Vol.4, Ch.2, P.8
Woodlands long and wild spanned south of Rolf’s new home of Hensen. Past their rustling canopies, treadable grasslands narrowed to nigh a defile, one redoubted by the stronghold of Balasthea, a veritable phalanx of stone ever standing guard for the land behind its battlements: the stretches of Former Ström.
And beyond this land’s eastern borders would one find the fiefdom of Tallien, a territory yet in the keeping of the Londosian Crown—albeit precariously, as reckoned by its unsettled citizenry. For in hearing of the recent Nafílim foray that had so stolen the whole of neighbouring Ström, the Tallieners were all of them on edge, dreading the day when war would wash through their own hearths and homes. And perhaps none amongst them were more apprised of the pale plight than the keen minds of the Roland Concern.
The mightiest mercantile guild in all the reaches of the realm, the Rolanders, as they were oft called, took pride in their palatial guildhall, a castle of commerce of which every stone seemed masoned to the finest measure. In such sublime spaces did their brimming number busy themselves with myriad businesses on the daily, as ever watchful through their windows was the viscount’s glowering manor.
Above all the guildhall’s bustling floors, in the topmost storey, there was situated a drawing room, furnished as it was to a luxury that, strangely enough, lacked the smell of money, as it were. Indeed, venal vices were not to be found here, no. The room looked just as the Rolanders’ ledgers did: clean and composed; august, yet honest. A pall pedestalising the Concern’s soaring renown, yet never to an excess that would shame its name as the very best in Londosius.
Now sat in that room was Torry, a middle-aged man, mahogany of both hair and moustache, his stature as slim and suave as a model gentleman’s. But more than anything, Torry was guildmaster to the Roland Concern itself. Yet in that space was he outshone, for seated aface him was the Viscount Bartt Tallien—tenant lord to this very territory.
“Do pardon the intrusion, Master Torry,” said the nobleman, as he leant back most leniently upon the settee. “The situation demands… suddenness, you see.”
“Oh, pray mind it not, milord,” Torry returned. “Why, I only regret we have not better tea and cake as could be contrived in haste.”
The gaunt guildmaster’s guest was of a girth nigh twofold his own. Indeed, Bartt’s body was built and robust, chiselled and champion-like. In contrast, his golden hair hung rather long, its every strand oiled and combed. The nobleman was nearing forty in his years, not few of which had been spent serving the Order as an esteemed knight—and as well, a mareschal.
Not few, either, were the ennobled number cutting out their careers as he had, all to earn their dear investitures. Londosius was a land ever at war, after all, a realm rich in martial tradition. And so to serve as its sword, if even in name, was, to the aristocracy, a most luminous decoration to bedight their lapels with. But to have held the high office of mareschal—now that was a merit nigh unmatched in itself, for as the Orders numbered five, so, too, did the much-sought seats of the mareschals, amongst which were enthroned the very heroes of Londosius themselves. To have fruitfully clawed and clambered his way up to such an echelon, then, was a clear token of Bartt Tallien’s quality and capability. Or at the very least, the man himself liked to think so—as did his daughter, the Lady Sophie, who was sat right there beside him.
No doubt dared draw breath in her bosom as to the bravery and virility of her father. From her formative years to the summers of her flowering, Sophie had borne witness to her begetter bounding from strength to strength, earning the mareschal’s mantle, waging fierce war with the Nafílim foe, and at the last, making his homecoming as a Londosian viscount, one to be loved by all the folk of his ancestral fiefdom. A lodestar Bartt was to his daughter, the very sort she herself wished to one day become.
And like her father, the young lady’s were locks of lustrous gold, undulating long down her bare and spotless back. Sharp were her eyes, yet just as delicate and fair, giving all that gazed upon them visions of shieldmaidens from the mists of myth. For her part, Sophie very much lived up to that image, insofar as she was a proud and imperious young woman.
“Master Torry,” she said, cold like a knife edge. “You were sooner expected at our estate. Given this grave circumstance, such sloth arouses suspicion—that the purse earns more of your loyalty than does your motherland.”
Bartt laid a hand on hers. “Let it be, dear Daughter,” he soothed her.
“Nay, milord,” said Torry, shaking his head. “It is as the Lady Sophie says. Pray forgive my indolence.”
The “grave circumstance” as aired by Sophie was no less than the storm hanging in the horizon—the Nafílim and their newly whetted craving for conquest. Already were throngs of the 3rd’s knights amassed here in Tallien to answer the surge. A grand clash was anticipated, and the smallfolk could but cower in the corners of their homes. Yet here was Torry, keeper to the uncountable coffers of the Roland Concern, late to come forth and offer a single coin in succour. The very thought had Sophie almost dithering with displeasure.
“‘Indolence’,” Bartt echoed. “Stern might have been Sophie’s words, but warrantless they were not. When trouble churns, we folk of the fief ought join hands to weather what wyke and woe wends our way. You would agree, I trust, Master Torry?”
“Pardon, Lord Father, but sternness is precisely deserved by him who but hides in your shadow when war burns bright all about,” Sophie objected. “Should he be such a man of the people, especially.”
At Torry did the lady stare daggers. Twenty years of age she was, conceived when her father was but an up-and-coming officer of the Order. And as one would expect, Sophie had eagerly followed in his footsteps. But her Order of choice had a different number; namely, the 2nd, closest as it was to Tallien’s borders.
She had every mind to become a mareschal herself, Sophie. Yet it was not to be. Fast in that seat was the 2nd’s star: Sir Stefan Cronheim. But the young dame grudged him little, in fact, and even measured him a hero equal to her father. If anything was to be grudged, it would have been her former, fellow officers. Strictly drilled they were under Stefan’s watch, crafted unto combatants most capable and effective. Sophie, on the other hand, had failed to find her own niche amidst such competition. And so a rank-and-file dame she remained till the midst of yesteryear; the Tallien line demanded continuance, and to answer her suitors, Sophie had shed silver for satin and boarded the carriage home.
Harsh was her reality, though it only served to further fan her fervour for her father, who had succeeded where she could not. Yet her years in the Order were not without fruit. Ill fortune and affair had occluded her second goal of lieutenancy, sure, but the rigours endured during that time had given her much confidence in her swordcraft. So much so that in their spars together could she best even her father.
“Hark, Guildmaster,” Sophie said on, “your lord feigned it not when he reckoned that our every number ought be brought against this evil. All hands and hammers attending the anvil, that we might make a mighty sword for my hero-father, who shall surely wield it to victory.”
“Most certainly, milady. Whether of sword or sagacity, the viscount earns my every vouch,” Torry answered. His servility was but a façade. To make a living in Londosius as a merchant, hands ought be kissed than cut off, no matter how deserved the latter—or desired. Such a skill had the guildmaster long plied, and on this day, he employed it to perfection. For as Sophie looked up to her viscount father, Torry could but look down, with lord and lady none the wiser.
Knowing is half the battle. As in war, so in business. Guildmaster to the greatest merchants in the realm as he was, Torry understood well the weight of this wisdom. And so it was that he had secretly loosed upon the viscount no few of Roland’s inspectors. What they had brought back to him were things to burden the brows.
Mareschal to an Order he once was, true, but truer still was that the military annals marked Bartt Tallien a leader of little note. If one merit must be named, why, it would be in his passing of the torch to the newest hero-dame: the Lady Emilie Valenius. Indeed, despite his daughter’s fancies, the brand of “hero” hardly became Bartt. For his part, after having met the man himself many a time thus far, Torry measured his lord ineffective at best, and parasitic at worst.
Bartt Tallien, a soul sallowed and sullied. Given to vainglory and unceasing narcissism, he was a dandy who delighted in demeaning others. Torry suffered service to the feckless lord only as he knew that bending the knee brought more boons than banes, that the pillars of status and institution stood sound only when hierarchy was heeded. Yet inly, Torry was himself more a man of venture than vassalage, one who sat at the pinnacle of the peerless Rolanders. Thus, as pragmatism was his guiding principle, the guildmaster could but privately baulk arrant authoritarianism and the authorities thereof—Bartt Tallien included.
But alas, such was not the end of Torry’s suffering, for as it happened, the lord nurtured yet another vice: that of lust, of lechery.
It was suppressed at need, certainly. In his time in the Order, Bartt had, in fact, laid not one hand upon the maidenly dames, more driven as he was by ravenous want of renown and self-furtherance. But to slake the lusting in his loins, ever had he summoned to the bed his many Talliener paramours.
Under Bartt’s baldacchin was indulgence unbridled. And there, indulgence became dalliance. Dalliance became debauchery. And debauchery, addiction. Nary a night was spent unentwined in some woman’s warmth. And as seed in soil is so wont to do, a new life inevitably sprouted from such passions, one he christened as “Sophie”.
Retirement itself had done little to allay Bartt’s libido. Oft was his lordly hand waved to welcome vixens and covesses to his velvet chambers. Though whether such women slipped into the sheets willingly or no was none of the lord’s worry. His were the eyes of a hungry beast, neglecting all prudence to ensnare his prey. And where did they turn now but to Torry’s side, where was sat the guildmaster’s own daughter, one by the name of—
“Ina,” Bartt called to her, hot in his breath. “Fair, fair Ina. What think you of this matter?”
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