. 03 Concubine

The Keeper of the King's Bedchamber was a middle aged Grumandrian woman, with long, quite greasy hair, and a worn face. She had been beautiful once, her features showed it, but her skin was marked with experience, and the furrows and crevices of worry ran across her face. In fact she had been much used by the King herself in the past, back in Grumandria and on campaigns. There were few secrets she did not know about. She had seen many wives, concubines, servants, slaves and local women come and go over the years.

The King had not for many years practised the restrictive sexual notions of his homeland, because he was a King. He made his own rules and none could criticise him without fear of punishment. There were times when he had enforced codes of conduct on his minions, and other times when he had encouraged his retinue to sexual delinquancies of all kinds – usually rape after conquest, the giving of pretty ladies to his knights and warriors as wives, concubines or slaves. The King was mainly in the habit of having one woman at a time in his bed, which was not to say he had not been more adventurous in his time. Mostly, in the past and the present, he seemed to enjoy his cruelties more than the hosting of orgies.

King Guthelm created an image of himself, without seeming to have planned it, of a great leader and a man of superhuman qualities, impervious to suffering. Some of it was doubtless myth, but much of it did seem true. The reputation of Guthelm was no lie. As he manipulated and murdered his way to power he never sought the affection of his people, by attempting to be one of them. Nor did he feel the need to share his life with the people. He resorted to a brutal, and in his eyes, more efficient and persuasive method of imposing his personality on Grumandria and other parts of Animar.

The Grumandrians were a people in the past, with natural tribal leaders, but the Earls and Barons had become wealthy from pillage and ownership of conquered lands. Because they ruled conquered peoples with an iron fist they began to treat their own people with similar disdain. The King made Knights. Even the Earls and Barons could create Knights and they did in large numbers, to serve them in war. The wizards and warlocks also became powerful and were feared by their people. All ordinary footmen chanced to benefit from the pillage of conquest. It fed them, made them feel they had a share in the cause of conquest.

Guthelm was like a mad bull. He was still powerful, but if ever he became injured or ill he might be at risk from rivals. For that reason his various brothers and half brothers had come to untimely deaths over the years, when he had particular excuse to arrange their demise. Even a half brother of the main royal line – through Guthelm's father, even though from a concubine or divorced wife, might, in the ever changing legal uncertainties that pervaded chaotic Grumandria, become a pretender to the throne if he was able to attract enough support of Earls and Barons. Guthelm had made sure the only inheritors now could be his own sons. Of these he now had many, but most were still children, to wives and concubines and even slaves.

And so, after being used by the King, Remzain stayed where she now belonged, in the hostel which had been taken over by Guthelm's Court. The Keeper of the King's Bedchamber controlled her movements and her working. She also determined where she should sleep and when she might be required to serve the King in any way.

She was guided back to the room she had been allotted earlier by the Keeper. It was a shared room, naturally, given the size of Guthelm's retinue. She shared it, she found, with two other concubines belonging to the King. One was fast asleep in the dim light so she could not make out her features. The other lay on a bed close to the one she was allotted, but looked up immediately as the Keeper hurried her in.

The Keeper, seeing the concubine was awake, introduced them, quietly. "This is Remzain, Kyla. Look after her, and let her sleep. Remzain that is your bed, over here. Go to sleep now and we will see what tomorrow will bring." With that the Keeper, tired as she must have been from waiting up, departed for her bed, leaving the newcomer to the wordless gaze of Kyla.

In the absence of words from the woman she had been introduced to Remzain offered, "Hello." She was impressed instantly by the beauty of the face which presented itself, and a rich mane of dark hair, but the face was marred by the tears which watered the staring eyes and the tiredness of eyelids which wanted to shut but would not. "Pleased to meet you," Remzain whispered politely, not wishing to awaken the other woman. She was not, of course, at all pleased to be here amongst the bonded women of the barbarian King, but she wanted to attempt to build some form of friendship with whoever she could find here

Kyla seemed to stare all the more, but Remzain heard her say, "Hello," in return. The accent was strange, like the accent of Keeper of the King's Bedchamber. She had met a number of Grumandrians now, from the wizard Aribor to his leader Valdark, the Keeper, and of course the King himself. She felt certain, even on this one word, that this woman was Grumandrian too.

The Council Hall was a mess with the barbarians in residence. Blood stained the stage; little did she know that some of it was her father's. Tables had been brought in to feast upon. The wine cellars of rich Cromililians had been plundered and the barbarians drank as if there would be no day beyond. They drank to celebrate conquest and success, perhaps to relieve the tensions of war, although few of them had seemed to risk their own lives in this sudden and complete conquest. They were a sociable crowd, surprising when she thought of the horrors they unleashed upon her city. The stolen wine loosened their tongues, perhaps allowing them to ignore conscience or rationality. Grown warriors sank into childish bluster and tomfoolery, fights, goodnatured and vicious; their leaders it seemed had no interest in controlling their drunken antics, and the waste of abilities through injury and accident, and not least the next few days through drunken hangovers and impaired thought.

She wished there was an army, of Shalirion, armed and nearby, ready to attack and reclaim their city. She saw that tonight after this feast would be a time when Guthelm's power would be at its weakest. His men would be asleep, drunk, injured by each other. They could hardly fight effectively. They could creep in and despatch these murdering scum as they slept. But there was no army of Shalirion nearby. It would take much longer to gather and to come here, by then the barbarians would be on their way to new conquests.

When the feasting was nearly spent captured women were brought in by guards who carried whips and threatened them like cattle until they stood on the stage. The Grumandrians bid for them as if this were a slave market, but the bids here were merely fun. Coins and chattels were bid, but it was done in jest, the bidding only for the evening's share of the captives. The chosen ladies, bought, were invited, welcomed amongst the soldiers who had killed so many of their menfolk and plenty of unfortunate women too. Their purchasers led them by the hand, or dragged the shy ones back to their tables where the men tried to flirt, plied them with wine and some food, and mauled them gleefully. The women of Cromilil had little option, they must do as they were told or be roughly treated. Cowed most of them mustered themselves to satisfy the whims of their new masters. The ladies of Cromilil were not generally averse to sexual frenzies. Before the conquest orgies had been one of the most popular pastimes of women in the city. Now they were required to suffer these drunken buffoons who had been killers just the day before. They accepted their new role, but few could have enjoyed these dangerous new times, in which a wrong word or displeasure could result in a beating or a scar.

Life was going to be very different now. Nothing could be the same. Remzain was going to have to adjust. Instead of being one of many citizens, all of whose viewpoints and wellbeing were respected, she found herself in a new world of servants and masters, with subtle and not so subtle differences of rank and status. Surprisingly, coming from a defeated population and expecting to be treated as a servant from now on she found she was treated as a trophy, sought after by Kings and wizards. She found she had great value to them, that arguments and fighting could be potentially provoked by her. However she had no real freedom. She could not save her father, or any other members of her family, whose whereabouts or wellbeing she did not know.