“I’ve but just come from the palace, you know, stopped there on my way here from Pirates’ Folly. The court of the duchess is much reduced and she and they are no longer at all popular among the commoners and lesser gentry of the Upper Town. The palace itself is a bit charred in places; the north wing is mostly roofless and may have to be torn down entirely.
“I was cheered when I rode through the gates of that city up there, Martuhn; cheered, do you hear, by folk who’ve hated my guts for as long as I can recall!” A smile flitted across the captain’s scarred face. “I know the feeling, your grace. For all the death and destruction and terrible suffering I hurled upon them, whilst Duke Alex the Feckless squatted with them, yet did they seem most fond of me when my guards and I visited the Upper Town yesterday.” The duke just nodded. “And well they should, Martuhn. Your holding of this citadel gave them all a salutary, if painful, lesson. They learned just how spineless and fickle is their formerly esteemed duchess and just how little she really cares for them and their welfare. They also learned that, with friends and allies like Alex and his minions, they will never have need of enemies. “They now love you because you were the first to fight against the man who quickly became their oppressor and exploiter. And it is well that love you they do, for you must rule over them for the rest of your life.” He allowed Martuhn to refill his flagon yet again, then went on, flinging the beads of moisture from his drooping mustachios with a hard, browned hand, the back of which bore a fairly new scar, broad and jagged. While the duke talked on of his own campaigns, both the southern one and the eminently successful guerrilla war he had waged in his own lands against Duke Alex’s cavalry— while the beasts still were war horses, rather than siege-beef—and in the swift, meroiless raids on the supply trains, Martuhn noted to himself that his grace had seldom looked better. Gone was any trace of surplus flesh at waist, hips, or jawline. Duke Tcharlz once more was the hard, weather-browned, intensely masculine fighting lord who had first hired Martuhn and his ragtag company on ten years agone. Gone were the dark half circles and pouches from under his eyes, and those eyes were once again clear and piercing; gone were most of the showy rings from fingers no longer chubby, but ridged with hard callus, with nails square-cut and neither buffed nor polished.
Moreover, it was obvious to Martuhn’s experienced eye that the duke still did not stick at risking his own skin, for the quillions of the plain, heavy saber he had hung on the sword rack before he sat down showed the nicks and dents of many a close and vicious combat.
At length, the duke said, “I saw her grace, of course. Most contrite, she would appear, and weighing less than she has in at least twenty years. Still plug ugly, of course—that’s one thing fasting can’t cure—but shapely enough now to look beddable.” He chuckled. “Being a man, I thought of it, naturally. I thought me of closing my eyes or of decently hiding that caricature of a face in a pillowcase or a bean sack. But all along I knew I’d not touch the bitch, for I want me no spawn out of such a graceless, demented creature. I’ll name one of my flock of bastards my heir, if it comes to that… but I’d rather leave my lands and cities and folk in better hands, in the hands of a man who thinks like me, a man of proven worth and valor and perception, a man of honor who will rule by love and respect, not by brutality and fear. And such men are an exceedingly rare breed. Martuhn, I thought me for long and long that I’d never find one of them.
“Is there any honey wine in this place, Martuhn? I’ve swilled me enough beer, for the nonce.
“Now, where was I? Oh, yes. How old are you, Martuhn, do you know?”
‘The winter just past was my thirty-eighth, your grace.” The duke frowned. “Hmmph, you look older than that, but you’ve no reason to lie, and you’ve led a harder life than do most men; that could account for it. “Well, Martuhn, my boy, I’m old enough to be your father, more than, considering the tender age at which I started swiving serving maids, peasant girls and suchlike. Last winter was my fifty-fifth, and few are the men, even of our class, who see more than threescore winters.”
The first.courses of the expertly prepared repast had long since been served, but the duke talked on between mouthfuls, motioning Martuhn to do likewise. “Now, my boy, we two have soldiered together for the best part of ten years, and I think that I probably know you as well as I know myself. Furthermore, I’ve always held that a man should only be allowed to assume high rank or office when he is at least forty years old, with a sound mind and body, and no stranger to warfare, women, men and horses… not necessarily in that order, you understand.” He grinned, then ripped most of the meat from a chop with his strong teeth and tossed the bone over his shoulder to his waiting wolfhound, who nabbed it in midair, crunched a couple of times, then swallowed and continued to sit, an expectant gleam in his yellowish-brown eyes.
“Now, true, my boy, we two differ in some small ways. For one thing, you’re far less lecherous than am I, but for all that, I know you’re no sodomite.” His eyes twinkled. “Oh, yes, my dear Martuhn, there are others who watch you when I cannot… and they all report back to me. So I know of the Lady Behti—fat as a lard sow or as my wife used to be, but most skilled, ‘tis said, in some rather esoteric modes of mattress play.
“I know, too, of the black-haired Dohlohres, in Pahdookahport; talk about contrasting taste, man, she’s skinny as the scarecrows in the Upper Town. How is it that you never ruptured yourself on those protuberant bones, Martuhn?” He chuckled again.
Then all trace of humor flew from his voice and demeanor. “Martuhn. you’re a perceptive and a highly intelligent man, and I’ve not the slightest doubt that you know in advance just what I’ve been building up to these past few hours.” Martuhn did know, he had read it all in the duke’s surface thoughts, and it had almost stunned him. “But my lord cannot mean to… but, your grace, I am so unworthy.”
The duke smiled again, this time most warmly. “Yes, my boy… my son, I mean precisely that. And I—whose word is law in these, our lands—I say that there is none more worthy from one end of the Great River to the other.” The duke withdrew a flat leather case from his belt pouch and from it extracted a cigar. Piercing one end with the point of his tableknife, he dunked it into his brandy, then puffed it to life over the flame of a candle. Waving to disperse the thick cloud of bluish smoke, he added a few more words. “Think on the matter, Martuhn. I believe we can spare a few weeks. Mehmfiz will not be bothering anyone until they get their own house back in order, and Alex will certainly have no idle hands with which to meddle in the affairs of others, not with western nomads over his borders. Things are winding down to normal again. Well talk this over at another time, but I wanted you to know my mind, my boy.”