IP: 82.19.140.112
Posted on January 6, 2014 at 04:33:06 AM by arthur
 Arthur had been in bed when Tsi’s letter had arrived, materialising suddenly just above his head. He hadn’t been back for long, having been supervising the restoration of the half of Shaman that had taken the brunt of Mallos and Lorraine’s latest argument. Fortunately, there didn’t seem to be any lasting damaged that the deities were incapable of fixing; but it had been a long and tiring day. The King reached up and took hold of the letter. He pulled it out of the air, opened the envelope, and unfolded the sheet of paper inside. It was a long letter...a very long letter...in fact; it just kept unfolding, getting longer and longer until Arthur had begun to question whether it was ever actually going to end. Thankfully, it did. Arthur dropped the letter and flopped back onto the mattress, his head sinking down into the feather-stuffed pillows, a smile forming in the corner of his mouth. “Tomorrow is going to be a long day too,” Pendragon sniffed from his perch on the windowsill, his head turned to his left so he could stare out through the glass at the grounds beyond. “Oh, I don’t know,” Arthur replied, leaning over in order to rummage in the top draw of his bedside cabinet, “It could prove...entertaining.” When he withdrew his hand he was holding a book, a piece of parchment and a pen. He had to look in the next drawer down for an inkpot, his seal and some sealing wax. Arthur began to scribble his reply to the Chairman. The King got up early the next morning to take Tristan hawking, as he had promised two days previously. They convened down at the mews where the master falconer was waiting with their gerfalcons. Tristan’s was still young, and still learning; it had been one of his thirteenth birthday presents, and he adored it. The bird was not ready to go out hunting on horseback, so they went into the forest on foot instead. Arthur glanced up at Mallos’ window as they walked beneath it, and smiled to himself again. His bird adjusted its grip upon his glove as Arthur nodded to the Captain of the Guard who was standing in the doorway of the nearest tower. The king had explained the circumstances of Mallos’ situation to all of the higher ranking guards earlier that morning, and had pre-warned to expect strange events throughout the day. They returned to the castle at midday, having eaten their breakfast in the forest in the autumn sunshine. Their hunt had been reasonably successful, and they returned with a few partridge and a brace of rabbits. Tristan was recounting for his father the final heroic scenes from the novel he had just finished reading, as they re-entered the castle’s courtyard. When they had returned their falcons to their perches, father and son went in different directions; Tristan took the dogs down to the lake, and Arthur returned to the castle. Or, at least, he tried to. He had nearly made it to the steps of the west entrance when he was intercepted by the head groom. “Camels?” Arthur repeated, looking amused as the groom twisted his cap anxiously in his hands, “Yes, Your Grace,” he confirmed, obviously missing the joke. Arthur patted the man comfortingly on the shoulder, “don’t worry about it,” he soothed, “just keep them in the stalls, and they should be back to normal this afternoon.” Arthur chuckled his way all the way up the staircase to his chambers, where he changed out of his muddy clothes into something cleaner, and changed his boots for one with softer soles. They were far more comfortable for moving around the castle. Checking the time, he sauntered down a different flight of steps to one of the parlours, where two women were waiting for him with some mulled wine simmering over an open fire. He sat down on the cushions on the floor, as one of his companions poured him a drink, and the other began to deal out from a pack of cards. Half an hour Arthur paused just as he was about to place a card on the table that would win the game, when he heard the sound of a duck quacking somewhere outside the door. A second later, the quacking was joined by the stampede of running feet and clinking chainmail. The two women were giving him enquiring looks. “My father-in-law is under house arrest today,” he explained mildly, as if nothing extraordinary had happened, “I believe he is having a tantrum.” Arthur thought it said something about Mallos that neither of his companions questioned the explanation, and returned their attention back to the card game. He excused himself from the card game, and drained the last of the wine from his goblet, at about half-past one, having had a rather nice lunch brought up to the room. Arthur shrugged his jacket back on as he wandered up to his office, passing a guard on his way who had a rather disgruntled looking mallard tucked under one arm. Arthur unlocked his study door with one of the iron keys he kept on his belt and stepped inside. He had left it tidy the day before, and hadn’t been back since Mallos’ accident, so it was all exactly as he had left it. The king crossed the room to behind his desk and opened the shutters in order to let the daylight into the room, before sitting down in his favourite chair. He was gratified to see that the guards had done as instructed and swapped the chair in front of his desk for a rather more uncomfortable one. He didn’t think for one moment that Mallos would sit in it, but it was more intended to send a message. Arthur leaned across to the nearest bookshelf and pulled down a well-thumbed little leather book of poetry and began to leaf through it. Mallos’ knock gave Arthur just enough time to stash the book out of sight, and he fixed the Spaniard with a stern frown, saying nothing. He watched, his expression unchanged as the deity exchanged one chair for another, and, with a hardening of his eyes, made it very obvious that he was not going to dignify Mallos’ question with a response. The king waited for him to stop fidgeting, and he waited a while. When the Spaniard was as close to still as Arthur thought he was ever going to get, her reached down and picked up a stack of papers and folders off the floor, neatly bound together with some string. Arthur dropped them down onto the table top with a thwack and stared at Mallos. “Yours, I believe,” he said a little stiffly, pushing them over the polished wood and then withdrawing his hands completely. “They were found in the yard below your window, and I would hate for you to lose them.” He waited. “I also believe I have you to thank for my supper tonight. It’s been too long since I had duck.” Again, the king paused, allowing the silence to drag on for a while before he spoke again. “Mallos,” he began heavily, “why is it, I not only have to deal with extensive damage to property and land, and then also have to come home and have to deal with you as if you were your thirteen year old grandson?” It was hard, oh so very hard, not to smile.  |
Replies:
- there's a wise man in every fool. - By mallos January 9, 2014 at 01:29:24 AM
- take a look through my eyes - By arthur January 17, 2014 at 05:49:18 AM
- there's a wise man in every fool. - By mallos January 18, 2014 at 05:34:01 AM
- through mist and shadow - By arthur January 22, 2014 at 05:11:12 AM
- there's a wise man in every fool. - By mallos January 24, 2014 at 02:19:22 AM
- through mist and shadow - By arthur January 22, 2014 at 05:11:12 AM
- there's a wise man in every fool. - By mallos January 18, 2014 at 05:34:01 AM
- take a look through my eyes - By arthur January 17, 2014 at 05:49:18 AM
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