73 lines
4.5 KiB
Plaintext
73 lines
4.5 KiB
Plaintext
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____________________________
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\___________\_________\_____\
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\__ __ / ____/ \
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/ / _/ ___/__ _/ \
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/ / / \ / /
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\/____/_____\________/________/
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"<22><>/<2F><><EFBFBD><EFBFBD> <20><>i<EFBFBD><69> /><3E><>/>z" p<><70>z<EFBFBD><7A><EFBFBD>:
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RED-005.TXT aka
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"Bastard"
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by: Archangel
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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It's raining. The delicate drops pound my armor as I sit astride my
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chestnut-colored gelding. The sound is of a pot clanging as it catches the
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drips falling to the floor through a leaking roof.
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Although I am proud of my armor, I'm not very fond of it. To be sure it
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is impressive with it's burnished steel breastplate, brass mail undertunic,
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and steel gauntlets (although I'm wearing my leather riding gloves right now),
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but it's heavy and uncomfortable. This is not a peasant's cheap, homemade,
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padded armor. This is the armor of a nobleman... and I am a nobleman. My
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mount has been bred to perfection, finer than the Grand Duke's... even though
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I am merely the son of a duke. Or, so I believed.
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As I sit astride my horse, staring at the humble cottage twenty yards in
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front of me, I take in the details of the house. It is a peasant's dwelling.
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It has a poorly thatched roof and windows partially covered with old, waxed
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parchment. The wood is rotting and the door is cracked and in need of
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replacing. This, I had found, is my true parent's house.
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Fifteen years earlier, the inhabitants of this cottage had found a
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nobleman lying in a muddy ditch with his dead horse lying beside him, an arrow
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through its throat. The blood from the horse's neck and from the deep sword
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wound in the man's side mingled with the rain that was streaming down from
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the sky to swirl in miniature, red whirlpools around the man's head. He was
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still alive, but barely.
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The peasant brought him back to the cottage. The peasant's wife treated
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the nobleman's sword wounds for a fortnight and he gradually healed.
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After some time the man was able to move around. He told his caretakers
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he was a duke and wished to repay them for their kindness. His wife was
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barren and would bear no children. He offered to raise their infant son as a
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nobleman. The boy would, one day, succeed him as Duke. The couple was
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reluctant, yet they thought of the boy's welfare and agreed.
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I grew up thinking I was of noble blood, despite the obvious differences
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between my father and me. I thought I was better than the lowly peasants who
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groveled on the side of the road as we rode by. They're such animals.
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Everything was fine until two weeks before today, my sixteenth birthday.
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A peasant was at the castle during one of the Duke's weekly
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"complainings" (hearings in the Duke's public hall at which the peasants
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would deliver even their most mundane complaints). She had gnarled, old
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hands after her hard years as a midwife.
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I was standing at my usual place, behind and to the right of the sitting
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Duke, with my hands folded in front of me. She came forward to speak of the
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need for an animal doctor in her village, the same village where I was born
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(the pigs had some sort of infection in their hooves). As she stepped up to
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the rounded dais, she stopped in mid-step and stared at the diamond-shaped
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birthmark on the back of my hand.
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"The mark of diamonds!" she cried. "You are not the Duke's bastard!"
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"My what?! Watch your tongue, midwife or," the Duke began to say.
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Oblivious to the dangerous mood she'd set my father in, the midwife
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screamed, "You're Goodman Cedric's missing son! That mark has been in his
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family for generations! I delivered you from your mother to your father's
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arms myself!"
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"Please woman, you are raving," said the Duke.
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"No, it's true I tell you!" the midwife yelled. Voices raised in alarm
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throughout the hall....
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That's how I got here. Sitting on my horse in all my regal splendor and
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staring through the pouring rain at a peasant's cottage. I dismount and walk
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to the cracked and moldy door.
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Time to meet my mother.
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- Archangel -
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ReD
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