He rolled over onto his belly and contemplated the potential for such a thing. All the elements necessary for the planning of an important quest were about him: foul weather outside; a hot fire inside; his own enthusiasm for the idea at a fever pitch; and the luxury of planning his scheme in a cozy chamber in what was otherwise a very drafty castle.
Now, if he had been a man of five-and-twenty, well-armored, well-horsed, and well-trained in the arts of war, he might have commanded the adventure himself. Unfortunately, he was just an eight-year-old boy who found himself quite generally being swept out from underfoot by those more suited to the doing of mighty deeds than he. But he was a clever lad, so his age would not be a detriment to his ambitions.
He looked at his brother, Reynauld, a supremely focused but otherwise unimaginative lad of ten-and-five who currently studied a complicated battlefield peopled with wooden warriors not of his own making.
Nay, Harold decided, there would be no aid from that quarter.
He looked at his sister, Imogen, a beautiful, dreamy girl of twelve summers who loved lavish fabrics and abhorred dirt of all kinds. Imogen’s idea of a good adventure was limited to pressing him and his grubby self into service as a mannequin so she might see how an endless array of itchy materials might grace her slight shoulders. Harold knew that asking her to cast her lot in with him would entail a repayment of hours spent doing just that kind of wearisome labor, and there were some things that even he would not do for the sake of a noble quest. He would have to look elsewhere.
He turned his piercing gaze upon his mother. She sat in a chair near him, fashioning some sort of needlework. He stared at her hands and felt warmth rush into his heart. He suspected it wasn’t a manly thing to admit—that he loved his mother’s hands—so he kept the sentiment locked inside his heart where he could examine it privately. Serving, creating, soothing; his mother’s hands were never still. He liked the soothing best, but that was another unmanly sentiment he would never admit to unless death loomed.
Not that his mother’s hands were limited to those gentler arts. He had, on one glorious occasion earlier that winter, seen his mother snatch up a fire iron and impale an enormous spider with it. If he hadn’t known better, he would have sworn his mother looked as skilled with a poker as any member of the king’s guard was with a sword (not that he’d ever seen a member of the king’s guard, mind you, but he could imagine their skill quite well). It had been a deed worthy of song, that one.
He stroked his chin thoughtfully. (He did that often. He was certain it made him look wise beyond his years.) Had his mother more skills than she let on? Those thin white scars she bore on her hands; could those have come from learning to use a sword?
He paused.
He considered. Then he shook his head. Impossible. This was his mother, after all, and as jolly a fellow as he considered her to be, the thought of her hefting a sword and tramping about in the mud to master its use was simply too far beyond even the vast reaches of his formidable imagination for serious contemplation. Her scars had likely come from the innumerable things she did to keep their household with its small battalion of servants, not to mention the secret messengers his father received at all hours that Harold wasn’t supposed to know about, in top form.
But in spite of the origin of her scars, and because of her love for him, he knew he could count on her to aid him in whatever business he might be about. She had done it often enough in the past.
She had also been up half the night tending him whilst he puked his guts out into various pots, so perhaps he should give her a rest for the day.
He turned to his sire. Here were riper pickings.
“Father,” he said, sitting up and using his most polite tone, “would you have a mind for an adventure?”
His father slowly lowered the missive he’d been reading, blinked a time or two at Harold as if he wasn’t quite seeing him, then frowned. “Hmmm?”
“An adventure, Father.”
“An adventure? In the snow?”
Harold suspected that if his sire looked that unwilling to tramp about outside in a blizzard, then he likely wouldn’t be interested in tramping about inside, either. Obviously, a compromise would have to be made.
“A story, then,” Harold said, thinking quickly. If he couldn’t live out his own epic compilation of events, then he would hear about someone else’s and be content. “Bloodshed . . . great daring . . . aye, I have it. The Tale of the Two Swords.”
Reynauld groaned loudly. “Nay, not that. Too much romance.”
“I like romance,” Imogen said quickly. “Aye, Father, that one.”
“The Two Swords,”
their father said thoughtfully. “Very well, if you like.” He rose and fetched a very well-used leather-bound volume from a shelf. “The Two Swords,” he muttered as he sat and gingerly turned the yellowing sheaves of parchment. “Aye, here it is. Now, Harold,” he said, looking over the top of the book at him, “where shall I start? With bloodshed? Mayhem? Long marches in the dead of night through marshy wastes infested with bugs of uncommonly potent stings?”
“Bloodshed,” Reynauld said absently, moving his cavalry to a more advantageous locale.
“Romance,” Imogen said with a dreamy sigh. “I like those parts—”
“Nay, begin where she flees the castle on one of Angesand’s finest steeds,” Reynauld interrupted. “There’s a goodly bit of excitement there.” He looked up at his sire. “And Angesand does produce the finest of horses, Father.”
“Aye, son, he does,” their sire agreed. “Harold, have you an opinion on where we should begin?”
“Any time during those first few days of her harrowing escape would suit me, Father,” Harold said obligingly.
“As you will, then.” He cleared his throat, then began. “This chapter is entitled ‘How Mehar of Angesand Escaped Her Father’s Keep and Earned His Bounty on Her Head in One Night.'”
Harold settled himself more comfortably on the rug, placed his toes a bit closer to the fire, and smiled. Could his evening improve?
