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In a fairer world, Arrai would win this fight.
“The heretics of Rhûn march upon the Stoneway,” the God-King of Tol Saamhar says. His resplendent white wings - proof of His royal divinity - are fanned out wide in His righteous wrath. “A prince of their decadent house leads his host down from the mountains to lay claim to lands that are ours; its lords and ladies must be rallied in defense of our claim. Who amongst you dare stand as your king’s chosen champion?”
The noble knights of Tol Saamhar roar as one, clashing their swords against their shields and stamping their booted feet, and Arrai roars with them.
Arrai will not be chosen. This he knows from the aching depths of his lowly, slave-born heart. It is a mark of God-King Galen's generous mercy that Arrai has even been permitted to count himself amongst the ranks of His knights; Arrai is meant for the pursuit of brigands and the hunting of deer-folk raiders, nothing more.
But when God-King Galen steps forth to choose His general, it is Arrai upon whom His royal eye falls. Arrai, plunked from servitude to be squire to a drunkard, whom He bides approach.
Arrai’s strength flees his body. He falls to his knees and then prone upon his belly, forgetting entirely the proper words of fealty and worship for being granted such an honor, but God-King Galen only smiles.
“Sir Arrai,” He says, “I know you will not fail me.”
And Arrai knows he will not.
Prince Llewelyn of Rhûn is a spoilt, swaggering stripling of an alpha. His shield and plate are filigreed with gold; the visor of his ornate helm is etched and intricate. Every inch of his arms and armor is polished to a glimmering finish, bright-shining and untouched.
In a fairer world than this, Prince Llewelyn would be as untried as his glittering armor. He would have spent his days in idle luxury, shirking his training and vexing his teachers; his practice foes would have thrown down their blades at the slightest touch and sung his praises for fear of his royal wrath.
In fairer worlds than this, humble slave-born knights rise up and prove themselves, and spoilt princelings are brought low.
In this world, Prince Llewelyn fights with all the vicious skill of a god with great white wings, even though he is merely a wingless Sûl like Arrai himself; Arrai had known from the first brutal clash of their blades that the spoiled princeling in shining armor has hands as sword-honed and calloused as his own.
In this mercilessly uncaring world, Prince Llewelyn of Rhûn has battered Arrai to the muddy ground. The mud is everywhere, clinging to Arrai’s boots and coating his leather gauntlets as he scrabbles for his fallen sword on his hands and knees, panic-gasping, his ribs flaring sun-bright agony from the blow of Prince Llewelyn’s pommel. His lungs ache for breath.
“Give it up, boy,” Prince Llewelyn drawls, careless and contemptuous.
Arrai forces himself to snarl. He has never been the sort of alpha to bristle at so petty a slight as boy; it is not the place of a slave, even one freed and raised to knighthood, to bristle at the words of their betters.
But this insult was not paid to Arrai in full - Prince Llewelyn spoke it to a faceless knight of Tol Saamhar. In doing so he has spat in the face of Arrai’s God-King, and Arrai must answer.
The fallen sword is almost within his reach. Arrai drags his shaking limbs through the sucking grasp of deep, thick mud, crawling through the mire like a cowering dog... but he will go on.
He will not fail God-King Galen.
“Fuck’s sake,” Prince Llewelyn snarls. “Fuck this fucking waste of time. We’re done here.”
A steel-shod foot slams down on Arrai’s back, forcing Arrai face-first into the mud. He cries out into the mire, unheard, agonized tears springing hot into his eyes from the weight of Prince Llewelyn pressing down on his wounds; he is jerking and mewling, helpless and filthy and lower than dirt.
It is where he has always belonged.
“Send word to the false god of Tol Samhaar,” Prince Llewelyn is saying. “Tell him Prince Llewelyn of Rhûn has captured his commander. He may send gold for his knight’s ransom if he so wishes.”
Prince Llewelyn is wrong: God-King Galen is a true god, heaven-sent to rule.
It is Arrai who must be a false knight, that he has not the strength to defend his God-King from this most unspeakable of heresies. He has not even yielded - Arrai is so worthless a knight that it does not matter to Prince Llewelyn or anyone that he has not yielded.
Arrai has failed his king.
Arrai has failed his god.
~
Arrai aches.
Blood oozes in sluggish drops from cuts over his lips and cheeks, prickling and itching as they dry. Arrai cannot raise his hands to wipe his face - he has been lashed to a post in the middle of Prince Llewelyn’s camp with his arms bound behind his back. When he moves, the ropes dig painfully into the unprotected skin of his wrists; when he stills, his shoulders and back protest. His ribs are throbbing with every breath.
Yet none of his body’s hurts compare to the yawning chasm of guilt and grief in his heart.
Sir Arrai, I know you will not fail me.
The Stoneway has fallen to the heretical kingdom of Rhûn... all because Arrai could not stand against a single green prince in shining armor.
His failure is bitterly, breathtakingly clear.
Less than half a day has passed since Arrai was thrown down into the mud, and already the lords and ladies of the Stoneway have arrived to swear fealty to their new ruler, all striding through the clamor of the camp with nary a glance toward their beaten former commander. They bow and scrape and murmur platitudes, and their soldiers - Arrai’s soldiers, half a day and a lifetime ago - straggle out of the makeshift prison pen at the rear of Prince Llewelyn’s camp to fall in line beside their former captors.
Arrai’s weakness has swollen the ranks of the heretics of Rhûn. How will he face his fellow knights when he must return after his ransom is paid? How will he face his god?
God-King Galen will be gentle, Arrai knows, and gracious in the face of Arrai’s failure. But now all of Tol Saamhar will know that Arrai has overreached: he was born a slave, and dared rise too far.
Arrai shuts his eyes. He cannot hide his face in his arms. His ribs hurt too badly to draw up his knees.
He cannot hide that he weeps.
~
“Your false god has declined to pay your ransom.”
Arrai stares.
No, he wants to tell Prince Llewelyn. No, you lie. That cannot be true. King Galen will not leave me here. But the stoic omega soldier standing by the prince’s side is holding a missive with the seal of Tol Saamhar in his gauntleted hands...
And why would Prince Llewelyn lie? He must return Arrai to receive his gold.
The prince scowls at Arrai’s silence. His pink lips are almost too plush to be an alpha’s, pouting and petulant. “Did you hear me?” he demands. “I didn’t knock you that hard about the head, did I?”
“Thinks you’re about to put him to sword, most like,” the stoic omega says, and it is all Arrai can do to not shame King Galen further by flinching at the thought.
Prince Llewelyn’s scowl deepens. “He’s an idiot, then,” he grouses. “Ain’t his lot always whinging about us taking captives as thralls? As though sending heads back like they do is any better.”
And to Arrai, he adds, “You’re mine if no one pays, and I reckon neither of us want that... so pay up. Who else should we write to? Rustle up your gold, and we’ll rustle you off home.”
Blood roars in Arrai’s ears.
The pounding of his heart drums fiery pain through his wounds with the rushing of his blood, and Arrai is almost grateful for the distraction. His head swims and his vision blurs, and his skin is clammy and cold.
King Galen will not pay.
And Arrai cannot.
“I--” He would be crying again if he had tears left to weep. “There is no one. I do not have the gold, my-- my master.”
This, then, is to be the price he pays for failing his god. This is to be his penance. King Galen has decreed it by withholding Arrai’s ransom. Arrai will obey.
“Don’t call me that,” Prince Llewelyn snarls. “Swear to pay, then, and I’ll release you to raise the sum. Have a year and a day or whatever it usually is.”
“I cannot raise the gold, my prince.” Even if Arrai sold his horse and sword and armor and all the rest of his humble possessions, and left himself destitute, he could not hope to raise a commander’s price. He could not hope to earn a commander’s price even in ten years and ten days, now that he has failed his king - what meager jobs will still be trusted to him?
“Fuck’s sake.” Prince Llewelyn steps close. Terrifyingly and loomingly close. “Listen to me, boy. You saw that pretty armor of mine while I was kicking you senseless? The filigree on that thing cost me thrice your ransom. You think I’ll spare the effort to remember you or your little pieces of gold in a year?”
His sword-roughened fingers dig into Arrai’s bruised jaw. He forces Arrai’s head up, up; forces Arrai to meet his darkly burning gaze.
“Now think very carefully before you speak again,” he hisses. The grip of his fingers are blood-warm and punishingly tight. “Tell me yes and I’ll release you. Can you raise your own price?”
Arrai knows what answer Prince Llewelyn wants him to give.
But Arrai also knows: Knights don’t lie. Slaves don’t lie.
The scars from those lessons are carved deep into his soul.
“I cannot,” he whispers. He wants to shut his eyes; he wants to hide. He dares not. “My prince, I cannot.”
Prince Llewelyn snatches his hand away, stumbling back from Arrai as though burned.
Arrai is suddenly very, very cold.
“Fucking shit,” Prince Llewelyn spits, already turning. Already leaving Arrai behind. “Fine. Fine, I have another slave. I also have an army to muster, someone else deal with him.”
~
The stoic omega Willem frees Arrai from his bonds and leads him to his new master’s tent.
Arrai is stumbling and shaking from being so long in ropes, and from hunger and thirst and pain. Willem, at least, seems a more patient sort that Prince Llewelyn - he slows his steps to allow Arrai to keep up with little more annoyance than a raised eyebrow.
“I’d order you to remain in here,” Willem says, when they arrive at last at a smaller, plainer pavilion than Arrai had expected of a prince, “but you seem quite the honorable sort.” It does not sound like a compliment. “Therefore: I suggest you remain here unless necessary. You will not be bound. If we come under attack, by the deer-folk or anyone else... Flee with the rest of the camp. Don’t stay here to die.”
He lifts the heavy woolen cloth at the door of the tent, and waves Arrai through. The pavilion’s interior is just as simple - a low cot, a small campaign desk with a smaller wash basin tucked underneath, a crude wooden chair.
“You are expecting deer-folk raiders here, my lord?” Arrai asks, half to take his mind off his pain and thirst. He had heard nothing of deer-folk in the regions, or brigands, or anyone else of the sort - he had come here only to face Prince Llewelyn. “And soon?”
Willem stares at him for a horribly long moment.
“Yes,” he says at last. “Yes, we most definitely are. And if they reach this camp, I assure you your servitude will be a moot point - you run, understand?”
“I do, my lord. I will.”
Willem nods. Not a particularly approvingly sort of nod - short, jerky, half-dismissive - but it is a nod. Arrai bites back a whimper. He has done nothing else right today. He has only failed, and failed, and failed.
God-King Galen declined to pay Arrai’s ransom. God-King Galen means for Arrai to serve as Prince Llewelyn’s slave. Arrai has proven that he is of no use as a knight; perhaps, if he proves himself a good slave even for a heretical prince of Rhûn...
Perhaps one day he will be allowed to return home, and be his God-King’s slave instead.
“How-- How does Prince Llewelyn mean to use me, my lord?”
“You’re his prize,” Willem says. “He may use you in any way he pleases.”
There may be a hint of impatience in Willem’s words, or perhaps it is only a trick of Arrai’s terrified ears. He sinks to his knees nonetheless, eyes lowered, with his hands trembling in his lap and a heavy knot of anxiety twisted deep in his belly.
“I only wish to be ready,” he whispers. “To be properly pleasing to him.”
Above him, Willem sighs. His steel-clad fingers brushed over Arrai’s bruised cheekbones, gentle and comforting; Arrai, shocked, dares to look up.
Willem is watching him - watching the helplessly open play of emotions that Arrai knows he cannot hide - and there is something inscrutable deep in his pale eyes.
“Go rest,” is all he says. His gauntleted hand cups Arrai’s cheek briefly, like a benediction, but too quickly he pulls away. “You’ll be all right. Llew isn’t cruel.”
“I-- my lord--”
It ought not to matter if Prince Lleweyln is cruel. It is the right of masters to be cruel - all that matters is that Arrai can prove himself a good slave. That Arrai shows, with his obedience and devotion, that he still deserves to have his ransom paid even after his failure.
But, “Rest, Arrai,” is all Willem says as he slips from the tent, and Arrai is alone.
~
Being a slave of Prince Llewelyn of Rhûn, Arrai discovers as he waits, is very much like being a squire to an old drunkard of a knight.
There is a jug of water on a crate in a corner that Arrai has not been given leave to drink; there is a discarded, forgotten bowl of dried-out bread half-hidden behind the jug that is not Arrai’s to eat. Just a bit, Arrai’s hunger and thirst whisper. Just a nibble, just a sip. Nothing that will be missed.
But old Sir Olwen - and Sir Olwen’s belt - taught Arrai better.
Arrai can only wait, weak from hunger and thirst and almost ill from pain, for his master to return to give him orders, and the wait is a lengthy and lonely one. Prince Llewelyn does not return to the tent until long after the sun has set. When the tent is shrouded in darkness and the air is cold.
Prince Llewelyn stumbles wearily into the blackness of the unlit tent without bothering with a lantern, and trips clean over Arrai’s huddled, shaking body.
“Fucking shit!”
“My prince!” Arrai gasps, fumbling, clutching at his already-wounded side where Prince Llewelyn’s boot caught him in passing. They are both equally blind in the dark. “My master, forgive me, I did not mean to--”
“Spare me your bleating,” Prince Llewelyn mutters from the far end of the tent.
Arrai has to clasp his trembling hands over his mouth to stifle the quiet noises of his terror. He cannot see his master; he cannot see the punishment that is going to come--
All that comes is the rasp of flint against steel, and a sudden flare of light.
Prince Llewelyn is crouched over a little brazier by the desk, coaxing the spluttering flame within to life. “Why are you still here?” he demands, without taking his eyes from the reluctant sparks. “The souls of your ancestors must be weeping, you idiot, we left you unguarded for hours.”
“My ransom is not paid, my prince,” Arrai whispers. He knows he should lower his eyes - neither slaves nor squires ought to stare - but he does not dare to look away from his terrifyingly vicious new master. Close to a full day has passed since Prince Llewelyn beat Arrai senseless into the mud, and his entire body feels like a single raw and battered bruise.
He does not know the punishment for a slave who trips his prince.
But when Prince Llewelyn rises, it is only to throw himself back down into the nearby chair with a bone-deep groan. “Fuck, Arrai, look: there’s no one here but us, so just tell me you can pay, and go home. No one else needs to know. I swear I won’t pursue you or the gold.”
Barely-armored and slouching, lit only by weak flickering firelight, Prince Llewelyn looks smaller and wearier than he had when he stood victorious over Arrai - it is sacrilegious that a failed knight like Arrai be allowed to see any prince so diminished, even a heretical prince of Rhûn.
Arrai presses his body closer to the ground, makes himself smaller and lowlier. He still does not dare to look away. “I cannot, my prince.”
He cannot lie.
Prince Llewelyn curls his lip. “Very well, then,” he says, low and hard. “You want to be my slave so badly, get over here and prove it.”
The set of Prince’s Llewelyn’s jaw is fierce, yet there is something brittle in his eyes and his shoulders are tense. He leans carelessly back in his chair, his legs confidently kicked out and splayed like a conquering alpha demanding service.
His leather-clad thighs are trembling.
“Either get out, Arrai, or get over here,” he says, commanding and clipped and fragile. “Either tell me you can raise your ransom and go, or get on your knees before me and suck my cock.”
“My prince-- I--”
Prince Llewelyn cocks his head. His stare is a fierce challenge, utterly unyielding; his fingers tap-tap a nervous tattoo over his own knees.
“I serve at your pleasure, my prince.”
Arrai does not dare to rise; his legs, weakened from pain and hunger and fear, would never hold him. He shuffles forward on his hands and knees, cringing as he goes like a beaten dog - his prince does not want him. Arrai’s obedience is displeasing to his master.
But Arrai has been commanded by God-King Galen’s silence to be Prince Llewelyn’s slave. Arrai must obey his god.
There is no lust in Prince Llewelyn’s eyes when Arrai settles between his legs. Only shock. Only an uncertainty that leans too close to fear, until his gaze hardens once more as he tangles his fingers painfully into Arrai’s unkempt hair to pull his head back. The thumb of his other hand sweep over Arrai’s lips, insistent, demanding entry.
Arrai parts his lips, waiting, but--
“Why,” Prince Llewelyn demands, “is your mouth drier than an alpha’s unused asshole?”
Arrai stares up at his master, stricken, his heart aching at the unfairness of Prince Llewelyn’s words. He knows full well that he is unpleasing as a bed-slave - he is a poor specimen of an alpha, underfed in too many of his early years. But to be found wanting even in this...
He was not given leave to drink.
He was only trying to be good.
“There’s water right there,” Prince Llewelyn says. “There’s food-- well, I suppose there’s no food, that bread there’s gone bad, but there will be. Go drink, you idiot. You’ve been sweating in your armor all day, are you trying to die?”
He shoves Arrai in the direction of the jug. Arrai scrambles to obey, half-crawling in his haste, and when the first blessed mouthful of water passes his lips...
Arrai forgets his helplessness, his pain and his fear. He is gasping and whimpering with every gulp, beyond desperate. Every drop is like nectar. His head spins.
“Good,” Prince Llewelyn says, when Arrai sets the empty jug down at last. “Next time don’t wait for orders. And if food’s brought in and I’m not here just fucking eat, I can always call for more. There’s no shortage. I’m a halfway decent logistician, believe it or not.”
“I do believe it, my prince.” Arrai stumbles back to kneel again between his prince’s legs. He feels lighter for having drunk, free-floating and dizzy. “Thank you. Thank you--”
Prince Llewelyn wanted his cock sucked, and Arrai wants show how grateful he is. He wants to be good. He shuffles closer, nuzzling and lapping shamelessly at the thick leather between the join of Prince Llewelyn’s legs, whining when his prince nudges him back.
“Yeah,” Prince Llewelyn says. His voice has gone rough, and his eyes are dark and blown as he fumbles at the ties of his trousers. “Yeah, okay.”
He draws out his cock.
Perhaps, Arrai thinks, he ought to be shamed by this. But he has already fallen as low as any knight can fall. How much lower can he possibly go?
In this, at least, he has been given a chance to be pleasing.
He leans in close, and presses a grateful kiss to the softly flushing tip of his prince’s half-hard cock.
“Yeah,” Prince Llewelyn says again, softer now, and his hands are gentle on Arrai’s face. “That’s it, just the tip-- Use your tongue. Good. Good boy.”
Arrai whines, already praise-drunk, his thoughts gone syrupy-slow. When was the last time anyone called him good? Prince Llewelyn’s cock is of a respectable size for an alpha, but not overlarge; its tip is a comfortable mouthful even when thick and hard from Arrai’s ministrations. Arrai mewls and suckles, laving his tongue over the underside of his prince’s shaft as far as he can reach, his hands trembling as he clutches at Prince Llewelyn’s thighs.
“Use your hands,” Prince Llewelyn rasps, and his eyes are so wide as Arrai obeys. Round and uncertain and vulnerable. Not at all like a god. “Yeah. Yes, like that-- Arrai--”
Arrai redoubles his efforts, whimpering his eagerness and desperation around the leaking tip of his prince’s shaft. He suckles, caresses, fondling freely at the looser skin at the base of Prince Llewelyn’s cock where a knot would surely be forming if only Arrai were more pleasing. He has not yet earned his prince’s knot, in his mouth or anywhere else.
First he must earn his prince’s seed.
Prince Llewelyn groans, one strong hand slipping down to cup the vulnerable nape of Arrai’s exposed neck, just above the line of his ill-fitted mail. The head of his cock leaks and twitches in Arrai’s eager mouth, the taste of it heavy with salt and alpha musk and growing stronger yet, until, with a punched-out gasp, Prince Llewelyn comes.
Arrai gasps in turn. The taste and texture of Prince Llewelyn’s spend is unfamiliar, but not unpleasant - there is just so much of it. Too much for Arrai to swallow despite his best efforts.
His master’s seed is dribbling down Arrai’s face and staining Prince Llewelyn’s trousers. Arrai whimpers again, this time in dismay. “My prince, forgive me--” His prince had spared his throat, yet Arrai’s voice is a ruin. He lurches forward, lapping frantically at the errant drops sullying his master’s royal clothing, until Prince Llewelyn stops him with an almost-gentle hand.
“It’s fine,” Prince Llewelyn says. He sounds as dazed as Arrai feels. “There-- there’s a basin and cloth under the desk. Clean me up, then clean yourself.”
“My prince, I serve.”
Cleaning his prince is a slow and calming task, almost more intimate than sucking his cock. Arrai dabs at his prince’s shaking legs and sensitized cock with tender care, blotting every drop of spit and spend from trousers and skin alike before gently tucking his prince’s shaft back into his trousers and redoing the ties. His mind is quiet, his heart at peace. His hands hardly shake at all.
“You did well,” Prince Llewelyn says, when Arrai has wiped his own face clean, and but for the grounding press of his legs around Arrai’s body, Arrai would float away. “We-- we should both rest now. You can take the spot by the foot of my cot, near the brazier.”
“Yes, my prince.” There is a foolish part of Arrai that wants to stay like this, curled against the warmth and shelter of his prince, but he makes himself obey.
“Keep your mail and boots on,” Prince Llewelyn adds, and these words are grimmer. “Your mail’s shit for sleeping in, I know. Bear with it for tonight. You’ll be safe in a keep tomorrow.”
Arrai blinks up at his prince, who sighs.
“Your false god didn’t tell you about the deer-folk, Will said,” he says, and Arrai should object to the heresy. “It’s-- Fuck, it doesn’t matter for now. Go to sleep, Arrai. I’ll be riding out early tomorrow. You march with Will, you hear? Obey him as you would me. He’ll explain.”
Take me with you, Arrai wants to beg. Let me fight by you. Let me suck your cock again, and please you.
He does not.
He obeys.
~
“The snows were light on the mountains this winter,” Willem says, midway through their march the next day. “Prince Vaos and his hosts fortified the East Hills earlier this month, through passes that should have been uncrossable until mid-spring. You’ve heard of Vaos even in Tol Saamhar, I presume?”
“I have, my lord,” says Arrai with a shiver. High Prince Vaos of Rhûn, foremost amongst the expected heirs of the heretical Queen Rhiannon herself. Arrai has heard sacrilegious tales, spoken only in whispers, that the High Prince once met God-King Galen - then a young divine prince in service to his holy mother - in battle, and put him to flight. “But if he is so close, then why-- not that I mean offense to Prince Llewelyn, my lord, but--”
“This is a test of sorts for Llew,” Willem says. “Not you, I mean. What comes after. Your mission was never meant to succeed, Arrai. You were sent here to die.”
“No,” Arrai says. “My lord-- The fault is mine. I failed my king.”
God-King Galen would not.
But if he had, there must have been some divine purpose. Something beyond Arrai’s simple understanding.
Willem’s smile is crooked and wry. “The snowmelt of our mountains feeds the rivers of the deer-lands,” he says. There is pity in his eyes. “This summer, their waterways will dry out and their pastures grow brown. Their people will starve.”
“And then they’ll come raiding?” Arrai has faced the raiding-bands of the deer-folk. “But that is months away yet.”
“They won’t wait so long. This year will be a bad one. We’ve had over a decade of heavy winters leading to lush summers. They’ve unusually overpopulated, and their elders know this. They can’t wait for the summer droughts. Too many young bucks and does for their chiefs to hold on to power then.”
“So... so they’ll...”
“So they’re already riling their young hotheads up,” Willem says. His smile is a terrible thing. “Telling tales of glory and plunder. Their war-herds are already massing, and none of them will be allowed to return without a head or hide to prove their courage. The floodwaters of spring are falling too quickly. The border rivers will be shallow enough to ford in days. Llew’s ridden out to meet them.”
Arrai gapes, horror-struck.
“God-King Galen couldn’t have know,” he manages, after far too long a pause. The pause was a heresy, as was his words - he should have defended his god quicker and better.
He can think of nothing else.
“He did,” Willem says.
“Perhaps he-- he didn’t wish to distract me from my battle with Prince Llewelyn,” Arrai tries. “The lords and ladies of the Stoneway would have told me soon after of the threat, if only I’d done my duty, and I’d have ridden with them again to war in our God-King’s name.”
“And you would have died,” Willem says, implacable, “as would they. The hosts you rallied in your false god’s name barely stirred to fight us, Arrai. They threw down their weapons as we approached, because they could not afford the losses. These borders need reinforcements to withstand the war-herds this year. When Llew came here with twice a prince’s full regiment, and you came alone... the Stoneway knew that Galen had abandoned them.”
“No,” Arrai says.
Willem’s silence speaks more than words.
“No,” Arrai says again, desperate. Willem’s words are lies. Heretical lies. “No, he would not-- He sent me here. My god trusted me.”
“This is a lot, I know,” Willem says gently. “Have as much time as you need.”
They march the rest of the way in silence.
~
“All my keep is at your service, Lord Willem,” Lady Bellamy declares. Not two days ago she had marched alongside Arrai, commanding his vanguard; now she spares him but a single pitying glance. “We are grateful for Prince Llewelyn’s protection. Does he wish me join my host to his?”
“He does not,” Willem says. “Your keep and host are to form the central pivot of our rearward line, safeguarding our supply caravans down from Prince Vaos’s holdings to the east.”
“I will see it done, my lord,” Bellamy says. Her aged face is careworn, her greying hair pulled back in the severe style of a widowed omega; out of armor, in the safety of her own keep, she looks nothing like the warrior Arrai knows she is.
Bellamy alone of the Stoneway’s lords and ladies had fought hard enough on Arrai’s behalf - and against none other than Willem himself - to take a wound in Arrai’s defense.
Arrai cannot repay her loyalty; he has failed her too.
He stays meek and quiet, eyes deferentially lowered, trotting half a step behind Willem as the two warrior-omegas stride through the keep, reviewing sight-lines and supplies and defenses. At last Bellamy calls for a servant to show them to Prince Llewelyn’s assigned quarters, and then hesitates for the first time.
“Will you... prefer separate quarters, my lord?” she asks, suddenly tentative.
“Prince Llewelyn’s will suit,” Willem says, untroubled. By what, Arrai cannot tell and dares not ask; he follows Willem, who follows the servant, who leads them to a sumptuous guest-room.
The bed within is massive.
The slave’s pallet in the corner of the bedchambers is softer than the cot that had been assigned to Arrai in the barracks of Tol Saamhar.
“You don’t mind me here, my lord?” Arrai asks, when they are finally alone. He had slept unguarded the night before by Prince Llewelyn’s feet... but the prince is an alpha, as is Arrai, and Willem is not.
“Slaves bed down in their master’s quarters,” says Willem with an unfathomable smile, and so Arrai does. In the days and nights that follow he waits to serve Willem as he had served Prince Llewelyn...
And Willem sets him to cleaning leather, and mending chainmail.
These tasks, at least, are familiar and comforting. Arrai can perform them at Willem’s feet, curled by his lord’s chair as Willem reviews supply lists and troop movements and missives; he can complete them well and quickly, and be praised for his diligence. He is even allowed to rest his head on Willem’s knee when his eyes and hands grow weary from his work.
He should not miss Prince Llewelyn.
He does.
Arrai would never touch himself in sin - especially not in the slave’s pallet with Willem asleep nearby in the main bed. He lies awake sometimes, regardless, and dares to slip his hand beneath his robes to caress his own trembling inner thigh, and remember the weight and feel of his prince’s cock on his tongue.
In those secret moments, it is Prince Llewelyn’s hand on the soft skin of Arrai’s inner thighs, so close to Arrai’s vulnerable cock and untouched alpha hole. He never touches himself in those places; he never brings himself relief.
He only lies quietly, dreaming in the dark of the sweet heretical attentions of his prince.
~
Prince Llewelyn returns like a tropical typhoon.
He clatters fully-armored into the study that Lady Bellamy has granted for Willem’s personal use, reeking of mud and sweat and blood. His armor is scratched and stained, its golden filigree flaking; someone else’s dried blood coats his helm.
He looks like a conqueror.
He bullies his way into Willem’s arms, legs whorishly splayed as he kneels over Willem’s lap, whimpering like a war-prize.
“Will,” he whines, “Will.”
Arrai, staring up at his prince and his lord from his now-customary place at Willem’s feet, can only gawk as Willem eases the bloodstained helm from Prince Llewelyn’s head, and sets it down gently on the desk, and pulls their prince into a deep, fiercely passionate kiss.
“You’re filthy,” Willem murmurs when the pair finally break apart, and Prince Llewelyn whimpers again.
“You’ll be gone by the time I wash.”
Even Arrai can hear the pout in their prince’s voice.
“That I’ll be.” Willem sighs, his regret clear, and the next kiss is slower and more tender. “Arrai,” --a hand flicks haphazardly in the direction of Arrai’s face-- “go have a bath drawn for your prince.”
Arrai murmurs obedience and rises, regret at his departure clawing in his own heart. But as he hurries from the study, the talk behind him turns to troop formations, and which village can or cannot be defended, and the risk of corpses left afield to rot, and a myriad of other grim matters that Arrai has never before had to manage in his life.
You were sent here to die.
I was not, Arrai tells himself as he hurries along. God-King Galen must have known that Arrai would fail - so he must have sent Arrai here to be a slave. To ease Prince Llewelyn’s weariness and hurts. To sate him and comfort him that he protected the people of the Stoneway.
There was a purpose to this.
There was a purpose to this.
~
“Will’s ridden out,” Prince Llewelyn announces, flouncing into the bath-chamber shedding bits of armor everywhere, looking entirely like a spoilt foolish princeling and not the warrior and commander Arrai now knows him to be. “Leading our next advance with fresh troops. You’re stuck with me for a bit.”
Lords and ladies and soldiers and refugees has been streaming non-stop in and out of the keep in the past days, all ignoring Arrai as he worked by Willem’s feet. All singing the praises of the Savior of the Stoneway, the noble Prince Llewelyn.
“I’ll miss Lord Willem, my prince,” Arrai says, and he will. Willem is far calmer a master than their prince. “But I missed you too,” and that also is true.
Arrai’s heretical heart flutters at the smile that flickers at Prince Llewelyn’s lips, then it skips a beat as his prince strips fully nude before him without an ounce of shyness or shame.
“Get that robe off and come wash me,” Prince Llewelyn orders, “though I must say, you look good in Will’s colors.”
“T-thank you, my prince.”
Arrai ducks his head, feeling his cheeks heat as he strips himself in turn and steps into the large sunken stone tub beside his lounging prince. He had cleaned and repaired his own mail himself, and had been permitted to keep them in a corner by his pallet; the rest of his ruined clothes had to be sent away to be scrubbed and mended. Willem has given him loan of a modest robe, one nonetheless suited to a prince’s concubine.
He feels so much like a concubine now, naked in the largest and most luxurious bath he’s ever seen in his life, washing his prince.
His treacherous cock is half-hard between his legs.
Mercifully, Prince Llewelyn’s eyes are mostly closed. He moves trustingly where Arrai guides him, leaning forward to allow Arrai to untangle his braids and scrub the blood from his long, war-filthy hair.
“We took two prisoners,” Prince Llewelyn says, quietly and suddenly as Arrai moves to fetch a washcloth for his skin. “Just two little deer-brats too scared to fight and too slow to run. Two out of... fuck, I don’t even want to count. The blood.”
He shakes his head, his soaked hair clinging to his face and neck, sending water flying.
“I don’t know why I care,” he continues bitterly. “Those poor fuckers in the war-herds... almost none of them are making it home. They were never meant to. The worst part is watching them realize that, mid-charge, just before the weight of their own herd behind them forces them onto our spears.”
He laughs, cracking, breaking, and Arrai is no longer a concubine.
The scent of blood is thick in the air, and it doesn’t matter anymore than Arrai is a knight of Tol Saamhar and Llewelyn a Prince of Rhûn. Arrai has comforted his comrades before, blood-stained and mud-stained, overwhelmed in war.
Arrai pulls his prince into his arms, cradling Llewelyn against his chest, and his prince makes a noise like a strangled sob and turns his face into Arrai’s shoulder.
“This is a cull,” Llewelyn whispers. Arrai holds his prince close. “A bunch of old deer-faced bastards we’ll never meet are the butchers... and we are their knives. Nothing more.”
“Just knives.”
~
In the days that follow, Arrai cleans leather at Prince Llewelyn’s feet, and mends chainmail, and rests his head on his prince’s knee, just as he had with Willem.
In the nights that follow, Arrai lies deliciously and delightedly nude in Prince Llewelyn’s arms. The sheets are so smooth and soft against Arrai’s bare skin, and Prince Llewelyn so warm; pleasing his prince is a joy.
“L-Lord Willem, he - oh, oh! - Lord Willem doesn’t mind this, my prince?” Arrai remembers to ask one night, gasping and breathless. His mouth and lips are tingling from having suckled his prince’s cock to full hardness, but Prince Llewelyn did not deign tonight to spill down Arrai’s throat.
His royal cock is taking its pleasure instead between the warmth of Arrai’s oil-slippery thighs. They lie together on their sides, chest to chest, Prince Llewelyn fucking into the join between Arrai’s legs. His strong arms hold Arrai caged against his body, and two sword-calloused fingers are plundering mercilessly into Arrai’s oil-slick, helpless hole.
Prince Llewelyn huffs with warm laughter. “Will doesn’t mind,” he says, his wicked fingers stroking heretical pleasure into the shivering walls of Arrai’s spasming channel. “You’ve never noticed his eyes on you? He wants you too. But Will’s old-fashioned: I’m the one who won you in battle, so he’ll touch you only after I’ve fucked you properly first.”
He thrusts languidly with both fingers and cock. Arrai moans, helpless, squirming in his prince’s embrace.
“And I,” Llewelyn continues, sweet and sinful, “mean to share with him your maidenhead... so you’ll have to wait for when we’re all together to have my cock in your pretty hole.”
Arrai gasps again. His greedy hole clenches around Llewelyn’s plundering fingers, and Llewelyn grins.
“Like the sound of that? Thought you would,” he says, and Arrai mewls and wriggles, bucking his hips into the sweet press of Llewelyn’s fingers, nodding in frantic agreement. “Maybe if you ask real nice he’ll play with your little pink nipples while I fuck you. Or let you suck his cock.”
“Yes,” Arrai mumbles, foolish with lust and pleasure. His tongue is thick and clumsy in his mouth. “Yes, my prince, please - I want that.”
“You’ll have it,” Llewelyn promises, “some day soon,” and there might be a wistfulness in his voice. But Arrai can’t focus on it - all his world has narrowed to the curl of Llewelyn’s fingers and the heat and pressure of his cock.
“You’ll have it all,” Llewelyn says again, and Arrai moans, and gives himself. “You’ll have us. And we-- we’ll have you. We’re keeping you.”
~
Life falls into a strange and delicious rhythm.
The days flow by. The moon changes, and spring flowers bloom and fade and fall. Prince Llewelyn and Lord Willem alternate command, never both in the keep long enough to plunder Arrai together. Willem still does not touch Arrai.
But he now allows Arrai to share the enormous royal bed... and each night, before they curl chastely together, he watches as Arrai touches himself.
“Good,” Willem murmurs. His pale eyes are intent, watching as Arrai opens the most intimately vulnerable part of himself, and Arrai whimpers, and shivers, and feels his swollen rim clench around the press of his own fingers. “Good boy, Arrai. How far did Llew open you when he was here?”
“F-four fingers, my lord.” Arrai is weak, and can only manage three of his own; tonight, his merciful lord Willem has commanded that Arrai fill himself only with two.
The small stretch is decadently sweet, and it lets Arrai toy with himself in other ways that are pleasing to Willem: stroking at the furl of his quivering rim between each thrust, wriggling and spreading his fingers to expose the inner pinkness of his channel.
His free hand is at his chest, toying idly at his peaked nipples.
“Mhm.” Willem’s smile is as fond and crooked as always. “You’re ready for Llew, sweet boy. And I’ll have you after he does. Some day soon. The war-herds are thinning.”
“My lord! Please--”
But when Prince Llewelyn is next in the keep with Willem, everything goes horribly wrong. Arrai is hurrying through the keep on an errand for his masters when he hears his prince’s name:
“--don’t like taking orders from Prince Llewelyn’s whore--”
Arrai does not mean to eavesdrop. But he stiffens in shock and confusion at the crude, angry words - surely he has never dared give orders here? - and so he overhears the response.
“Shh,” a rougher but more careful voice hisses. “Don’t speak of Lord Willem in that way,” and Arrai’s world spins off its axis. “It’s Prince Llewelyn’s right to raise who he likes as his general, slave or not.”
The voices move away, still murmuring. Arrai slumps against the wall.
If Lord Willem is a slave, then Arrai has wronged him, and terribly so.
He had assumed Willem to be Llewelyn’s indulgent mate, a lord sharing the body of his princely lover’s conquest. He’d displayed himself before Willem; a slave is always unquestionably lowlier and may expose their intimate, vulnerable places for the pleasure of their master’s mates.
But Willem is a slave like Arrai.
Willem is Llewelyn’s concubine. A higher-positioned concubine than Arrai, because Willem is a proper omega and not an underfed, ill-suited alpha; Willem has their master’s love and trust while Arrai is nothing but a war-prize and whore.
Arrai, with his wanton misdeeds, has been flaunting his place in their master’s bed. Seeking to place himself above Willem, when Willem is in all ways above Arrai.
He must make amends.
He hurries back to the study with his heart pounding in his chest, horror and fear twisting a sickly knot in his belly. Llewelyn and Willem are murmuring quietly when Arrai slips through the door, their heads bent together over crumpled papers. Llewelyn, as usual, is in bloodstained armor.
Arrai shuffles meekly close, and sinks to his knees at their feet.
“What’s with you today?” Prince Llewelyn demands, looking down at Arrai with a puzzled frown.
“Your--” Arrai is only a failed knight, and does not know the proper words for what he now is in relation to Willem; he can only make his best guess. “Your lesser concubine wishes to beg forgiveness, my prince. I did not mean to...” He looks up at a wide-eyed Willem. “I am your lowlier slave, my prince, and I know my place. I did not mean to insult your favored concubine with my--”
A rush of emotions plays across Llewelyn’s face as Arrai speaks: confusion, slow understanding, rising shock.
Rage.
“Llew--” Willem begins.
Prince Llewelyn seizes Arrai by the hair, yanking him up to dangle painfully off his knees by the scalp, and strikes him hard across the the face with the back of a gauntleted hand.
“You don’t call him that,” Prince Llewelyn snarls. Arrai cries out in his prince’s grasp, shaking and terrified and hurting, more helpless and far more exposed than that first terrible day when Llewelyn had him beaten in the mud. “You don’t fucking talk to him like that--”
“Llew.”
Willem’s voice is like the crack of a whip, and Prince Llewelyn stops. Prince Llewelyn stops at Willem’s word.
Arrai has gotten everything wrong.
“He called you a--” Prince Llewelyn begins, plaintive.
“I know,” Willem says. Commanding. “I know, Llew. Let him go. Go to the training yards and hit something that isn’t a person. I’ll handle this.”
Prince Llewelyn’s jaw works, soundless. The look in his eyes is helpless, almost childlike as he releases Arrai.
He steps towards Willem with his shoulders tense and eyes lowered, deferential and pleading, and Willem pulls him close.
“It’s all right,” Willem murmurs. Prince Llewelyn’s face is buried in the crook of his neck. “I’ll fix this. Go, Llew,” and Llewelyn obeys.
And Arrai is alone with Willem.
Arrai crumples at Willem’s feet. He presses his face to the wooden planks of the study’s floor, mudstained from Prince Llewelyn’s boots. Flattens himself down as low as he can go, makes himself smaller, and he cannot stop the flood of his tears.
“I didn’t mean to,” he pleads, again and again. “Please. Please, I didn’t mean to.”
“Hush,” Willem says. His hands land on Arrai’s arm and shoulder, tugging him up - Arrai obeys, tear-blinded. “Here. Sit down.”
He is guided into the chair behind the study’s large desk. His masters sit in this chair; it is not for Arrai. But Willem pushes Arrai firmly down, and stands by him, and cradles Arrai’s head to his chest as he weeps.
“Are you badly hurt?” Willem asks, his fingers gentle on the bruise blooming slowly across Arrai’s cheek, and Arrai, dashing tears from his eyes, shakes his head.
“No. It’s just-- it was a shock, my lord. Please, I truly didn’t mean to--”
Arrai’s heart hurts far more than his face and scalp. Prince Llewelyn had been brutal to Arrai-the-knight, but he’d never before laid hands in anger on Arrai-the-slave.
“You meant well, I know,” Willem says. “But what brought this on?”
He listens, strong hands stroking slow comfort over Arrai’s face and shoulders and throat, as Arrai explains.
“Don’t take these things to heart,” he says, when Arrai has run out of words. “They would not have dared speak thus before Llew or myself, or even Lady Bellamy. I’m a slave, aye. I’m also a noble omega of a great house of Rhûn. Nothing changes the circumstances of my birth.”
“If you are,” Arrai begins, bewildered, “how...?”
“How was I enslaved? My grandfather turned assassin.” Willem speaks as though it were the blandest thing in the world. “He tried to kill Queen Rhiannon.”
“Ah,” says Arrai.
“In the old days, we would all have been put to sword,” Willem continues, still far too calm. “Down to the youngest babe. Times have changed. Queen Rhiannon was as merciful as she could be. She put the guilty to death quickly and cleanly, us warriors she merely enslaved... the rest she spared. And she could have done far worse than giving me to Llew, or my father to his.”
He smiles ruefully down at Arrai.
“I’ll beg your forgiveness on Llew’s behalf, Arrai. I’ve been his slave over a decade now, and his friend longer yet. He’s spent most of our lives defending me from very similar insults. It... may have accustomed him to being over-quick with his fists.”
“Of course,” Arrai breathes. “My lord is generous... and I’ll never offend you with my wantonness again, my lord. I swear it.”
“On the contrary,” Willem says, squeezing Arrai about the shoulders, “I’m not Llew’s concubine, so your actions have never offended me. I very much enjoy the sight of your sweet little fluttering hole.”
Arrai squeaks.
“Llew and I, we’re--” Willem sighs. “Llew says sometimes that he’s the concubine of the pair of us. I say rather: he is mine and I am his, and it’s no one’s business but ours how we choose to fuck.”
Arrai’s face is growing hot. “You mean that you’ve--”
“I’ve had him, and he’s had me, and one day we’ll both have you. If I could, I’d call Llew from the training grounds now, and we’d carry you off to our bed to show you how much we want you. But duty calls, I fear. Llew will return to you when he’s calmed himself. Until then... will you obey me?”
“Yes, my lord,” Arrai says, fervent. “I will.”
~
Willem’s orders are a balm to Arrai’s wounded soul.
He returns to the royal bedchamber, as his lord has ordered. He strips himself nude, and washes and dries himself, taking comfort in the smooth bareness of his freshly cleaned body as he clambers into bed.
The royal bed, not the slave’s pallet. Willem had been very clear on that.
He builds himself a nest.
It doesn’t matter that Arrai is an alpha and not an omega in heat; his lord has commanded that Arrai have a nest to comfort himself in, and so Arrai obeys. He drags pillows and sheets into high piles around his body, right in the middle of the bed where the scent of his masters linger most strongly, and nestles himself down. One more pillow to hold against his chest. A last to tuck between his legs and rock his hips against, dreaming of the touch of his prince.
Willem has ridden once again to war, and Llewelyn...
Prince Llewelyn will return.
Arrai curls into his nest of pillows, breathing in the combined scents of Llewelyn and Willem on the sheets, and he only cries a little.
~
Prince Llewelyn does not leave Arrai waiting long. He returns as Arrai has just barely begun to doze, already washed and in clean clothes - he had neither used the adjourning bath-chamber nor summoned Arrai to wash him.
“Used the main bathhouse,” he mutters, as though he’d guessed the directions of Arrai’s thoughts. “Everyone else was headed there anyway.”
His movements are slow and hesitant as he strips himself, and he shuffles towards Arrai as unsure of his welcome. Arrai whimpers, reaching out for his prince, splaying his legs wide to offer himself, and Llewelyn tumbles into the hollow of the nest with something like relief.
“My prince,” Arrai whispers.
“Arrai,” Llewelyn begins.
They stare at each other, both stricken, Llewelyn’s gaze darting guiltily over the bright bruise blooming over Arrai’s face.
“Arrai,” Llewelyn says again, small and scared and soft, nothing at all like a prince. “I--”
His voice cracks.
He leans in close, and kisses Arrai like a lover.
Arrai whimpers into his prince’s lips. He has never before been kissed like this - he parts his own lips, yielding eagerly to the press of Llewelyn’s tongue and trying to match the ease and passion of Llewelyn’s mouth.
He does not remember to breathe.
He’s gasping when the kiss finally breaks, and he gasps more as Llewelyn presses his lips and tongue in a slow, sensual trail down Arrai’s jaw and throat. Sharp teeth nibble at the tender skin over his collarbones and down his chest; a tongue swirls tenderly around the hard desperate peaks of his nipples.
Arrai has never worshipped the body of his prince as Llewelyn is now worshipping him.
More kisses, all over Arrai’s heaving chest and moving down towards his belly where his achingly hard cock rests, flushed red and leaking at the tip.
“My prince...?”
Arrai’s lowly cock will soon be brushing at Prince Llewelyn’s royal face. It is heresy. It cannot continue.
Arrai’s cock cannot be twitching at the thought that it might continue.
“Call me Llew,” Llewelyn says, half a command and half a plea, bent so close to the throbbing thickness of Arrai’s shaft that his breath tickles the skin.
He leans down, and swallows the head of Arrai’s cock.
“Llew!”
Llewelyn’s mouth is velvet heat, all-encompassing warmth and wetness. He whimpers - Arrai’s prince is whimpering around a mouthful of his cock, staring pleadingly up at Arrai through his lashes like the most alluring of concubines, tongue laving and eager at the underside of Arrai’s cock. Arrai moans in turn, reaching out, desperate yet not daring to touch, until Llewelyn catches Arrai’s trembling hand and guides him to tangle his fingers in his prince’s still-damp hair.
Arrai cups and caresses his prince’s straining jaw with his other hand. “Llew,” he says, and Llewelyn whimpers again at the sound of his own name. “Yes, Llew, my Llew. Please--”
Llewelyn shudders, full-bodied, dropping his head and suckling hard; his hand wraps over the thickness of Arrai’s shaft and strokes and strokes and strokes. It is nothing at all like Arrai’s own inexperienced fumblings - how can Llewelyn bear to have Arrai’s far lesser hands and mouth on his own cock, when he wields Arrai’s pleasure with such skill?
“Llew, I-- I will--”
Yes, Llewelyn’s eyes say, and Arrai spills. His hips jerk, his release tearing from his body; his eyes blur and his head swims.
Llewelyn swallows every drop.
“Please,” Arrai says, when he can speak again. Llewelyn is watching him with wide eyes. His lips are flushed. “My prince, my Llew... May I kiss you again?”
Llewelyn nods.
He shuffles close, slower now and shyer, a soft pink tint to his cheeks. His legs splay out wide over Arrai’s body as he leans down, trembling, to meet Arrai’s mouth.
His lips taste of salt, and alpha musk, and Arrai.
“Please,” he whispers in their kiss, soft and shivering over his own slave, “Arrai--”
“Ask me,” Arrai urges. He has been heretical enough this night. What is one more heresy?
Llewelyn draws back. Sits back over Arrai with his legs parted like an omega riding their alpha’s body, and his cock is hard and flushed and dripping.
“Arrai,” Llewelyn’s voice shakes. One hand is on his own quivering thigh, close to the hard line of his straining shaft but not yet touching. Waiting for Arrai’s command. “May I?”
“Yes. Yes, Llew--”
Come for me is a touch too sacrilegious to pass Arrai’s lips, but Llewelyn must see the words in the fever-brightness of his eyes.
Llewelyn obeys.
Arrai watches. He wants to remember this; he must remember every way that his Llewelyn brings himself pleasure. But it is over too soon - Llewelyn fumbles for his own cock and strokes, firm, passing his thumb over the sensitive, blushing head, and then he is arching forward over Arrai with a fragile, pleading cry. Seed splatters between their bodies.
Llewelyn shakes, and Arrai holds him tight.
“You did well,” he whispers. “My Llew, you did so well.” Arrai does not know how to make use of a slave, but he’s always known how he wants to be comforted. “Lie down now. I’ll clean you up.”
Llewelyn whimpers again, the beginning of a protest on his lips, but Arrai silences him with a kiss.
He knows what Llewelyn means to be for him tonight, but Arrai has never been a master. Llewelyn is shaking and Arrai will care for his lover.
“Lie down for me, Llew,” he says again, as firm as a knight. “I am here.”
“Yes,” Llewelyn says, hoarse and shy and sweet, “I will.”
~
The war-herds have fled.
The celebrations have not yet begun when exhausted messengers on half-dead horses arrive with the news: God-King Galen has arrived with his divine host to reclaim the Stoneway for Tol Saamhar.
“King Galen is offering terms,” Willem reports. “If Llewelyn of Rhûn yields and begs pardon, he will forgive the invasion as a young prince’s foolish misadventure, and allow safe passage for retreat.”
“A misadventure--” Lady Bellamy sounds as though she’s choking on rage. Her eyes are wild and wide and staring. “He can’t. He yielded the Stoneway. He can’t walk back in like this.”
“He can, and now he is,” says Willem.
Bellamy’s face twists into a feral rictus. “He left,” she snarls - an omega’s fury, rarer and far fiercer than any alpha’s. “He left us to the herds, and now he dares... March against him, my prince! We of the Stoneway will march with you.”
Prince Llewelyn has not spoken since the first missive arrived. He stares down at the crumpled paper, eyes darting across the scribbled lines, reading and rereading as through sheer repetition might change the words.
“Don’t speak words your king will have you hanged for, my lady,” he says, quiet and calm. More like Willem than the Llewelyn whom Arrai has known.
So much like a prince.
Bellamy turns stricken eyes upon Llewelyn. “He left us to die,” says she. “He is no king of ours.”
Llewelyn sets the crumpled paper down. For a single brief moment Arrai sees a familiar flash of painful uncertainty in his eyes, then he squares his shoulders, and speaks with steel.
“Lord Calai scouted King Galen’s host, my lady,” he says with a commander’s calm. “All the Stoneway could join my host and we would still be far outnumbered... and we have been fighting for months. His troops are fresh.”
“The High Prince Vaos--”
“Prince Vaos cannot reach us in time.” This must be the Prince Llewelyn that the warriors of the Stoneway so eagerly follow. How could Arrai have ever thought to stand against him? “And I alone do not have the numbers or strength to defend you against Galen. We will fight, and we will fall... and Queen Rhiannon will pay ransom for me and mine. Galen will not accept her gold for you and yours, my lady. If you stand against him now, he will have you all hanged as traitors.”
“You fought for us,” Bellamy says. “You’ll have us stand by the king who did not, and watch you kneel before that... that...”
“Yes,” Prince Llewelyn says. Calm. So icily calm. “And I’ll have you do more. Go now, I command you. Leave me, and swear to King Galen once more your fealty. Live.”
“We will all speak those words if you command it of us,” There are tears in Bellamy’s aged eyes. “But never again will we truly be his. He must know this.”
“He must,” Prince Llewelyn agrees. “I don’t know what game he plays, but it will not end with you dancing in a leash of hemp, dangling from the gate of your own keep. I will not permit it. So do as I say.”
Bellamy is quiet for a very long time.
“My prince,” she says at last, achingly soft, “I serve.”
~
Arrai’s old knightly clothes and armor do not fit half as well as his borrowed concubine’s robes.
“You were wonderful,” Prince Llewelyn says. They are both armed and armored as they were when first they met, yet nothing else is the same. “We’d have kept you if we could, y’know, Will and I. And not just as a slave. As-- as ours.”
“I--”
I’d stay if I could, Arrai wants to says, but his throat has closed. Arrai’s God-King has come for him at last, and he no longer wants to go.
Ahead of them, just past the next bend, the majestic camp of Tol Saamhar’s divine host is fanned out in full array, gleaming pavilions and splendid horses and knights as noble as gods. Behind them, Willem is leading Llewelyn’s battered host on a forced march to the safety of Prince Vaos’s holdings.
There is nowhere else for them to go but forward, but Arrai does not want to move.
“I’m sorry, for what it’s worth,” Prince Llewelyn says. He brushes his gauntleted fingers over the faceplate of Arrai’s helm, where the healing bruise lies beneath. “For this. For everything.”
He urges his horse forward, and Arrai follows.
God-King Galen is gracious in victory; he does not keep his beaten foe waiting. They are met on the path by knights whom Arrai know, and led with all courtesies into the heart of the God-King’s camp.
The God-King awaits.
As Prince Llewelyn dismounts and eases his helm from his head to begin their parley, the God-King folds his divine white wings gently behind his back, as though Prince Llewelyn were some timid young creature who might be frightened by some greater display.
Arrai, from sheer force of habit, steps forward and takes the reins of his prince’s horse.
“Young prince,” says God-King Galen with fatherly warmth, “well met.”
“Well met,” Prince Llewelyn says. His teeth are gritted and his shoulders are tense. He looks small, and frightened, and young, and nothing at all like a prince.
“It is not my way to withhold praise well-deserved.” The God-King’s smile is all regal majesty. “A bold act, child, to lay claim to my lands, and I dare say it was well fought. But of course I cannot let the matter stand.”
He inclines his noble head towards the grass between them.
Prince Llewelyn’s face is pale and drawn.
“There is nothing to fear,” the God-King says, with a gentle teacher’s patient love. “You only need ask pardon, and pardon will be granted. We have all been young and foolish.”
Around them the lords and ladies of the Stoneway stand in silence. Lady Bellamy’s lips are a thin fierce line; Lord Calai’s brow is pinched. Every last one stares down at their feet or unseeingly into the horizon. Refusing, Arrai suddenly realizes, to bear witness to Llewelyn’s humiliation.
Prince Llewelyn takes an uncertain step forward, and another.
He kneels.
“King Galen.” His clasped hands are shaking in his lap. His voice trembles with frustration and terror and humiliated rage. “I have wronged you. I beg pardon for my trespass.”
“And pardon is granted,” the God-King says, like a bestowing of a blessing. “Rise, child. This matter is forgotten.”
Llewelyn stumbles to his feet, head low, already backing toward the horses, and the God-King too turns away.
“King Galen,” Llewelyn says, sounding only like a child calling timidly out to a stern parent, “your knight?”
“Oh,” the God-King says, and he looks for the first time at Arrai. “Of course. Sir... Alek, is it?”
“I am Arrai, Majesty,” Arrai says. There is not a single part of him that has not gone cold.
“Yes, yes,” God-King Galen says. “Well, you’ve returned. A new place will be found for you, I’m sure. Come along.”
He steps away, and Arrai does not follow.
“Majesty,” Arrai says, “my ransom is not paid.”
The God-King turns with a frown. All around them, the watching knights gasp and murmur - Arrai has defied his God. “Does it matter?”
“Majesty-- yes-- surely it--”
“I release you,” Prince Llewelyn says quietly. “Your debt is clean. Whatever you do now, Sir Arrai, make that choice freely.”
Arrai’s God-King is watching him with a wrinkled brow. Arrai ought to fall on his belly, begging pardon; Arrai has been displeasing.
Arrai is a knight. A poor knight and a failed one, but he has been taught a little of honor.
His God-King has shown none.
“Majesty,” says Arrai, and for the first time since he fell before Prince Llewelyn, Arrai feels strong. “I have not been able to raise my rightful ransom. Your knights ought not dishonor your great name and honorable crown by fleeing their debts. Forgive me; I must remain.”
“Well,” God-King Galen says. He turns to Llewelyn, and his smile is paternal once more. “So it be. It seems you shan’t leave these lands without some small prize, child, and of course I do not begrudge it. Run along.”
Llewelyn has to shake Arrai hard before Arrai remembers to mount his horse. The noble knights of Tol Saamhar lead them back the way they came, still full of effusive courtesies.
~
Prince Llewelyn and Lord Willem are every inch a prince and his general as they walk together through their makeshift camp at the foothills of Prince Vaos’s strongholds with Arrai settled back in his customary place at their heels. They speak quietly to every frightened soldier who turn to them as they pass; they pause by the caravans to encourage the wounded.
They even make a detour to the prison pens, to comfort the little handful of timid deer-folk prisoners.
From time to time, one or the other or both at once reach back, and catch Arrai’s leather-clad fingers in their gauntleted hands, and squeeze, and Arrai’s heart is full to bursting.
~
High Prince Vaos of Rhûn is a plain-faced omega in his middle years, with a kindly, bookish sort of look. Arrai could have passed him by half a hundred times before and never looked twice, yet Vaos of Rhûn, or so spoke the tales, once fought God-King Galen and won.
Prince Llewelyn’s mask of effortless command crumples as they step into Prince Vaos’s private study; Willem’s holds out mere seconds longer. Both fling themselves into the high prince’s arms to cling like children to his sides. “Vaos,” Llewelyn says, soft and ragged, “Vaos, he was--”
He presses his face into the high prince’s shoulder and shudders. “I was afraid,” he whispers. “In his camp. Everyone saw.”
“Only a fool is fearless in an enemy’s stronghold,” Vaos says, and he pulls Llewelyn closer. “You are not. And the false gods of Tol Saamhar are fearsome foes, my Llew. I was afraid too when I faced him.”
“But you--” Arrai begins, shocked out of his silence. He claps his hands over his mouth with a horrified squeak as the high prince’s eyes meets his own.
“Speak freely,” says Vaos. There is no majesty in his smile. Only kindness.
“You bested him,” says Arrai meekly, “and sent him running. I have heard heretics speak of it.”
“Ah, that,” the high prince laughs. “We sent each other running. Galen merely limped away a touch more quickly, which I’m sure he still rues, and I must confess: I’d broken my foot, and couldn’t. Our Llew here did well to come away unharmed.”
“I knelt,” Llewelyn says, half-choked with bitterness.
“And that was wise.” Prince Vaos tucks Llewelyn against his chest, cradling the nape of his neck with a gentle hand.
Llewelyn sniffles against the crook of Prince Vaos’s shoulder. “I lost them,” he whispers. “They followed me. They-- they trusted me, Vaos, and I gave them back to him.”
“And Galen will not have them long,” Prince Vaos says. “They followed you because you defended them, Llew, and then you humbled yourself before Galen to protect them again. They’ll remember.”
Llewelyn snarls, muffled and ragged, and it is Willem who answers.
“They’ll rise, High Prince,” he says. “The moment Galen’s back is turned. He’ll send his knights to put them down, and then they’ll rise again. How many are going to die who didn’t need to?”
“They’ll rise, but not so quickly.” Vaos brushes a kiss over the top of Willem’s head. “There are old men and women amongst them who will know to wait. Do you think Queen Rhiannon won’t respond to such a base insult to her young kin? She’ll march. They’ll wait for her.”
“You mean--” Arrai begins.
“She can’t go to war!” Llewelyn yelps. “Not over me-- Vaos--”
“If Rhiannon does not march for you, Galen will find some worse way to draw her out,” Vaos says. “There’s only one reason to do as he did, and it’s not to reclaim the Stoneway - he’s as good as lost that for a generation. No, it’s war with a champion of Rhûn that he wants. He would never actually have faced you himself, do you understand? A king of his renown has nothing to gain in battle against so young and green a prince, and everything to lose.”
“So Llew was just a pawn?” Willem asks. His pale eyes are hard.
“Yes. But a pawn with teeth sharper than Galen knows.” Vaos smiles, and in this smile Arrai sees at last the High Prince of Rhûn who once bested a god. “You’ve grown, the both of you. I ride for the capital tomorrow, to speak with Rhiannon of what will come. The two of you will take my place here. Guard our east. Stand ready.”
Llewelyn stares up at Vaos, and it is Willem who answers.
“We stand, High Prince,” Willem says. He straightens, standing as tall and strong as a prince himself, and he takes Llewelyn’s hand.
“High Prince,” Llewelyn echoes, “we stand. And we ask now for one who stood by us too against his king - Sir Arrai was a knight of Tol Saamhar. Will you swear him into our people, and give him leave to stay?”
“Of course,” Vaos says. “If he so chooses,” and all three turn to Arrai.
There is an old, timid part of Arrai that wants to sink into the floor... and something newer and brighter that blooms.
“My prince,” he says. He looks his prince in the eye, and feels nothing at all like fear. “I serve. I’ll stay.”