The Black Knight

II. In the Shadow of the Gallows

II. In the Shadow of the Gallows

Behind Kurval, the hollow clangs of a hammer echoed through the rising dawn. Some of his men were building a gallows, a gallows large and sturdy enough to hang Adelard and several of his followers. That had been Izgomir’s idea. Erect a gallows and show Adelard exactly what fate awaited him, if he did not bend his knee to the throne.

Kurval had inherited Izgomir from the late King Orkol along with the throne and the kingdom. As a result, Izgomir had been dealing with the trouble caused by the Black Knight of Angilbert for much longer than Kurval himself had. It was only too understandable that he’d want Adelard brought to justice. Though privately, Kurval suspected that Izgomir simply enjoyed executing people.

Kurval cast a glance at Ragur, Count Falgune, who rode by his other side. At every bang of the hammer, the young man flinched. Again, his reaction was only too understandable, considering that Ragur Falgune had been sentenced to die on a gallows just like this one, after his father had been caught plotting against the King. Kurval had paroled Ragur, once he realised that the boy knew nothing of his father’s intrigues. Nonetheless, the memories conjured up by the hammering and the sight of the gallows had to be painful.

“So how fares Nelaira?” he asked the boy to distract him from the sinister thuds.

“She is fine, Sire, and sends her regards.”

Ragur beamed, as always when he talked of his wife of less than a year. Kurval had paroled her as well, though unlike Ragur, Nelaira had actually tried to kill him.

“In the beginning, she was often sick in mornings, but now that the babe is growing, she is feeling much better. Just before I left, she told me that she could feel the babe moving inside her.”

“That’s excellent news,” Kurval replied. He meant it, too. Ragur and Nelaira had been through so much pain and sorrow and they were theoretically still under a sentence of death, too, though Kurval had no intention of hanging either of them. Still, they deserved some happiness. And a child promised happiness.

“Nonetheless, sir, I…” Ragur lowered his eyes. He was clad in the plain armour of a common soldier and around his neck he still wore the noose by which he would have been hanged to remind him of the punishment that awaited him, should he ever become disloyal.

“…I am worried,” Ragur confessed.

Kurval patted the shoulder of the young Count in encouragement.

“There is no need. Women have been having babies for thousands of years. They are strong, stronger than us menfolk will ever be. And as the Countess Falgune, Nelaira will have the best physicians, healers and midwives in the realm to attend her, when the time comes.”

“It’s not that. I know that Nelaira is strong and that she and our babe will be healthy. But…”

A blush raced over the young Count’s pale face.

“…I worry that I will not be a good father to our child.”

Kurval turned to Ragur, genuinely surprised. “Whyever would you think that?”

Ragur lowered his eyes. “My own father… he was not a good man…”

Kurval had known that much. In his brief acquaintance with the elder Count Falgune, the man had been nothing but trouble, a plotter, a traitor and a coward.

“…and he was not a good father either.”

That bit was news to Kurval, though not exactly unexpected, given his impression of the late Count. The man barely seemed to remember he even had children. He certainly never pleaded for their lives and was for more interested in saving his own neck.

“I don’t know what he wanted out of a son. But whatever it was, I wasn’t it…”

There was a pause and Kurval thought that Ragur was finished, but then the boy continued, haltingly.

“For my father, I was never strong enough, tough enough, not enough of a warrior. So he hired weapons masters to train me and my brothers. And whenever I failed, my father had my trainers or my older brothers beat me, to make me stronger, he said. Sometimes, he also beat me himself, but mostly he couldn’t be bothered and just let others do it…”

Kurval’s hand tightened on the boy’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice trembling with barely suppressed anger. May the elder Count burn in the fires of the underworld for abusing his sons and condemning them to the gallows.

“I guess this training was successful in the end, because I eventually started to fight back. Not enough to satisfy my father, because I’d never be as skilled a swordsman as my brother Adric and I’d never be as strong a fighter as my brother Fardulf, but enough that he left me alone and just ignored me. He barely even talked to me anymore, so that I honestly had no idea he was plotting treason until your men came to arrest me. I’m sorry, Sire. Maybe I could have done something, if I had known…”

“It’s all right. I know that none of this is your fault. You’ve grown into a fine warrior and better man and I know you’ll be a wonderful father to your child. If your own father couldn’t see that, then it was his loss, not yours.”

Ragur turned to him, his expression still troubled. “I know I should mourn my father and my brothers, that I should at least miss them, even though I know they brought their fate upon themselves. But… well, mostly I’m just relieved they’re gone.”

Kurval said nothing, just patted the boy on the shoulder. How much pain and disaster had the elder Count Falgune wreaked by blindly pursuing his ambition to take the throne?

“However, I worry that I will turn out like my own father…” Ragur continued after a pause, “…that I will hurt my child, even though I don’t want to. After all, I doubt that my father set out to destroy our family and get us all killed, even if that’s where his path led in the end.”

Kurval was certain that the late Count Falgune had never much thought about anyone or anything at all or he would have known that his plot would never succeed.

Nonetheless, Ragur needed reassurance, so Kurval said, “You’re not like your father and you will never be like him. I would not let you ride by my side, if it were otherwise.”

That seemed to satisfy the young Count, for he flashed Kurval a shy smile. However, there was clearly something that was still on his mind.

“Sire, I know I never asked, but my father and my brothers… did they face their death bravely? And did they suffer much?”

“They died bravely…” Kurval said, though it was a lie, at least as far as the elder Count Falgune was concerned. For the Count had trembled and quivered and begged for mercy right up to the end, like the worthless coward that he was. But Ragur did not need to know that.

As for the two older sons, Kurval found that he could not remember them. There had been so many conspirators hanged that day, thirty-five altogether. And what did it say about him that he could not even remember the names and faces of those he’d condemned to death?

“…and they did not suffer.”

That at least was the truth. None of the conspirators had suffered much. Kurval had ordered the hangman to make sure of that.