C Dale Brittain - Count Scar

Brittain, C. Dale - Count Scar

C DALE BRITTAIN

ROBERT A, BOUCHARD

COUNT SCAR

Chapter One ~ Caloron

1

Snow had fallen steadily all day, muffling the sounds of hooves. As we sat

around a blazing hearth, celebrating New Years, we did not even realize

anyone

had arrived until the guards brought them into the hall: the messengers come

to

tell me I was going to be count.

Everything was as abruptly transformed as if the wintry night had been ripped

away to reveal the summer sun. A few minutes ago I had been staring unseeing

into my wine glass, thinking that the purposeless and fruitless year just

over

was about to be replaced by another equally purposeless, but now in an

instant

possibilities and opportunities waited on every hand. I was too startled at

first to show any emotion at all.

My nephews were the most excited. "A count! With your own county! Can we come

visit you, Uncle? Is it as good as being emperor?"

My older brother the archduke, far more exalted than any count, tried his

best

not to seem patronizing. "A place of your own at last, Caloran!" he said,

resting his elbows benevolently on the trestle table before him. Was there

the

slightest emphasis on "at last"? "Well, after all your service to the emperor

and to me, God knows you deserve it."

His wife, my sister-in-law, was less successful in the sincerity of her

congratulations. "Isn't that the little county up in the mountains your

grandfather came from originally?"

"I understand he was delighted to be able to come north and become an

archduke."

She paused to finish delicately biting the flesh from a roasted bird's wing.

"I'm sure you'll be glad to be down there, however, where you won't always

have

to wonder if you're in our way."

The messengers had pulled off their travel cloaks and stamped the snow from

their boots and now warmed their hands by the fire. Their skin was darker

than

anyone's around here, and their eyes black and shadowed. They watched me as

though intensely interested, although I had the least to say of anybody. The

bouteillier brought them hot mulled wine, and they continued to observe me as

they sipped it.

My niece had retreated shyly behind her mother when they first came in, but

now

she darted across the rush-strewn floor and threw herself into my lap. "Are

you

really going away, Uncle Caloran?"

There were tears at the corners of her eyes, but as I bounced her on my knee

I

felt a wash of pure joy pour over me. A county of my own, land and income of

my

own, a castle and knights to direct as I pleased. No more sharp comments from

a

sister-in-law who would clearly have preferred that I never existed, no more

landless service to an older brother whose constant and rather forced

good-humor

toward me seemed intended to make it seem that he had forgotten what neither

he

nor I could ever forget.

And maybe as a count in the south, something more than a scarred and landless

man, I would find women, well-bred and elegant women, who would tolerate my

attentions. After all, I tried to persuade myself, plenty of men came back

from

the wars every year with much more disfiguring scars than mine.

"I'll miss you, Gertrude," I told my niece, meaning it but unable to keep

from

smiling. Her blond braids had worked out from under her little bonnet as I

bounced her. "Yes, I shall have to go away."

She reached up then and touched the left side of my face, the large reddish

patch whose texture was more like leather than human skin, where the beard

would

never grow. Gertrude's brothers had each in turn asked about my face when

they

had first reached the age of wondering about the adults around them, rather

than

simply accepting whatever they had found in the world when they came into it.

Gertrude had never asked, but then she was still very young.

"If you're leaving, Uncle Caloran, I want to ask you something first. Why

does

your face look like this? And," turning in the circle of the arm that held

her,

"your hand?"

"It's an old burn," I said easily, as I had said before to my nephews. "From

a

fire a long time ago, when I wasn't much more than a boy. Did you know you're

named for someone who used to live here in this castle," I added as though

irrelevantly, "someone also named Gertrude? Your parents will tell you about

her

some time when you're older."

For a second my brother Guibert looked toward me, but he cast his eyes down

before they met mine.

"Does it hurt?" asked Gertrude with grave concern.

"Not now. It hurt horribly once, of course—and watch how you stand on my

legs,

or you will hurt me even more!" I laughed as I seated her again on my lap.

"It's

never kept your old uncle from being a good fighting man, as my years in the

emperor's service proved."

"You're not so very old, Uncle," she protested.

But one of the messengers interrupted before I could answer. "You are the

emperor's sworn man?"

"Of course," I said, surprised at the note in his voice. "I fought up and

down

the Empire for five years as his liege man."

The messengers conferred for a moment in lowered voices. I had already

noticed

that they had a trace of an accent, and what they spoke now did not sound

like

any language I knew. I felt a brief moment of doubt. In spite of the great

fire

on the hearth, in spite of the warm lump of Gertrude—shy again—on my lap, my

brothers hall was chill on this cold night, and drafts found their way

through

the carpeting covering the narrow windows. Would the men who were going to be

under my command even understand the orders I gave them?

"You see, my lord," said a messenger, and it took me a second to realize that

he

was addressing me and not my brother, "Duke Argave expects all the counts of

the

region to swear liege homage to him. His honor demands it. But down in the

south

the Empire is distant enough that it may not matter that you once took an

oath

to someone else."

And the emperor was unlikely ever to hear about it, or care if he did. Five

years in his service was all he wanted before taking on a fresh crop of noble

fighting men to captain his soldiers.

"Duke Argave?" I repeated aloud. I realized I knew virtually nothing about

the

county which I had just inherited. My grandfather, himself a younger brother,

had come from there originally, but he had already been old when I knew him,

and

I had had scarce time as a boy for an old man's stories. That had been, of

course, before the fire.

"We are the duke's men. Did you not hear us say so? It was he who chose you."

I almost expected my brother to make some jovial comment about he and Duke

Argave being fellow dukes, but for once Guibert was silent. They might once

have

met at the royal court, however; when I had him alone I would have to ask.

"There was a choice?" I asked the messengers slowly. "I was not the only

possible heir?"

"The countess's death being so sudden, of course, and with some saying—" The

messengers had been suave and assured, but now their assurance cracked. "But

here," pressing a sealed letter into my hand. "You can read about it

yourself."

I sent Gertrude back to her mother. My sister-in-law had started laughing and

talking to her boys again as they ate, as though uninterested in my county.

Guibert, however, was not even pretending not to listen.

The parchment roll was sealed with red wax, impressed with the image of a man

on

horseback. Around the image, very tiny, were the words, Argavius dux. I broke

the seal with my thumb and unrolled it slowly.

My new liege lord the duke might have men who spoke a language I couldn't

understand, but his chancellor wrote a fair hand. The letter started with

flowery invocations of the triune God, told me that it was an honor to be the

first to address me by my new title of Count, and then got down to the hard

details.

"The countess's sudden death left the county without a head at the worst

possible time," Duke Argave told me, "just when there are rumblings from

those

despicable fools over the border, and rumors that the heretics may be

spreading

their spew again, not just back in the mountains but in the towns themselves."

I

had no idea what he was talking about. "And a second death so soon after the

first makes it even worse. Her husband, of course, acts as though it has

never

occurred to him that doubt might fall upon him, and was outraged when he

learned

I would not accept him as successor. When you have met him, I would like to

learn your opinion of him. I think you can guess mine."

I looked toward the fire, not seeing it. There were suspicious circumstances,

then, surrounding the death of my predecessor the countess, my own second

cousin, a woman I had never even met. And not all of my new subjects might

welcome me gladly since there was apparently another claimant to the county.

Visions of lying back in the warm, soft grass under the olive trees, several

silk-robed maidens arrayed around me, faded before I could even begin to

enjoy

them. I knew how to talk to children and how to talk to soldiers, not to

politicians and learned men of law. I took a deep breath. It appeared I would

be

learning soon. "You can't be harder to face than the emperors enemies—or for

that matter the emperor himself," I muttered to the distant duke and turned

back

to his letter.

"My messengers will escort you to your new home," Duke Argave concluded.

"Make

whatever preparations you may need and come as quickly as you may. I shall

expect you each day I do not see you." He had drawn a monogram for his

signature, a tall "A" with the other letters dangling off it, in a heavy hand

that left a wider line from the quill than his chancellor's.

I leaned back, slowly starting to smile again. The duke with his insinuations

might have meant a dozen things, but by the time I had learned what he really

believed I would be lord of my own castle.

The snow fell heavily that night and kept the roads closed for the best part

of

a week, and I spent the time making my preparations, but I could have done

them

all in a single day. For thirty years I had been a son of this castle, and

yet

how little effort there seemed now in preparing to leave it behind me.

When I had first gone off to the imperial court, as a little boy who had

scarcely begun to trace his letters on a wax tablet, I remembered my mother

and

her ladies spending frantic weeks in the preparation of my clothes and

supplies.

When I had gone again to the emperor's court, this time as a young man sworn

to

fight in his service, there had been months spent in readying the armor, the

weapons, and the warhorses, not just for me but for the knights who would

follow

my banner. Both my parents had been gone by then to the convent in the next

valley— my father to the mausoleum, my mother to pray among the nuns for

another

two years yet—but my brother Guibert had followed all my preparations

closely,

grudging, I knew, everything I spent because it all came from his budget, but

refusing to say that he begrudged it.

Now there was little to do but pack a few warm clothes for the journey—I

would

buy new in the south, where I had heard they had recently started wearing

shoes

with long pointed toes—polish my armor, and sharpen the excellent sword I had

received from the emperor's hands. The messengers had brought spare horses

with

them, distrusting northern steeds, and everything else could wait until I

reached my county. I would take nothing this time from Guibert. It was easy

now

to leave the castle because it was no longer my home. It was his alone and

his

sharp-voiced wife's.

Only one person from here would accompany me, Bruno, the old soldier who had

fought under me and who had asked the emperor to release him to follow me

home

when I left imperial service.. Too stiff in the joints to be much of a

warrior

any more, he liked to think of himself as my bodyguard, but I thought of him

as

my friend.

"No more biting winter winds, Captain," he said with relish, "once we live

among

the olive trees down in the south."

Guibert took me aside the evening we finally decided that the weather had

cleared enough to start in the morning. For a moment I wondered if he was

going

to talk at last about Gertrude, but of course he did not. "For your journey,"

he

said gruffly, pushing a small jingling pouch into my hand.

I accepted it with a nod and without counting it. The money the emperor had

given me when I left his service was long gone, and while I trusted the

duke's

messengers would have enough for the journey, something extra was never amiss.

"I met this Duke Argave once," Guibert said, "when we were both at the royal

court at the same time." Over at this edge of the kingdom we served the

emperor

more than the king, but my brother was liege man of both— something he had

never

told either one, though they doubtless knew and didn't care, as long as the

peace held between them. "The duke asked quite a bit about our grandfather,"

he

continued, "how he had come to marry an heiress and become an archduke. He

seemed better informed on our grandfathers ancestry than I am myself."

"What is this Duke Argave himself like?" I asked.

"Dangerous." Guibert let the word hang for a moment. I had never credited my

brother with much imagination, but perhaps I had underestimated him. "Watch

yourself around him, Caloran. There are always rumors of intrigue from the

south, and at least one new count riding up every year to swear fidelity to

the

king long after unfortunate accidents to their predecessors, but Argave has

so

far survived them all, for far longer than either you or I have lived."

I would have to become the kings man as well as Duke Argave's, then. Someone,

I

hoped, would understand all my new responsibilities and deign to share the

information with me. But any trips back to the north, I resolved, could wait

until summer.

"Argave," added Guibert slowly, "has, how shall I express this, the manners of

a

dancing master, including both the elegance of style and the love of

intrigue,

but the soul of an assassin."

2

The trip south took close to a month, over roads either deep in snow or, as

we

began approaching my new county, thick with mud. The inns were crowded and

fetid; the monastery guest-houses were cleaner but the food there worse. Once

among sullen gray hills we fought off an ambush, and another time we outran a

pack of twenty bandits. Bruno's horse broke a leg, and we were outbargained

on

the price in buying a new one. Four times we became seriously lost, and once

we

had to swim the horses across an icy river when the duke's messengers could

not

find the ford they insisted had been there when they came north.

Although I tried questioning them about my county, they resisted both open

and

subtle questions. The closest I got to interesting information was one

beginning

to tell me that my new castle had long been rumored to have hidden passages,

maybe even lost treasures, but the other silenced him. They did, however, know

a

number of delightful southern songs, some bawdy, some sweetly sentimental,

which

they were happy to teach Bruno and me. We sang the bawdier ones in the

evening

at the inns and the more sentimental ones at the monastery guesthouses.

As we continued south, even through treacherous countryside, I could feel

dropping away behind me all the oppressive weight of living on the charity of

my

brother. It was as though the scar itself was peeling away from my face,

though

I could still see it there in the polished metal of my mirror. And if the

thought of leaving Guibert's castle further behind with every step was not

always enough to push me forward, then I could always imagine the county

waiting

for me.

The vision of the sun dappling the soft grass through the olive branches kept

me

going as we left the snows behind for sleet and cold rain and started at last

into the southern mountains, with their steep uphill climbs and jaw-dropping

descents. The vision lasted until, after a long day's ride up an increasingly

rocky incline through barren fields, the messengers pulled up their horses to

point.

"There's your castle. There's Peyrefixade."

My mouth fell open. Bruno at my shoulder muttered, "It's like somebody wanted

to

stick a thumb in the eye of God."

Thrust up from a knife-ridge of rock far above us, the dark red castle was

the

best positioned for defense I had ever seen. The faint track of the road

before

us twisted back and forth, back and forth, in its slow ascent. As we watched,

a

dark rain cloud came down the ridge and obscured the castle from sight. Night

reached us at the same time. I sighed, knowing in my thoroughly chilled bones

that while dragging all the stones for the castle up to that peak no one had

thought to install a modern fireplace.

That evening I was too tired to inspect my new castle properly. The castle

seneschal greeted me and formally passed the huge iron key of the front gate

into my keeping. He appeared gaunt, the skin on his neck and arms slack as

though he had recently lost weight rapidly, but I was too exhausted to wonder

about his troubles. I received the bows and murmured welcomes of the knights

and

servants, more obsequious than anything I had ever received in my life. The

bouteillier, dressed like a nobleman and with a nobleman's manners and

bearing

but the most deferential of all, brought me wine and a slab of cold meat,

which

I ate and went straight to bed.

The hearth, as I had feared, was built in the old-fashioned way in the middle

of

the hall, but while it made the room very smoky it also kept it warm. My

entire

adult life I had preferred fire safely housed in a fireplace, but I thought

tiredly that I could deal with this—at least until next week when I would

order

the masons in.

The great curtained bed, at one end of the great hall in which everyone in

the

castle ate and slept, was doubtless the same one, I thought, that the former

countess had died in. At least she seemed to have insisted on a goose-feather

mattress on the rope-strung frame and warm wool stuffing in the brocade

coverlets. I just hoped someone had thought to change the sheets after her

death.

But I awoke with my mood much improved as dawn broke over the ridge, lighting

up

the greased parchment stretched over the windows. I threw on my clothes and

stepped over still snoring men to go out and survey my county by daylight.

Bruno

was among the sleepers, his face in repose showing the lines of age and

exhaustion he tried to deny during the day. Him I smiled at indulgently, but

a

little discipline, I could see, would be needed among the rest.

Yet faint clanking and rattling sounds elsewhere in the castle indicated that

I

was not the only one awake. I could recall seeing no priest among the staff

last

night, but I would have to get one and start them all off right with the

divine

office every morning. I went out into the courtyard adjoining the great hall,

where the cold morning air carried the scent of distant snow as well as of

mud,

then followed an unroofed passage to the base of the great tower I had seen

from

below and began to climb.

Stairs winding upwards within the walls led me to the top. From there, as I

had

hoped, I could survey the whole region of the mountains. The view was

spectacular and the drop stunning. On all sides were further peaks. To the

south, I must be looking miles into the next kingdom. Perhaps the duke had

heard

I was a good fighting man, I thought, able to defend Peyrefixade against the

political ambitions of enemies not far away.

As I gazed downward through oceans of air I realized it would be a sheer fall

from a dozen different points on this castle to the valleys on either side of

the ridge, and the people living in those valleys would never forget the

presence of the castle above them.

Fields that had appeared desolate the night before now had a faint green

cast,

of early grass breaking through, and far below I spotted what were doubtless

flocks of sheep. On one hillside I could see a large vineyard, still in

winter

dormancy, though nothing I could recognize as olive trees. So far below it

could

have been a toy, such as I had sometimes made for little Gertrude, was a

tile-roofed village, smoke rising lazily from the rooftops in the still air.

I

leaned on the battlements, well wrapped in my cloak, letting it sink in that

this was really mine, and trying to remember all the words of one of the

bawdier

songs.

A little terrace opened out a storey below me, and as I looked around two of

the

servants came out onto it, beer mugs and pieces of bread in their hands.

Neither

looked up. "So," said one, "what do you think of our new master?"

An accent like the duke's messengers' but perfectly intelligible. I leaned

forward, intensely interested and scarcely breathing.

"It's a southern name, Caloran, for all that he talks like a northerner,"

commented the other around a mouthful of breakfast. "I understand he's a

cousin

or something of our late Countess Aenor."

"I gather he's not married. Maybe he's holy or something."

This "or something" seemed to give the other pause, because he was silent for

a

moment before saying, a bit too loudly, "They don't have heretics up in the

north."

"Or maybe he's one who likes the boys better," the first servant suggested.

"Or

maybe no lady would have him."

The second laughed. "Once they learn he's Count of Peyrefixade they'll come

flocking around. He'll have plenty to choose from then, will our Count Scar."

Count Scar. My own servants were calling me Count Scar.

I had scarcely gotten used to the sound of Count Caloran, to the image of the

wise, severe but just lord from the north, and already it was being altered

out

of recognition. I waited in silence until my servants—I didn't even know

their

names, but I marked them as best I could from above—had finished eating and

gone

back inside, then went in search of breakfast of my own.

At least they had seemed to think that I would have plenty of ladies to

choose

from.

The first order of business when I finished my beer and barley bread was to

start acquainting myself with my castle. It had clearly been built and

rebuilt

over several generations, with an effort in manpower getting the stones up

here

which I couldn't even imagine. Maybe their efforts had been assisted by

magic,

which I understood was much more widely used in the south. But I dismissed

the

thought.

The castle was smaller than my brother the archduke's, but to me it felt like

a

kingdom. It had a formidable keep, many unexpected passages and rooms, a

gracefully proportioned chapel leaning far out over the precipice, and plenty

of

places where the unwary foot could have slid with fatal results. My initial

exploration revealed no secret tunnels, but if they had been easy to find

they

would not have been secret.

"I heard one of the stable boys refer to you as Count Scar," Bruno shuffled

up

to tell me triumphantly. "But after a good thumping he agreed to use your

rightful name from now on."

Though I now felt that everyone in the castle was looking at and wondering at

the dark red disfigurement of my face, the feeling did little to dampen my

good

mood. After all, I was long accustomed to that. No matter what they said

behind

my back, they were still mine to command— as soon as I knew what commands to

give them.

By now all the men were busy about their day's tasks, the knights tending

their

gear or practicing their swordwork, the staff cooking, cleaning, making

barrels,

attending to the horses, renewing the slates on a bit of roof line, hammering

away in the forge, and a dozen other chores. It was somewhat disconcerting to

realize how well the castle was already functioning without me and my

discipline. There were no women at all in sight; the few ladies who had lived

there had doubtless left at once when the countess died.

But I missed them almost immediately. The chief cook spotted me when I looked

into the kitchens around noon to check on dinner's progress. He hurried over,

full of deep bows and apologies, to acquaint me with the state of the spice

chest, "For you see, my lord, these two months gone I have not been able to

buy,

and this time of year the prices are always scandalous, yet we are shockingly

low on pepper and dangerously low on cinnamon," I wondered briefly if

irrelevantly on the dangers the lack of cinnamon posed to Peyrefixade, then

realized with a cold thud what he was asking: he wanted money, and all I had

was

the pitiful sum left in the bottom of the pouch my brother had given me. This

county must produce an income for its count, but how was I to gain access to

it?

Surely there was a bailiff or stewart somewhere who saw to the rents and

tolls

coming in, but I could not recall meeting any such person last night. The

seneschal must not have the money himself or he would have been able to

supply

it to the cook.

And why was the cook bothering me about the spices anyway? I knew nothing of

these things. At home first my mother and then my sister-in-law had always

supervised the kitchen provisions. The ladies who flocked around Count Scar

had

better be well trained in castle management.

We were interrupted before I could ask how many peppercorns he could get for

the

few solidi I still had. A clear note of a horn sounded through the castle,

then

again and a third time.

"That's the signal that someone's coming up the road, my lord," said the cook

helpfully. "It was blown last evening when you were spotted, though of course

we

didn't realize at first it was you."

"Of course," I said briskly. With a castle like this, someone could roll out

of

bed with nothing on but his shirt and still defend it, but it was good to

know

that a certain discipline was already established even without me. Soldiers I

could always talk to; I should start with the guards once I had dealt with

whoever was now making the climb up my mountain.

Bruno met me outside the kitchen, and the castle seneschal silently fell into

step at my shoulder as I hurried toward the front gate. The latter looked

just

as gaunt this morning as he had last night, but lugubrious rather than ill, I

judged. He had murmured something then about the great sorrow of the

countess's

death: an old family retainer, I thought, but he was not really so old.

The duke's messengers who had brought me south joined us at the gate. "It is

Duke Argave," one informed me. "We sent a message from that inn three days

ago,

and it is good to see he received it."

A small group of horsemen labored up the last climb, led by one carrying an

enormous black banner. Behind him on a powerful stallion rode a man who could

only be the duke, clean-shaven, with dark eyes that seemed even at a distance

to

be looking into mine. Dangerous, my brother had termed him. He was tall and

heavily built, graying but still graceful in the saddle, wearing a red silk

tabard over his armor.

"He said in the letter he sent me," I muttered to Bruno, "that he wanted me

to

start south at once, and he is certainly wasting no time making my

acquaintance."

"Halt, in the name of Caloran, Count of Peyrefixade!" shouted my guards to my

surprised delight, as they leaped out in front of the gate and stood with

crossed halberds. The duke stopped twenty yards below them, before the final

loop of the road. "Tell your master that Duke Argave requests permission to

enter the castle which he has vouchsafed him." He must know who I was but was

not looking at me now.

I stepped forward. "Enter my castle, esteemed lord, for I would gladly greet

you

and bow the knee to you." They might pride themselves on their dancing-master

manners here in the south, but I was sure that none of them had experienced

anything like the ceremony of the imperial court on a high holy day.

Argave gave a sudden smile and kicked his lathered horse for the final assent.

It was quite clear that I would never have inherited this castle were it not

for

the duke, so there was no use in holding back. When he reached the gates I

was

already down on one knee, reaching for his stirrup to hold it as he descended.

He nodded in satisfaction but said, "Rise, Caloran. You will come to my court

at

Ferignan for formal investment next week, and until then you need not bend

the

knee to me." He gave only the slightest flick of his eyelids at the sight of

my

scarred face. I came to my feet slowly but maintained my grip on his stirrup

until he had dismounted. He took a heavy, linen-wrapped box from the back of

his

saddle, then the grooms appeared to lead the horse away.

His messengers immediately burst into a flow of words that I could not

understand. The duke looked at me over their heads and smiled as though

C Dale Brittain - Count Scar

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