer, still thrusting as she wept, and then climbed off of her and slowly she turned around.
She did not know what to do. She simply lay there and Edmund said, “You may leave. Perhaps you are lucky. Perhaps I planted my baby in you. You may go.”
She did not leave easily. Blood was there, and it irritated him that she left it on the sheets, had gotten it on his cock. She crawled off the bed and gathered her ripped gown, and the stupid girl was trying to be quick—he could tell—but she was not quick enough, staggering and weaving to the door.
When she was gone and the door shut feebly behind her, the wench was quickly out of his mind. He was drifting off to sleep, thinking of that tempting Herleva back in Daumany, of the Dauman women who knew how to be lovers, of the young wenches in the palace who were here to be fucked, how it was almost better when he knew they didn’t enjoy it, knew they feared him. He passed into sleep.
In his sleep a woman came into the room. She was white robed, and shadows were under her eyes. On either side of her were two dead children. They stared at him with red eyes and ran fingers over their slashed throats. They opened their mouths, all three, but it was only the woman’s voice Edmund heard, saying plainly:
“Murderer.”
Northern Inglad
The Western Fens
“Myrne!” Wolf cried as her horse misstepped and, with a great neigh, fell neck deep into the water of the fens while Myrne’s head disappeared beneath the water.
“Myrne! Wolf cried again, dismounting.
Myrne came up out of the water, soaked, weeds in her hair, floating on her back, and Wolf, jumping into the water, dragged her onto, if not shore, a shallower spot in the reeds.
“Myrne!” he cried. “Speak to me.”
Black hair plastered to her white face, she did not open her eyes, but when he pressed on her chest and she coughed, Myrne said, “Damn these marshes.”
“Gods!” Wolf picked her up and pulled her to him. “Gods, you’re alive!”
“So, I am,” Myrne said, as her horse neighed. “But get Snowmane back on shore. If his leg is alright.”
Myrne coughed again. “Is it?”
Wolf took off his soaked cape, heavy and smelling of wet fur, and he and Myrne tugged at the horse. Snowmane seemed to resist for a time, but came back onto the shore screaming in pain.
“It was by my magic he even got to shore.” Myrne said.
Crazed with pain, the horse screamed every time it landed on its leg, and almost danced back into the water. As Myrne moved back from the horse and Wolf reached for his dagger, suddenly something whistled past them and stuck fast in Snowmane’s neck. The horse neighed crazily again, and then collapsed on its side as Myrne called out its name.
But now they all saw a small boat sailing over the more open water, and it found the firm, higher land Wolf could not. Out of it came a brown and bent old woman, so ancient her nose touched her chin.
“’El be fine,” she said, coming to the horse. “But ‘el be sleepin’ for a wul till I get some plank and bandage for ‘im.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Wolf said, sounding uncertain.
“Yer a yung fine piece o’man you are,” she assessed, winking and grabbing Wolf’s backside, “Twill be a treat for me if you ride back to the stead.”
“Stay with Snowmane,” Wolf said to Myrne, feeling like an idiot as he climbed onto the raft with the old woman. The crone winked at the wet Myrne and chucked Wolf under his chin. As he smiled foolishnly at Myrne, she watched him and the old woman paddle away to her house in the swamp, leaving her alone..
If the leg could be bound, and if Myrne could get a good night’s sleep, then she could perform a spell powerful enough. And draining enough to heal Snowmane.
As they left, Myrne knew they were going to get bindings for Snowmane, but she thought of old fairy tales where strange hags demanded one night of love from a young man for their favors and part of her imagined Wolf sleeping with the hag. She knew she should laugh, but as she coughed up water, Myrne found the idea of Wolf sleeping with anyone distinctly unfunny.
