The Warrior Queen of Karth – Part 2: Dawn

It was a long night, and she kept to every term.

She set him small tasks, at first, in the lamplit tent. To bring her the map. To hold a lantern while she read. To kneel at the foot of her chair while she drafted orders for the morning, and to be silent, which he did, with a quiet that grew steadily deeper. She said nothing at all for the better part of an hour. She did not need to. The weight of her presence was enough. Each time he shifted, a glance from her pinned him to the ground, and each time he settled, her face softened by a fraction.

"Does my champion wish to continue?" she asked, at the first watch.

"I do, Majesty."

"Say it plainly."

"I do. Thank you."

"The Queen of Karth does not require thanks." But she smiled.

She corrected him, as she had agreed to, in the manner of a commander training a recruit. A tap of her boot to straighten his back. A single finger lifted under his chin. A short, level word: No. Again. Better. She never raised her voice. She never harmed him. She stood behind him and rested one broad hand on his shoulder, and he felt the weight of an entire kingdom pressed gently, deliberately, into his bones, and he understood, slowly, with a kind of wonder, that this was what trust was. To be held by a hand that could break you, and be sure it would not.

At the second watch she gave him bread and wine with her own hands. At the third she let him lie on the rug at her feet with a blanket and said, "Sleep, if you can." He did not sleep. He lay awake, listening to the scratch of her pen and the rain starting on the canvas, and felt more alive than he had in years.

Near dawn, she set down the quill.

"Dawn," said Brannoch, softly.

It was the word they had made, and she spoke it for both of them. The Queen's face did not change, but her whole body did, a loosening, as of a bowstring unstrung. She came down from her chair, sat on the rug beside him in her shirtsleeves, and wrapped her cloak round both their shoulders.

"How are you?"

"Unburdened," said Aldric, in a voice thick with feeling. "And very, very grateful."

"You were a magnificent servant." She laid a scarred hand against his cheek. "The best I have had."

"May I serve again?"

"The bond is mine to renew, and yours to keep." She smiled. "I think we will both want to."

Outside, the first light spread across the battlefield, grey and then pink and then gold, and a lark began to sing above the ruined banners.

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