Kingdom's Fall

Chapter 2, Part 1

Gray stood at ease, facing the doors to the king's court hall. It was an impressive doorway, a vast, arcing construction of wood and ancient, banded iron that made it seem as if King Varion was in the habit of entertaining giants. The stairwell leading up from the courtyard told a different story. The broad steps - too deep for any human stride - were scored by the passage of iron-clad hooves. It was a grand gesture of celebration to have mounted troops ride through the hall in full plate, and it was the king's pleasure to keep the spectacle alive. Gray had seen it enough times to have come to his own conclusions. It was ridiculous. The pomp that accompanied their entrance was impressive; there was something awe-inspiring in the clamour of vast bodies, the hot shudder of their breath, and the flint-spark strikes as they ascended in darkness. Once that was done with, though, there was no easy way for him to settle knowing that all it would take was for one of the horses to panic and they'd have the noblest bloodbath in living memory to mop up after. Trained as they were to a level of obedience that put most recruits to shame, Gray couldn't shake the feeling that all horses were big, mad buggers that trembled perpetually on the cusp of an explosion. They looked calm, but were really just biding their time until an excuse came along for them to kick your belly out through your spine.

He had been waiting for a long time to see the king. Been kept waiting, to be exact, but that meant little to him. Army life was all about waiting: waiting for orders, waiting for supplies, waiting for the enemy. A very small part of the job was all about trying very, very hard to stay alive, but mostly it was about waiting. Although luck had factored heavily on the survival side of things, Gray had spent a long time mastering the military art of killing time. Sleep was the best way. Nothing could fill an hour quite like a nap. Sadly, there was no such luxury within the royal court. You showed up when summoned and hoped your social capital was high enough to see you ushered in before your legs fell asleep. Likewise there was nowhere to sit, unless you were the sort of fool who would be happy to let the stone floor leach all the heat out of your arse. So, Gray stood at ease with his eyes focused on nothing at all, and sang a song inside his head.

It was a folk song, of sorts, about a young soldier who meets a milkmaid coming the other way down a narrow street carrying her milk pans to market. He could only remember thirty or so verses of it - there were plenty he was glad to have forgotten because they might have put a lie to his claim of standing at ease - but he also knew it took about a third of an hour to get through them. Three repeats an hour, over and over, it made for a simple and entertaining way to keep track of how long the king intended to demonstrate his displeasure, and a nice distraction from the thought that if he was really counting time on Varion's ire then it was getting on for fifteen years now. Fifteen years since Gray had done what his duty demanded of him, and then he'd been punished for it. Fifteen years in exile at the southern border, the post chosen to remind him of his failure.

There was a clank from inside the hall, the scrape of a giant bolt being drawn back, and a shift in the air as the massive doors relaxed inward on their hinges. Gray adjusted his doublet, making sure it sat neatly across his chest. He felt like an idiot wearing it, but it was what court demanded. The hose were even worse. Some clever dyer had perfected the process of a dark blue that held fast to cloth, and it was considered the height of fashion to wear it. When he'd asked for some clean clothes to present himself, he'd forgotten to specify that they shouldn't make him look like a blueberry. Eilidh would have offered to boil you for jam. Gray drew himself to attention and tried to swallow the thought down. Eilidh. The memory of his wife was like an old wound. No matter how well he thought it had healed over, one foot wrong was all it took. And behind that one, there was another. Rodric. Gray put his feet together, his arms by his sides, raised his chin and presented the professionally blank expression of a soldier at parade. A steward appeared in the widening gap of the doorway, his face an artfully-composed picture of superiority and worldly disapproval.