"I've conquered these damned lands and I get nothing in return. To the north the treacherous Writhrings and to the east the horsefucking Valemen. He will burn them all, that's what she says, that's right, that's what she says...I think my Alistar wants to murder me, that son of a whore, not good at all, for nothing, not at all..."
from
King Eddard III, Conqueror of Tyr the Storm King 6 A.T. (excerpt from a letter from his last days)
Chapter 1: The Storm Keep
"It doesn't make sense", the fat man said.
"He was mad already, no sense left in his fuckin' head.", said the one with the slightly curved nose.
Alyc stood silently besides Brother Mikel and Jannis, holding the tray with hot blueweed-tea in his scrawny hands.
He hated them. Both. With a fiery hatred. Sometimes, at night, when he couldn't sleep again, he'd wake up, sweating, having their stupid dull faces branded into his brain.
They laughed at him at mass. They laughed at him at supper in the kitchen, where all the other servants ate too.
In those dreams they laughed at him for making a mistake, over and over again.
One time, he forgot to wash his hands before touching the books in the grand library. It got dirty, from all the soot he had cleaned up from the fireplace just before. Brother Mikel and Jannis took him to the storeroom that was at the top of the Library tower and slapped him over his head with the book.
After the mass, the two Brothers would usually laugh at him, together with their equally terrible Brothers. That made Alyc especially sad. The mass was the only time in the week when he felt like he belonged.
The fat one always spat, too, Alyc noticed. But only when he began yelling. And the fat one yelled a lot.
"Get your arse over here, maggot", screamed the fat one. Alyc walked over to the two, looking at the hardwood ground. They had spilled their drinks before and there were breadcrumbs on the ground. He would need to make sure to clean it afterwards, or Mother Rosanna would get really mad with him.
"Oi, there's nothing in these. It's madness. On paper. Just throw it into the fire, it'll be more useful there".
"Whoever wrote this shit down for him should have been hanged."
"Actually, I think the King burned him."
"You shittin'."
"Yea, he burned all servants of the Church, too. Set them all on fire with the rest of his castle's servants."
"Hey maggot," said Brother Jannis. "Do you know what he did to those servants of his, eh?"
"He burned them," Alyc replied.
"N-No, fuck off, I mean, the corpses. After he burned them. Do you know what he did to their fucking corpses?". Alyc shaked his head.
"You tell him, Mikel".
The fat one grinned.
"He piled them all up in front of the castle gates- the smell was unbearable they say, it wafted through the whole castle and even down in the town they could sniff it- and he let them rot there for weeks."
Alyc felt like he could smell the rotting bodies. Or maybe it were the Brothers.
"The townspeople, they were in shock. Some went mad after a while, they began attacking the guardsmen guarding the shitpile of rotting people. At first, the good soldiers didn't know what to do, so they just shoved the citizens back and threatened them not to come any closer.
The captain of the King's guard went for an audience with the king, but the mad old moron just yelled Kill them over and over and over again..."
Brother Jannis took a sip of the blueweed-tea before continuing his story.
"So that's what they began doing...First, it was just a whiplash here, a stroke with a club there. The King's guard did not want to kill their own people, and they resisted their King's wish for as long as they could.
However, a couple of days later, people were starting to leave the city. They had packed up their things and were ready to flee, towards the land where there was clean air and not where they were safe from their once-beloved king. Some tried to overcome the guards in front of the pile of bodies, and it was there and then, that blood of innocent people was shed. Hah!"
Brother Jannis leaned back on his chair and smiled a big fat grin. He had managed what he hoped for, he had disgusted the little boy servant.
"But how does it end?", Alyc asked curiously.
Brother Jannis shrugged. "Some people were killed, a lot fled the city. Just three days later the old King died and his son reinstated the Church's law and cleaned up the mess in front of the castle gates."
Somehow, Alyc felt disappointed. He had expected something bigger, like a battle of some sorts.
"Now, don't stand there like you've seen the One and Only God himself, get on with whatever you were doing before you interrupted our work, maggot.", Brother Mikel said, clapping his hands together and returning to his texts of old books and letters.
Alyc turned around and did just that. But he kept thinking about what Brother Jannis had just told him about the old King and Alyc couldn't stop picturing the big pile of human bodies in front of the gates. He shivered.
And so Alyc made pace and once again began scrubbing the soot and dirt from the ground and dusted the bookshelves. He made sure to be extremely careful when touching the old worn-out books. So much history in these, he though to himself. How great would it have been to live through those times. Todays, there was nothing like that King was a good king and so were the people.