Gautin's Errand

Short Story | A child walks barefoot into a fog-shrouded field at dawn.

This is the story of a young boy entrusted with a sudden burden too great for most men to bear. Born with a crippled leg, and without even understanding his mission, Gautin must carry a package through absolute peril, all to save his family—and his father—who have only ever treated him with contempt.

I originally wrote this exclusively for my Forgemasters, but given my effort this calendar year to write and share more of my fiction, I’ve made it free for everyone.

Thanks for being here. I hope you enjoy. —Eric.

Gautin stepped out from the treeline and waited in the silence. The sun was rising somewhere beyond the clouds, but there was little light. The late-autumn fog filled the air; sky and earth were one world, damp and closed-in.

The boy stepped forward until he was shrouded in the mists. Never in his eleven years had his legs walked so far as they had last night.

They are coming for us, his father had said.

The cold ground, nearly frozen, pressed against the skin of his bare feet. His left foot was already numb from the chill of the passing night, but not his right. That foot felt the cold as a comfort; the chill helped the swelling and worked against the ever-present pain in this half-mangled limb.

He looked down and, in the tiny glimmers of that hidden dawn, saw his accursed leg. Malformed since birth. It bowed out beside him. It would not bend the way it should, and the bulging thing below the ankle hardly looked like its supposed twin. Both leg and foot always gave him a constant ache, but the pain was extraordinary now. Gautin expected to see blood or bruising or some blemish that could betray the searing hurt. He wanted to see something grisly there. He wanted to see protruding bone or seeping fluid between his toes. It would only be just. If only there were some horrid sight—more than mere ugliness—that could bear witness to the world the agony of his life.

Instead it was only a bowed leg and lump-foot. Puffy, bony, and misshapen all at once. Just ugly. A wretched scar with no battle to tell of.

The boy sniffed, brought his gaze back to the world. He saw shadows of trees behind him. Endless fog ahead.

There was nothing to do but wait for light.

His hands moved under his outer garment and removed a flat package wrapped in linen. Besides his tunic, cloak, and underclothes, this was the only thing Gautin had with him. He thought he knew what was within, but he unwrapped it anyway.

Under the linen he found a massive red wax seal, a crisscross of twine, a stack of folded parchments. You must safeguard these letters and deliver them to Naufke, his father had said. Into his hands only, and to no one else. It is more important than you can understand, my son.

My son.

When else had Gautin ever heard those words?

He replayed the moment in his head, savoring it as the dawn made its reluctant appearance. In the bone-cold mists, those words were a warming hearth. Eventually the light ceased its growth. The morning was no less obscure than the hours that preceded it. The sun would be no help.

They are coming for us.

No one can save us, except perhaps Naufke.

Better that you should die…

Gautin put foot in front of misshaped foot. He set off further into the woods, further from home.

✹ ✹ ✹

It was a particular preoccupation of Lord Arling Kolvensing that his home be known far and wide as a place of jovial leisure and manly pursuits. The estate was neither large nor remarkably wealthy within the standards of its realm. Nonetheless, for the kingdom’s baronial classes, there was no better table at which to sup, no ale-bowls more full, and no gatherings more enjoyable than those to be found under the roofs of Kolvenfeld.

Much of the credit for the hall’s reputation naturally belonged to Arling’s wife, Hilfa, but Kolvenfeld was much more than a banquet-hall. Outside the hall’s doors lay a great, rectangular yard with single- and double-storied outbuildings on every side. Some, like the kitchen and smokehouse, were mundane enough. Most of Kolvenfeld’s main estate, however, was dedicated to the pastimes of the martial lords—and their sons.

There was an entire shed for the lord’s hunting gear, and a two-storied armory overflowing with spears, shields, helmets, and all the panoply of war. So great were the number of horses in the stable that the building’s hayloft was the size of a granary. Then there was the guest house, the steward’s house, the smithy, the gameskeepers’ hut, and the brew-house with its many drinking-benches. All of this was in addition to Kolvenfeld’s many tenant homes, farms, barns, store-rooms, and pastures. Nearly thirty people dwelt on the estate itself, with another two-hundred souls in its immediate orbit.

Lord Arling himself was boisterous, gregarious, and headstrong; he was vigorous in his eating, loud in his jests, swift in war and in the hunt. Other men liked him. And why should they not? He remembered their names and their lineages and he never refused to share an ale-bowl. He laughed easily and made others laugh at themselves. He had won glory in war. Men flocked to him.

Lord Arling Kolvensing even had the trust of King Thelcor. Not an easy thing to earn, that.

The domestic culture at Kolvenfeld was an extension of the lord himself: manful, stalwart, hearty.

One of the newest buildings at Kolvenfeld was the women’s house. Built for childbirth and the nursing of babes, it lay on the far side of the main hall, away from all these others. This was no exile; Lady Hilfa had chosen the spot herself.

Hilfa did love her husband, of course. Arling loved her in return.

She gave him five sons.

He loved four of them.

✹ ✹ ✹

Gautin heard the horsemen before he saw them.

Something twinged in his chest; his heart was already beating faster than he thought possible, as if it was about to burst. Would he now be discovered? His latent fear swelled into pure terror.

The poor boy was tumbling through branch and brush like a startled cub. Stealth was impossible with his leg; endurance was impossible with his lungs. With every step he lurched, swung his lame foot through the duff, and limped onward. He laid hands on whatever tree-trunk he could reach for support.

Voices echoed through those trees, their source undetectable in the fog. Gautin stopped to listen. He could only hear his own panting. His hands went to his knees. He looked behind him at his trail: broken branches, dark gouges in the woodland litter where his limb was always dragging. If his pursuers were behind him, he was already caught.

But the voices—the horses—seemed to be up ahead in the fog.

They were growing louder.

Where could he hide? He looked around at the ground, spun his head, and collapsed.

✹ ✹ ✹

All four sons of Arling Kolvensing, save the youngest who was a babe, rushed from the doors of their father’s hall. They pounded across the planks of the upper gallery which wrapped around the whole building, to the stairway, and then down the steps into the courtyard.

It was a familiar sight at Kolvenfeld. The young masters storming to the armory and the stables meant that Lord Arling was in a hunting mood; his sons ran before him to prepare his way.

Equally familiar, but far less regarded, was the sight of little Gautin Arlingson utterly failing to keep up with his brothers. As the other three were already emerging from the armory with bows and spears, the limp-legged Gautin was still shambling down the stairs from the hall.

“Slouchin’ Gautin!” laughed his brothers when they saw him. “You can’t catch us, and you can’t catch a hare!”

Berglif, a year younger than the cripple yet half-a-head taller, stuck his tongue out and wagged his head. “Keep the porridge warm for us when we return, sister!”

Gautin tried all the harder to catch up. His leg swung clumsily below him. Halfway across the courtyard the boy had to stop and catch his breath.

In no time at all his brothers were emerging from the stable, leading the horses which had been saddled with an alacrity Gautin could not countenance.

“Oh, look: Slouchin’ wants to come too!” announced Orlend Arlingson, the eldest. “Of course you can come, little sister. Just saddle Nokil and follow us!” This got a laugh from the others. Nokil was Father’s warhorse, twice the size of these garrons that Arling and his sons took on their hunting expeditions.

Then a new voice boomed out over the courtyard: “Leave Nokil out of this! You know better than to bring him into the mountains.” Lord Arling Kolvensing descended the stairs of the gallery. His heavy strides made deep impressions in the soft grasses.

Orlend said something to his father which earned another laugh, but Gautin did not hear it. His whole person, heart and mind and body, was bent towards the looming figure who was now passing over him like a thundercloud. The sun briefly disappeared behind the towering man—

—there was a whisper from somewhere near the ground—

—and then Arling went by. He asked his eldest: “Have you packed all the quivers this time?”

“Yes, Father.”

“And the hard-cakes?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Good, though I hope we’ll have meat by dusk. We can go up to the old stone hut at Skellering. Hillibrent tells me there’s plenty of grouse this year. Now, what of the horses?” The chatter went on.

This was man’s work, and Gautin was only fit for loom work and cookery. Lady Hilfa encouraged it, even; she worried over her three wild sons, but for Gautin her eyes she had only sympathy and affection. They spent much time together in the hall—when it was quiet—or over in the women’s house. When a fifth son was born this past summer, disappointment was plain on Hilfa’s face when the midwives announced the baby’s sex. With no daughter, the Lady doted on her diminutive son.

By the time Arling rode off his estate with three beaming sons, the courtyard was empty. Where Gautin had gone, and when, no one even thought to wonder. Not even the servants knew where the child had limped off to, although one of them did later find the lord’s war-saddle disturbed from its resting place in the stable, lying in the dust beside some of Nokil’s tack.

✹ ✹ ✹

He startled, as if awakening from a falling-dream; his heart jumped from a pained stillness to a rapid thumping. Voices. There had been voices.

Where?

He picked his face out of the leaves and dirt. He strained to see what he could from his low vantage.

Something was moving from right to left, twenty spans away at least—it was so hard to discern through the fog and branches.

A horse. Then the tiniest glint of light high above it revealed a rider’s helmet. He was not alone. Two more horsemen came next, looking more like ghosts than men.

Gautin stayed exactly where he was.

This must be the Sil road, he thought. He must have come farther east than he expected. Surely, these men had come from Kolvenfeld.

The boy could scarcely breathe. There was a rustling near his hip: his own hand, trembling in the forest litter.

A few words passed between the riders, too far to hear. Then another voice, this one angry, louder—the boy in the woods could almost recognize it. There was an exchange, then the angry voice grew louder. The words were unclear but the insulting intent was not. Then that voice cried out in surprise and cut off.

There was laughter from the horsemen. A quiet rebuke.

Had that voice been… ?

The fog thinned, and more figures came into view. He counted four, all on foot, the tallest first, then each one shorter than the last, until the last one… only a child.

Father. Brothers.

They were each bound at the wrists, and tied in a line one after the other, and a tether extended from Lord Arling’s neck into the mists ahead of him.

Then came a shorter steed. Gautin recognized their own mule, even in the fog. Much worse, he recognized the figure of the woman atop it. The bundle in his mother’s arms could be nothing else save his littlest brother.

Gautin blinked away the tears. A prayer escaped his lips.

The cavalcade was beginning to fade into the mists again when some unseen captor tugged at Arling’s leash and the proud man fell face-first out of Gautin’s sight. His sons clambered close behind in an effort to not step on their father. They were soon all tangled and stuck.

Gautin heard the jangling of chains. And laughter.

✹ ✹ ✹

A crashing sound of pots and pans made everyone in the hall jump. Every head turned.

There, suddenly the target of attention for the whole Kolvensing family and two dozen of their drunken guests, was little Gautin.

He had been carrying a broad basket of fleeces and furs to accompany the extra bench-beds his father had requested so as to sleep the whole party here in the hall. But with Gautin’s off-kilter gait, the whole basket had been lurching to one side with each of his shambling steps.

That is how he bumped the andiron at the edge of the central hearth.

The spit jostled and wobbled, the cauldron swung back and forth, the weight of it pulled the spit free from the andiron’s fitting, and the whole long bar—loaded with a dozen measures or more the night’s cooking—fell down into the hearth.

The clatter was deafening. The cauldron spilled and the soup hissed into the fire, sending smoke and steam up to the oak rafters, incense of burning pork and evaporating stews. As one end of the spit landed, the rest angled awkwardly and pushed the other andiron over and out of the hearth entirely. A lady leaped off her paramour’s lap and the man tumbled back over the bench to avoid the hot metal. The roast landed in the fire. An explosion of sparks. Ash blew out from below, dusting all the bread that was warming on the hearthstones.

When the gasps and shrieks died away and it was clear there was no risk of a hall-fire, all eyes went to the petrified little boy with the hamper in his hands.

“Have you no wits?!” roared Lord Arling from his seat. “If I did not know your face, boy, I would think I had invited Stumrain of Sil into my hall! A cripple is bad enough, but an idiot too?”

There was absolute silence in the hall, save the fire consuming the roast and the sizzling of the soup upon the logs. The guests might have been confused, but those who lived in this region knew Stumrain, the young, bow-legged, idiot youth who spent every day shambling about the town, yelling wordless moans at passersby, weeping and shouting in his witlessness.

“Worry not, friends!” Lady Hilfa announced with a pained smile. “We have plenty of vittles already prepared in the cook-house. Virik! Bring out the second cauldron, and get the girls to bring the bread.”

“And more ale!” shouted one of the men.

“And more ale, yes!” Hilfa’s composure was returning. “Now Kiljan, strike up that tune again.”

The party resumed. The servants began to work at the hearth to repair the damage. No one paid the crying boy near the hearth any more mind. Except, of course, his brothers.

“Ha-ha!” Orlend sneered right in Gautin’s face as the other three gathered around him. “Slouchin’ Stumrain! You should leave, little sister, before you make more ruin for Father!”

Gautin dropped his basket on the floor and brought a hand to his eyes. He squeezed his face, trying to keep his tears in.

“Ha! You even have a squint like Stumrain, don’t you? Slouchin’ Gautin. Squintin’ stupid Stumrain.”

Even as the words left the eldest’s mouth, Munand and Berglif had turned the tease into a song.

✹ ✹ ✹

“Hold there, Carter!”

At the soldier’s words, the farmer reined in his oxen and brought his haycart to a halt. The three riders were coming up the road the other way from Sil. Over their hauberks they wore tabards of green and red, denoting their place in King Thelcor’s household.

The farmer felt a keen desire to be anywhere but here, on this road.

The men inquired after his business, and he told them about hay and wagoning and the market-day at Sil. They asked him what he knew about the goings-on at Kolvenfeld. The farmer had heard little; some people at market had spoken about it, but no one there understood anything of what had happened.

“Arling Kolvensing has been declared a high traitor,” said one of the king’s men. Now the farmer truly wanted to be elsewhere. Everyone knew what happened to those who fell under Thelcor’s suspicions. The soldier, for his part, seemed to relish the man’s now-troubled mind.

“And what about him?” the soldier nodded to the boy who was fidgeting in the back of the haycart. He was young, perhaps eight or nine, completely filthy, dressed in a cloak and tunic far too thin for the weather. He was barefoot, and one of his legs was misshapen, with a clubbed foot beneath. The boy rocked back and forth in the hay, but did not regard the men at all.

“Oh, ehm, he climbed in while I was leaving town.”

“He just hopped in on his own?”

“Well…” the carter cleared his throat. “So, with him, well—.”

“You there! Boy!” the rider brought his horse alongside the rear of the cart. He had to shout again before the crippled young man turned his head. When he did, he was squinting hard out of one eye, and the rest of his face held a strange expression as if he was not quite looking at the man, but past him. “Yes, you! What are you doing on the road? Where are you going?”

The boy did not say anything. He merely held his gaze at—or near, or beyond—the soldier.

“Answer me!”

The sound that came from the squinting face was wordless and unsettling. It seemed to belong to an animal more than to a man.

Then the soldier laughed. Turning to the carter he said, “I’ve heard of this lad. Why didn’t you tell us you had the Idiot of Sil?”

The rider reached down and smacked the boy on the side of the head, then chuckled again at the goose-noise this abuse produced. He mimicked the boy—“Wonk, hyonk!”—and looked to his friends.

The other two were laughing too. They dismounted, came around to the back of the cart, and began to torment this rare exhibition before them. They prodded its bony leg, flicked its ears, and took turns trying to effect louder and more raucous sounds from the thing.

The farmer sat statue-still, wishing again to be whisked away.

Eventually the men remembered their duties. Or maybe they simply got bored. One of them flicked two copper algrens into the haycart. “Your bread for the day, beggar-goose.”

Then they left.

The oxen began to walk, the cart axle began to creak, and the driver began to shake from the after-fear.

The boy, however, was only relieved. The prodding and mocking he did not mind. Only one thing concerned him: the letters he had stashed in the hay.

✹ ✹ ✹

The horsemen came pounding into Kolvenfeld without any warning. Virik the steward was near the gateway to the road, and the first horse knocked him clear to the ground.

Six riders. Twelve. Twenty. All dressed for war. Thundering and spreading through the courtyard.

Some of the women were crying out. Chaos reigned where moments ago there had only been a quiet, domestic morning at the end of autumn.

Gautin looked up from where he sat in the shade, uselessly scraping a rake in the dirt for lack of better amusement. But now a hoof stomped his scrawling into a puff of dust.

“You there!” snapped the green-and-red-clad man from his steed. The sun glinted off the top of a spear, high overhead. “Where is your lord? Where is Arling?”

In abject fear, the boy swallowed, and found he could not. He bobbed his head like a chicken to get his throat to work.

“Whore-son servants,” the man grumbled. “Useless.” And he rode away to continue the search.

Men were everywhere now. Riders wheeled about, going from corner to corner of the yard, steeds stamping. Many had dismounted and were charging through the doors of both hall and outbuildings. There was no bloodshed. Not yet.

Gautin stood up. He looked at his rake and its twig tines. He thought of the horseman’s spear. He wished he had his own.

Mother was almost certainly in the hall. His brothers were all in the far field. There was no one here to help.

Gautin’s grip tightened on the handle.

He limped off towards the armory.

✹ ✹ ✹

Try as they might, the royal soldiers could find no evidence of Arling’s treachery. Every room was turned out. Every floorboard pulled up. Every servant questioned, some more forcefully than others. The walls of the storehouses were so thoroughly torn apart that the whole building began to sway. The men put it to the torch.

Evidence or no, King Thelcor’s men did not wait to bring their quarry all the way back to Saxo Keep before starting their work on Arling’s flesh. They were tasked with bringing in quite a few things, after all, and the traitor’s person was only one of them.

Arling held out. No amount of ingenuity could force him into submission.

So they proceeded against his flesh and blood via another route; they began their work anew, this time upon his eldest son.

It was only a matter of minutes—a few blows to the face, a twisted arm, the dramatic revelation of a hot iron—before Orlend Arlingson’s tongue flowed freely at the will of his family’s captors.

Which was how the king’s enforcers learned of a particular mistake. They were tasked with capturing all of Arling’s sons, and they had been told of four. Four they had. But this babe here, he was the fifth.

“Why had Lord Kolvensing not told his liege of this newest child?” the men asked themselves. “Is Thelcor not generous with his vassals? That alone confirms this man’s guilt.”

A description of this missing son was soon provided to them from the whimpering Orlend.

A certain few of the soldiers admitted that they had seen this boy—not the idiot they thought they had met, but Arling’s last remaining free kin. After the appropriately bloody lashing, these three were among those who were sent back out again onto the roads to find the damnable child.

Their captain went with them.

✹ ✹ ✹

Gautin made it to the armory without anyone giving him more than a moment’s glance. He went up the steps, opened the door, and entered the dark portal. There was more shouting in the courtyard below. Gautin closed the door behind him.

He took several steps into the room.

A great shadow moved at the edge of his vision. Gautin twisted on his good leg. The boy swung his rake as hard as he could—

—Arling the Warchief caught the handle in a fist. His other hand held his sword.

“Gautin!” he gasped. He wrenched the rake from his son’s grasp and threw it to the ground. He cast a glance over his shoulder, back toward the door. Then he whispered: “Are your brothers with you?”

Gautin shook his head.

“Bolt the door. Quickly now.”

Gautin did. When he turned back, his father was gone.

His absence only lasted a moment. Arling dropped down from the loft, like lightning from a raincloud, eschewing the ladder and landing with thunder. The noble chieftain stood up on steady feet. He beckoned his crippled son to the bench near a high window at the back of the room.

As he limped over to his father, Gautin thought that the man seemed transformed. This was not the gregarious drinker at the center of every hall-party. This man was taut as a bowstring, hard as a shield-boss, sharp as an arrowhead. For the first time in his young life, Gautin was catching a glimpse of the chieftain who had led hard men into blood.

Arling lifted his son and sat him roughly on the bench.

“Gautin. You must do something for me, for your mother, and for all of us,” Arling’s breathed into his son’s face. “This is a sudden burden that you must bear. Why the Words have chosen you as the only person to help us in this distress, I will never understand, but you are all I have now.”

There was shouting outside in the courtyard. Arling turned over his shoulder to look at the door again. Another shout, very close now. The man turned back.

“Listen: this is what you are to do. You know Haslofeld, don’t you? The place of your mother’s kin and your uncle, Naufke Thinilson? Good.” Arling produced a flat, linen-wrapped package and put it on Gautin’s lap. “You must safeguard these letters and deliver them to Naufke. Into his hands only, and to no one else. It is more important than you can understand, my son. They are coming for us, the king’s men. We Kolvensings face our doom. No one can save us, except perhaps Naufke, if he receives these.

“I will soon face the king’s ire and the burning racks. I will resist, but Thelcor’s wrath will not be sated. Once they are done with me, they will come for you as well, and for your mother, and all our kinsmen. Even the little babe, Gautin.

“You must understand: better that you should die than these letters go undelivered. You must not fail!”

The door from the gallery slammed against the bolt. “Arling Kolvensing!” came the shout from beyond. “Open in the name of the king! Surrender yourself!”

“Out this window now,” said Arling, lifting his son to the opening near the ceiling. “Drop over the gallery-railing to the yard below. Go straight to the woods. Speak to no one. Do not be seen.”

✹ ✹ ✹

They found the old carter first.

“I knew nothing of the boy!” cried the farmer through bloodied lips. His teeth lay on the road. “I left him back there, at the trappers’ hut. Back that way!”

“It’s nearly dark,” noted the captain. “Why did you hurry onward? Why not stay back with the other travelers?”

“Sign of a guilty conscience,” supplied one of the other men.

“You think you can outrun us, peasant?” the captain demanded.

“No! No!” the farmer sputtered. “I would only rather be home than to pass the night in a drafty hut with villains and beggars.”

His protests fell on uncaring ears. Most of the searchers left him and his oxen, but a few stayed behind. The farmer never did make it home.

Those kings-men who were more concerned with their mission continued back up the road towards Sil, looking for the travel-shelter the doomed carter had spoken of.

The sun set.

An orange glow appeared in the darkness, flickering at the edge of a wood. The trappers’ hut. The hole-plagued fur that served for a door could not contain the light of the hearth within, not its warmth. The soldiers descended upon the shelter and crowded in the doorway. They looked inside: four walls of stone packed with moss, a mound of moldering thatch for a roof, a smoky hearth, and three figures hunched in the smoke-filled den.

Two were adults of indeterminate sex and age, for they were only piles of rags and filth, and both were sleeping on benches. The third was also a vagrant, equally wretched, but awake to the world. When the fur-door opened he turned to the newcomers. His eyes were milk-white with cataracts; his unseeing stare wandered over the soldiers but brought him nothing except his private world of darkness.

“Is that you again, boy?” rasped the old josser.

“We are not boys, but we are looking for one. Tell me what you know of him. Where did he go?”

“Oh, I…” the man hesitated. “I’m not sure.”

“You speak to a captain of the royal household. Loosen your tongue in the name of the king, sightless one, or I will cut it out.”

“I cannot see anything, sir. I know not where he went.”

“But you knew he was a boy.”

“The man who left him here. That’s what he told me. He didn’t stay, m’lord. The boy, I mean. He stirred the fire, then left. He didn’t say a thing.”

The captain stooped to the fire. There among the burning embers he saw a burning lump of tinder, tossed in not long ago. There were scraps of linen, a stack of black and flaking papers, and, oozing out of the whole bundle, bubbling globules of red wax.

“Do you have any bread?” the blind man asked. “I’ve two coppers here. I can pay.”

The captain ignored him, and watched the black papers as they crumpled to nothing in the ember depths where Gautin had stuck them.

✹ ✹ ✹

Three hours since the royal horsemen had galloped into Kolvenfeld, and darkness had descended upon the woods.

Gautin could smell the smoke from the home which burned behind him.

He knew where he had to go, but only vaguely. He knew how to travel there, but knew his foot would not allow it. He knew there were men searching for him, but knew he would never be able to outrun or outfight them.

He tried to keep walking, but his feet stumbled in the dark—not that they were ever steady in the daylight. So, little Gautin crawled to the nearest tree. Finding it hollow, he curled up inside and tried to sleep.

He wept instead.

✹ ✹ ✹

The moment he heard about the arrest of his sister and her husband, Lord Naufke Thinilson summoned a dozen of his closest followers to his home. These being dark and uncertain times, and with the tidings from Kolvenfeld spreading like disease through all the baronies of Estval, no fewer than sixty men had answered his call. Each arrived armed for war. More were sure to come. Haslofeld was so packed with warrior-guests that Naufke was already sending his bondsmen to sleep in the stable-loft; the cowshed might be next.

On this, the third night since Arling’s capture, most of these men were crowded around the edges of Naufke’s hall; they watched from the shadows at the latest newcomer: a mangy, glassy-eyed, barefoot cripple-boy who had wandered onto the estate around midnight and who now sat staring at the hearth-coals alone. They awaited the return of the lord of the house. He was not long in coming.

When Naufke did reenter his hall, he carried a quill and small clay ink-pot, along with a tight stack of cleaned birch-bark for writing. The lord strode across the rushes to sit on the hearthstone facing his young kinsman. He acknowledged no one in the hall except Gautin, whom he now addressed:

“Are you certain this letter is destroyed? If it was so important, why didn’t you hide it somewhere? Perhaps if there was some hope of recovering them, then perhaps—.”

“Husband,” the mistress of the house interrupted Naufke. “This should wait until morning. Let the boy warm up, find him some shoes, get some food into him. I’m sure you’re tired, Gautin. Rest. Then we can deal with whatever this is… How does that sound?”

The boy shook his head.

Naufke sighed. Shaking his head, he opened the ink-pot, dipped the quill, and placed the bark on his knee. “What is it, then, my boy?”

Gautin sat up straight and took a deep inbreath...

Then he spoke:

“‘For the man to whom I trust my family in what may become our most dire hour.’”

His voice was calm and direct, and it carried through the hall. It had a reedy timbre, but he sounded nothing like a child. He continued:

“‘I must offer my correspondence to you without any names for reasons you will soon understand, but at each turn I will make my meaning clear to your mind, even if to no one else’s. Today is the sixteenth day of Sumine. Since our chance meeting outside Lienburg yesterweek—’”

“Stop!” Naufke threw up a hand. “Everybody out. Wake those in the loft. Get them out! Do it now!”” The collected men began to take their leave. Naufke shouted for them to hurry. Even his wife was banished from his hall.

When they were alone, Naufke gripped Gautin’s arm. “Why should I trust this message? Your father swore an oath of silence to me about that meeting. And now he is under the knife for treason! Do you understand, boy? I could die. My family could die. If he told you of that meeting, what else did he say? Who else knows of it?!”

“He told me nothing, sir. I know not if he kept counsel with anyone else. I am not in my father’s confidence. I know of it only from the letters.”

“Letters? There was more than one?”

“Six letters. This is only the start of the first.”

“What did they say? What were they about?”

“I…” Gautin sniffed. “I am not sure. They did not make sense to me. So I simply learned every word of them. I assume they will make sense to you.”

Naufke’s jaw dropped open. Then he leaned back and surveyed the room with widened eyes. “You simply learned every word…”

“‘Since our chance meeting outside Lienburg yesterweek,’” Gautin continued, “‘I have had no rest. Your words were truth. A hard and bitter truth which has burned both my heart and conscience. I pledge to you that I shall now work towards the goal you spoke of then. I shall not share my plans with you until you receive this letter. The man we spoke of trusts you not, but he trusts me now. Discovery is too great a risk. The work is too fragile. I will do it all with my own hands. What follows is a list of evidences where you may have the means to argue before our peers. I shall add to it as I undertake this work.’

Gautin interrupted his recitation: “None of that makes sense to me. And everything after this is merely a list. But my father said that if you received this letter, you could save my family.”

Naufke’s face was pale as fresh-washed fleece. He had not copied a single word. His implements dropped from his lap, and the stack of bark clattered against the hearth and then to the floor. The lord stood up, paced one way, threw his hands through his hair, paced back.

“Can you save my family, Uncle?”

Naufke bent and cupped the child’s face in tender hands. “How many letters did you say you learned, Gautin?”

“Six.”

“And how long was each?”

“The first was forty-one lines on one side. The second letter was four pages, with twenty or twenty-one lines per page, but he wrote on the backs as well, plus a postscript. The third lett—.”

“Scribes!” Naufke shouted. He broke away and ran to the hall’s door. “We need clerks and writers!”

Minutes later, Gautin found himself at the center of a table-ring with seven men, each with quills, bark, parchment, or wax-tablets, diligently awaiting his next words. Naufke bade him to speak, so Gautin spoke.

He recited every word of every message.

The letters were full of cryptic instructions: “Go to the tree where we buried the dead after the Battle of Crehan for Brolingson’s seals. Ask the abbot of Grimalbans for the ‘pearl of the Coridon.’ The fifth chancellor’s ledger is with your longest tenant. Under the north corner of the women’s house on my estate there is a stone, buried testimonies beneath that our subject thought destroyed.”

On and on the lists went. At the end of each item, Naufke would point to the next scribe so that Gautin would not be slowed down. Round and round the clues flew. The recitation rolled on like a spring-swollen river.

Several times the writers had to ask Gautin to repeat something and he would say it again, verbatim, exactly as before, without needing to ask which item was unclear. Then he would take up the litany again.

By the time Gautin finished the last item on the last list of the last letter, there was a new dawn.

“Do you know what you’ve just done, Gautin?”

“No,” said the bleary-eyed boy.

“One thing is certain: your father is a traitor of the highest order. No—” he corrected himself when he saw the fear on Gautin’s face. “Let me explain. It is a relief. Shortly after your father was appointed vicar-chancellor, we met unexpectedly on the road—the meeting the letter spoke of. I took the chance and begged him to work to subvert the king’s tyranny. He refused. In strong words. I thought our kinship died that day. I thought it a great shame, for I always loved him even in his faults. I feared Arling might turn me over to Thelcor’s torturers for my thoughts…

“But now we see the truth. Your father has been working to undermine Thelcor—and quite diligently. If I understand your father’s meaning in these lists, every word of those letters is a path to another tool to win over our fellow lords.

“I will dispatch men. Your father mentioned missing seals stolen for Thelcor’s forgeries, funds that he has extorted, orders in the king’s name. Thelcor has committed so many crimes, Gautin. So much evil. But so many have not seen it first-hand. They have only rumors. But now your father has given us proof of all! I will send out messengers to every landholder I know. Your father is well-liked, you know, and the lords are restless enough already…”

He trailed off when he saw that Gautin’s eyes were closing and he was slumping in his stool. Naufke lifted his nephew into his arms, carried the boy into the family’s private chamber, and laid Gautin into the lord’s own bed. The child was asleep before his uncle could pull the furs over him.

He awoke in the afternoon. His aunt was there at his bedside with bread and hearty stew. He ate, and even sipped deeply of the ale-bowl she offered for his fortification. Once he had changed his clothes and donned one shoe for his good foot, he went to find his uncle.

Outside the hall, Haslofeld’s small courtyard was bustling with activity. Horsemen were coming and going, helmets on and shields bouncing on their backs. Strong men were loading carts and pack-mules. In the middle of it all was Lord Naufke, wearing mail and sword-belt. His followers were packed around him, but they parted before the bow-legged boy like wheat in the wind.

“Here he is,” Naufke bent to embrace Gautin in two arms. “Are you feeling better?”

“What is happening, Uncle?”

Naufke stood and sighed. To Gautin’s relief, the man did not kneel or crouch down. “We’re collecting your father’s hoards. They are already having the intended effect: my messengers are returning with notes of support. The lords of Estval are rallying to our cause. And so we are preparing to march on Saxo Keep, where, your father has written us, the king is starving his own nephew. Perhaps that youth will make a better king than Thelcor.”

“Cursed be the name!” interjected one of Naufke’s men.

“Curse Thelcor the Wicked!” Naufke echoed. “He shall not be king much longer, if we have our way!”

There was a sudden commotion by the gates, and everyone turned to watch a tired-looking warband riding into Haslofeld.

“Ah, yes,” Naufke chuckled. “I sent out more than messengers…”

“There’s blood on their clothes,” Gautin said. “Blood on the horses.”

“I should hope so. That means they found their prey. Thanks to you, Gautin, the banners of rebellion are being raised all over Estval. Today was just the first skirmish...”

But Gautin wasn’t listening any more. The riders who had come in were filtering through the gates and he saw between helmeted heads a patch of long, raven hair and a bundled babe wrapped in its mother’s arms. Beside the woman was her husband, Arling.

His nose was broken, his jaw was swollen, his whole face was purple. But his eyes were alert. He scanned Haslofeld’s yard like a hawk, searching with a grimace. Then he saw Gautin. Arling smiled and pointed to him with a cry.

“My son! There’s my son!”

All at once, mother, brothers, and father looked at Gautin Arlingson with joy on their faces.

He ran to them.

Thank you all for supporting my work. I hope you enjoyed this month’s story. If you did like it, please don’t hesitate to share it with others. Tell them what they’re missing, eh?