“Damn you, woman!” the fellow groaned in his sleep, rolling back over with a huff. “You’re all bones.”
Roland promised himself that tomorrow night he’d sleep with the rocks in the field.
The thought had hardly crossed his mind when he woke from a deep slumber.
He was entangled in the fellow’s arms again, arms as big as logs. His bedfellow had kissed him on the forehead.
A dim morning light shone through the window. His eyes closed, the man seemed fast asleep, breathing deeply.
“Excuse me,” Roland said, catching the man by the beard and yanking this way and that. He shoved the fellow’s head back. “I admire a man who can show affection, but please refrain from showing it to me.”
The fellow opened his bloodshot eyes and gazed at Roland for half a second. Roland expected the brute to offer an embarrassed apology.
Instead, he paled in dismay. “Borenson?” he shouted, coming fully awake. He scuttled his three hundred pounds of bulk back against the wall and huddled there quivering, as if terrified that Roland might strike. “What are you doing here?”
He was an enormous man with black hair, and a good deal of gray in his beard. Roland didn’t recognize him. But I have been asleep for twenty-one years, he thought. “Do I know you?” Roland asked, begging a name.
“Know me? You nearly killed me, though I must admit that I deserved it. I was an ass back then. But I’ve repented my ways, and I’m only half an ass now. Don’t you know me? Baron Poll!”
Roland had never met the fellow. He’s confusing me with my son, Ivarian Borenson, Roland realized, a son he’d only learned about after waking from his long sleep.
“Ah, Baron Poll!” Roland said enthusiastically, waiting for the fellow to recognize his own mistake. It didn’t seem likely that Roland’s son would look so much like him, with his flaming red hair and pale complexion. The boy’s mother was fairly dark of skin. “It’s good to see you.”
“Likewise, and I’m glad you feel that way. So, our past is forgotten? You forgive me...the theft of your purse? Everything?”
“As far as I am concerned, it’s as if we’ve never met,” Roland said.
Baron Poll suddenly seemed mystified. “You’re in a generous mood...after all those beatings I gave you. I suppose it turned you into a soldier, though. One could even say that you’re in my debt. Right?”
“Ah, the beatings,” Roland echoed, still astonished that the fellow didn’t realize his mistake. Roland knew only one thing about his son: He was a captain in the King’s Guard. “That was nothing. Of course I gave as good as I got, right?”
Baron Poll stared at Roland as if he’d gone utterly mad. Roland realized that his son really hadn’t given as good as he’d gotten. “Well...” Poll ventured suspiciously, “then I’m glad we’re reconciled. But...what are you doing down here? I thought you’d gone north to Heredon?”
“Alas, King Orden is dead,” Roland said solemnly. “Raj Ahten met him at Longmot. Thousands of our men fell in battle.”
“And the Prince?” Poll asked, his face pale.
“He is well, as far as I know,” Roland answered.
“As far as you know? But you’re his bodyguard!”
“That is why I’m in a hurry to get back to his side,” Roland said, climbing off the bed. He threw his new bearskin traveling robe over his shoulders, pulled on his heavy boots.
Baron Poll heaved his bulk up on the side of the bed, stared about dumbly. “Where’s your axe? Your bow? You aren’t traveling weaponless!”
“I am.” Roland was in a hurry to reach Heredon. He hadn’t taken the time yet to purchase weapons, had only learned last night that he might need them, as he began to meet refugees fleeing the north.
Baron Poll studied him as if he were daft. “You know that Castle Crayden fell six days ago, along with Castle Fells and the fortress at Tal Dur? And two days ago Raj Ahten destroyed Tal Rimmon, Gorlane, and Aravelle. Two hundred thousand of Raj Ahten’s men are marching on Carris and should reach it by dawn tomorrow. You’re heading weaponless into that kind of danger?”
Roland knew little about the lay of the land. Being illiterate, he could not read a map, and until now he had never been ten miles from his childhood home at the Courts of Tide, but he knew that castles Crayden and Fells defended the passes on Mystarria’s western border. He’d never heard of Tal Dur, but he knew of the castles that had been destroyed to the north.
“Can I reach Carris before they do?” Roland asked.
“Is your horse fast?”
Roland nodded. “It has an endowment of stamina and one of strength and metabolism.” It was a lordly animal, such as the king’s messengers rode. After being on the road for a week, Roland had met a horse trader and purchased the beast with money he’d inherited while he slept.
“You should easily make a hundred miles today, then,” Baron Poll said. “But the roads are like to be treacherous. Raj Ahten’s assassins are out in force.”
“Fine,” Roland said. He hoped that his mount would be up to the challenge. He turned to leave.
“Here now, you can’t go out like that,” Baron Poll said. “Take my arms and armor—whatever you want.” He nodded to a corner of the room. Baron Poll’s breastplate was propped against the wall, along with a huge axe, a sword as tall as a man, and a half-sword.
The breastplate was too wide for Roland by half, and he doubted he could even heft the tall sword well enough to use it in battle. Roland was a butcher by trade. The axe was no larger than the forty-pound cleavers that Roland had used for splitting beeves, but he doubted that he’d ever want such a clumsy weapon in a brawl. But there was the half-sword. It was not much larger than a good long knife. Still, Roland could not take such a gift by deception.
“Baron Poll,” Roland apologized, “I fear that you are mistaken. My name is Roland Borenson. I am not a member of the King’s Guard. You mistake me for my son.”
“What?” Baron Poll spat. “The Borenson I knew was a fatherless bastard. Everyone said so. We teased him mercilessly for it!”
“No man is fatherless,” Roland said. “I served as a Dedicate in the Blue Tower these past twenty-one years, giving metabolism in service of the King.”
“But everyone said you were dead! No. Wait...I remember the story better now: They said you were a common criminal, a killer, executed before your son was born!”
“Not executed,” Roland objected, “though perhaps my son’s mother might have wished it.”
“Ah, I remember the harpy well,” Baron Poll said. “As I recall, she often wished all men to death. Certainly she damned me enough.” Baron Poll suddenly blushed, as if embarrassed to pry any further. “I should have known,” he said. “You look too young. The Borenson I knew has endowments of metabolism himself, and has aged accordingly. In the past eight years, he would have aged more than twenty. If the two of you stood together, I think you would look like father and son now—though he would seem the father, and you the son.”
Roland nodded. “Now you have the way of it.”
Baron Poll’s brows drew together in thought. “You’re riding to see your son?”
“And to put myself into service to my king,” Roland answered.
“You’ve no endowments,” Poll pointed out. “You’re not a soldier. You’ll never make it to Heredon.”
“Probably not,” Roland agreed.
He headed for the door.
“Wait!” Baron Poll bellowed. “Kill yourself if you want, but don’t make it easy for them. At least take a weapon.”
“Thank you,” Roland said, as he took the half-sword. He had no belt to hold the scabbard, so he tucked it under his shirt.
Baron Poll snorted, displeased by his choice of weapons. “You’re welcome. Luck to you.”
Baron Poll got out of bed, shook Roland’s hand at the wrist. The man had a grip like a vise. Roland shook hard, as if he had endowments of brawn of his own. Years of knife work had left him with strong wrists and a fierce grip. Even after decades asleep his muscles were firm, his calluses still thick.