Woven Steel

CHAPTER 6: Bottomless

Lord Alrine Moray sat alone in the hall of his fathers, drinking, reminiscing, and dying.

The fire in his hearth was burning, which meant he must have fed it sometime during the night. He did not remember doing so, but no one else could have done it. He thought he had run out of firewood days ago, but then again the hall was full of broken, splintered chairs and trestle tables. It was conceivable, quite likely even- that sometime during the night he had busted a few up and thrown them in the hearth.

 The timorous fire did little to the warm the wide, cavernous hall. Even though it was daytime now- Moray could tell by the silver sliver of light coming in underneath the crack of the door- the air was still bitter cold. It was probably snowing outside. It was late enough in the year for it. Moray hall was perched halfway up Mont Uaine, looking over a narrow little valley carved by a rushing stream. This time of year, the white poplars that lined the sides of the valley would be turning from gold to blood red.

All of it bore his name- The valley, the river that made it, the village that lined the banks of the river, the hall and towerhouse that looked over the rest of it- Moray, Moray, Moray. Yet he felt no connection to the place. He never had. If he reckoned up his life, not by count of years but by intensity of experience, he had spent almost all of it elsewhere.

Riding the bridge at Metsamor- now that was living. His brothers-in-arms on either side of him, their horses pressed tight against each other as they pushed down the bridge. The pathetic townsmen had crumbled before them. They hadn't even been soldiers, really, just shopkeepers  and students in bits of rusty armor, timidly shoving spears and billhooks at the four mounted knights. Moray and his comrades had killed them by hundreds- trampling them, cutting them down, driving them screaming over the rails of the bridge and into brown tidal water below.

Lord Arline counted that as his first real fight. He had had ridden away unhurt but bone tired, barely able to lift his sword arm. His horse had been wet up to the neck with rebel blood. His hair, now thin and gray, had been thick and jet-black. His beard, now a tangled mess hanging halfway to his belly, had been wispy and slight. Sir Cayn the Red had teased him about it, he remembered. The burly southerner had called him "Maid Moray" among other colorful epithets- right up until the day Arline had unhorsed him.

That had been at the Empress's jubilee tournament. A torrid summer day, with the dust stirring in the dry air every time the horses galloped down the rail. A thousand knights had come from every corner of the empire to boil inside their armor and sweat buckets while they waited their turn to ride a tilt for Her Perfection's amusement. Arline had not wasted his chance. He had struck Cayn on the side of the helmet, spinning the big man off his horse and down to the dirt. The bastard had completely lost the hearing in his right ear after that. Served him right. Arline still remembered looking over the Empress and seeing the plump little woman clapping her hands in an endearingly giddy and girlish way, her arms beating soft and quick like the wings of a hummingbird.

Lord Arline took a hearty drink from his silver wine cup as he remembered. As always, it had refilled itself before he had set it back down on the table. The exact amount of vermillion colored wine that he just drank bubbled back into the glass from-well, somewhere. He often wondered if he was stealing wine from some other poor sod on the opposite side of the world. The Bottomless, his father had called it. His legacy. His birthright. Other lords had swords that never dulled, or armor that let them walk through fire. Oh well. At least it was convenient for drinking oneself to death. He didn't even have to get up.

He was unsure exactly how long he had been sitting alone in his cold, empty hall. The servants had all gone weeks ago, taking most of his silverware and furnishings with them. His third wife had gone shortly after, taking the rest. She had run away with a troupe of travelling minstrels. Minstrels, of all things! That still surprised him in a distant kind of way. She had always seemed such a sour, joyless woman to him. He had not even known she liked music. Arline shrugged, thinking of her, and toasted her health.