by Jay Requard
in Issue 155, December 2024
He knew something was amiss when they did not take him right to the feast hall, but to the sunlit halls of the east wing, where only the royal family lived.
The chamberlain opened the door to a room off the main hallway. A serene warmth inside, fed by dozens of small oil lamps arrayed around the room and down the center of the table. No dishes or plates heaped in food lay upon it, nor had anyone taken to the fine chairs around its oblong length.
“Go sit,” the chamberlain said. “The king will join you soon for the first meal.”
Anxious from the moment he entered Borgir, the lavish palace of the White King of Helmland, Canute Olafsson had remained mute, never speaking to the chamberlain or the king’s army of servants with any more than nods to “keep up” or “get out of the way.” The smoothness of the advisor’s voice startled him out of his daze.
“Aye, sir,” he said, his voice quaking too much.
The chamberlain made a hard expression, unimpressed. “Then go sit.”
“What about my spear, sir? Or my shield?” Dressed in a new tunic cut of soft red cloth and beige breeches, they had girded Canute in a polished belt with a rich silver clasp and two fine ghillies laced up to his shins. All of this was given to him in preparation to meet the White King, but the lack of his father’s spear and his own shield—which they had said to bring—made him feel naked.
Deep down, despite how silly it was, Canute felt safer with his shield.
Even on a day when he was to be hailed a hero and made a lord of the realm.
The chamberlain screwed his face in contempt. “We will gather those items when the king gives permission. We wouldn’t want a stranger armed and alone with Helmland’s liege, would we?”
“No, sir,” Canute said. “Pardon me, sir.”
He stepped inside the small dining chamber. The chamberlain shut the door, muttering something mean the wood between them muffled.
The small dining chamber austere save for a regal hearth which lay cold, and the dozens of lamps lighting it instead, only a few chairs and a platter on the table decorated its sparse setting. A clay carafe nestled among a trio of short, squat goblets on the wide plate.
His throat dry, thirst roused a curiosity about the carafe for he had not taken any drink or food that day. A gentle lift brought a relieved smile to his face. The liquid inside heavier than simple water, he poured out a small trickle of honey mead into a waiting cup.
He glanced to the doorway. His host had yet to arrive.
Too parched, Canute raised the goblet to his lips.
Then the door swung inward and cracked the wall. An older man in his late-forties broached the entryway, perhaps older given his wrinkles and graying brown hair.
Eyes wild and bloodshot, he braced an arm against the doorpost, lifting the other to point at Canute. “Is it poisoned?”
“Is what poisoned?” Canute’s focus shot down to the fine sword on the man’s belt, its hilt crusted with hammered silver and precious stones. Easily the finest sword he had ever seen, an immediate terror set when he deduced its owner.
“The mead, you dolt!” The White King of Helmland tilted forward, lowering his finger to belch. Heaving in place afterward, he drunkenly stood in the doorway to the small chamber. “Well?”
Horrified by the possibility, Canute glanced down at his cup. “Well, sire, I—”
“Drink, boy!”
Stuck with the cup in his hand, he checked on the murky golden liquid one last time before throwing it back, daring the worst as he swallowed the heavy, sweet wine. Time paused.
Until the chamberlain who had brought Canute to the dining chamber barged in. Red-faced and huffing, he skidded to a stop behind his master.
He did not hide his disdain. “My liege! The impudence! To run from us during our council—”
The White King shushed his man without regard, bouncing his finger at Canute. “It’s not poisoned, is it?”
Swallowing the sweetness on the back of his tongue, the mead heated Canute’s throat, but nothing more. “No, my king?”
The White King glared at his chamberlain. “See? I’ve no need to fear this mead in this room any more than the mead I drank in my room. Now get the fuck out of my face and bring us some food, you inbred.”
The regal advisor, dressed more elegantly than his lord or their guest, bit back an acidic reply and closed the door, leaving Canute alone with the powerful ruler of his homeland. The two measured each other for a moment before the surly monarch approached the table.
“Well?” He said, thumbs tucked into his wide belt. “You going to pour your king a drink or should I do it myself?”
“Oh, oh, my lord! My apologies,” Canute said, clutching the carafe as he retrieved another empty goblet. He filled it quickly.
The White King snatched it from his grasp. Without hesitation the old drunk made loud, slurping quaffs before the young warrior even sipped. He guzzled it down in a few seconds. His gray-streaked mustaches drooped over his lips as he slammed the goblet back down. “More. And you’ll have to keep up. Sit down.”
Claiming one of the chairs around the table, the king dropped himself into it, the unwieldy movement leaving him half-leaned to the side. A passing fancy returned for the half-empty carafe. Addled eyes rose to examine his guest’s face.
“Who are you?” The White King said. “What great thing did you do for me?”
“Canute, sire. I’m the son of Olaf Grimringer. May I fill your cup again?”
The White King leaned forward, pushing his cup ahead of him. He squinted at Canute. “Olaf… wait, Olaf Grimringer? Captain of the Newstead Range?” He pulled his cup back after it was refreshed. “I know your father.”
“Aye, sire,” said Canute. “He served you in the last Lowland War against the barbarians. He killed six chieftains with his spear.”
“Yes, yes, yes!” The White King said, slapping his hand on his table. “But of course his son would appear before me, a hero as well!”
Canute offered no smile, no reply, he simply stared at his drunken king. Before he knew it tears stung his eyes, but with his host already halfway to the winds, they were given no attention.
The White King drained half his cup before wiping his long, scraggly mustaches with his fine sleeve. He glanced about Canute, too muddled to do more than search lazily. “Did you not bring it? The spear?”
“I did, sire,” Canute replied. “They would not let me bring it, nor my shield, into this room, however. Not without your leave.”
“Well, let me show you how things get done around here!”
The surly old man popped out of his chair but almost fell, holding on to the edge of the fine table for a few moments. With an unwieldy turn he plodded to the chamber door, wrenched it open, and found someone out of Canute’s view.
“Hey, you two! Yes! See me?” The White King hollered. “Go get the fucking useless chamberlain and tell him to bring Lord Canute’s spear and shield here immediately!”
“Lord Canute?” Canute mouthed in confusion.
“And more mead! The good stuff from the cellar! And vittles!” The White King screamed, louder this time. “We want some fucking vittles! Plates of ‘em!”
He slammed the door and staggered back to the table, finding the chair next to the first he had claimed. Slugging down into its wooden seat, he grabbed at his cup and brought it along.
“Just watch,” he half-whispered, slurring.
A moment later a knock on the portal preceded the arrival of a new servant, his frantic expression coated in sweat as he pushed through with a heaping tray of hot beef and chicken. A woman followed him, bearing a platter of bread and cheese littered with dried figs. Both deposited their loads on the table before they escaped into the hallway. A guard entered next, and immediately Canute’s view of the room narrowed to the things he carried.
In the guard’s right hand was the simple spear given to Canute by his father, which carried nothing more than the name Grimringer for the many men it killed once, and recently again. He did not look at it, out of shame, but paid his shield more favor. Its broken circle scorched in multiple places where the burning axes had struck, somehow it had held together over the hundreds of miles over sea and land to return home.
Better than he, he mused to himself.
The guard placed the blackened shield and spear beside the king’s chair who paid little attention as he busied with the plates.
“Eat, Canute,” said the White King, tearing a whole loaf of bread apart with his hands. “Eat, drink, and then we can speak.”
Eager to think about anything else other than the reason why he had ended up in that dining chamber, Canute fell into feasting at the order, thankful for an easy directive. The mead sweet, the cheese fresh with the salty bread which made the drink all the tastier, supplemented the ample amount of fried salt pork he devoured.
The servants reappeared a few minutes later, or perhaps it had been an hour, but deep into his third cup, Canute devoted his attention to the steaming beef ribs and livers arrayed on the plate they brought, delicacies only lords enjoyed. The son of a famed warrior, but a farmer nonetheless, he only ate these when the final cows left in the family’s hold were counted, the rest taken to be served to Helmland’s court.
Yet for all the food there was, the White King fed himself more on the mead, then a pitcher of ale. Half-sliding out of the chair, he gripped the arms every few minutes, hauling his sluggish weight back into his seat.
And he kept drinking.
So did Canute. Praying the king drank himself asleep, he had almost dozed off himself when the pitiful lord spoke.
“So,” slurred the White King, staring at nothing on the wall. “Speak. It’s time for you to speak.”
Canute woke from his stupor. Unable to veer from the dark corners where the horrors of the recent past haunted, his memory drove right for the shores of Stormguard. Lightning and rain failed to dampen the flames.
Or hide his shame.
“I slew a man for you, my king,” Canute said. “At least that is what they say.”
“And who was this man they say you slayed for me? Why was he so special?”
“Because he was the Giant MacChuil,” Canute answered in earnest, and in that earnestness the dam on his emotions broke, overflowing with the secret he failed to restrain. “They say I slew the Giant MacChuil!”
Then he wept, a flood of tears wetting the light brown beard on his cheeks. Uninhibited by the ample amount of mead he had drank, he bawled until his lungs failed, leaving him groaning.
Eyes half-shut from the alcohol, The White King nonetheless watched in sympathy. He straightened a bit in his chair. He spotted his cup, but too woozy to move more, he raised his rheumy gaze to Canute.
“Then tell me what happened, son,” he implored in a gentle tone. “Tell me what you did and didn’t do.”
*****
The ship Canute took from Fishton, its hold packed with conscripts called from the countryside, had left on a sunny day with warm, favorable winds. Hundreds of ships had beached along the coasts overlooked by the sprawling fishing town on its bluff. Only separated from their target by a day’s journey, the fleet would fall upon the island of Stormguard and reclaim it for Helmland.
Hot in the cramped mail his father had gifted, Canute still found reason to enjoy the company of the many fighters around him, all handsome and eager to chat. Away from his mother and sisters for the first time in his life, he indulged in idle conversation with an ease he often hid or consigned to the farm’s stable hands and workers. He had dallied with a few, in their beds and his, but on a deck among so many virile young men like him, passionate to see war with their blood hot, his head swam with new attractions. More than one bottle of smuggled mead passed through many hands, celebrating glory, life, and possibility.
Then they set to sea.
The mood dimmed when they lost sight of land. The sun’s warmth no longer blessed the wind. Cold and biting, their joy diminished as small foodstuffs, hardtack and various dried meats, were swallowed with the leftover dregs from the bottles before most resorted to the water barrels. Unable to light fires on the deck, a stern warning from their old and gnarled captain threatened to throw over anyone who attempted.
Hundreds of white sails bearing the blue eagle of Helmland drove westward.
One of the few privileged through his status not to have a turn on the rowing bench, Canute found no time for flirting with any of the handsome men miring in the freezing cold, huddled in their blankets. Nodding off throughout a night blackened to pitch by clouds that blocked the stars and twin moons, he wondered if he had slept for hours or mere moments, the miserable weather fogging his senses.
Then the horizon to the east warmed, but with no gold or gladness to herald the dawn. A cold line, the color of steel, woke the salt-bitten fighters with growls of thunder.
“This is all shit,” said Ulfhar, one of the men who had spent the night huddled next to Canute near the starboard bow. An ugly man with a broken nose and crooked teeth, he stared glumly at the graying skies through the eyeholes of his helmet. “Drizzling, awful, freezing shit.”
A horn blew from the boats toward the front. Droning across the sea filled with hundreds of ships, it was answered by an equal number of notes.
The captain of their ship appeared, capped in a conical helm crested with gull feathers glued to simulate the spread of bird wings. He pounded his axe upon the face of his shield. “Forces on the beaches! Forces on the beaches! Prepare to land and fight!”
“Fight?” Canute asked, huddled in his blanket. He had sat on his father’s spear and the round shield also bought with the armor on his shoulders. He slowly shrugged off his coverings, his reaction dulled by stiffness and the cold, and grabbed the rail to haul himself up.
Whatever tired ache burned in his waking body vanished when he sighted the coast ahead.
A massive island southwest of the mainland, Stormguard’s great mountain and surrounding hilltops concealed a land covered in thick forest. Partitioned by Helmland long ago in the great wars before the kingdom’s founding, it remained a valuable source of lumber and iron, a dire requirement for a people surrounded by barbaric neighbors with ill intentions.
Thousands upon thousands of torches raised in defiance on the beach. The barbarians from the north of Helmland, in the misty realms of Lughan, had joined with the local lord and claimed the entire island for themselves. The White King had responded with an answer that would be delivered on that rainy, thunderous morning.
The rebels, along with their woad-covered allies, had prepared an immediate response. Their wooden boats overturned in the surf, men ran from each pile and lit them, adding smoke into the dark gray sky.
“Drizzling shits,” Ulfhar repeated as he threw his blanket off. “Well, time to see.”
“See what?” Canute asked. He brought up his spear and shield, eager to grab them first for a small sense of safety.
His compatriot, born of some other lord from some other town, hefted his two-handed bearded ax, its iron rusted from use. “If we’re the men our fathers raised us to be.”
“Prepare to disembark and fight,” shouted the ship’s captain. “For Helmland!”
A few echoed him, but the rest faced forward in silence. One of the quietest, Canute gritted his teeth inside of his helmet, unable to unclench his jaw. He hefted his shield and gripped Grimringer. His father’s spear conveyed no sense of safety.
Greater details of the enemy sharpened as they closed, an innumerable horde of tartan-clad rogues interspersed among the traitors, though all had stained themselves in ashes to give their faces a sickly color.
But it was the barbarians who scared Canute the most.
Tall and broad of chest and shoulder, many of them went dressed only in the long tartans they wrapped to their bodies, an effective armor to turn a blade when wet, though some came with leathers and crude mails. Bearing massive swords, or weird-looking axes that seemed suited for giants, among the powerful warriors stalked tall, furred men with glowing eyes.
Uncertain of what he saw, Canute had no more time when the keel of the ship crashed into the rocky shore. The boat jerked to a halt, pitching several of the warriors on the deck forward from the weight of their weapons. Several hard on their faces.
Lucky to hook his spear arm around some rigging, Canute remained on his feet when the captain appeared on his left.
Many of the gull feathers on his conical helmet already torn away by the sea squalls, he pushed Canute hard in the shoulder, his blade tight in his fist. “You first, boy! Ator calls! To war! To war!”
Before Canute could get out of the way the captain dodged around him, leaping up to the rail like a veteran of sea battles. He pointed his sword at the enemy below.
“Quickly, lads! Assail the traitors! Assail the foreign—”
An arrow shot from the beach pierced his throat.
Between the slain captain and the sheer terror of being felled by an arrow, Canute pitched himself over the side of the boat with the rest of men. Landing hip-deep in the slosh before the beached enemy ships, his spear dragged on his arm until he thrust it high, out of the churn and his shield out in front of him.
By some happenstance he and several of the crew, Ulfhar included, dragged themselves out of the surf to meet the traitors and the Lughanians—some of which were not human at all. Bare of any armor or weapons, these strange figures walked in a mix of upright and loping gaits, covered in dark, greasy fur. Their noses at the end of extended snouts, they drew back their lips to bare their fangs, growling like hounds.
“What the Hel are those?” someone in Canute’s unit shouted.
An unknown warrior among them boomed an order which drew all of their attention. “Stay together! Shields and spears forward! We join the rest of our men to form the line!”
The confidence, the poise of the man, who Canute had not seen their entire voyage, roused a calm from his cohorts. Clustered together, they trudged out of the waves onto the rocky shore, one of dozens of landing parties. The waters already red with blood, multiple times they had to navigate scores of their fellows, shot full of arrows.
Canute searched the enemy line as the Helmlanders pressed up the slope. He saw the werewolves among the traitors and foreign highlanders, but there, in the fog, another shape moved in the distance.
A man leaped from the enemy’s left flank. Soaring through the air, he landed on the complete other side of his forces.
“Oh shit,” shouted Ulfhar. “Did you see that?”
The nameless man who had led them stopped the advance, waiting for the next cluster of Helmlanders to merge with theirs. He spoke, but no longer with the bravery he had shown in the water. “It’s the Giant MacChuil! He’s here.”
“Who?” Canute asked, able to find his voice.
“I heard our captain speak of him during the voyage,” he said. “They say the men we fight are from the Axe Islands, farther north than even the dark, damnable highlands where this scum sprang! Among them is a chieftain who may be the son of their fell gods, able to leap great bounds, and fight men by the hundreds! But the captain said he was not real, and that we needed to have no fear…”
As if in answer the figure in the mists leapt a second time from the right side of the enemy horde, landing in its center.
Then, without warning, the enemy raised strange, bent horns of copper, the broad ends hammered to mimic ferocious animals. A long drone exploded from them, deafening Canute for a moment before a loud, collective roar announced the charge.
The traitors of Stormguard raced to engage the Helmlanders.
Canute had been raised, like any other good lord’s son, to go to war. Practicing with axe, sword, spear, and bow to prepare for the day duty required defense of his homeland, he had thought himself readied when he walked up the gangplank to the boat.
No amount of practice prepared anyone for the reality.
New rain fell as the bloodletting began. Between the growl of thunder and the lightning’s boom Canute witnessed men on both sides die, over and over, each a new face imprinted somewhere in the darkest recesses of his soul. Bunched together with his cohorts from the ship, they remained in line, four or five deep, and held against the rush.
In the third or fourth row, depending on how the line shifted to accommodate the melee, Canute stabbed Grimringer over the shoulders of his compatriots. Never knowing if he struck anyone or anything, those in front of him fell one by one, slashed or stabbed through by a raging foreigner covered in woad. Yet as quick as Helmlanders died around him, more would battle into their place. More than a few times their nameless leader cleaved down the worst offenders, never tiring.
Rivers of blood soaked the rocky shore until saturated, then sluiced into the sea. Already choked with the slain or drowned, the waves crashed crimson. Yet onward he stabbed, his right arm aching as he pumped the spear over Ulfhar’s shoulder, who bore the worst attacks with his shield, striking back with his sword when able.
In a brief lull where the Lughanian highlanders and traitors from Stormguard paused to move their dead, the werewolves attacked. Launching from atop the mounds of corpses, they hurled themselves into the shield walls, ripping away sections before doughty fighters speared them down one by one.
And still men died in droves.
Then the Giant MacChuil landed before Canute’s section of the line. Falling out of the rain, his impact shook the beach beneath their feet. Rising up, the warrior towered over the Helmlanders, a full three-heads taller than them all.
Up close he may have been a man, but he had girded himself in only a loin cloth and the great mantle of a bear on his head and shoulders, the fur-covered helmet already streaked in rents. Painted in swirling, vine-like designs of blue woad that tracked from his face all the way down his body and along every limb, blood coated him as well, too congealed to tell where it came from, or if it was his own.
He wielded an ax in both hands, which he threw with his full might at their shield wall. Expecting the iron wedges to batter, split, but not break whole shields, Canute watched in stark amazement as the Giant tore them asunder. He shrieked as the behemoth hacked down Ulfhar, who died without any noise save the squelch of his torn organs.
The unnamed chief of Canute’s unit fought his way to the front. “MacChuil!” this nameless hero shouted, his iron blade rapping the broken iron band holding together his shattered shield. “MacChuil!”
With a quick, graceful movement, the Giant deviated his attack, leapt backward, and landed beside the hero. He downed him with a quick chop to the neck, decapitating him. He laughed loud as blood spurted from the stump.
The feat broke the Helmlanders, who fled in every direction, Canute included. He kept his spear and shield but ran for his life.
Then he tripped on a stone.
Unable to break his fall, Canute’s head collided with the iron boss of a fallen shield. The blow sharp, the world fell black despite his helmet’s protection.
*****
Brined by the sea, his tunic and trousers stuck to his flesh, he shivered awake in the wet rocks where he lay. He braced against his shield, still in his left hand. He pushed against it, pushing up until he found his knees under him.
Canute struggled into a kneeling position before he scanned the beach around him.
The decapitated head beside his knee belonged to the nameless hero that had led them.
Lifeless eyes cast to the storming sky, seeing no more. Just one piece of the uncountable dead, corpses covered the shore as far as he could see before the mists claimed the distance, where the fight continued.
Confused, alone, Canute slowly stood, his shield his only remaining possession.
The Giant bellowed behind him. Charging from the mist, the barbaric MacChuil bore his two axes, but flames roared from the iron edges as he slashed.
Canute brought his shield up in time to catch the two strikes, which twisted his entire body around as he struggled to hold on. As quick as the Giant rushed in he disappeared again, his massive frame swallowed by the fog.
Scrambling for balance, Canute whipped his shield low in front. The scent of charr off the front filled his nose, and the scorches left on the wooden planks were indelible. Too startled to focus, he hunched, unsure of what to do when his foe growled behind him.
The Giant MacChuil threw himself forward for a double blow.
One flew too high to catch the top of Canute’s head. The other he took on the shield again, which by some impossible measure deflected the wedge down and away. He backpedaled as the Lughanian pressed. The upper edge split, breaking the iron band, but the rest of his meager wall remained as he continued to retreat. Smoke rose off the wood, acrid and black.
Yet the second ax did not follow.
Canute halted, bracing in case he had chosen to meet death for a foolish pause.
Yet no blow fell.
He spied around the remains of his blackened shield and to his astonishment, found the Giant MacChuil face down in the bloody sand.
Shocked beyond words, Canute peered over the top, and then lowered it when the massive Lughanian remained still.
The Giant started, raising up on his hands and knees to lunge at Canute. He landed face first in the wet sand, groaning from the impact of his flop. A feeble attempt followed to arise again but a shaking seized him, leaving him unable to do more than jerk in Canute’s direction.
Watching the highlander unable to do more than flail against his failing body, Canute slowly neared. Blinking the rainwater from his eyes, his hunter glared back at him, having rolled on his back in one last show of strength. The reason for his collapse was revealed in the many wounds on his limbs and torso, which had been burnt during the battle. Bleeding from a nasty gash on top of a massive head covered in wiry black hair masked his face in gore.
But in those black eyes, a mix of unyielding menace and a stark need for it all to end, Canute found only suffering. His mind, his soul, yearned to fight on, but his body had surrendered.
Trapping the Giant MacChuil for a brutal end.
“There!”
Down the beach appeared a cadre of seven men. They marched toward Canute.
A fresh wave of fear conquered him. He searched about his feet for a weapon and by cruel happenstance discovered his father’s spear. Grimringer lay in the sand, covered in grit. He snatched it up in his free hand. Too tired to run, and too many to fight off by himself, he waited until he discerned a common pattern on their shields, the opened-winged eagle of Helmland.
His brothers in arms, Canute lowered his spear.
Then he glanced at the fallen Giant MacChuil.
Still alive. Still suffering.
He knew what his people did to prisoners. Something stirred inside him, an unwillingness to create more suffering after the calamity of everything else that day.
Canute had already made his decision before the other men arrived.
*****
“I didn’t slay him,” Canute said through the tears stinging his eyes. Hands braced on the table’s edge, the spear had been knocked to the floor in his drunken sorrow, every ounce of self-loathing revealed. “Mercy!” He sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. “I just wanted to give the man mercy!”
Whatever he had to say next disappeared in the outright shame of the confession, his face buried in his hands. He wept until breathless. The only survivor of the boat he had taken from Fishton, flashes of that horrid moment on Stormguard played again and again, until Canute could not bear to look at his king—not when the eyes of the Giant MacChuil haunted him.
None of it, be it a lordship or victory or survival, could get those eyes to stop looking at Canute. Staring forever, even glazed in death, they cursed him for his cowardice, or his kindness. He could not tell.
The White King said nothing, slouched in his seat as he struggled to balance his mead-cup on a knee. He stared at Canute with those rheumy eyes, lost for a moment. Without word or warning, he quaffed its dregs, draining it to the end. He set it down and rose, unsteady at first.
“Stand up, boy,” The White King said in a low, grumbling tone. “I sure as shit can’t lift you.”
Canute slowly straightened, his knees aching. He still refused on meet the White King’s gaze, instead choosing his lord’s boots.
The toe of the left one was crusted with vomit.
The ruler of Helmland leaned on the table, too inebriated to stand. “You know, I’m going to go out there, at the feast after this, and announce that I’m gifting lands to you. A title as well, equal to your father’s.”
“I don’t deserve it.”
It drew a mean laugh. “You still think this is about who gets what they deserve?”
Canute swallowed, too worn to argue. His eyes hurt from weeping.
“It’s all shit, Canute,” The White King said. “Always has been. But, as your king, may I give you some advice?” Helmland’s liege reached out with a grimy hand and clapped Canute’s shoulder. “Be happy you have such an easy lie.”
Hopeful his lord had reached out to provide a path back to honor, the words instead seized Canute like the sight of the Giant MacChuil had. Yet instead of mortal terror, or the nightmare of watching men die around him, it was replaced with a deeper despair.
Shame—for the man he had killed, and whom he had killed him for.
“Power goes to fools,” The White King said. “And too often fools do not use that power the right way. They mire in their egos, their pasts, or what they didn’t have or didn’t do, in their minds. You don’t have to do that, Canute. You’re very lucky.”
“How?” Canute asked. “How am I lucky in any way?”
“Most men make up a story to build their glory. Yours fell right at your feet and—” The White King playfully mimicked a downward thrust with an invisible spear. “Now the question is what you will do with it. You could do what you have done for me—bravely admit the truth for the sake of a single man’s honor but at the cost of Helmland’s honor and glory. But what matters more? Helmland’s honor, or yours?”
Canute did not need to be led. “Helmland’s.”
“People have died for glory. But honor? It ruins the story.” The White King clicked his tongue and shook his head. He noticed Grimringer on the floor, discarded in Canute’s sorrow. “Has old Olaf ever told you the true count he took that day, or does the number change and you all say nothing as he grows doddering with old age?”
Canute gritted his teeth, roused by the insinuation. “My lord?”
“Take your lands, Canute. Farm them, find some woman, and screw some heirs out of her to make sure it’s not all lost before you’re dead. And never say a word. Don’t say a word when I leave this room, which I’m about to because I must piss. Don’t say a word to the lords you’re about to be counted among. Don’t say a word to the woman you bed, to the children you whelp, or on your dying bed. And by doing that, you will serve Helmland.”
Canute averted his eyes and settled his gaze on the blackened shield leaned against the table. He pursed his lips together in a thin, bloodless line.
“Oh, be cheered, boy,” said the White King. “It takes effort to be honest. It takes nothing to be a hero.”
Canute did not bow to his liege as The White King stumbled to the chamber door and departed, too delirious to know better. Alone again before the chamberlain came to collect him, he studied the shield he had brought back, remembering the effort, the losses, and the dead not there to stand where he was.
He asked aloud the question he wanted to inquire of the king but had not dared. “What does it take to be a king?” Canute found himself searching out his cup again instead of the answer.
©December 2024, Jay Requard
Jay Requard‘s work has appeared in Bards & Sages Quarterly, Silver Blade Magazine, and previously in Swords & Sorcery Magazine. He is also the author of several novels.
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