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Among other things, Gorlan was greatly prone to dark and stormy nights.This one was no exception – and he quite enjoyed them, if he was honest with himself; candlelight washing out the fire-warmed stones around him had always made him feel safer than any amount of moonlight sweeping widely across his rooms ever could. The shadows, too, were an advantage – no one looked too closely at each other in the dark. Brief glances all around, searching for anything that may be lurking, but never coming too close to the light lest it be blinding.He’d been near-blinded, once; for playing too rough with a blacksmith’s son, when he himself was a child and far more daring than he was intelligent. He remembered being held just against the inner wall of the simmering forge-pit, thrashing, howling like a dog as he stared into the flame. By the time one of his father’s knights had thrown the boy off and another had guided a blade between his ribs and sternum, the long tongues of the fire had done their job. The scars curling around his temple and down his cheek had stretched with age, whiter than the rest of him, knotted together in long strands of singed-away skin.He didn’t like fire much before that day, and he developed no great love for it after. Still, the chambers needed warmed.
He would hold his fingers over the flame of a candle until he could no longer bear it, sometimes, and think about such things. Whatever that might’ve meant about him, he wasn’t certain. Perhaps it ought to have concerned him.It didn’t. Perhaps there was something to be said about that, too.

The blizzards of Araluenan winter chased many inside – travelling musicians, knights, nobility. It wasn’t out of the ordinary to host multiple esteemed guests in one night – and by now he dared say he excelled at it, dividing his attention as was needed and dancing his way around his guests to satisfy each want, steer clear of any inconvenience.
The barons and their servants were admittedly tricky – thankfully, they showed up unannounced with corresponding scarcity and were not so picky in entertainment outside of mandatory appearances. His own circle was always a challenge; all pledges of loyalty be damned, gods help him if multiple of them were to convene under his roof at the same time. It was difficult not to see the men as wolfdogs on such occasions, snapping at each others’ necks as though they’d been sicced on each other by some invisible hand. He dreaded their upcoming convenings about as much as he anticipated the finality of gathering all of them, at last, in his hand.The diplomats were a case of concern, when they were around – whether of Araluen, Gallica or Hibernia, all of them held the same fruit of poison in their mouths and killed any good plans simply by glimpsing upon them. He could try and keep them locked tightly down while they were around, and still they would smile when they struggled against his hold. They would speak with words so sweet they would not have recognized the taste of honey, and they would leave him with an unpleasant uncertainty in his chest. He disliked the couriers, barring not even his own – they kept their pockets too full of secrets and too well-sewn shut for him to reach in.But it was only the Rangers, of course, that truly he worried about. Not him alone, naturally – any good Lord would have started ordering out his thoughts if a foreign Ranger dropped in without a prior word. They cared little for weather, blizzard or hail, and he had long-stopped believing any story folks told of them hiding from the elements. And diplomats – one could at the very least come in with the intention of spending the night before continuing on their way.The Rangers only ever came in with the intention of spending the night, and. And if any believed otherwise, they would not stay a Lord for long.Therefore it was always best, he knew, to meet a Ranger with a purpose of one’s own.That, at least, was far from difficult. He had plans enough for the Ranger Corps; at this point, it was only a matter of choosing which of them came first.

Araluen to Redmont, he considered, the edges of his nails scratching up the corners of the map he was leaning over. Araluen to Redmont; a journey across the kingdom would take the better part of two weeks when taken restfully. He leaned back, took in the cold, damp air of the basement.Knowing Rangers, a better estimate was closer to five, perhaps six days. He hummed, dragging his finger down the Crowsfoot. It was simpler to cross it Gorlan-to-Keramon, of course, unless they wanted to go over Salmonbridge up north. Too considerable a detour, he elected. Rangers didn’t have that sort of time, no matter how little they may have wanted to cross paths with him – or perhaps it was simply Stilson that was unpleasant enough to avoid with such vigour. He wouldn’t have put it past the man.His quiet laughter startled the guard, it seemed, because the otherwise silent room was momentarily crossed by the sound of shifting plates. He turned to look at them, pulled from his own respective thoughts.There were two of them at the door in black plate. He’d have preferred they wore something less damned noisy – mail suited him just fine, indoors – but such were knights, and such was his ill-gotten fate. Spending a lifetime surrounded by men he could only ever glimpse the eyes of.Perhaps it was little surprise, then, that over the years he’d gotten quite good at reading the eyes.He beckoned the younger man closer, and he stepped up with a silence that could be appreciated. So he spent a moment trying to remember the name. Looked in his eyes. Dark, glimmering like a clear night.“One of the Maddock boys, aren’t you, sir?” he asked, and the man bowed his head. “I’ve seen your eyes before. Tomos’ blood runs clearly through his children – too bad it wasn’t strong enough to carry him through his last patrols.” He watched the man blink once, twice. No words. Good enough. “It is the right blood for a knight, nevertheless. Morgan off serving our King, Lewis buried here, I recall… You’re their youngest, then.”“Lynwood, my Lord,” the man told him, voice whispery as the wind.“I didn’t ask for your name, sir,” he said, keeping his tone low, managing to hold back displeasure from bleeding in. Watching the black eyes flick up toward him and fall back down. His interest toward the man buckled quickly as he turned back away to the map. “Get me Seren.”“Seren, my Lord?”He sighed. Regretted, somewhat, not asking the other guard – Davis was thick-skulled, to a point, but at the very least he knew the names of his people. “In the kitchens. Follow the screeching – no doubt she’s teaching that feeble-minded sister of hers how to throw together something edible without poisoning half the castle.”“Should she leave her sister behind, my Lord?” Maddock asked, and remained still.He turned to look at the man, slowly raised an eyebrow. Composed himself. “If I’d wanted her to bring the half-wit, I would’ve said so. I didn’t hear myself saying it – did you, sir?”Maddock’s eyes met his. Held them, for an admirable stretch of time. Fell again, finally, with an answer – “No, my Lord.”“You know what to do, then.” He smiled, thinly, and looked back over the map. And, as though he’d just remembered it, called out – “And if you keep prattling on without being asked, Lynwood Maddock, I’ll cut out your tongue.”That, at last, got no answer. He closed his eyes and breathed slowly out. Back in. Little could be done to clear his thoughts, once they were muddled for good.At the very least, Seren came down quickly, and he supposed Maddock was not as useless as he sounded after all.“My Lord,” Seren said, and stepped up to join him at the table at the permitting wave of his hand.
“King Oswald is expecting Rangers,” he said, quietly. She nodded sharply, as though it was news on the weather. “Redmont and his apprentice. Go to Araluen and request their journey by; I’ll give you the letter. When they depart, trail them; release a pigeon once they reach Crowsfoot.”“Yes, my Lord.” A moment of silence. Before he could open his mouth, though, she did so first. “My Lord, may I ask – “ He nodded, feeling oddly unperturbed, and she continued – “May I ask for my sister to take my place in the kitchens while I’m gone? Nelly, you recall. She has grown skilled under my watch. She would be a fine addition.”He sighed, exasperated, and turned his head to look at her. She stood still as a statue, dirty tied hair framing a startlingly angled face. She held his gaze, at least.
He leaned back, waved a hand again.“Hell does it matter to me, Seren,” he said, as amicably as he could be bothered to. He didn’t care much for her in the kitchens and her sister was a waste of space at best – but perhaps this way she at least earned her stay in the castle. “I believe you – you can go and take it up with the cook.”“Thank you, my Lord.” She bowed low for him, and he only waved her away; the plan was in motion, at last, and now he had only the kinks to work out until the Rangers’ arrival.The scraping of steel accompanying the creak of the door made him jolt, then turn sharply and snap, if perhaps harsher than intended – “And, heavens above, take Maddock with you – I’ve had enough of both of you today!”

The Rangers were not all that much more than what he’d been expecting.
They met him at the end of his hall dripping with rainwater and displeasure, which he had more or less been expecting as well. He curled his lip upward, steeled his face into some mix of humility and gaiety that had always done him well. Waited for them to approach and watched their faces for any sign of animosity – any trace of suspicion at all.He knew the old man well enough – Pritchard had held the post of Ranger at Redmont for decades now and seemed to carry his own Baron’s aversion to Gorlan close to his heart. Perhaps it was the raffishness of a man born to no family and carrying no last name that made him so disagreeable. Perhaps it was the simple truth of being a Ranger. In spite of that, or perhaps because of it, he would’ve been dishonest to say Pritchard was not capable. Bothersome, for certain.
His apprentice, though – a great deal shorter than him and with his cloak done up to his nose so only his eyes were staring back into the world from the shadow of the hood – it was he who was the mystery of interest. He knew only that Pritchard had taken him in a year or two ago; he was no Ranger, not yet. But just enough of a start, perhaps, to be useful.The Rangers made their way forward, wary and quiet, and stopped to bend down for a bow at a distance inconvenient to talk through. He felt as though it were deliberate; most things were when it came to this. But it was easiest to hide his own dissatisfaction and step forward instead – they would come and speak, one way or another.“Welcome to Castle Gorlan, Rangers.” He spread out his arms in invitation, smiled down at them. Bowed his head down cordially when he saw the apprentice looking up at him from under his hood. “Please, make yourselves at home here – it is an honour to host any at the King’s service.”“We’re grateful for your generosity, Lord Morgarath.” It was Pritchard who spoke, his voice hoarse with the cold and humidity. He was the first to pull back his hood as well, shaking his head of swift-graying hair to keep it from clumping together. “We hope our arrival did not pose an inconvenience to you.”Morgarath laughed, as though the very notion had been absurd. Laced his fingers together behind his back, shook his head. “Not at all. You must know I’m always delighted to receive such esteemed guests.”“It was kind of you to offer your home to ward off the weather, but we hope not to take up too much of your time.” Pritchard kept his head down, the very picture of humility. Morgarath tried to keep his smile from turning crooked in expected amusement; it was a tendency Rangers often had, he thought, to walk into a room and try to walk right back out immediately as soon as any eyes turned to observe them. “That is, our stay should be sufficiently short.”“Not too short, I hope,” he said, enjoying the way Pritchard tilted his head in what was clearly veiled disagreement. “I’d hate to think Gorlan is so disgraced among the King’s closest advisors that they all seek to draw a grand circle around it in their travels.”“Not at all, my Lord. But we’ve already been away from Redmont too long, and it brings us great anxiety to leave our duties unattended,” Pritchard answered, and raised his head to look at him. He seemed calm. Nearly somber. His pale eyes, bland and unremarkable, were terribly piercing when he fixed them on Morgarath. “I’m certain you understand.”Morgarath could only nod to them in turn and start at the corner of the conversation. If they were determined to leave quickly, it only meant he would have to work quicker – and it was good, then, that Morgarath had never been fond of wasting time.Was he quicker than the Ranger Corps? He hadn’t yet raced in time against them. But he would adapt, he thought, and bowed his head in reflection of Pritchard. He would always adapt.
“Of course. Of course – but until the storms settle down, I’d be elated to have you sitting at my table.”
“I can only repeat that you show us great kindness by it, my Lord,” Pritchard reiterated, and Morgarath hummed to himself, quiet enough that they may not hear it. It was just like attending Court, in some way, and it seemed Pritchard was well-used to the proceedings. Morgarath wondered yet again if the same ills had already stuck to his apprentice, or if he’d be more amicable in words. “If you would allow us, my Lord, it would be an even greater relief to find ourselves someplace to start a fire and put our things up to dry; the weather is vicious this time of year.”“Naturally, you will be given rooms to stay. Just one more moment, if you will – “ Morgarath stopped them from turning with a raise of his hand, let his eyes wander innocently toward the hooded young man. “Ranger Pritchard, I don’t believe I’ve met your apprentice. Would you be so kind as to introduce us?”Pritchard paused for a moment, and Morgarath inclined his head in encouragement, smiling thinly. With no way out, Pritchard nodded to the boy, who then raised pale fingers to pull the hood off his own head as well.The boy was young. Morgarath had not been mistaken in that. The hair around his face was dark and wet with rain, falling flatly to stick to his skin, but the rest of his head was red as autumn leaves. His eyes had gotten no less dark when he’d taken off the hood, and his cheeks and forehead were dotted generously with freckles and moles.
He had the eyes – and the general countenance – of a critter. A squirrel, perhaps, or if he turned out to be more clever than the rats, perhaps a fox. Either way, Morgarath could see the potential of the boy disappearing in a crowd. He did not seem overall impressive.But he was staring at Morgarath about as attentively as Morgarath was the other way around, and suddenly he wondered what the boy was seeing. It was frustrating – he could almost see the thoughts turning in his head, but the boy let none of them cross his face.
“My Lord, this is Ranger Crowley,” Pritchard said. Morgarath blinked, glancing between them. “He’s been by my side for two years and earned his oakleaf with a dedication to our service I’ve not seen in many.”
Even as Morgarath knew his words were nothing more than a mask over his thoughts, he thought the pride in them seemed, at least a little bit, genuine. A well-loved apprentice, then. It lessened Morgarath’s chances, but by no means erased them. He’d severed stronger bonds.“A bronze oakleaf, you mean?” he asked, and Pritchard shook his head, so slightly it was more than easy to miss.“My Lord, forged of any metal, it is still a Ranger’s oakleaf.”“Of course. Forgive my curiosity.” Morgarath smiled, and looked Crowley in the eyes. No, he decided – he seemed a simple enough boy. There was no need to think of him beyond much more than a child fond of running in the woods. And he’d long appealed to runaways, a truth he was well-aware of – there was no cause to think this would be any different. Perhaps more difficult. But no different.
So he only nodded, and smiled a little wider, stretching his lips thin. “I see I’ve held you up far too long – please accept my apologies. I’ll have a squire – “ He gestured to the side, eyes sliding past Maddock. The man seemed to be everywhere, lately, and Morgarath was still trying to fight the strange annoyance that overtook him each time he saw him at his beck and call. He could go – Morgarath couldn’t have cared less. He waved the man over. “I’ll have a guard show to your room.”“Our thanks, my Lord,” said Crowley. Morgarath turned to look at him – regarded him for a long moment, his deepset eyes, his clouded brow. His voice showed his age, nevertheless, and his words were added just late enough to seem an act of reminding himself that he was there at all. Morgarath smiled.“I look forward to such company,” he said, bowed at the waist, and his words were spoken to neither in particular.

The healers straightened up when he arrived at the hall. He was aware of it – his presence tended to be followed by some threat even he wasn’t certain he was making.
No threats now, certainly. None at all.He crossed the hall in a dozen wide strides, came to a sudden halt at the headboard of Seren’s bed. The girl’s face was twisted by a sharp grimace, her shoulders drawn tightly up to her neck as she gripped her thigh so hard her knuckles were paling. Her bare foot – wrapped and blue and swollen – was lifted on a pillow at the end of the bed.Her pained eyes flicked up to his face for a moment before darting back down to the bed in lieu of a bow. “My Lord,” she managed, through gritted teeth. “They didn’t want to stop, they wanted – straight to Redmont, my Lord, so I – I made them stop. Made them bring me here. They wouldn’t have believed me if I wasn’t – ah, hm – already hurt, so I…”Slowly, the pieces slotted into place in his head. He’d known only that the Rangers were here; she’d completed her task. Now he looked at her and knew she’d done so at some cost to herself and none to him at all.Rangers would not have hesitated – a young Ranger, especially – to help an injured girl walk out of the woods alive, no matter how much of a circle they were drawing around the castle where she lived.He watched her for a moment. Took in her hissing, her pain, all the marks of her devotion to him. And he smiled.“You’ve outdone yourself, Seren,” he told her, and, for once, it was true. Fueled by a trace of curiosity, he asked – “You broke your own ankle?”“I – I stood on it, my Lord,” she answered, and whimpered at the slightest movement of her leg. She was a pitiful picture, eyes quickly filling with tears. “It took – some tries, but my weight eventually… did it, and – and – and they heard the crack, or they could’ve heard me…” She squeezed her eyes shut. “It just – hurts terribly, my Lord.”“It’ll heal,” he told her, curt – and if it didn’t, at least she’d done her job. And her sister hadn’t poisoned anyone in the kitchens just yet; it wasn’t as though they were lacking a replacement there. “Good job. You can go back to the kitchens once you can stand on your own.”She nodded, a shaky, sharp thing – and managed a response, though it sounded more like a sob, “Of course, my Lord.”

The rains continued throughout the next day, and the one after that. He could only conclude, in the end, that the gods he prayed to loved him well, or else he’d managed to encounter a lucky star falling on one of the clear nights he’d spent studying the ever-shifting skies.It was not quite a night like that, this one. It was clouded, damp and dreary, and slowly soured his mood toward much of the same. Especially with the added fact that the Rangers lived up well to their reputation, and had been doing their best to vacate any corner he might’ve found them in as soon as he appeared at the end of the hallway.Midway through lunch, he’d decided the clouds could not keep up his front forever, and simply called Pritchard up to his room. Simple matters, he’d instructed the page to explain. Their travels and correspondence with the King. And, though he naturally kept it from the boy, a bit of productive conversation. How productive it would be, naturally, depended on Pritchard; but Morgarath recalled the previous Ranger of Redmont, and decided he had hopes high enough.Pritchard was toeing the line of lateness when he finally slipped through his door. And Morgarath had expected no less than that, he thought to himself; the old Ranger had been making his hesitation very clear throughout their stay, and kept his apprentice all but entirely voiceless. Morgarath felt at times like a cat rounding circles around a birdnest – but then Crowley would glance his way again with those glassy brown eyes, and Morgarath would be struck again by the fact that he looked, even from only the face, just innocent enough to be a fox among hens.Still, Morgarath had been Baron for more than long enough to know when he’d have to reason with the groundskeeper. And Pritchard, clearly, did not want to reason with him at all.But there were things that appealed to all men, still. Even when put on a platter of flowery words and masked truths.“I’m sorry to have lured you from the fire, Ranger Pritchard,” Morgarath said, turning around at the rattling of his guard’s armor and then the closing click of the door. Pritchard was, indeed, standing in the middle of his room, clad in his cloak and newly-dried clothes beneath. Morgarath had given them clothes; Pritchard had not worn them. Little matter, he decided, and offered the Ranger a smile, not bothering to mask the tension in his body. “I hope you can forgive my curiosity. I haven’t been to Araluen for nearly a year now, and I’m deeply concerned for the state of affairs at the King’s Court.”Pritchard bowed – all in all, it was perfectly proper, but Morgarath had all but learned to expect such politeness to be accompanied by a change of topic wrapped up in appropriately fanciful words. That, or blunt transgression of etiquette. Honestly, Morgarath didn’t know if he preferred Pritchard as the former or if it would’ve been more productive if he were the latter.“Of course, my Lord, you’ll know of it from His Majesty himself if there should be matters requiring your attention.” Predictable enough, he supposed. “We were merely attending to some concerns put forward by the Ranger Commandant.”Morgarath didn’t glance back to his desk, but he thought of it. Letters from the King had been scarce, though he did reply to the inquiries sent by Castle Gorlan. It was expected, naturally – but Morgarath himself had grown wary of writing ever since the head of the Diplomatic Corps in Araluen took over the correspondence. Weak and shaking as it may have been, he trusted King Oswald’s hand to convey his state of mind more transparently than any scribe he may have employed to keep his eyes restful from the candles.
“I trust Commandant Nicholl is doing well,” he said instead, keeping up his smile. It did not truly matter, after all, if Pritchard told him of the King or not – it would all be filtered through the same mask of hesitance he wore when speaking to him in the first place. Patience had rewarded Morgarath many times throughout the long years of his life – it would reward him once again.“As well as always, my Lord.”He allowed himself a short moment of laughter, knew it left his eyes glimmering and his frame not as intimidating. “Your lips are sealed so tightly I should think you fear to bite your tongue, Ranger Pritchard.”Pritchard did not seem swayed by his words – when the corners of his lips rose in response, it only looked the slightest bit forced. “I hope you forgive me for it, my Lord. It is a Ranger’s nature.”“Certainly, there isn’t anything to forgive. I’ve long-grown used to it.” The lie was easy, by now, with all he knew about the Rangers from his own. Mostly that they were deeply frustrating, and otherwise extremely useful. “Either way, I hope the storm did not disrupt your messaging too harshly.”“No, my Lord. Baron Arald is young, but he is more patient than most,” Pritchard said, and it was, again, a perfectly neutral statement.
Morgarath wondered how much truth was actually contained within; he’d seen Arald closely only in the tournaments, first on his horse and then the ground, and in the occasional meetings of the whole Court in which the young Baron did not speak much more than the rest.Easily, he said, “And has a very dedicated Ranger in his fief.”“I’m not as well-equipped to handle flattery as I am secrets, I’m afraid.” Pritchard’s eyes lingered on him. His hands rested behind him, completing again the picture of serenity; Morgarath wondered how long it took Rangers to grow into this, since Crowley seemed to stand still in a manner which seemed more like he was frozen into stone.
“Only an observation. I continue to be impressed.” This time, the chuckle Morgarath gave was half-genuine. The first whole truth, he figured, that the Ranger had told him throughout his entire stay. Perhaps it was good, then, to dive into the meat of the matter. “I was hoping to see your apprentice as well. Crowley, was it?”Pritchard nodded. His pale eyes followed Morgarath when he rounded his table and stopped to pour himself a glass of red wine he’d taken from the cupboard. “Ranger Crowley, my Lord, yes.”“A glass, Ranger? It is well-aged.” Pritchard shook his head, not glancing down even to see what Morgarath was offering. What a cold man, Morgarath thought, amusement curving his lips again.“No, my Lord, thank you.”
“As you wish.” He took a sip himself, closed the bottle. He didn’t like drinking, much – especially when there was nothing to celebrate. And, certainly, Pritchard’s rebuffing of each of his attempts at conversation had little to do with victory altogether. “I was under the impression a man only becomes a Ranger when he receives his silver leaf?”Pritchard paused, caught between explanation and silence. Morgarath watched him carefully until he finally tilted his head and conceded, “As you would, my Lord.”“Don’t agree with me for the sake of it, Ranger Pritchard,” Morgarath said, quietly. “I don’t appreciate it.”
“Only a graduated Ranger can be trusted to watch over a fief and perform their full duties, my Lord, and in this we’ve no disagreement,” Pritchard told him, and to Morgarath it felt just a little bit like giving ground. “But we’ve all been apprentices once. And some of us, throughout our apprenticeships, have performed feats of service more valuable than others will throughout their entire lives.”Morgarath smiled, swirled his wine some. “It sounds riveting.”“I will bring a few tales for you, my Lord, should you enjoy them,” Pritchard said, rather dryly, and Morgarath laughed.“That’s quite all right. I’m fairly certain the entire kingdom knows perfectly well the many achievements of the Ranger Corps.”Pritchard didn’t bother repeating himself. Instead he looked away from Morgarath, a scowl setting deeply into his face, and said, with a sliver of sincerity that Morgarath hadn’t truly expected of him, “And that is its biggest failing so far, my Lord.”He was good at it, Morgarath thought – not good enough, perhaps, to handle Court, but his speech didn’t stray from his point. It was only regrettable that his point seemed to be in direct opposition with Morgarath’s. Not enough folk knew, he thought, simply how to speak.
“Would it not be best to appear too large to tackle? Cast too big a shadow to be pushed into the light.” He took another sip of the wine as Pritchard tilted his head, furrowed his brows in thought. Pretended to consider his words, at least. That had to be good enough for now. “It would prevent some troubles from getting to you before they ever appeared, methinks.”Pritchard shook his head, again, and Morgarath thought it just a little ridiculous to keep so firmly on one’s own path. “And it would quicken others, my Lord. I see no need to deviate from the quiet that’s kept us together for half a century already.”Morgarath nodded into his glass, considering where he stood on the matter. His father, he recalled, was the one to witness the founding of the Corps; he’d not been even a babe screaming in his mother’s arms, back then. But he’d heard enough of it as he grew, he thought; more than enough. “Were you among the first, Ranger Pritchard? If I may ask.”Predictably, Pritchard shook his head once more. No, he didn’t look quite old enough. “My Master was, my Lord. But he was a young man when he took me in, and we learned most things together, I believe.”“It is not so with your apprentice now?” Morgarath smiled as he spoke, and Pritchard’s eyes narrowed a little, watching his fingers circling the glass.“I think it is always so, my Lord,” he answered, though he seemed hesitant. Morgarath wondered whether that was because he didn’t want to speak wrong or because it wasn’t his intent to discuss his apprentice altogether. Morgarath had the suspicion it was the latter. Still, Pritchard continued, voice and face settled into impassibility, “Ranger Crowley is a promising young man. It is simply our lot to learn from our young.”Morgarath hummed, placed the half-emptied glass on his desk and turned to look out the window. The sky was a deep gray, heavy clouds rolling into the horizon as they poured over the woods. The Rangers would leave, he knew, as soon as the downpour turned gentler. He would’ve had them stay quite a bit longer than that.“I can’t promise you it will teach you much you don’t already know, but I would be delighted if you stayed for longer. Past the storms,” he said, holding his hands behind himself, open palms still within Pritchard’s view. Turned his head, just a little, to glance over his shoulder. “It would only be fitting to honour you and your apprentice’s hosting with a hunt.”
“My Lord, it would be exceedingly kind of you,” Pritchard said, almost immediately, and as soon as he began to bow Morgarath knew his answer. “But we dare not let arrows fly in another Ranger’s woods.” Morgarath breathed out, turned back around to watch the rains to hide his annoyance as Pritchard went on, “It isn’t our place to stand at your side. The Ranger of Gorlan has a rightful claim to it.”At that, Morgarath let out a grim chuckle. It could not have truly been his concern. “Have no fear of his anger. He will allow it.”“It isn’t fear that keeps us from each other, my Lord,” Pritchard said, firmly, as though Morgarath was a student who did not know the answer to a question. Perhaps, it occurred to him, he should’ve been asking different questions altogether. “It is the trust of well-performed duty. We’ve no need to stare over each other’s shoulders, only to watch each other’s backs.”Morgarath turned on his heel sharply, stepped down to return to his desk. Braced his hands on each edge as he looked down at Pritchard. From up close, the man was a lot smaller than he seemed from afar. “Please do not take my offer as a slight.”“I do not, my Lord,” he replied, bowing his head again, and all of a sudden Morgarath thought he resembled some persistent critter, the kind that was a hassle to kill and even more so to leave alive. “And I hope you do not take my refusal as one either.”“Certainly.” Morgarath smiled thinly. Sat down and pulled the wine glass he’d abandoned back to himself. “I’ve taken up enough of your time now, I should think. I won’t keep you from the fire any longer.” The look he sent was meaningful, and the old Ranger was more than aware enough to understand it. “Send your apprentice my regards.”“Of course, my Lord.”He backed away, not without another bow, and Morgarath thought he must’ve been relieved to have this over with. Once the door closed behind him, Morgarath murmured to himself for a while, rested his chin on his interlaced fingers.
He’d not thought the old man to be such a stone wall. He hadn’t thought him easy, exactly, but this riddle wasn’t quite what he’d had in mind either.
Pritchard was not interested in what he could offer. Or Morgarath had simply not known what he had to interest him in – not well enough.He frowned, finished his wine, pulled out a cut of parchment and began writing.

Even while drenched in rainwater, smelling of drowned dog and wearing an expression that spoke of too much recent sobriety, Stilson was a breath of fresh air. And Morgarath could handle the rest – most of it simply by wordlessly pushing a bottle of liquor his way once they had sat down.In return, Stilson listened to him with narrowed eyes, and scarcely took his attention off their conversation besides taking another swig from the bottle. It was mostly for his own benefit, those talks, Morgarath thought – he got to lay his thoughts out loud to someone other than the walls of his chambers, and Stilson knew much more of Rangers than even he did. But even then, he thought the conversation might have kept Stilson at least a little bit behind the line of turning feral, holed up in that hut of his. Especially with the rain.
Besides, most folk found it difficult to lie to Morgarath. Unlike most, Stilson had figured this out very quickly and simply spoke his mind so straightforwardly Morgarath dreaded to save him a seat in his hall during summer festivals. Never a cushioning word on the man’s tongue.While Morgarath admitted it was for the best, most times, he couldn’t help the sting of annoyance when Stilson shook his head and cut him off in the middle of the sentence.“It won’t work,” he said, plainly, and Morgarth leaned back in his chair. He’d just begun to talk of Pritchard and if there was anything Morgarath might do to sway him. Stilson took another look at his face and pressed his lips together, shook his head again. More pointedly, this time. “No, it won’t. I’ve seen him at Gatherings. It won’t be any good at all.”“No?” Morgarath sighed. Pinched the bridge of his nose between the eyes. He felt, all of a sudden, very tired of the entire ordeal. Still, it was not in him to leave his work abandoned at the first sign of being met with a foe. “I did not have you come to hear the same which the King’s bloody Ranger told me.”Stilson tipped his head back, tilted the bottle. Morgarath watched with little amusement the bob of his throat as he swallowed. Whenever he finally put the damned thing down, he cleared his throat, leaned forward, and laid his hands one over the other on the table.“I, too, am the King’s bloody Ranger, my Lord, and I’ve spent a few years now around my fellow King’s bloody Rangers, and I beg of you to let me spare you the trouble,” he said, rather amicably. He was rather good at that, at least, Morgarath thought – Stilson may not have been the best shot or the best strategist of his Corps, but at least the fact that he had a tongue and knew how to use it was not among the long list of grievances Morgarath had with his people at the moment. And he hardly seemed to be joking – if anything, the spark in his eye made him seem more serious than he had been sober. “Pritchard has the eyes of an honest man, my Lord, and, hell, someday he may have even been one. But it’s not a Ranger’s eyes you’ve got to watch, it’s the hands. That’s the part that holds the knife.”Morgarath crossed his arms, tilted his head to the side. “Spare me the theatrics.” It was what everyone knew of the Rangers, and that had stopped worrying him years ago – all that he had left of it was good food for thought when considering things like this. What use the Ranger Corps might have in the future. At the very least if he might sway the old man and his boy.“I’ll spare you a lot more, if you hear me out,” Stilson said quietly, his lips tugging up into a grin. His yellowed teeth seemed even more so in the candlelight. “Can’t teach an old dog new tricks, yeah? So do away with the old one, get a puppy. Isn’t that why Meratyn’s here?”Morgarath raised an eyebrow. “Meratyn?”
Stilson glanced up at him, looked puzzled for a moment – then something seemed to click in his mind and he waved his hand in dismissal. “Crowley Meratyn, I mean. Pritchard’s apprentice.”“He’s a family name?” Morgarath asked, somewhat intrigued at last. He’d never heard of it – certainly not a noble house, but then again, noblemen rarely became Rangers. Stilson was a fine example. Still, a last name was good; a hook, a string that could be traced.“Meratyn? Sure, and a mother he bled it from.” At that, Stilson grinned wider, and reached for the bottle again. “We know her well where I’m from, my Lord, the Bitch of Bannock, more wolf than woman. They say she once clawed out the eyes of a man who had snuck into their home to kill her husband.” While Stilson paused to drink, Morgarath glanced to the wall beside his head and thought that through. Bannock; then Stilson and Meratyn shared a fief, at the very least. Even better. “Fieffolk had enough eventually and threatened to burn her, once, her and her flock of fire-hair spawn, and they say she laughed and asked who wanted to try and tie her to a stake first. No takers.” Morgarath smiled, dryly. He understood, now, why Meratyn had been staring at him like he was a woodland fox looking at a canary. Dogs learned to growl early, he supposed, and to run quickly. “If her son’s got any of her ferocity between the ears, he may just be what you’re looking for.”“Lots of ‘they say’ here, Stilson. I don’t like things ‘they say’; ‘they’ are horrendous liars, most of the time,” Morgarath said, nevertheless, laced his fingers together on the table and leaned forward, catching Stilson’s gaze and keeping it there. “What do you say?”In spite of it all, Stilson did not seem particularly fazed by him. Perhaps it was his own fault, Morgarath supposed, for letting him last beside him for so long – but while Stilson still proved useful enough, he’d long promised himself to put the man’s head on a pole at the first sign of that changing.He liked Stilson enough. He was, perhaps, the most pleasant nuisance out of all of them.“I say Crowley Meratyn’s an enigma like all of them are, at first,” Stilson said, and glanced at the door behind Morgarath as though he was expecting the boy to walk in through the wall. “They sort themselves out, eventually, get over themselves, learn to shoot and skin. But by the time they come into themselves, they won’t be looking to come to you.”“You came to me,” Morgarath said, and it was half-true – not only had Stilson come to him, he’d come to him and stayed through all the trials Morgarath had devised to see if the man was trustworthy. After that, Morgarath supposed he deserved better than to be discarded.“That’s because I’ve this sort of interest in keeping my head on my shoulders, my Lord, while my wood-brothers seem to think a necklace is worth losing it for. But that’s what being a Ranger moulds you into.” Stilson shrugged, almost noncommittally, and the oakleaf on his chest glimmered in the candlelight as though in protest as he stared its way. “Don’t bother with Pritchard, my Lord. One way or another, he’s an old candle burning out. Meratyn, on the other hand – blow out his flame, and you might just salvage the wax.”Morgarath sighed. The old man had experience that must’ve been foreign even to Stilson, and the fact that he was in Redmont was a convenience – but having Stilson might’ve made up for that, and when Meratyn earned his silver, perhaps he’d be sent to a distant fief. Be eyes for Morgarath on the other side of Araluen, if things worked out just right.
“And you believe there’s anything useful to be shaped from it?” he asked, gauging at last how much effort he might put into his planning once this conversation was over.Stilson hummed, the most thoughtful he’d looked throughout his entire visit. Spoke, finally, slowly, “I haven’t spoken with him for long, my Lord. But with the she-wolf of a mother he has, it isn’t much wonder the boy ended up a witchling.” At Morgarath’s quirked eyebrow, Stilson gestured up at his hair. Morgarath thought back to Meratyn’s red fringe, and let out a long-suffering sigh. “Never good to have one of those glaring you down from the other side.”“One day, Stilson, you’ll reach the end of my patience,” Morgarath told him, and Stilson smiled again, damn the man. “Or be done in by one of your old wives’ tales, whichever comes first.”“Falling by your hand would be an honour, my Lord,” he crooned, and offered as elaborate a bow as he presumably might have, sitting down and with a bottle in his hand. “I’d assume, then, that I was your biggest problem, which in turn would mean I’ve already helped you solve all the rest.”Morgarath leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes for a moment. Rested his forehead against his cool palm. “Get out.”
“Yes, my Lord.” The scraping of a chair being pushed back, then a pause. Stilson’s voice, asking with the assumption already made – “Can I keep the bottle?”“You opened it, didn’t you?” Morgarath looked through his fingers to glare, and the expression of immense innocence plastered over Stilson’s face didn’t help things. He covered his eyes again. “Finish it all and fall on the armoury’s stock of spears for all I care, as long as you get out of my sight.”“With pleasure, my Lord.”Morgarath flinched when the door slammed a little too hard on Stilson’s way out.Gods, with this many Rangers about the castle, it was no wonder he could feel a headache coming on.

The storms were gradually settling. It was in the trees – Stilson had said, once, that there was a certain smell to impending sunlight. Morgarath had only not called him delusional because they’d been in proper company then, but as he stood by the open window now, he thought the Ranger might’ve been right after all.Though this, to Morgarath’s mind, wasn’t really a smell. It was, rather, a damp and discomforting feeling of urgency he could feel coming on more and more with each day the dark clouds crept further north.
At least he might remedy it today, he figured, and walked back to the chess table he’d ordered brought into the space beside the largest window in his room. He was terribly frustrated with the wait, and even more so with the way the Rangers seemed to have taken to nearly hiding from him, but at the very least he could still call them up to his room. They couldn’t refuse an offer to speak with him when, naturally, it wasn’t quite an offer at all.
Pritchard had proven quiet and somewhat uncomfortable, beside him, and finally Morgarath had cast him aside. Best to know when there was ground to be given, he supposed, and it was best to know which Rangers he might’ve been able to pull to his side after his council of Barons finally assembled. It was not Pritchard.At least it might’ve been Meratyn.When the boy finally showed up at his door and walked in with steps that carried masked uncertainty behind them, Morgarath did his best to make the smile on his face seem welcoming.
“I was wondering if you’d gotten lost, sir,” he said in lieu of a greeting. Meratyn hadn’t been late, per se, not to the point of bad manners; but he hadn’t been perfectly punctual, either, and Morgarath had begun to suspect it was not an accidental expression of hesitance.The boy bowed low at the waist and his red curls spilled over one shoulder. “Ranger Crowley, my Lord. I apologize for making you wait.”“I hold no grudge,” Morgarath told him, amicably enough. The boy had manners like his Master, he supposed, perhaps learned from the man directly – but that alone did not mean they had to be alike. He pressed, a little – “But the moniker, I’m afraid, you will have to accept.”“Sir, my Lord?” the boy clarified, and, at Morgarath’s small nod, furrowed his brows. “We don’t call each other that.”Morgarath gestured with one hand helplessly, as though it was something he simply had no control over. “But you are an apprentice, sir, and I cannot rightly group you into the Corps just yet. Or at least that is how I understand it.”Meratyn paused, for just a moment. His Master, Morgarath recalled, disagreed with him. “As you would, my Lord.”Meratyn did not.Morgarath offered him a smile that was just a little warmer and motioned toward the chess table.“Come, now, sit with me,” he invited him, and pulled back a chair to sit down himself. Frowned, just a little bit, watching Meratyn hesitate. “I feel out of sorts, making a guest linger in my doorway.”That seemed to break him out of his reluctance, and he stepped towards the table with none of the gingerness he held before. “I did not mean to offend you, my Lord.”“You did not.” Morgarath gestured at the checkered table. “Would you care for a game, sir?”Meratyn eyed the squares with something that, Morgarath noted with amusement, almost seemed like vague suspicion. “Chess, my Lord?”“Do you know how to play it?” Morgarath asked, pleasantly, and Meratyn shook his head.“Not particularly well.”He did not look at it with complete confusion, Morgarath supposed, and he knew the name, so he might as well have taken his words for the truth. Still, it further clued Morgarath in to the confirmation that Meratyn was no nobleman’s son.“It is a simple game, at its core, and I hear those training to be Rangers already burst with strategic creativity. You’ll grasp it just fine. It is a battle, after all,” he assured the boy, and pushed a small black figurine forward to the center of the board. “You can take the white; I’ll give you the first move. Let us start here, with the pawns: the servants, the soldiers. The skin of the army, holding the front line. Bravery or stupidity, letting your weakest lead you in battle? I never could come to a final decision.”“Can’t it do more than be fodder for the arrows, my Lord?” Meratyn asked. His brown eyes – lighter now than they’d seemed in the hall on the night that they arrived – were focused on the pieces and the board. Morgarath looked his fill of him – hairtie just on the verge of giving out, eyes wider than his Master’s, his jaw clenched and large nose wrinkled slightly in concentration. Morgarath smiled, just a little bit.“Of course. Should it reach the other end of the board, you will see its real strength shine through. Because there, it will turn – “ Morgarath moved the pawn to the end of the board before flicking it gently onto the rest of the table – “ – Into a different piece altogether.”Meratyn looked up at him. He seemed fascinated, Morgarath thought. Certainly no nobleman in spirit, then, either. “What piece is that, my Lord?”“Most people I play with choose the queen, naturally. For she is all-powerful. All-seeing. She goes wherever and however she wants.” Morgarath took Meratyn’s queen between two fingers and motioned her movements in all directions quickly before putting her in the middle of the board. “But this puts her in a lot of danger, as you may imagine. And if you take the opponent’s queen, the blow you’ve struck will echo throughout the remainder of the game.”“This, then – “ To his surprise, Meratyn reached out to take a different figure altogether. “- is the king, my Lord?”“Keen eye, sir. Indeed, the king is the central piece, but, among other things, by itself it is quite helpless.” Morgarath watched something in Meratyn’s eyes shift, just the slightest bit, and looked away from him. “Its moves are limited – it can neither attack nor run effectively by its lonesome.” He tapped the pieces on the sides of the board, ran his fingers over their ridged tops. “The towers take the brunt of the weight in its protection. With this in mind, should you take down the towers…”“The king will fall,” Meratyn murmured. Morgarath hummed, and flicked the king off the board as well. Meratyn blinked, shook his head a little bit, and looked back up at him. Morgarath curved his lips upward.“Not necessarily, of course. All of the pieces on the board are dedicated to protecting their own king, and cornering that of the opponent. This is the run of the game.” Morgarath raised his hands, gestured to the entire board. To Meratyn. “As you play – though I’m certain you know this much – you take your opponent’s pieces, and the opponent takes yours. And if you and your opponent are rather evenly matched, well – you may play for a while. And in the end you’ll find both sides empty out, and you remain; the one untouched king with a handful of loyal dying allies as the similarly battered army of the enemy approaches, determined to make their dying breaths the same of yours.”And Meratyn, it seemed, considered it with a good bit of thought. Looked up at Morgarath and said, slowly and with care, “It all sounds like quite an unpleasant ordeal, my Lord.”Morgarath tilted his head, conceded, “The pawn might think so, certainly. I doubt the king would.” At the pensive expression on Meratyn’s face, he moulded his own into something more inviting, and scooped up the pieces that had fallen off the board. “Let us give it a try, sir.”Meratyn twitched forward, suddenly, like something had snapped apart in him. He stuttered for a moment, caught under Morgarath’s gaze, and said, finally – “My Lord, you might just call me Crowley.”Morgarath allowed himself to laugh. Found himself comparing, suddenly, how Stilson’s reaction might differ if Morgarath suddenly decided to begin sirring him. “Does it discomfort you to be grouped under the same title as the kingdom knights?”Meratyn, looking everywhere but at Morgarath, it seemed, shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “I would be rather unsuited for such a life.”“I presume that is why you aren’t living it, Crowley. And it is for the best.” Morgarath met his eyes somberly, when he looked up. “A lot of people live out their entire lives without knowing – without even suspecting, really – that they are meant, truly, for far greater things.”Meratyn stared at him, for a moment, then glanced down at the board. Looked back up again. Spoke, with resignation Morgarath hadn’t expected from a boy like him, “I’m sorry to say it, my Lord, but I think for now I’m meant to lose this game without question.”It startled a laugh out of Morgarath; he had the charm of a humble man, if not overstatedly so. It would serve him well, he thought, if the boy wanted to take the path of mingling among those of higher status; then again, it was difficult to mingle with anyone as a Ranger.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Crowley. And – here.” He reached out a hand to the windowsill they were sitting beside, took one of the fruit bowls he had brought up earlier. To make conversation sweeter, in some sense. “Have an orange.”He put the bowl down on the table next to the painted board. Meratyn was eyeing the orange fruits with some curiosity. He hadn’t reached out to take it.“What is that, my Lord?”“An orange, as I said.” With the air of helpfulness about him, Morgarath plucked one of them out of the bowl, and held it out to Meratyn. Presented with the blatant offering, the boy reached out and took the fruit, slipping his hands back down under the table. Morgarath smiled. “Not a fruit that grows in Araluen – if you’ve not tasted it before, that may be why.”“No, my Lord.” Meratyn’s eyes followed his hands; he was eyeing the orange, no doubt. “I’ve never so much as heard of it.”“Few have. It cannot thrive in our land; it is far too cold,” Morgarath said, casually, and, as Meratyn was still examining the fruit, he reached out and pushed his first pawn forward on the board, the rule of firsts be damned; no army would stand and wait for their enemy to make the first move on even ground. That would be good for the boy to learn. “This desire for warmth therefore often restricts it to the tables of banquets and feasts in the homes of Lords with wealth to spare.” Meratyn noticed, naturally, that he’d begun his play, and raised a hand to push one of his pawns forward. Morgarath stifled a chuckle – it ended up diagonally to Morgarath’s. Easy prey. His attention was focused on the orange. “You may eat one, Crowley. There isn’t any need to regard it with such suspicion.”Once Morgarath took the pawn down, Meratyn blinked at the board – and it seemed that brought him back from whatever thoughts he was having, eyes sharpening to a point again. He put the orange up on the table and watched it for a moment. “Thank you, my Lord.”
It occurred to Morgarath that the boy didn’t know how to eat it. Just another thing he could teach him. “You must peel it. Once it sheds its shell, it’ll break apart in your hands.”With a hum, Meratyn did just that. Morgarath watched him work, scanned the board with the same gaze. Meratyn didn’t seem prone to distraction, otherwise; perhaps he didn’t care much for the game. His fingers seemed steady as he separated the shell from the fruit, and tore off a part of it. Narrowed hazel eyes slipped, to Morgarath’s slight surprise, over the board.
“It’s very sweet, my Lord,” he said, quietly, and brought out his knight. Morgarath raised an eyebrow.
“They are best eaten in winter,” he continued, kept his voice even, kept a small smile on his face. “I first ate it when I was a child, much the same as you. Younger, of course; I would not insult your age.”Meratyn seemed to be watching the board with intent, now, his hands folded one over the other on the table. He didn’t seem to care overmuch for the orange, and left it half-eaten on the side. “It’s well-appreciated, my Lord.”Morgarath eyed him, for a moment. As good a time as any, he supposed. He thought he might’ve been wrong, in the end – Meratyn seemed to grow quite interested in the game, once Morgarath took his first pawn.“Folk with work – the sort of work you do – grow up much faster than those of us sheltered behind castle walls. It is blissful, in some way, to be protected from any harsher wind; but it simply makes it colder to step out the very first time,” Morgarath said, quietly, and bit the inside of his cheek at Meratyn’s first blunder. He watched Morgarath’s bishops; he wasn’t using them nearly enough himself. “I felt beneath the squires, even when I was one myself; the scars they bore were foreign to me. Marks of their strength, their learning, their progress – I envied them, and I admired them.”
Meratyn glanced up at him, for a moment, eyeing, clearly, the scars that now littered his face. Morgarath smiled, a little bitter, and looked down to bring out his queen. Meratyn was easy to play, though it wasn’t a very fair game between the two of them. The boy had a scar, too – small but deep, carved over his forehead, just under the hairline. Morgarath wondered how he’d got it; there were many ways, he supposed, when one’s mother was a hound breeder and their mentor a Ranger.“My father was kind to me; too kind, perhaps, and so protected me from much I would’ve then greatly benefitted from.” He didn’t try to hide the disdain in his voice; his father had not known himself the first thing about keeping a hold on power. Or on his son, for that matter. It was how they’d gotten here, the Gorlan of today, little more than damp crossways overlaid with dust and drowning in mud. “The knowledge of our world, so to speak, which I only got to see when I became a knighted man. The world beyond the drills and tourneys, feasts and ladies; the world as it is, truly, and not the visage the blue-blooded have built up to enjoy.” Meratyn glanced up at him when he took the pawn Morgarath had all but given him, and Morgarath offered him a smile. One kind enough, he hoped. “It is your world, Crowley; I’ve loved it as long as I’ve known the concept of it. As soon as I understood what work you do to keep it that way.”Meratyn looked back down at the board. Rested his chin atop his interlaced fingers for a moment. Morgarath saw his doubt – but not in his face. His expression was even. “If the land fell into chaos, there would be little good to upkeep at all.”“You understand this intrinsically; it is what I admire in people like you. Just how vital and nevertheless thankless it is to keep up the order,” Morgarath said, and watched as Meratyn’s eyes flicked up at him. The same discomfort there, he noted, as he’d seen in Pritchard – but Meratyn did not speak up. Good. “And nevertheless, you do it.”
Meratyn shook his head. Just the slightest bit. “Us, the soldiery, the knights, my Lord.”“Of course.” Morgarath smiled, and switched his king with his tower. Hid his weakness behind a line of surrounding pawns. “I hope you don’t mind me sharing such with you: my father was a deeply unappreciative man. I try to right his wrongs by seeing past his assumptions each day; seeing into the eyes of the folk all around us, and what good they might do for the world.”“It sounds like a noble goal, my Lord,” Meratyn said, slowly. Morgarath’s move had confused him – that, for a moment, had been clear in his expression before he wiped it away. Morgarath tilted his head. Watched him still, even as Meratyn’s gaze stayed fixed on the board.“I hope it is. My forefathers have not always been shined upon kindly by life – but I hope that, whatever sunlight falls onto me, I can reflect onto the earth all of us walk on.” He sighed, leaned back – drummed his fingers against the table and smiled reassuringly at Meratyn when the boy raised his head. “But that’s plenty about my family – there will be records enough to last them centuries.” He leaned forward, laid his hands out on the table. Asked, simply – “Who is your father, Crowley?”“He was a cooper, my Lord,” Meratyn answered, with no particular feeling in his voice. Morgarath wondered how quickly Rangers learned to speak this way; wondered if Meratyn knew how similar he felt to him, in this. “Or so I was told.”Morgarath raised an eyebrow – that, he hadn’t heard. “You are an orphan, then?”Meratyn picked up a pawn, put it down, moved another piece. Morgarath elected not to tell him to touch meant to commit. The game wasn’t the point, either way. “My father wasted away shortly after I was born, but my mother lives, my Lord.”“Your mother raised you, then,” Morgarath said, gauging for any sort of feeling, any flash over Meratyn’s expression. “Who is she?”“She breeds hounds, my Lord.” Meratyn looked up, met his eyes. Looked away again quickly, perhaps frightened by the intent in Morgarath’s gaze. He added, quietly, “For hunting.”“It is strange work for a woman,” Morgarath said, and Meratyn shrugged his shoulders. They were tense. Morgarath was certain they hadn’t been, a moment ago.“She has done it all her life, my Lord.” His voice was still devoid of much of anything. No offense, no upset. Speaking, simply. Noncommittally. As though it didn’t concern him at all. “I’ve heard folk speak of her skill in training them as uncanny.”“Naturally, there are all sorts of peculiarities in the world,” Morgarath agreed, giving up on this line of questioning. Rangers were masters of walking around subjects, after all; a diplomat could meet their match in an apprentice, even one like this. And Morgarath had learned it from Stilson, eventually – if he wanted a straight answer, he needed to ask a straight question. “And you, Crowley – you did not wish to take over for your mother?”“I like dogs, my Lord.” His voice softened, just a little bit, and he hesitated over the board. “She has always said I like them too much to be any good at training them.”Morgarath hummed agreeably. Then asked, and watched him carefully – “Do you believe her?”Meratyn looked up. Morgarath could read the surprise in the shift, even if it was short-lived. “She is my mother, my Lord. Who will I trust if not my own blood?”“Our own blood can sometimes turn against us,” Morgarath warned. And even as he tried for regrettable, he couldn’t help the turn of his lips. “A rotten wound, a sickness in the veins. Sometimes blood must be left flowing to rid the body of its imperfection.” Before Meratyn could narrow his eyes too much, Morgarath leaned back, waved a hand gently in the air. Smiled a little wider. “That is, of course, entirely metaphorical. I do not mean to insult your family, Crowley – only to warn that it is always good to look past what we are used to into what may be terrible and true.”But Meratyn was not so easily settled. It was still his turn, Morgarath recalled – but the boy didn’t seem to be in a rush to make his move, looking over the board and at Morgarath. “I don’t think I fully understand your meaning, my Lord.”Morgarath smiled. Teeth behind his lips. “That’s quite alright. It is easier to recognize a flame when you’ve got yourself a burn, no?”“We’re taught to manage flames, my Lord,” Meratyn said, carefully. There was recognition in him, now, even if the conversation wasn’t quite turning out the way Morgarath had hoped. “One of the first lessons we learn.”“Is that so?” Morgarath watched him swallow. Nod. He didn’t look away.“Dry wood burns easily, my Lord. And we live quite a bit of our lives surrounded by it.”“You aim to be used to flames, then,” Morgarath suggested, and Meratyn shook his head, lightly. Red hair spilled over his shoulder; witchling, said Stilson’s voice in Morgarath’s head. Surely not – but as careful as someone threatened by a stake in conversation, certainly.“I aim to know one by sight, my Lord,” he said, and Morgarath huffed, gently, almost a chuckle. “And I aim to put it out before anyone else has to.”“What words to describe your service,” Morgarath praised him, smiling a little wider. Yes, he thought, the boy was certainly more agreeable than Pritchard. And still, already, there was a quiet in him, and his inexpressiveness, no doubt learned from his master, that Morgarath did not like at all. “I don’t think I could have said it better myself.”“I am certain you might have, my Lord.” Meratyn bowed his head, just a bit – and, it seemed, finally remembered their game, raising a hand to push his queen forward almost reluctantly.“Mm.” Morgarath watched it – and finally realized, as Meratyn pushed his queen far past the safezone, that the game mattered about the same to both of them. Meratyn was simply not bothering to try. Using the time to think. Morgarath chuckled, joined it to his words so Meratyn would not catch his amusement – “I hope it does not offend you to hear – but it is strange to meet anything less than confidence among Rangers.”“I don’t lack confidence, my Lord,” Meratyn said, rather matter-of-fact. “Pritchard says the opposite.”Morgarath hummed, refrained from taking Meratyn’s queen just yet. Surrounded him, instead. Pushed forward. Spoke, surprise imbued in his tone – “What strange teaching, to put your pupil down as such.”“He doesn’t…” Meratyn trailed off, and Morgarath kept his expression even. Meratyn looked up at him in earnest, now, and he thought that perhaps he should not have mentioned Pritchard at all, as such. “If you knew him better, my Lord, I think you’d find he’s seldom wrong about things like that.”“You agree with him, then? That you’re overconfident?” There was not much more to do now, though, than keep going down that path. Morgarath tried to ease it a little, raised his hands palms-up. Questioned him honestly. “Crowley, I hope you’ll forgive my fascination. You’re an intelligent man; does that not sound like a contradiction to you?”“Not a contradiction. Recognition,” Meratyn corrected. Morgarath could see the tension in his body, in his expression. He could push him more than this before Meratyn tried to catch him in it, though. He was certain of that. “My Lord, I know myself.”“Yes, men your age often think they do,” he conceded, nearly in jest, and moved a piece again. Meratyn did not seem to notice that they’d skipped his turn; or perhaps he simply didn’t care. Morgarath laid a hand over his chest, bowed his head a little. “You would not think it, Crowley – and please forgive me, I have been in your place once – but you are very, very young.”Meratyn’s expression alone spoke of scepticism. “It’s rare I hear it said to be a bad thing, my Lord.”Morgarath hummed. He supposed so; he himself would not have been opposed to finding himself younger one day, in the body – but certainly not in the mind, he thought, and smiled at the boy sitting opposite him. If only he knew. “It seldom is. Youth is a spring which flows best uncontained.”“But, my Lord?” Meratyn prodded, and Morgarath was glad at least for that. He caught on quickly. Wouldn’t have been a Ranger otherwise, he figured.“But a young dog should not resign itself to a chain as easily as an old one might,” he said, and watched Meratyn carefully.The boy did not raise his eyes, blinking slowly, staring at a single point on the board. Morgarath got the feeling it was not some strategy of the game he was contemplating. “You often speak in metaphors, my Lord.”“It is the speech preferred among nobility, exhausting as it may be,” Morgarath allowed, and Meratyn did look up at that, one red eyebrow raised. The expression didn’t fit him; his eyes were too big to get any wider.
“You do not think I know it to be exhausting? It is a foul and deceitful thing, to always speak one thing while thinking another.”“Then why not simply say what your mind speaks to you, my Lord?” Meratyn asked, and Morgarath laughed, allowed some real amusement to slip through.“It is not so simple,” he said, and could not have promised he would’ve preferred it another way. Not after so many years spent speaking this way – not so many spun webs later, not after so many victories his words alone had won him. Meratyn was simply invited to be yet another one of them. “To open your mouth is to enter a game of strategy; and to close it is not necessarily to capitulate. It may be a shame, but it is so. Devised by men thousands of years before you and I.”Meratyn paused, for a moment. Seemed to study Morgarath’s face. And Morgarath waited on him to ask the inevitable.
“Are we playing a game, my Lord?”Moragrath closed his eyes. Finally. “Of sorts, I suppose.”“And there are stakes, then.”
“There are always stakes, Crowley,” he said, quietly, and smiled at Meratyn. “Don’t ever let clever old men fool you into believing otherwise.”Meratyn nodded evenly, as though, in some way, he’d expected that answer. Perhaps he had. Perhaps he’d gone to Pritchard beforehand – no, that was a near-certainty – and listened to all the suspicions his master might’ve had about Morgarath. For better or for worse, he did not name them, and Morgarath was beginning to dislike the silence.Meratyn did not speak for a while longer. His eyes moved in instants from the board, to Morgarath, to the slowly lessening clouds outside.
When he leaned back, finally, Morgarath tilted his head. There was his answer, he thought.“I think you’re wrong, my Lord,” Meratyn said. Morgarath raised an eyebrow. “About the chain. It isn’t one. Merely a kinder road and a gentler thing than purposeless freedom.”Morgarath shook his head slightly, fought the frustration rising in him. Kept his voice even, his voice kind. “Don’t convince yourself of such, Crowley. You will grow to value freedom far more than you may ever think, one day.”“If such a day ever comes, my Lord, it will simply mean I no longer value whoever is at the end of my leash.” Meratyn seemed nearly relieved to speak the words. It was ridiculous, Morgarath thought – though he supposed he might’ve expected too much from a witchling son of a wild woman. “And if there’s one thing I know about hounds, my Lord, it’s that the teeth of the one which trots around the house and sleeps with the children are just as sharp as those of the one who hunts in the woods and howls at the moon. The housedog just knows when and when not to bare them.”Morgarath exhaled. Pressed his lips tightly together. “I think there is a saying, Crowley, about dogs.” He reached out, and pushed his tower one square to the side. Checkmate. It did not make his anger simmer any less. “They say a dog should not snap at the hand which feeds it,” he said, and looked up at Meratyn. He didn’t have it in him, anymore, to keep the chill from his expression. “It is something that would do you good to recall.”For what it was worth, Meratyn did bow his head again. Not that it seemed all that apologetic, since he didn’t keep his mouth shut after.“My Lord, a dog’s sense of smell is a gift of their nature,” he said, almost insistently. As though they were talking about dogs in the first place; as though he didn’t realize what he was refusing. What he was putting himself against. “It recognizes those that touch it gently and snarls at those that threaten to strike it and bind it. The promise of feeding isn’t enough to earn its loyalty.” Morgarath bit back laughter, near-incredulous. Uncertain if he wanted to send Meratyn away or keep him in the dungeons. For a moment, he wholly considered the possibility. “You must first tuck away your teeth and unwind the rope you’ve tied around its throat.” At that, Meratyn raised his head to look at him again. Wholly serious. Nearly somber. “But it is all, of course, entirely metaphorical.”Morgarath shook his head. No, he decided; Stilson was what was given to him, and Stilson would make do. He’d known it was a hassle to deal with Rangers; he’d not considered, perhaps, that he’d dealt with any other for a long time. The men from the woods had their peculiar ways embedded in their children’s bones, and it seemed even those with bodies forged of fire were not exempt from such. Blindly loyal; blind and loyal dogs.“You are a very peculiar boy, Meratyn,” Morgarath said, quietly, and motioned for him to stand. That, at least, he understood. “And I would like to say that it will make you a very good Ranger. But, and I hope you’ll forgive me, I don’t seem to be sure.”Meratyn bowed as he stepped away. Morgarath didn’t like the small smile on his face. “That is just as well, my Lord. I’m quite sure of it myself,” he said, and, if nothing else, Morgarath admitted Stilson was right in this – the boy was an enigma. “Thank you for the fruit.”
“It was a small favour,” Morgarath said, forcing a pleasant expression onto his face, even as he wished more than anything for the boy to finally get out of his sight. Waved his hand. “Run on, then. Return to your master.”If Meratyn caught the jab, he didn’t show it. Only bowed, and backed out of the room with all the manners demanded of a boy from the woods. “Good night, my Lord.”Once the door shut, Morgarath sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose again. He’d just gotten over Stilson’s usual nonsense, and now a boy thought he could refuse his offer and just return to the woods in his fief with a Baron who wasn’t much more than a boy himself.
What peculiar times.Damned Rangers, echoed the curse in his mind. Twice-damned Rangers and their thrice-damned Commandant, holed up in Araluen and watching over the old King with the eye of a hawk.
But they’d get what was coming to them, in the end. Just a few more weeks, he thought. Just a few more weeks, and he can begin to be rid of the cursed creatures altogether.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

There had been people around him, if only in brief flashes of colour. There one moment and gone the next. Some speaking to him with a stilted gentleness that struck him as utterly useless; he did not reply to them. Others were quiet. Did not dare utter a word. And he spoke nothing first, either.And so the hours passed under a veil of silence and pain.He knew of his broken bones. Knew of the swelling of blood under his skin. He couldn’t see very well, and there was a ringing in his ears that made both words and thoughts difficult to comprehend. Whenever he tried to move, a sharp pain would pierce his body anew, and he’d give up on it. Whoever had carried him had dripped water on his lips. Bandaged him. As though any of it mattered.Morgarath was dying.He felt, oddly enough, little outrage at such. Little of anything, truly. Not like he’d presumed hours earlier, while considering what would happen if they were to lose. He’d discarded the thought; he always fought like a wounded animal. He had presumed that, if he was to fail, he would certainly not live to see such. But it seemed, now, that his own wounded animal was to blame, trampling him under its hooves, taking away his victory and life.The people – not his own, he recognized eventually – tended to him for hours, and he lay quiet and unmoving. Not a groan to grace their ears. He had never been the sort to entertain a captor. But he could feel now a strange heaviness spread over his body – and he was tired, too tired to feel even the anger. Too tired to feel the full extent of the pain. Too tired, perhaps, to know when his last moment would come at all.He heard the battle horns, outside. Was listening to them still. The weeping and the laughter, mixing into one deafening wall of voices crashing into one another. It was too loud, he thought distantly; he disliked the noise. The sentiment came as a passing notion, floated away from him before he could focus on it. Once, he may have shouted for all of it to stop.He was not delirious enough to be under the illusion that he held any such power here. Still, he may have shouted – may have thrashed and fought, if only his body had not felt so heavy. If only his blood hadn’t been slowing in his veins.It took him a while to notice that someone was in the war tent with him. Longer still to notice the mock-up of a crown atop its wearer’s helmet, the helm itself held securely under his arm. It took him longer still to glance up at the man’s face and tug his torn lips up into some semblance of a smile.He could taste souring blood in his own mouth. It was getting difficult to breathe.“My King,” he greeted the man, and one of his arms dropped down from the cot he was stretched out on. The world was spinning, and he couldn’t hide the note of ruin in his voice. Still, what silk he could summon to drape over his tone came a little more easily, prompted by years of such speech – of planning, the delight of victory and bitterness of failure alike. “I don’t presume you’re here to recount my sins to me. Even you should know how pointless such a thing would be now.”Duncan wasn’t bothering to hide the disdain in his expression. Good, Morgarath thought. If only he’d managed in battle.“You know nothing of reason, Morgarath,” Duncan spoke, and his bared and bandaged fingers paled with the grip on his helmet. “You’ve lost. You were always going to lose. Didn’t you know such?”“In my rather long life, I’ve found that blindly following fate leads only to ruin.” Morgarath pulled his smile wider out at the corners, bared his red-stained teeth. Let them see him, then, if he had no choice in such. Let him stay with them at least in their troubled dreamings.
“It doesn’t seem to be what led you to yours.” Duncan’s voice was trembling – but he was far too old, now, for it to mean anything resembling fear, gone far from the young prince that once held his father’s longsword in an unsteady grip. Morgarath recognized it in the shaking of his own hands after a skirmish; something between anger, restlessness, and the rush of the battle he’d just survived.He supposed he’d survived this one, too. Even if he would not live through the aftermath.“No. No, it doesn’t,” he conceded. The entire world was beginning to feel strangely airy, as though his hearing itself was succumbing to the white noise surrounding him. “Has it led you here, Your Majesty?”“I came of my own volition.” Duncan glanced to the side – Morgarath didn’t follow his gaze, didn’t care to spend the effort for it – and then looked back at Morgarath. Said, plainly, “The physicians don’t believe you’ll make it through the night.”If he had expected this news to shock Morgarath, well, that was an issue for him to sort out on his own. Morgarath could’ve sensed it, could sense it – every piece of his body giving in, the burn and flutter of his flame betraying him. “Yes, it rather feels that way as well.”Suddenly, someone was in his line of sight, stepping forward – he squinted, and could just discern an armored person in front of Duncan. Aside from that, all Morgarath could make out were the tired eyes glimmering from the cut of the visor. Steely, still, as they demanded, “Do not interrupt the King or I will carve out your tongue and feed it down your throat.”Morgarath hummed. Smiled a little wider. He recalled, when he was younger, holding the burning tongs. Hearing the screams and then the gurgling of something flooding the throat. It was usually their own blood. “I always did wonder how that felt.”“On the morrow – if you see the sunrise, that is – you will be hanged,” Duncan finished, his voice evened out. And Morgarath found that it all seemed entirely arbitrary. He wouldn’t live that long, he knew – could feel it as clearly as the air filling his lungs for the time being, open wounds trailing all over his body, pulsing his lifeblood away. “That is what I came here to say.”The fact that it was King Duncan standing in front of him wasn’t lost on him just yet. He made an elaborate gesture with the arm he could still feel in lieu of a nod of his head, as though making up for his lack of etiquette.
“I’m honoured to be receiving the news from you, Your Majesty.” He smiled, and watched Duncan’s expression twist – where there had been disdain now shone hatred. Morgarath tried to hold back any sort of chuckle, even as he knew himself to be far removed from any sort of social grace, here. “Is there any reason you’re the one playing courier for me?”“Not much aside from personal satisfaction,” Duncan spat. As quickly as he’d appeared at Moragrath’s side, he turned on his heel to leave. “Don’t be so quick to feel honoured, Morgarath. The gallows need a night to be built; at dawnbreak, you’ll be strung upon them like the traitorous scum you are.” While Morgarath wondered if his expression was enough to convey the sheet disinterest he had managed to conjure up for the situation, Duncan motioned for someone else to step forward. “Commandant, once you’re finished rounding up your men, find Halt for me. See if he has news of my daughter.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”The voice was quiet, near-whispery. And the man who stayed behind as the guard and the King left was cloaked in green.Morgarath grinned, felt the flecks of blood stretch out in his lips. Atop his tongue. Waited for him to say something. It wasn’t his position to mind a prisoner; surely, there was something to speak of between them.But the man was quiet. And, finally, Morgarath thought he might speak to him. The last interesting moment of his life, perhaps.“Well, well,” he managed, quietly, and the man inclined his head like a hunter might at the snap of a dry branch. Ever-so-slightly. “Speaking of dogs…”The words launched him into a coughing fit. After he’d spat up enough blood and mucus, when he’d wiped his mouth with his torn sleeve, he saw that the man hadn’t moved at all. And Morgarath couldn’t quite hide his bitter amusement. “Come now, Ranger Commandant, don’t just lurk there. Though I suppose it’s par for the course for you to linger in doorways, mm?”
The man stepped into the light. Slowly, easily. Most importantly, with not a single sound. Morgarath watched him, his eyes wishing more than anything to close.He found that Meratyn did not look like the same person he remembered at all. Certainly, he was no longer the boy he’d met so many years ago to offer his guidance.For one, he was a man grown. But that was the least notable change about him.
The oakleaf on his chest was cleaned for battle, Morgarath noted. There was no fear, he supposed, for any enemy to see him – by the time they saw the Ranger, the Ranger’s arrow would have found them. Meratyn’s quiver was full of them, as red-feathered as his own head.His hair had grown long, dirtied now with the mud and blood of war, the lower half of his face hidden by a beard just long enough to pull into a slender braid. He had his own array of scars, now, of knives and of swords and a large split over his eye and forehead that made the fact both of his eyes were intact seem quite impressive. Still his eyes had not stayed quite the same; there were lines about them, borne of age and frowning, and Morgarath felt, for the first time in many years, rather old.“I presume you aren’t here to gloat,” he murmured. “You certainly don’t need me here to do it.” The pain was sharpening, slowly. Especially in his legs. Perhaps the rush was wearing off. Meratyn watched him with a strange look in his hazel eyes. As though waiting for him to finish talking. Morgarath grimaced, waved a hand. Just a little bit. “Perhaps you are. Well, in that case, go right ahead. You’ve won.”“We’ve won.” The continued quiet of his tone surprised him. Meratyn had not seemed a quiet child. Then again, he was no longer a child. And he spoke to Morgarath today of his failures, with some trace of anger in his eyes that Morgarath had not seen before, spitting the words out one after another like a fanged snake striking, again and again and again. “You speak of fate with a tongue that deserves to be sliced and taken from your mouth. The very ground in Araluen detests your presence.”Morgarath smiled, just a little bit. Good, he thought – good, that he had come with his hatred. Morgarath had longed to see it. Longed to be able to watch them struggle under what he’d done. In different circumstances, surely; after his own victory, not this humiliating defeat.But he’d always known to take what he could get. And he’d take this with what gratitude he still held in his crushed chest. Soak in the steely cold of Meratyn’s eyes.
As cold, he noted, as the Ranger’s dagger he kept his hand on in its sheath. A Seax, if he wasn’t mistaken, taken long ago from the Skandians and repurposed, among other things, to cut flesh and bathe in blood. Meratyn’s hand was steady on it, years of practiced use behind the gesture. He’d learned to reach for his weapons, Morgarath suspected, and attributed it to just another trait of a man at war.But the heavy yew bow on his shoulder was hanging loose, even if it remained strung. Morgarath was certain Meratyn could nock an arrow even in the cramped tent; but his hand on the knife was far more telling. And he couldn’t muster up any sort of surprise at the sight. Only curiosity.
“Are you here to do it, then? Be the sliver of comeuppance tied to this – string of fate you keep tugging on? Your King might not appreciate it,” he warned, quietly, baring all his bloodied teeth. Meratyn was looking at him with open disgust, and he wasn’t quite sure what to think of it. The man hadn’t moved, after all. He goaded, just a little, almost gently – “Though I’m certain you have your reasons. Plenty of your men must’ve died in the skirmishes too, didn’t they?”He watched, then, as Meratyn’s face darkened. Smiled – he wasn’t wrong, then. Wondered how many Rangers they were missing; among the King’s thousands of knights, they were barely more than a green-clad speck. And yet – he was glad for Meratyn’s survival, if only so the man could come here and spare him the night of undoubtable torment, and further humiliation in the morning.
“I am rather glad to hear that the Hibernian survived, though. I would’ve been sorely disappointed to have sent a Kalkara after the man only for him to die on some spear,” he added, smiling – he’d not seen any black-feathered arrows in battle, and perhaps he should’ve been glad for it. Or not – after all, perhaps falling with one through his throat and being devoured by his own army would’ve been more dignified than this.
And still, the man hadn’t moved. Hadn’t so much as twitched, even as his hand remained wrapped around his knife.
“Your silence intrigues me, Commandant,” Morgarath said, letting his eyes finally drop down to the knife with a blatant point. “Are you letting me get my last words out before you cut my throat?”At that, Meratyn tilted his head. His eyes, dark in the dim light of the tent, didn’t shift downward. And he sounded entirely unburdened, when he spoke.
“I won’t kill you, Morgarath.”It gave Morgarath pause, for just a moment. Just enough to flick his eyes up to Meratyn’s and find the same hatred there he was so used to seeing. He smiled, again – it was getting harder and harder to pull his lips upward, he noticed. Or into any expression, for that matter.“Now, that’s not the purpose I saw in your eyes when you came in,” he said, quietly, and Meratyn shifted forward. Just a little bit. Morgarath raised an eyebrow. It hurt. “One can tell an awful lot from just another’s eyes, I’d have you know.”“I won’t kill you doesn’t mean I don’t want you dead,” Meratyn said, with such ease in his voice one might’ve thought he was talking of food or family. Morgarath had to hand that to him – he’d learned the trade of a Ranger well, his face a mask torn only in the spots he wanted to bare and his voice an easy mould into whatever would allow him to seep beneath the shields of his opponent. Morgarath had never liked speaking to Rangers as such – had never liked the games they played, more secretive than nobles and more indirect than diplomats. “There is an important distinction. That’s why I’m here.”“To watch the rot of my wounds?” Morgarath asked him, and when Meratyn’s expression shifted only into slight exasperation, he sank back into the cloth that his makeshift bed was constructed of. “It pains me to say, I’ll admit – I did not think you the sort of man to refuse another a dignified death.”“I am not,” Meratyn said, quietly. There was a shine in his eyes that Morgarath had to look twice at to recognize. It did not fit him – not as Morgarath remembered him. But his face had aged, too, to accommodate this sort of willful savagery all men grew into eventually. “You don’t need to know me to think that. And you do not know me.” He took a step forward, slow, near-meandering. No rush in his movements – Morgarath supposed he had the time, after all. “You never did at all.”He took another step, and, to Morgarath’s slight surprise, leaned gently against the pole that kept the tent standing. Almost as though he was waiting for something.
And as his eyes slipped over Morgarath’s broken body, Morgarath realized what it was he was waiting for. Why he was watching him so, all but idly, almost as though he was enjoying the sight.And Morgarath wasn’t certain if the fact that Meratyn was watching him die with the kind of pleasure he himself had once delighted in amused or insulted him. He felt a little bit of both, he supposed.“I do think I know you, Commandant,” he said, finally, unbothered by the doubtful rise of one of Meratyn’s thick brows. How turned the tables, he thought, and how changed the men. “Just a little bit – if only enough to recognize your cruelty.”There was a moment of silence, and, for a blink of time, Morgarath allowed his eyes to slip shut. Behind his eyelids, he saw red, and it seemed that with each moment the tension in his muscles made the ache in his body worse. He wanted silence, for a moment. Just for a moment.
“I can tell you why that is.” He tore his eyes open and suddenly Meratyn was standing up straight again, and then crouching down, eye-to-eye with him. Morgarath would’ve hid his startling at the sudden shift, but his body, it seemed, did not wish to convey even the basest feeling. Meratyn’s eyes were too dark, this close, and too hollow. And Morgarath couldn’t see the man behind them at all. “Two decades ago, you tried to sway me into betraying my master. Fifteen years ago, you tried to sway my brother by the woods to betray me. And when he did not, Morgarath, you had my master torn apart for your own enjoyment.”
He recognized the chill in Meratyn’s voice, recognized that the man longed, after all, to sink that dagger of his into Morgarath’s chest. And still he knew he would not, and that discomforted Morgarath, somewhat. As though Meratyn knew it would be giving Morgarath what he wanted.
He could barely remember it now, the killing of Pritchard. A small obstacle, he’d thought, in his escape from captivity; and though he knew he’d be hunted by Meratyn and the Hibernian for it, he couldn’t have cared less, then. They would be grieving boys trying to chase after an army alone, if they were less clever than Morgarath gave them credit for. And if they were not, they would simply stay behind. One way or the other, the old Ranger that gave him so much trouble would be dead at last, and Morgarath, freed, would be untouchable. For a while, he’d certainly felt it.But Meratyn was here now, a man grown and a Ranger Commandant, holding the blade to Morgarath’s throat and refusing to cut it. Morgarath wondered if he’d killed Stilson with it – or if they’d kept him somewhere in the King’s dungeons to live out the rest of his miserable life in the dark. But Stilson was a rat well-suited to the shadows, he thought. If he had survived this long, he would survive the rest.Morgarath wasn’t certain if the thought brought him some sort of comfort or otherwise bitterness. A bit of both, perhaps, though it was difficult to distinguish the two now. Either way, it did not evoke envy.“If I am cruel, it is because I remain a houndsbreeder’s son,” Meratyn said, more of that cold calm cutting through the anger in his voice, and Morgarath found that he was worse than cruel, worse than murderous. He was just the same as Morgarath himself. Speaking inevitabilities and hiding his own displeasure. “You are a feral dog, Morgarath. And feral dogs can only be reined in by two means – cruelty, or a knife.”“And that is just what you did, you suppose?” Morgarath murmured, and looked over the man closer, as attentively as his closing eyes would allow. And he found himself there – not only in the reflection of his eyes, but in the carefully steeled lines of his face, the steadiness of his hands, and the anger. All the anger.In some way, Morgarath supposed it was amusing. That he’d refused Morgarath so vehemently, all those years ago, and ended up just like him, in the end.He suspected Meratyn would deny it. And he truly did not have any more blood in him to boil over an argument now.“No. Fate put you down, and I can’t even claim my hand was guiding it,” Meratyn said, calmly. And, to his credit, he did not seem so caught up over it. Perhaps that was the difference between them. That he did not care to be the killer; only for death to be brought regardless. It was a source of satisfaction Morgarath had never been willing to give up. “Not for my lack of trying. But here’s the beauty of it – it was not a Knight that killed you, did you know?” Meratyn’s eyes were staring through him, and Morgarath only hummed, noncommittal. “It was an apprentice.”
Morgarath tried to remember the man – or the boy, he supposed. He hadn’t seen much past the sun-struck armour, but his voice had been too high for a man. It had shaken too much. And the sword in his hand had looked far too unsteady. “He played the part well enough.”Meratyn smiled. He had rather pointed canines, and he seemed to stretch his lips too far. It wasn’t a pleasant expression, but it fit him. Fit his witchling hair, his freckle-speckled and scar-marred face.“His name is Horace. He will live.” He sounded all but fond; even so, Morgarath doubted he so much as knew the boy. Though he supposed now they might all know him; as Morgarath’s killer, if nothing else. “Some broken bones. Some scrapes, some bruises. But he will live. May even pick up a sword at the end of it, too, get to be the Knight – today certainly earned him that.”
Morgarath would’ve sneered at it, days ago. Snarled at the idea and bared his teeth and blade. Now, he felt only tired, and somewhat exasperated. “Being the cause of my killer’s knighting. I suppose the gods thought that would be humorous.”“Can’t you see it? How fateful that is?” Meratyn asked him, leaning close. He was incredulous. Something about the expression seemed off, as though he was holding laughter back just behind his teeth. Morgarath supposed that wouldn’t have been that strange. “You didn’t sway me. Nor Halt, no. But all your people, you took them in young. You taught them to do your bidding, young. Youth is a fountain; I remember what you told me. It stuck with me. Youth is a stream that needs a guiding touch. Well – you guided them, didn’t you?”No; it was not laughter he was hiding. It was intent. And Morgarath recognized, again, that Meratyn wanted to kill him. Was showing him that in all he said and did, and yet still refused the temptation.“You danced them right into their deaths down there among the Wargals. And if not now, then earlier still. While they were still young. Because folk needed to either be young or madmen to bow to you.”Morgarath wondered how many of his own men had come to him from Meratyn. Not so many, he would’ve guessed; Meratyn, as it turned out, had the strange ability to keep his allies very close to his chest, and to do so very quietly. “And your point in all this, Commandant?”“My point is that you were killed by a man younger than I was when I first laid my eyes upon you,” Meratyn said, and leaned back. Closed his eyes, for a moment, and huffed a trembling sound that, now, sounded just a little like laughter. “And I will confess that that is – deeply, deeply exhilarating to me.”“I would not have thought you the type to celebrate death,” Morgarath said, even as he himself felt how redundant the words were.“And I reiterate, my Lord – “ Meratyn was smiling, the expression crooked and pulling at his scars. Morgarath felt as though it was the most open one he’d seen from him. “That you knew me never, and not at all.”“Is that why you came, Ranger Commandant?” he asked, forcing one last attempt to tilt his head, to see through him. Even as the only thing he saw, plainly and clearly, was how good Meratyn had become at hiding from men like him. “To tell me that I underestimated you?”“No. No, you knew you underestimated me when you first saw me, after Pritchard’s banishment. And if you did not, you were a fool.” Meratyn moved to the side, and, to Morgarath’s surprise, shifted down to sit on the ground by his bedside. Folded his legs underneath himself, pulled out his seax, and placed it almost serenely in his lap. “I came here to see the look in your eyes as you die.”There were flecks of colour splattered over the knife’s blade, Morgarath noticed. Meratyn seemed to as well, as he wiped the blood off with the corner of his cloak a moment later.“Might have to wait for that a little while, Commandant,” Morgarath said, and hoped the growing weakness of his voice might’ve masked its bitterness. “Since you refuse me the small mercy of your dagger.”“I figure I’ve extended small mercies for far too long.” Meratyn turned his head, looked up at him. Even from below – Meratyn had stayed quite humble in height, at least – it occurred to Morgarath that he must have looked rather pathetic. Distantly, he supposed it ought to have humiliated him. Perhaps the loss of blood took other things with it, after all. Some semblance of understanding – understanding, though not sympathy – seemed to pass over Meratyn’s face. “And, please, don’t worry about wasting my time, my Lord. Men often sit with dying dogs, after all.”“I recall you speaking of them, all those years ago. That you were too kind to train your own.” He ignored the near-mockery Meratyn made of his title. Rangers had never understood blue blood, it seemed, despite serving it for so many decades, and perhaps that was what had kept Meratyn alive through all those years. Alive and a Ranger, in spite of Morgarath’s best efforts. “That your hand was too gentle. Has that changed, Commandant?”“Not so greatly, I wouldn’t say. I disagreed staunchly with your beliefs, but some of your words were true then, I believe.” Meratyn smiled again, just a little, as he scrubbed at a patch of dried blood on his thumb. Morgarath watched the deep cuts of the bowstring in his fingers redden, then whiten. How many arrows had he put through the throats and eyes of Morgarath’s allies, the past few days? “I didn’t yet know the man I would be at all.”Outwardly, Meratyn did not seem cruel. Even with the wicked red hair, with the flecks of blood in his beard, with the soft voice and laughter that seemed to rumble from somewhere deep within his chest. And it was freeing, in some way, to see past his steel-masked eyes, and to know that even death had not taken Morgarath’s sight.
He claimed to reject Morgarath’s words in their entirety – and yet, here they were. Cruel men on different sides of dying.
Because all men had to grow up cruel – and if they did not grow up cruel, then they did not grow up at all.In spite of himself, Morgarath tipped his head back, coughed back the blood in his throat, and began to laugh.