Steel and Sorrow: Rise of the Mercenary king

His lady mother was always wrought with him whenever she caught him perched high up in a tree.

”A monkey’s way should not be a prince’s toil.”

That was the grand, lecturing maxim she always liked to deploy to admonish his wild behavior. But say what she might, the Queen had never actually been able to stop him.

You would ought to burn and cut down every tree in the kingdom to keep me on the dirt, Mother, Basil thought with a silent, roguish grin as the rough skin of the tree bit into his palm.

Even now, he pressed the heavy sole of his boot against the rough bark of the great trunk, using the leverage to propel a sudden, athletic jump toward a higher, thicker branch. His fingers clenched tightly around the wooden arm of the tree. He offered a quick, silent prayer to the All-Knower that there were no aggressive biting ants up there today as he swung his torso upward, searching for a sturdy nook against the bark with his leg. When he found his footing, he stood straight up on both feet upon the branch, his back crouched slightly and one hand gripping an upper limb for balance while glossy green leaves tickled his ears from all sides.

Let the courtiers have their stuffy stone halls; Basil never felt as much at home as he did when he was sitting in the sky.

He peered down through the dense canopy, his eyes finding the little girl waiting below. ”Is everything ready down there?”

He watched as Mesea steadied herself, holding a large, woven wicker basket in her hands, the kind of simple, sturdy chest one would easily find in any southern village, crafted by peasant women out of dried river reeds.

She gave him a firm, serious nod, and they both immediately got to work.

”Alright, I am going to throw the oranges down. Your job is to catch them and pack them tight with the pears,” he explained, shimmying a bit further out along the limb. ”These are the absolute last of the winter’s yield, so make sure you don’t let them roll away into the grass. If they mix with the rotting ones on the dirt, Uncle Laedio will have no choice but to fill his mouth with spoiled mush.”

He received no spoken answer, of course, but the way her small hands gripped the edges of the basket told him she had heard every word.

They had already made a daring, highly successful raid on the castle kitchens to grab whatever fresh fruit the head cook had lying around. The basket was already coming up to be a truly magnificent prize, smelling sweetly of ripe tangerines and heavy pears; now, only the oranges were missing to complete the collection.

”Heads up! The first one is coming down!” Basil shouted. He reached out, plucked a fat, bright orange from the cluster, felt its firm, dimpled skin under his palm, and tossed it down toward the general direction of the girl below.

It was the first of many.

”You know, Uncle Laedio always claimed he could eat ten of these in a single sitting,” Basil chattered idly as he plucked another, tossing it with a high, easy arc. ”Personally, I think he was lying. I tried eating six once and my stomach felt like it was full of angry bees for a week. Catch!”

The orange sailed down, landing with a satisfying thump right into the center of her basket. Mesea moved with surprising agility, shifting her feet to track the fruit as Basil kept up the pace.

She was smiling.

”We keep bees too, you know?” Basil called out, his voice echoing through the rustling leaves as he shimmyed further out onto the branch. ”On the far eastern wing of the garden, we have a whole little section dedicated entirely to bee-keeping. That’s why the palace always has a steady supply of sweet honey for our cakes and pastries. Here comes a massive one!”

Another fat orange tumbled down through the canopy, slicing through the green leaves.

”Do you want to know the funniest thing about bees?” he continued, leaning his back against the sturdy trunk and looking down. He couldn’t quite see her face from this height, so he had no way of knowing if she was genuinely fascinated or just waiting for him to shut up. He desperately hoped it was the former; he certainly found the little bugs entirely interesting.

”They are not like regular livestock,” Basil lectured smoothly, plucking two more oranges at once. ”Sheep, cows, and goats, you can throw them in a wooden pen and feed them. You force them to stay exactly where you want them. But with bees? You try to force a bee into a cage, and you just end up with a swollen hand and a dead hive. You can’t do that to them.”

Suddenly, Basil went to work with both hands, picking the fruit as fast as his fingers could move. Oranges rained down through the leaves like a fiery rain of a god’s fury, a bright cascade of gold tumbling through the green canopy as Mesea scrambled below on the grass, her wicker basket tilting wildly left and right to catch the sweet, flying wealth of winter’s last yield.

”You can’t force them to build a nest where you want, because you can’t do a damn thing to stop them from flying away if they suddenly mislike the neighborhood,” Basil yelled over the rustle of the leaves, tossing a quick succession of three smaller fruits. ”So, you actually have to come down to a mutual pact with them. You take only a small share of their honey, and in return, you provide them with a spectacular, safe ground filled with flowers to feed on. My father has always been fascinated by the little insects. I used to wonder how a warlord knew so much about bugs, he even wrote a whole book about them, you know?It’s in the library.”

He paused, wiping a bit of sticky citrus juice on his tunic before plucking the final cluster.

”Still, isn’t that completely amazing, Mesea? To have a tiny race of creatures that we humans cannot force our grand will upon, but instead have to sit down and negotiate a lease with? With hunting dogs, we feed them and they track our meat. For every other beast in the stables, we ruthlessly take what we want, whether it’s their flesh, their milk, or their warm wool. But not with the bees. The only thing we provide them is a sturdy house and protection from the birds, and in exchange, they pay us a sweet rent. I find that interesting.”

He extended a hand to grab another cluster, his fingers brushing against a particularly ripe stem, before a sudden, booming voice rolled up from the roots of the tree.

”Your Grace has the right of it.”

The voice was exceptionally deep, rich in both tone and a thick, faraway accent. Basil knew that voice instantly.

”Ser Xoffo?”

He peered his head out from the thick canopy of leaves, blinking against the sunlight, to indeed see the towering, imposing knight standing on the grass below. Xoffo was a magnificent figure, possessing a hue of skin as deep and black as midnight, a rare sight in these courts, shared only by Uncle Jarza.

”Your Grace,” Xoffo said, offering a crisp, respectful bow. His pristine white cloak rolled elegantly behind his broad shoulders, caught in the small, gentle wind of the afternoon. ”I would most kindly ask for your royal person to vacate the canopy and come down from that tree.”

”We are catching oranges, Ser,” Basil replied defensively, nudging his chin toward the woven wicker chest firmly gripped in Mesea’s hands.

The girl had instantly frozen up. She was clearly deeply uncomfortable with the sudden, imposing presence of the giant knight, her old stone walls threatening to slide right back into place as she looked down at her boots.

”Well, I fear you will have to cut this day’s royal toil short, little prince,” Xoffo chuckled, his deep voice rumbling. ”I was sent to retrieve you posthaste.”

”Retrieve me?” Basil repeated, his brow furrowing as he began his nimble descent, swinging from a lower branch. ”Is it my lady mother? Is she finally sending the guards to chop down the trees?’’ he looked about ’’I see no axe with you...”

”Nay, it is not the Queen,” Xoffo said, his expression brightening a bit at the jest. ”It is the King.”

That was exceedingly queer. His father rarely summoned him so abruptly in the middle of the day, especially while the southern frontier demanded so much of his attention. Still, whatever the urgent case might be, a prince did not keep the crown waiting.

Basil dropped the final few feet, his boots hitting the turf with a soft thud. He immediately began swatting at his clothes, rigorously dusting off his tunic and trousers to free himself of any stray ants and small, hitchhiking bugs.

”Why is he calling for me so suddenly?” the Prince asked the knight once he had made himself reasonably presentable. ”Has a courier arrived from the front?”

”I don’t have the absolute foggiest, Your Grace,” Xoffo admitted honestly, extending an arm to guide the boy back toward the main path. ”I only know that a heavy royal carriage is currently waiting for you at the front steps, and that I was strictly ordered to pick you up without a moment’s delay.”

”I see.”

Basil let out a breath. He certainly wasn’t about to deny his father’s direct summons. He turned back around, offering a genuinely apologetic look toward Mesea, who was still holding the half-filled basket of sweet gold and pears.

”I fear we will have to indeed cut our great work short for today, cousin,” he said softly.

He would have sworn on his honor that he saw her small, serious face wince for a brief moment, a fleeting shadow of disappointment crossing her eyes.

The sight warmed his gut; she actually didn’t want him to leave.

”We will resume our raid on the orchard first thing tomorrow, what do you say?” Basil promised with a bright, reassuring grin. ”I presume the oranges will manage to hang onto the branches for just one more day yet. And we still have to pack the basket before the courier rides.”

To his delight, the silent girl didn’t retreat into her hollow shell. Instead, she looked him dead in the eyes and gave a firm, clear nod. And as if the impossible become possible, a small smile.

It was a beautiful ending to a strange afternoon, he supposed.

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