I climbed the stone steps of the keep, hearing the echoes of my own footsteps and yelling and shattered glass above me. Glass! Fuck what the priests drone on about -- wasting such a precious substance is a real sin.
As I mounted the landing, I envisioned taking Harald's other eye to teach him a lesson about following orders. Nothing could have prepared me for what my own eyes saw next.
It was a noble lady's bedroom, with a fine, wide bed with a carved headboard adorned with cherubs and angels. It was also, in this instant, a battlefield. My man Harald cowered by the door with his arms up, in the universal position of a spurned man trying not to get hit in the head with a flying object. On the floor around him lay all the detritus of a noble lady's soft existence -- baubles, jewelry, pillows, bronze goblets and all manner of broken glass.
On the far side of the room, by the window, stood the lady. She had flowing blond hair going well past her shoulders. She had a heavy candlestick in her left hand, pointing it at Harald like a sword.
She was also very nearly naked. She was dressed in a kind of smallclothes that I had never seen before. Two circular pieces of cloth supported and surrounded her buxom breasts. The cloth continued down her ribcage in a flowery kind of material. The cloth appeared attached in the front and in back, and whole effect was to both cover her breasts and accentuate them at the same time.
"You're a LIAR. You are NOT Lord Donnchad!" she screamed and threw the candlestick awkwardly. It crashed into an empty chamber pot six feet away from the hapless Harald.
"ENOUGH!" I bellowed. "I am Donnchad, but I am not a lord. I am a mercenary, and you will be silent."
She looked at me consideringly and swallowed any complaint. I turned to Harald.
"What in gods name are you doing?"
"I'm sorry my lord -- I opened the door to the lady's chambers and, well, she was dressed... um, like that, my lord, and she told me to come in, and then she started kissing me..."
"That's not true!" she blurted. "I asked him if he was Donnchad, and he said yes, and then I saw that he was missing an eye and I smelled him and I knew he wasn't you! Just by smelling him!"
"Silence!" I thundered and turned to Harald.
"She started throwing things at me, and -- and -- you told us not to hurt her, and she's a crazy person!" Harald stammered.
"You're a soldier. You should be able to restrain an eighteen-year-old girl."
I tensed, considered striking him, and thought better of it. "Leave us. Perhaps you'll have better luck controlling her father."
Harald said his "yessir" and left, quickly shutting the door.
I strolled into the center of the room. Out of the corner of my eye, I observed another girl lying under the bed, with her back against the floor. I sighed and regretted not striking Harald when I had the chance.
"Your name is Emma," I stated, deciding to leave the girl hiding under the bed in peace, for now.
"Yes," Emma smiled. "And you are Donnchad the Mercenary..." She began to walk toward him, swaying her hips like she was in an alley behind a tavern, eyeing a lonely mark.
"You look like a whore," I told her.
She stiffened, and her eyes flashed. "How DARE you!" she began.
"Spare me and get to the point," I interjected. "What do you want?"
She looked uncertain for a moment, and then stepped closer to me. I waited, ready to disarm her at the first flash of a knife.
"I want you," she said, and she took my right hand and brought it to the soft white cloth covering her teenaged cunt.
It was soaked through. I looked into her blue eyes and saw girlish excitement mixed with fear. She breathed heavily as I rubbed her smallclothes. I looked down at the tops of her breasts and admired her thick, pale thighs. Her breath was sweet, I could smell it, I was so close to her, so close. I rubbed slightly faster, and she moaned.
At the sound, I remembered my present purpose and pulled away to the window.
"I have orders to bring you to the King unmolested," I told her, emphasizing the last word.
"Please don't take me there!" She pled. "I'll do anything." She bit her lip.
"Does your father know how much of a whore you are?" I asked.
She reddened and looked away. "I don't think so..."
"You're still his prefect little girl." My cock twitched as an idea took root in my mind.
"Yes," she turned, looking at me.
"Why do you not want to go to the royal court? The King will likely marry you off to some baron or some such. Nothing bad will happen to you, girl. Nothing bad ever happens to noble snots like you."
"That's not true!" She snapped. "My mother killed herself three days ago -- because of you!"
"Well," I paused, admiring the light hitting her hair. "I didn't kill her. But I think most mothers would rather die than see their daughters throw themselves at their husband's executioner." I smiled sardonically.
I expected her to burst into tears like her father. Instead, she grabbed the candlestick.
I strode across the room in two long steps and grabbed her left wrist, forcing it down. "Now now, little girl..." I took the candlestick from her and set it on a bedside table. "I take it your mother heard of my imminent arrival."
"Yes -- since news of the battle," she said, looking down before rising her gaze to meet mine. "She knew of you and your reputation."
"And what reputation is that?"
"Satan himself," she said doggedly. "The king's demon. You kill the men, rape the women, and sell the children into slavery. My mother could not bear the strain. She poisoned herself because of you."
I shrugged. "Your father should have paid his taxes."
"My father is a fool," she stated flatly. She turned her back to me. I admired her fulsome and thinly covered buttocks -- the rounded and muscular rear end of a noble girl brought up on three course meals and regular outings by horseback.
"And you? Throwing yourself at the man who will orphan you, like a tavern slut?"
She turned, chin out. "Better a tavern slut than a married woman!"
I laughed. She folded her arms under breasts. She was clearly trying to appear serious, but the gesture just exaggerated her generous display of cleavage.
"I want to bargain," she ventured.
"Bargain?" I grabbed her chin. "I don't bargain for what I can take."
"You don't know what I'm offering," she said huskily. Her girlish attempts at seduction amused me.
"I don't?" gesturing at her near nudity.
"There is another..."
"You mean the girl hiding under your bed?" There was a surprised thump from the bed, followed by a girl's voice saying "owww!"
Emma looked put out. "I didn't think you knew she was there."
