Draka wanted to laugh and cry at the sight of the three men staring at him. The two guards looked barely a day older than fifteen. He crinkled his nose more at the two boys than at the brightness of the sun. With a few splashes of water from the barrel and a combing of his hand through his messy hair, Draka regarded the third from feather capped head to polished leather boots.
“I had paid your wife well for these stables,” the Baron slid from the saddle as easily as any cavalry man and handed Draka the reins. Behind him, the other two did the same. “I expect them to be clean and well brushed when I return for them.” He held up a single gold coin in front of Draka’s face. “To ensure that this one is well cared for.” And he pressed the coin into Draka’s palm.
Draka blinked at the coin. Did he just—? Vigora peeked from in her stall at him with one ear cast curiously to the side. There is no possible way.
Maud came to the door with expectant brows and crossed arms. A knowing grin adorned her pretty face.
“Excuse me,” the Baron snapped his fingers to draw Draka’s attention. “If you could get on with it. My men and I are parched. Also, send word to the Prince to inform him of my arrival.”
Oh, I’ll inform him forthwith, Draka narrowed his eyes. He dropped the reins and turned around.
“Where do you think you’re going? Hey! I paid you. You’ll be whipped for your insolence, I’ll make sure of it. Such disrespect, I tell you. Your Prince will be furio—”
Draka slammed the door behind him and Maud. Maud looked up to him with the warm smile that made him lose track of why he did things. If she asked, he couldn’t help but give it to her. Thankfully, his little devil never asked for anything absurd. Yet, anyway.
She was nearly a twin to her mother with the coloring of her aunt now that her doe eyes had slowly gained that blue tint over her emerald greens after she had been healed by the Holy Spirit. It was uncommon but happened.
There was another whose eyes changed color while he was in the Holy Lands. He couldn’t remember the man’s name, but he had dark eyes that reminded Draka of a wild animal’s before he was healed. Then, they, too, turned more blue. On a man, such blue eyes were haunting. On a woman, especially the pale sky blues of Maud’s mother, Aurelie, they made him forget where he was.
“Should I?” Maud asked with her head leaning back on his shirt. Draka rolled his eyes. Playfully, she skipped back to the basket and continued her inventory. “He’ll probably go to the Fort and Gerard will set him straight. Sixteen gold for horses to be fed. Is that normal?”
Draka thought about it for a moment. He nodded with a tossing hand, close enough.
The door vibrated with a volley of hard knocks. Maud gave Draka a look and he knew that he had let the joke go long enough. He turned and opened the door to find the plump Baron glaring at him.
“Now, I paid you well. Either you take our horses to be stabled or I want my money back,” the Baron’s hand went to draw his rapier from his belt.
Draka motioned behind his back for Maud. On his behalf, she shouted over him, “You’re speaking to Paladin Grande Prince Deitrich Luminis in the doorway to his own home. Try being more disrespectful when speaking to him.”
The Baron leaned to look at her over his shoulder. Draka shot her a quick glare.
She shrugged. “He was being a cock.”
“I’m sorry, but there is no possible way that you—” Draka wasn’t certain what caused the Baron to stop mid sentence, but the dry swallow and backstep spoke volumes. The Baron bowed eloquently by crossing one leg to the side and lowering his entire body nearly to the ground. “My apologies, my Prince. I am Christophe von Strasse, Baron of la Baronnie de Strasbourg.”
Draka raised a brow. What am I supposed to do now? He wondered. He thought about what he had observed of the nobility in the Holy Lands and held out his hand with the fingers spread downward. The Baron went to kiss his fingers. Draka instantly pulled his hand back. Gross.
The Baron straightened, his plump round face turning red. “I apologize if I have offended you. I thought that you were a stableman housing the Prince’s—well, your horse and when I saw your mistress…”
Maud and Draka exchanged glances, both mirroring the same sickened expressions. They both laughed.
“Ward,” Maud corrected him.
“Yes, right,” the Baron turned to Draka. “Yet another thing I must apologize for. I merely assumed…”
Maud looked at the ceiling with a frustrated breath after Draka shot her another, more helpless, look. She came to his side, standing like she was no more than a teenager with how much shorter she was than him. The top of her head barely reached Draka’s shoulders and Draka was short in comparison to most men. The Baron was nearly a head taller than him.
“Can you read?” Maud seemed unintimidated in the shadow of the two men. She had the look of a lioness swatting at a mouse. Draka brimmed with pride.
“Of course I can read,” The Baron condescended her, “Can you read?”
Maud narrowed her eyes. The Lioness was getting tired of playing with her food. “He is a Paladin and has taken a vow of silence. He writes, you read.”
The Baron turned to Draka. “Does this girl speak on your behalf?”
Draka wanted to laugh in the man’s face as he nodded and watched the Baron’s shock overwhelming his cool, noble expressions.
This is going better than I hoped, Draka mused. He pointed for Maud to fetch paper from the desk and another quill—he had dropped the other somewhere on the way to washing his face—and sat at the table. When the Baron reached to sit in one of the other chairs, Draka stopped him with a wagging finger.
Though offended, the Baron straightened in silence. Maud handed him a stack of parchment and quill dipped in an inkwell, then returned to cutting vegetables at the end of the table.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
‘Welcome, Baron de Strasbourg,’ Draka wrote. He waited for the Baron to acknowledge it before he continued, ‘Yes, it is faster for my ward to give you answers than it is for me to write them most of the time. I have a vow of silence.’
“I see. An odd thing for a Prince to agree to as penance, but not unheard of among you crusaders. I have come to swear my fealty and to ask what you wish to do about the mines in Nuese-Baden,” the Baron tucked at his tunic and belt as if he needed to vent steam like a pot of Maud’s delicious stew. “I have the supply trains guarded but…”
Draka blinked. Not Maud’s stew. But also, yes, always Maud’s stew.
“…thirty seven and twelve wagons a month…”
He turned toward the pot that was already boiling as Maud dropped diced somethings into it. His mouth was watering.
“…he has made quite the offer for…”
Wait, he must have missed something. What was the Baron talking about?
‘What you think is best, make it so.’ Draka was too hungry to go over whatever this was.
“Then I need more soldiers,” the Baron said glumly. “At the minimum, five hundred men at arms, not including my bloody engineers you have kept here for the past three months.”
Shit. Draka sighed. His stomach was rumbling. Maud’s hands moving chopped vegetables from the table to the pot held his eyes. But this was important. He wrote, ‘Again, why do you need them? The village needs the rest of the bridge completed and the canal to be functioning before winter.’
The Baron’s eyes became knife cuts, “Lord Mueller has already laid siege to our holding in Freiburg. Once he has it, our mines will be isolated. I have fifty men defending each, but they won’t hold against the full force of the Baden Army.”
‘Are we at war?’
“Is this a jest?” the Baron looked to Maud, “He must be jesting.” He leaned toward Draka with a slam of his fist on the table, “We invaded Baden under Lord Taggerty’s orders last spring and have been fighting to keep hold of it since. The King of Baden himself has promised Lord Mueller a thousand men by next month, specifically with engineers and sappers.”
Maud was frozen with salt spilling from her hands, wide eyed. Draka met her concern with a long nasally breath. Leave it to his oldest and closest friend to start a war and leave Draka to fight it. Phillip Taggerty at his finest. When I get my hands on him…
Draka wrote while the Baron waited patiently, ‘Leave a garrison of twenty, including the fisherman and the architect to supervise the remaining work here in the village. Prepare all but your engineers to march on Neues-Baden under my command.’
“With all due respect and accolades, your grace,” the Baron’s tone made Draka’s mood sour, “but my men are more accustomed to my command of them and I am more than capable of defeating Mueller if I have proper supplies and manpower. If you could rally your banners at Alcer, Lorraine, perhaps even gain some mercenaries from the King…”
“War?” Maud stomped to Draka’s side. “You’re going to war? No. You can’t!”
“Your ward is quite right, I may look noble…”
You don’t.
“…but I am tested in battle. I’m far more experienced in the matters of war…”
You’re not.
“It would be wiser for you to allow me to lead this on your behalf. I’m certain I can drive Mueller back and perhaps even take the rest of Baden in your name.”
‘No.’ Draka slid the paper in front of the Baron. ‘You have my orders. I will be in Berone in a week to take command then. Have them prepared to march by then.’
The Baron sank back from him. “As you wish, my Prince. But when the fighting starts, it would behoove you to allow me to take command of the fighting so that we can ensure victory.”
Draka rolled his eyes and turned away from him. He could see the Baron’s irritation by the half-hearted bow reflected from the side of the pot. Once the Baron left and the door shut behind him, Maud stepped into Draka’s vision.
“You don’t need to go to war,” Maud moved in close, her eyes already glimmering with tears. “Send the Baron instead. He clearly wants you to stay here, too.”
Draka shook his head at her. I have to, he said by soothing squeezes of her shoulders.
“I wish you could say something, just once,” Maud leaned her cheek into his chest, “so I could understand why you do things like this.” He slid his hands to behind her shoulders and pulled her in. Her breath ruffled his shirt, “I can’t lose you, too.”
Draka took a deep breath into his chest. He needed to cheer her up. Nothing made him remember how alone he was in his new Principality like Maud avoiding him because he upset her. Last time had nearly driven him mad. He didn’t remember what had made her so angry with him but he did remember how she spent almost an entire week leaving cold pots of stew on his porch each morning instead of coming to make them there. He always left them on the hearth for too long or had the fire too hot or something because they didn’t taste half as good as when she made them here. And Vigora ignored him as well. He was slowly becoming convinced that Vigora was more her horse than his at this point.
He brushed her hair and rested his chin on the top of her head.
“When do you leave?” She leaned back from him to stir the loudly bubbling pot. Draka held up a finger. “Tomorrow? No! That’s too soon!”
Draka shook his head with wide eyes. Calm down, calm down. He held up the finger with one hand and rolled his wrist at her with the other to indicate more.
“Week? Month.” She stirred while looking at him sideways. “Week,” she finally understood with obvious relief. “Good.”
See? Draka tried to say with body language.
Maud lifted the ladle from the pot, took a sip, made a face, and replaced the ladle. She raked a handful of chopped onions into her hand to drop in it.
“You need to catch a deer, then. And not with those arrows that tear the meat, either. Smooth ones, I need to be able to strip the meat evenly. Oh, and skin it quick after you kill it or it tastes too gamey. And I’ll need money to get flour from Preston. You’ll need at least two loaves of bread for the trip. Chives, garlic, and sesame from Aunt Leta. I think Uncle Gregor is going to Alcer this week, he might be able to get me some parsley. I ran out this morning. Salt from Sorin, but I’m not paying his asking prices. He always makes it too high and I’ll need a lot if the meat is to keep. And enough for me to get you a proper blanket. I’d have sewn you one if anyone had told me you were going to be a warring tyrant instead of a good and kind prince.”
Draka had been nodding along until that last part, coupled with the glare and hands on her hips, which made him purse his brows at her. Obviously, she was upset. At least she was already here, making the stew. She wasn’t the kind to leave anything uncooked. Right?
“And I need a new dress.” She turned around and continued stirring before taking another sip with a pleased hum.
Instead of leaving a half cooked stew as payment for upsetting her, she was making him actually pay for it. How much does a dress cost anyway?
Then he remembered when an old friend bought herself a dress in Heblem years ago.
Oh no…
