Kingdom Born

Chapter 6: A journey north

I had the treasure of a hundred lifetimes stored safely away in the hold of the Red Raven, but that did little to cheer me up. If anything, it gnawed at my gut. The deck of the ship rocked out from underneath me and I had to grab hold of the rail to keep from being pitched over the side. I wasn't about to jeopardize the remains of my future by falling into the sea. I would live out this year of banishment and I WOULD return to the Guard. The Council may have taken my oath lightly but I didn't. All I had to do was survive a year...

"Phara!"

Karl? I twisted around and saw my husband standing near the captain's quarters. His travelling cape was wrapped tightly around his shoulders to cut the hard cool wind. He was supposed to be back with Kyle and Mother. "What are you doing here?" My voice was still tear harsh from the night before.

The welcoming smile he had plastered on his face faded and he dropped his arms down to his sides. He walked toward me, his eyes full of concern, "I couldn't let you go alone."

"Captain!..." I brushed past Karl and headed toward the stern where Delmarta stood with her hands on the wheel. "Turn the ship about."

"Why?"

I was taken back slightly. Having grown used to the chain of command within the Garrison made it hard to remember that everyone didn't have to jump when I said so. "You have to take my husband back to port."

Karl crossed his arms in front of his chest. "I'm not going."

"Yes, you are."

Delmarta's voice snapped loudly. "Children! In case you didn't notice, the wind is with us today. It would take a fool and her husband to try and fight the way the Goddess is blowing us."
My face burned.

"There's no need to be rude, Captain Delmarta." Karl stood beside me with his hand on my shoulder as if he could restrain me if I decided to take offense at that remark. Didn't he know that the strength of a man just didn't compare to that of a battle trained woman? Still, it felt comforting.

Delmarta didn't bother to hide her contempt. "She has to be to throw away a fine career. If you want, boy, I'll give you my bunk for the rest of the trip. Of course you'll have to share it with me..." Delmarta tossed back her head and laughed.

I turned on my heel and marched back toward the quarters I had purchased. I could have survived in Coveport alone just fine, but with Karl...I couldn't leave him to the mercies of those goddessless women. They would eat him up and spit him out without looking twice at the mess they would leave.

"Sunny!" Karl caught up with me and grabbed my arm. The ship heaved beneath me again and I lurched backwards off balance. The low guard railing hit me across the back and I felt myself tipping over. Just as quickly, Karl jerked on my arm and sent me toppling into him back onto the heaving deck. He took the burnt of the fall then rolled to lay on top of me. His large hands framed my face, sheltering me from the cool wind that ripped across the ship, as he bent closer, as if he was going to kiss me in front of the whole crew. I had to push against his chest twice before he rolled off. I climbed to my feet caught up in a mass of emotions: anger, embarrassment and, Goddess forbid, lust.

"What are you doing? You act like a shameless whore." My words were directed at myself but Karl stiffened as if I had struck him across the face.

He paled as the ship rocked. His shock had nothing to do with the motion of the ship. He stepped close and hissed at me, "Who told you? I bet it was Zaren - he's your old suitor isn't he? That bastard..." Karl turned on his heel and ran from me. I could only watch as he disappeared below deck.

The silence was broken only by the flap of the sails and the creak of the ropes. Delmarta stood not far off, her face still set in its scorn. "A woman without honour is better off dead."

"And will you test your honour today, Captain?" My hand gripped loosely around the hilt of my sword; feeling its familiarity settled all my roiting emotions. "My career is in disgrace, but my personal honour is intact. The affairs of a husband and wife are of no concern of yours unless you are asked to mediate."

"Keep your sword buckled, woman." Delmarta met my threat with a look of healthy respect more for my swordwomanship than my words. The disdain in her eyes was meant to cut at my behaviour but I didn't care.

"Keep out of my way." Pushing past her, I hurried after Karl. What did he mean... who told you? Zaren? Zaren was an old memory long before Karl entered my life. I'd never even bedded him. Where did he get this notion?

Jumping off the third stair from the bottom, the ship rolled and I landed on my still healing ankle. I crashed into the wall and leaned against it. My ankle throbbed enough to make sure that it wouldn't be ignored. "Damn ships." Hobbling down the corridor to my...our, quarters, I flopped down on the bed just to check how serious my injury was before I went searching for Karl.
He walked out of the small closet carrying a bedroll. His face was red as if he had been crying.

I tried to blank the hurt off my face but he saw it. "Your ankle?"

I gestured to the dropped bundle, "Where were you going?"

He loosened the laces on my boot and cupped the palm of his hand around the heel and pulled. Flashes of red burnt into my brain, then my boot was free. My ankle was swelling up again but there didn't seem to be any more new bruises. A first.

"I'm moving down to the hold to bunk there. You won't have to see me. I'll make sure that I eat with the crew. You should soak your foot." He pushed himself off the floor and looked down at me intensely, as if he were memorizing my face.

Grabbing his hand, I urged him to sit beside me, "What are you talking about on deck? What is this about Zaren?"

"You will only be gone for a year. If he waited this long, he'll be waiting when you get back."

I frowned, "Did you hit your head on the deck when we fell?" I touched the back of his head and he jerked away as if he were stung.

He looked at with accusing and stung grey eyes, "You called me a whore!"

I reached out a gentle hand slowly, allowing him time to get up if he didn't want me to touch him. He sat still, looking at me with unreadable eyes. I touched his short hair and stroked my hand along his smooth skin, "I called myself a whore for wanting to take you right there in front of the sailors!"

"Oh." A sheepish smile tilted his lips upwards.

I leaned over and gave him a light kiss, "Oh. Why did you think I called you a whore?"
Karl looked away uneasily. "Because I used to be. Don't say anything right now, Sunny. Just listen." He climbed off the bed and walked toward the swaying lantern high above a small wooden table. The shadows it cast, back and forth on the walls and on Karl's face, set uneasiness stirring within me.

He stood still, staring up into the lantern, "We've been married for ten years and you courted me my first year in Sandshore. You remember when we met."

"I pulled you off the rocks on the beach." That day was forever etched into my memory. I would relive it for as long as Goddess grant me life.

Karl's words snapped me out of my meandering. "I jumped ship. I couldn't take the abuse any more...Sunny...Phara." He paused and stared into the bright flame of the lamp. He stiffened as if he expected me to attack him from behind, "I was a brothelman."

Stunned into silence, I couldn't say anything, but I had to. "Did you chose to be one?"

"Never..." The pain in that one word forced me off the bed. I hobbled to him and slipped my arms around his stiffened body in a warm embrace, "Then you have nothing to be ashamed of. The ones who stole you from your village and sold you into that hell are the ones with the stains on their souls."

In my mind, I could see the shadowed faces of the men and boys as they huddled in the cages of the Badlanders. Most of them had been raped. Some of them had been cut with knives for some transgression, but in all of them, the eyes were dead. "The Goddess will deal with them. And if there are any still left on earth, I will send them to Her justice."

"I..." Karl choked.

"No more words. We've said enough today." If Karl had wanted to be difficult, he could have pulled away and I wouldn't have been able to do anything about it.

"No...you listen to everything I have to say, because I don't want to go on living with this any more. I'm always trying to tell you but then something happens and I don't think that I should ...or.." He paused, took a deep breath and then helped me back to the bed.

"There's so much I have to tell you and I don't know where to start." He ran his hands through his hair and paced with ease on the pitching floor. The notion that much more of this rocking and I would be getting ill, flittered through my brain but my eyes followed his pacing. "At the beginning...you've heard about the Kingdoms in the West, across the seas."

"Everyone has, traders drink too much and tell ale stories about men the size of moose and just as strong. They're just stories. No one has ever met a Kingdom man."

"You married one. By the Goddess, Phara,this is difficult." He took and deep breath then knelt before me, gathering my hands in his. "My name used to be Karlen Bezer. My father was War Thane to the King. I was his only child. My mother died at my birth and he never forgave me for it. My guardian told me that I was a sickly baby, one illness after another. My mother died for me and I was turning out to be a weak heir." Karl twisted on his heel and stared back into the brilliance of the lantern. "Some heir...I couldn't do sword work. I couldn't ride well. My skill at archery was the only thing that kept me at his side. I wanted to learn books. My father sent me to the tutors to learn the tricks of strategy and I found all these...volumes of knowledge...," Karl gestured passionately, "books dating from before the Fires, stories of machines that flew the skies, machines that travelled over the land faster than a horse could run...What was the lessons of war compared to all this knowledge?

My father didn't like that. I can still remember his words when he found out I was reading old fairy tales. I must have been eleven years old, "What are you going to do when the enemy attacks our walls? Throw books at them?" Karl's face was turned away from me but his shoulders and back were so tensed. Old wounds never heal cleanly. He pushed himself to his feet and began to tread back and forth again.

I sat up and reached to touch Karl but he was too far away, "There is nothing wrong with the pursuit of knowledge."

He twisted on his heel and stared down at the bed. "When you are the only son to a man with enough armies to overrun Sandshore, the pursuit of knowledge is not acceptable."

"Overrun Sandshore..." My voice was stunned.

Karl dropped to his knees and caught my hands in his, "Phara, your lands are so peaceful. You have trouble with Badlanders and sea raiders, but that is nothing that cannot be handled. A War Thane is in battle almost everyday - somewhere - protecting the boundaries of the kingdom from intruders who want what precious little land there is. You fight or you die."

"If you father is so mighty, how did you get kidnapped?"

He climbed back to his feet and returned his gaze to the light in the lantern. "He sent me away. I shamed him. A boy who only wanted books was not the son he wanted. I was on a ship heading toward my mother's family. The only escort I had was an elderly man-at-arms. Raiders took us at sea. They killed everything in sight..." Karl's face tightened and paled. I watched as his breathing began to speed up. That horror was replaying itself in his mind.

I stood and limped over to him. I held onto his hand and squeezed it reassuringly, "You're with me now. Your father was a fool to think so lowly of a true scholar. What good is land when there is no one learned enough to use it? Why let the children grow up with no knowledge of what the people used to be? I hope never to see the Kingdom that would raise such men on the Goddess's lands."

"May the Goddess never let such a thing happen." Karl's voice was almost an inaudible whisper.

"Come to me." Karl crossed over to me and laid beside me. "I will never place you second in my life again. I will cherish you so much that you won't remember that there was pain in your life. When my banishment is over, we'll travel back to Sandshore, gather up Kyle and find ourselves a new home."

I pulled my short dagger free and ran it lightly across my palm. The sting was minimal, "With this blood, I swear to you."

Karl lifted my palm and kissed the small trickle away. "You don't need to spill blood on my account, especially your own."

The grey in his eyes darkened to a stormy sea as desire swept over both of us. He explored my body as eagerly as I explored his. Soon the throbbing in my ankle was overwhelmed by the burning of my skin. My nipples swelled and burned. His hands ripped my lacings free from my jerkin as he kissed me just as hard as I pressed into him. I could feel his manhood pressing hard against my thigh. I wrenched his kilt up as he pulled my breeches off. We didn't wait, both of us were excited beyond control.

Afterwards, the rocking of the ship lulled us toward sleep. "I'm sorry that I hit you," referring to the futile attempt I had made to drive him away.

"I know why you did.." His body twisted into mine in our familiar sleeping position, "Don't do it again, even though it's meant with nothing but good intentions." He yawned, smiled sleepily at me, then snuggled his face into the crook of my neck. His breathing dropped off into regular sleeping softness.

It felt good just to lie there with the warm air from his nose travelling over my shoulder to fan my naked breasts. I'd wake him up soon. A peace that I didn't even know that I missed entered me and pressed my body heavily into the bed. The peace and satisfaction of a well spent body. There was so much to think about and plan...but it was so inviting to join Karl in sleep. I deserved a change. I reached down and pulled Karl's leg up to lay across my upper thighs, twisted into his body, pressed my breasts up to his chest and fell asleep.