Mortance: Summer's Snow

Prologue

Servawd was without doubt the dreariest place in all of Ert. I would rather have never come anywhere near these hellish tunnels, but the king wanted an alliance, and so here I was. It won't be too long, I told myself. Make the alliance, then you can return home and lead the war.

I'd been telling myself that for twenty-six days.

Would that King William had sent me to Elsinct instead, but that was a job for his son. Prince Angus wasn't the one I would've picked for that job, but King William only trusted me to train his son in swordplay and nothing more. The Lord Commander of Sacreon's armies should've been worth more than that, but apparently not. Here I was in the hellhole that was Servawd, trying to gain an alliance that would likely gain us nothing more than a few good swords for the highborn knights.

But King William the Third had raised me to my position. I was my father's son, and my father had trained and fought with him. He was a just king, as all kings should be, and he was my king. My king had ordered me to Servawd to procure an alliance, and so here I was.

"Ser Jon," Ser Rian called to me from across the pitiful little room we shared. "You think they'll see us today?"

"Not likely," I answered. "I'll bet my sword on that." It was basic politics, what the dwarfs were doing. In making us wait, they made us all the more anxious to leave. The more anxious we were to leave, the more likely we'd be to agree to the quickest terms laid forth by the dwarfs. I will not bend to that, I told myself. I must not fail the king.

"They should've just turned us away from the start if they didn't want to see us," the other knight pointed out. He was near my age, but with half the wisdom that came with it. "It'd be better than the waste of time this is."

"They aren't turning us away," I told him.

"So you say," Ser Rian doubted.

"Go wake Ser Thompson and Ser Fabion," I commanded. "We're trying again."

The lords of Servawd were hardly united, but that didn't matter now. Only one of them commanded their army, and all Sacreon required of the dwarfs was an army. General Henryk was the man who we planned to negotiate with. One commander could surely convince another to join his cause.

Still, it would never feel right to fight alongside a dwarf. They were a queer folk; ugly and hairy and built for forging weapons instead of using them. Even the women were half bearded themselves. They were all so short too. The value of this alliance would be in holding land on both sides of Elsinct more than anything else. Dwarfs would not make good soldiers.

I dressed myself in the royal ambassador's garb of Sacreon before going out. The gold and white and blue of Richard the Conqueror stood out starkly against the grey rocky halls of Servawd. A glorified mine was all this really was, but it would soon be Sacreon's glorified mine.

The three knights I'd been allowed joined me as I traversed the tunnels from our quarters to the home of General Henryk. Ser Rian, Ser Thompson, and Ser Fabion were nowhere near what my first choice would've been, but the best knights had to stay in Sacreon in case the worst happened. Were I not the son of the man who negotiated a horde of vir off the lands of Stonewood Keep, I would not be here.

The other knights were dressed similarly to myself. Together, we represented the power of Sacreon. Servawd would be foolish to spurn our alliance; there was no better option. I would return home with allies, and then I'd command Sacreon's armies as the Thousand-Year War resumed in Ert.

All of us knights were anxious to be gone from here. Ser Rian had a lady wife back in Esson, and he talked as though she was expecting. Ser Fabion was rumored to have someone waiting for him too, though he refused to speak of her. The only acquaintance of his I knew of was some blacksmith whose name I'd forgotten, and who was certainly not of the right sex for marriage. Ser Thompson and I were of the same ilk in this; all we were returning to was our duty. The matters of love had never held much interest to me. I had no great house whose line I needed to further, nor did I ever find a woman who piqued my interest in the way love was said to.