Chapter 29
An Understanding
After Clark left Bruce, he resumed his walk to the library. When he knocked on the door, he received a surprised greeting from the lord of the manor.
"Well, hello, Sir Clark. It's a pleasure to see you at some time other than a meal. I figured my daughter was going to end up monopolizing all your free time."
"Most, your Lordship, but not all." Clark gestured to a finely carved chess set that sat on a small game table nearby. "Lana tells me you play a skilled game of chess."
"I have my moments," Lewis allowed.
"Would you favor me with a game then, your Lordship?"
The two men sat down to play and few words were spoken during the first half hour of the game. Lana came to the door once to check up on her men, and backed away unnoticed when she saw them engrossed by their game. It wasn't until Lewis was sure he was going to lose the first game that he began to talk.
"This game has been over for ten moves. I resign." He suited his actions to his words by reaching for his king and tipping it over on the board. As they set the pieces up on the board again, this time giving Clark the white pieces, Lewis asked, "So what caused you to search me out at this time of night? If it was business, I'd expect for you to find me in the middle of the day while I'm working…seeing you here now, when I'm relaxing, especially with the way you and Lana keep looking at each other, makes me decidedly nervous."
"I don't deny how I feel about Lana, your Lordship, but she's not what I've come here to talk about…at least, she's not all I've come here to talk about." Thinking this conversation could cover topics best left unheard by outside ears, Clark cast a dome of silence around them as the conversation continued.
Lord Lang nodded in agreement when he saw the purple glow in Clark's eyes as he cast the spell. "No? What then?"
"The Harvest Ball," Clark said simply.
"Why? Lana's going, thanks mostly to her stubborn protest against me keeping you two apart, and you aren't going. And don't think I can get you in either. If so, I'd be wrangling an invitation for Lois, who needs the exposure, or even Alicia, who would die to finally get to try her wings."
"How about both?"
Lord Lang said nothing, but raised his eyebrows in a show of polite interest.
"Prince Harold, who is well known to me, told me he was going to invite me to the Harvest Ball. The invitation is to arrive tomorrow by special courier, and despite my preference for remaining as private as I can after that incident on the road, this is an invitation I cannot safely ignore. Someone at the palace would be sure to comment on the self-possessed knight who dismissed such an important invitation.
"When Sir Bruce learned of this public engagement, he became worried I would be inside the palace with my guards outside, so I promised to use my connection to Harry to get him an invitation also.
"Thing is, in Krakovia, those invites come with obligations to find proper escorts." Clark shook his head slightly. "At least back home we just have to deal with dance cards."
"I know. You can't get stuck with a bad match all night long that way. Much more civilized…but, we are here and thus have to do it their way."
"Which brings me to my point. Bruce would like to ask Lady Lois to accompany him, and I would like to ask the same of Lady Alicia. We don't want this becoming public knowledge until the invitations actually arrive, just in case Harry forgets mine and thus keeps me from relaying my request to his courier for Bruce, but both of us are asking for your permission to ask your daughters.
"Oh, and if you, and they, say yes…we'd also like to borrow your carriage, a team of horses, a driver, and footmen. The whole works."
"Is that all?"
"Mmm…yeah, I think so…unless you're ready for me to talk with you about Lana now."
Lewis closed his eyes and rested his forehead in his hands. "Oh God. What now?"
"It has come to my attention that you intend to find Lana a husband as soon as possible."
"That's correct. She's already invested too much of herself into a relationship, with you, that has no good ending. The sooner I get her permanently settled, the better."
"When I first heard that, my immediate reaction was to send you a letter in my capacity as the Duke of Borussia that would forbid you from making marriage contracts of any kind for any of your daughters."
"But you're still a minor…oh shit. You were a minor until I knighted you. And as I owe fealty to the Count of Ostfalen, who in turn owes fealty to you as the Duke of Borussia, approval of any and all potential marriages in my family is up to you."
"Yeah, it is. But I've thought better of that letter. You can make all the arrangements for Lois and Alicia that you choose to, but I will block any attempt to attach Lana to anyone until the rebellion is over and I've had a proper chance to convince my parents that Lana is the bride for me. Remember, no betrothal contract is valid without my seal and signature on it."
"You're actually serious about making my daughter the next Queen of Alemannia." Lord Lang looked like he was caught somewhere between disbelief and awe. My little Lana…Queen Lana. Lewis was so caught up in that idea that he failed to make the mental leap to the next generation, so Clark did it for him.
"Yes, I am…and that would also make Lana's firstborn son, your grandson, my successor as king." Lewis got a stupid grin that just wouldn't go away. "King Kal-El and Queen Lana. I fully intend to make it happen somehow, someway. Just please don't try to take her from me first."
"Okay…until you've had a chance to win over your parents, I won't even try to set her up with a marriage. But how on Earth do you intend to…?" Lewis held his hands high in the air above his head, palms facing outward, and dipped his head. "Wait a minute, I do not want to know. Just get it done."
"Thank you." Clark looked down at the pristine chessboard, and slid his king pawn two spaces forward. Having succeeded at his mission for the evening, an exuberant Clark felt like playing aggressively as he launched his pieces into a wild variant of the King's Gambit.
Lewis followed suit, sliding his black King's pawn forward two squares also. "You do know your parents will soil themselves when you tell them you wish to marry Lana instead of some princess with a large dowry."
"Yeah, they will. I hope they'll give me the chance to explain, and then give Lana the chance to prove herself. I swear five minutes alone with Lana should be enough to convince anyone."
While Clark had spent the day dancing and then talking to Harry and Lana, several hundred miles to the northwest, his sister Mara was living an idyllic life. The weather in Anglia was moderate, a welcome respite for her ladies from the heat of Alemannia, even though Mara herself didn't notice the change.
What she did notice was her host going to some lengths to entertain her. The Anglian noble ladies that joined her every day were a treat. After her first few days at court, when the people in charge learned what Mara was like, those ladies seem to have been drawn from those with the sharpest minds and most punishing wits, because Mara thoroughly enjoyed their company.
Mara didn't hunt for deer or boar like the men did, she didn't like that sort of aggressive riding through sometimes dense thickets of trees, but she did like to go hawking. She had a pair of prized peregrine falcons and took every chance she had to exercise them.
At least once a week, King Richard and a modest retinue would come along and join her hunt. He had a goshawk of his own, and they would spend a few hours at it before returning to the castle.
As Richard and Mara rode side by side, Mara slowly rolled the sleeve of her dress down her arm, before tying it snugly around her wrist. Richard himself had worn a thick, very tough leather vambrace for his goshawk to perch on so it's talons wouldn't maul his skin. He marveled that such a delicately beautiful young woman could let her peregrines land on either bare forearm with no harm.
"I've known of your people's attributes since I was small, Mara," Richard said, "but until now, I'd never seen them in action. I have to admit to wanting to defend you as your falcons swept in to perch on your arms. I mean, I kept expecting them to mangle your arms."
"No Kryptonians in Anglia, Richard?" Mara asked.
"No, none. Apparently your people concentrated on conquering the continents before coming out here, and then The Great Schism must have happened before the first Kryptonians could turn their attention to us."
Evening meals turned into long banquets with varying forms of entertainers each night. A traveling acting troupe might put on a few of their best plays one night, a lutist might sing heartachingly beautiful songs of bravery and chivalrous love the next night, while a craggy, old storyteller might have the crowd spellbound the next night with his tales that were always on the edge of being too fantastic to be believed.
As for what was happening back on the distant continent, Mara knew even less than her brother did. The distance was farther, and there were far fewer travelers between the island kingdom of Anglia and Alemannia. Still, Richard had standing orders for any word of the Alemanni rebellion to be brought directly to the princess first, and then to him.
All of these little attentions took the embers of Mara's initial interest in Richard and fanned them into a small flame. It glowed brightly and hopefully, but still was in danger of being snuffed out. And as for Richard, he was finding more to like than just Mara's incomparable beauty. She never told him what she thought he wanted to hear, instead, she told him what she thought. When they played board games like chess or backgammon, she didn't try to stroke his ego by allowing him to win; she tried to try to kick his ass, and did more often than not.
As the mass of men and women rode back from a hawking expedition one day, a couple of Richard's closest confidants rode off with him at some distance from the milling throng and began to question him closely.
"What's it like to be pursuing a woman instead of having her throw herself at your feet, Richard?" one Baron Howard asked.
"I feel more like a man and less like a king. To know a woman is completely unimpressed by my titles, and yet seems to be interested anyway, is exhilarating."
"What I want to know," Baron Percy asked, "is what it's like pursuing a woman who could break you in half, literally, without even breathing hard."
"What I want to know," Richard replied quietly, "is how a woman that strong and tough, can seem so soft, feminine, and utterly appealing…and then there's her brains."
While King Richard was pondering his question, Mara's parents were involved in asking more serious questions. The six Kryptonian men who had been captured during their attempt at kidnapping the king and queen were guilty of treason, and as such, were subject to immediate execution. Jor-El and Lara, however, decided to hold onto the six men in dark prison cells deep within the granite below Mecklenberg Castle, and use them as bargaining chips.
Once the six men had all lost their solar energy to the poisonous power of the green Kryptonite and were far underground, away from any possibility of seeing the sun, there was no harm in removing the green Kryptonite from them as there was no sun available to reenergize them. Kept in common cells, the six men were guarded by nothing more than the Duke of Salzerei's jailors as a sign of contempt for their now useless Kryptonian abilities.
Outside the castle, Dru-Zod kept his cavalry detachment on patrol to help prevent any escapes by the king and queen, who he believed had been in the lead-lined carriage. He wasn't sure, but definitely couldn't afford to take a chance, so, as he waited for the rest of his large army to catch up with him over the next week, Zod reviewed the terrain around the castle and made plans to detach a small part of his army to secure the approaches to the castle and keep the monarchs bottled up inside, in effect, putting the castle under siege.
Zod then spent time arranging a rudimentary supply line for the besieging troops as he waited for his scouts and spies to bring him word of the location of the loyalist army. He needed to find that army and smash it before it's very existence encouraged more wavering nobles to support Jor-El.
Using a few of his remaining Kryptonians as scouts, and having them flying high overhead for safety, Zod quickly learned where his enemies were massing and got his reorganized army on the road. This time he'd be able to keep his army together, as the need for speed wasn't nearly as great.
The loyalist army was commanded by another loyal duke, this one the Duke of Pannonia, Dax-Ur. He knew he only had a limited amount of time to integrate the various smaller armies into one homogenous whole, before Zod would be after him. It didn't help matters that he had no idea where any member of the royal family was located. He figured it would help his forces to have a member of the royal family among them so they'd have someone tangible for which to fight.
Worst of all, from his perspective, was that the steward in charge of Borussia while Kal-El waited to come of age did not appear to be releasing Borussia's rather large army to join in the royal cause. The one message he'd gotten from the steward was that his job was to preserve Borussia to the best of his ability and to not get involved in politics.
"Damned idiot," Dax-Ur had said upon reading that message, "if he does not get involved in 'politics,' there won't a duchy for Kal-El to inherit. It will have been given to someone else by the new king."
