The Blackmuir Reign: Rivyr’s Bedtime Story
CW: recent harm to a child, whump of a minor, fantasy violence and gore, fiction-within-fiction warfare and dragon-fire, bruising/abuse mentioned, mouth trauma, fluff, big scary knight taking care of a kid
Summary: Rivyr’s first night in Castle Blackmuir, Rudy sits up with until his bed is ready.
Rudy took a swig of dark Muirish ale.
Same as last time, it was like drinking skunk and stewed mushrooms. He wiped his beard on his sleeve, wondering if he’d ever warm up to the taste, of if he’d dream of blond Perry brews and southerly strongwine the rest of his days here.
The servant cleaning up the empty pitchers and cups in the solar was giving him a wide berth, glancing at him from the corner of their eye every few seconds, as if he were a sleeping bear and not a Knight.
“When you get to the kitchens, ask if they’re ready for the boy, will you?” Rudy said, nodding to the sleeping child on the wooden bench next to him. “I’d like to get the poor thing abed. He’s exhausted.”
The servant nodded hurriedly. They snatched up the last empty cup that was not Rudy’s ale and hurried out the way they had come with their dishes.
Rudy didn’t know if the servants in the castle were skittish because Henry mistreated them, or if they were just naturally wary of a new regime. Either way most of them acted that way around him. Around all of Therrin’s men.
As the servant shut the solar door with their hip, one of the pewter cups dropped from their overful arms and clattered noisily to the floor. The Truly boy jumped out of sleep, scrambling to sit up and banging his head on the table with a sharp crack.
Rudy reached out to right him so he would not topple off the bench, but the boy flinched away from his touch with a whimper that went right to his heart like a splinter.
The Knight that had handled him in the hall today had been so rough. Truly or not, he was still a child, barely old enough to be a first-year squire. The top of his head had hardly come to the Knight’s chest. How much force could possibly be required to control him, even if he had been difficult? The yellowing bruising along his little jaw made Rudy clench his own til his teeth creaked.
He looked so confused at the turn of events that Rudy felt the urge to explain. “You’re alright,” he nodded solemnly. “A servant dropped a cup and it startled you. You’re okay, little one.”
He whimpered again softly, gingerly touching the place he’d just hit his head.
“May I see that?” Rudy asked. “You bonked yourself pretty good there.”
The boy hesitated, but slowly lifted his hand away from his rust-brown hair, newly washed and soft where it had been filthy and matted this afternoon.
Rudy sifted through his hair around the spot, looking for blood on his scalp, any concerning swelling. He watched warily through his eyelashes, like it might be a trick.
Satisfied he wasn’t hurt, Rudy ruffled the un-bumped side of his head. “You’ll live.”
“We should have a bed for you soon. They’ve just got to fetch some clean linens and make it up for you. It’ll be straw, and on the floor. But it’ll be yours, and it’ll be warm. If you need more blankets, you can ask. And if they don’t get you any, you can tell me, and I’ll see it done.”
The boy’s eyes roved over the thick black aketon Rudy wore over his tunic, landing on the sword at his hip.
“I’m a Knight,” Rudy said with a grin. The boy had not asked, but the question was in his light brown eyes, cautiously curious.
“But we’re in peacetime now. The fighting is over. You don’t have to worry. I’m just here to make sure things go how they’re supposed to. To make sure everyone’s safe. Like you.”
The boy looked at him with open hope. The splinter in Rudy’s heart burrowed deeper. He wondered if the boy’s silence was from some threat, or trauma. Perhaps Lord Burn’s Knight had broken his jaw, which would account for some of the bruising. He’d have a healer look at him tomorrow.
The boy studied the tapestry on the wall behind him, following the lines of the black dragon depicted there, spouting red fire faded yellow from years of morning sunlight.
“Do you know the story of Queen Isobel’s dragon?” Rudy asked.
He shook his head no and shivered with a sudden chill. Rudy pulled his silver trimmed cloak from his back and draped it over the boy like a blanket, tucking it around his narrow shoulders.
“Three hundred years ago, all the land north of the Draer river belonged to a wise Queen named Isobel,” he said. “And all the people loved their Queen.”
The boy laid his head on Rudy’s arm, looking at the tapestry as he began the story. It was a childlike gesture of companionship. Of guardianship, rather. Of trust.
Trust for him— a big, heavily armed Knight like the one who had hurt him and pushed him to the floor of the throne room like a calf for branding.
Rudy cleared his throat and continued.
“There was a long, terrible war, and soon the battle was on Isobel Queen’s very doorstep. This very castle we’re in now, under attack. Isobel knew if the enemy breached these walls, her Kingdom would be lost. So she called on her boldest, most loyal Knight to help her in her darkest hour.”
The Truly boy pulled the black cloak closer about his chin, tucking his legs underneath him on the bench. Rudy slowed down on the next part, making his voice as even and soothing as he could.
“The Knight’s name was Willem, and he was as famed as he was brave, and loyal to his Queen. But when Willem saw the battlefield he was dismayed, for the armies set upon them had a secret weapon. The Cyclops. You see him? Behind the trees, there’s one.”
Rudy pointed. The boy followed his finger until he found the ugly rendering of a fifteen foot monster in the tapestry, its one gorgon eye bulging, swampy green.
“There was a whole family of giant Cyclopes, ten at least. And the Cyclopes would scoop men up and bash their skulls together, and drink them like soup. They were going to tear down the archers from their scaffolds and break down the wooden doors with their fists.
“So Willem went up into the hills, to a dark and quiet cave in the side of the mountain. No one who had gone inside had ever come back out to tell the tale, and Willem stepped on men’s bones as well as dry rat husks as he entered.
“It was the lair of a great and terrible dragon, the Orm of the north.”
The dragon on the tapestry had a great spiked body like a demon, but the dished and delicate face of a seahorse. Its jaws were unhinged wide like a serpent, teeth like a hundred curved swords.
“Willem wanted something from the great Orm’s lair. A sword that was rumored to have been lost a century before, hoarded by the dragon's infamous greed. But before he found the sword, Willem came face to face with the dragon itself.”
The Truly boy lifted his chin, looking up at his storyteller in anticipation, though still he did not speak.
“‘What seek ye?’ said the dragon to the Knight. ‘I seek a lost sword’, said the Knight to the dragon. ‘A sword that will turn the tide of the war’. But the dragon didn’t care about the war, or Queen Isobel. The dragon had lived in that cave on the side of the mountain since there were no people in the valleys below, nothing but the long grass and the blowing wind.
‘For your boldness’, said the dragon, ‘I will kill you quickly with my breath of fire, and not roast you slowly, like I did the last who disturbed me.’
“Then the beast took a great breath, and its belly rumbled with the sound of a hundred roaring fires. ‘Wait!’ said the Knight. ‘What is that in your scales there? You favor one paw, as if it pains you.’
“It was the sharp head of a lance, and a foot of the handle, splintered and stuck in the dragon’s great paw.
“Try as it might, the dragon could not pull out the lance with its teeth, and the lance had pained it with every step for nigh a decade.
“Willem offered to help. The dragon was wary of a trick, and watched very closely as the Knight took a step closer, and closer, until he could feel the heat of its breath on his mail like an oven.
He took hold of the broken lance in both hands, and with one heave he removed it from where it was wedged in between those powerful scales, into the soft paw beneath.”
The boy blinked slowly, his eyes staying closed for a second longer each time. Rudy lowered his voice another notch.
“The dragon had forgotten what it was like to be free of pain. It flexed its talons and whipped its tail like an over excited puppy, so it clipped the cave ceiling and a spray of rock clattered down. ‘I know not of a sword that will help you,’ said the dragon. ‘But if you’ll climb on my back, we’ll finish the battle.’”
The boy blinked himself awake to listen.
“And they rode down the mountainside, the dragon’s wings so wide the army below thought there had been an eclipse. The Cyclopes shaded their big ugly eyes and the army looked up just in time to see the flash of dragon fire before they were turned to ashes where they stood.
And Isobel,” Rudy said, fixing the cloak when it slipped so it covered the boy's shoulder again, “reigned for forty-five more years. And good thing Willem helped that dragon, since Queen Isobel is King Therrin’s great great great grandmother.”
The boy’s breathing had evened out, and he leaned heavier into Rudy’s arm with sleep.
When the servant came back to tell him the bed was ready, Rudy scooped the Truly boy into his arms and carried him down to the servants quarters, lying him in his little straw bed and covering him warmly with blankets.