April 17th, 505 CE

A low fire crackled in the stone hearth, sparks dancing up the chimney as the firewood crumbled to coals. In the bed beneath the pale tapestry, the cook and his mistress muttered to each other, arguing between the sheets, trying to hide their words, but I knew they were arguing about me. It was how things always were for unclaimed bastards like me.

“Boy,” The cook said suddenly, the single word rumbling down to where I laid curled up atop my pallet on the other side of the room.

“Yes?” I returned, lifting my head and speaking in a soft, tentative tone, my heartbeat hitching as I strained to meet his gaze in the dark. I found the woman’s eyes first and flinched away from the angry heat behind them, soft beads of sweat ticking the nape of my neck as my shoulders tensed.

“I’m sorry,” he said, drawing my attention from the woman, and I was surprised to find that I believed the man.

“It’s alright,” I said, and it was. Rarely did I ever spend more than one or two nights curled up beside someone else’s hearth. That Mourlais let me stay for nearly a fortnight was nothing short of a miracle.

“Oh, and Bast,” he said as I hastily gathered up my cloak from where it lay, the heat of his mistress's baleful gaze on my back urging me to move faster. “We’ll still need you in the kitchens come morning. Don’t be late.”

“I won’t, sir,” I said, ducking my head before rushing out into the narrow hall, clutching my frayed cloak close, desperate to escape the room’s increasingly oppressive atmosphere. A chill breeze blew across the stone walls as I closed the door, sending a shiver down my spine and a spike of longing through my heart.

I sighed. Damn that woman. I didn’t even know her name but damn her anyway.

The castle laid still, quiet in the late summer night, the only illumination the frail blue-green glow of moonlight slipping through the narrow slit windows carved into the meter-thick stone walls. I kept my step light, one hand on the wall to guide my way, the rough stone pulling at my calloused palm as I searched for my secret hideaway.

Save for the skittering of mice in the rafters and the hushed mutterings of lover’s behind closed doors, the castle was silent. After only a minute of careful searching in the dark I finally found it, a tapestry hung across a shallow alcove. With silent swiftness I slid beneath the hanging drapery, curling up to squeeze into the tight but not uncomfortable space.

A thin, weather-worn cloth bundle was stashed inside, hiding my most revered treasure.. A simple silver ring adorned with a single red-brown gem set into the center of a water lily. It was my mother’s ring, the only thing besides my memories that I had left of the woman, which seemed to be fewer with every passing day. The gemstone reminded me of her dark eyes, so unlike my own. I caressed it in my palm for a moment, feeling the shape of it and imagining it in my mind as I sat in the darkness.

The scuff of footsteps echoed down the hall a moment later and my heart began to race as I set the ring aside, wrapping it back up inside the fraying cloth and pushing it to the corner of my alcove. A pale yellow glow of candlelight illuminated the stone beneath me, and the muffled muttering of voices reached my ears a moment later. I couldn't help but listen.

“Little time left. The eye-” one man began before another cut him off with an impatient growl.

“I don’t give a damn about what your ‘eye’ sees, Lleu. They are dead and gone, all of them. We repelled them from our lands years ago. The rumors are just that, my friend, rumors, nothing more."

The first voice was soft, a man’s gentle tenor, the second a familiar rolling baritone, the commanding voice of king Bronwydd. My pulse quickened, and, falling further victim to that primal curiosity, I leaned closer to the back of the tapestry, bracing my hands on the walls either side of me as I strained to hear.

“The eye sees all, brother,” the first voice, Lleu, said, his tone pleading. “I beg you, heed its warning, lest your kingdom fall victim to these conquerors.”

A rumble shook the castle, shattering the peaceful quiet of the night and sending me tumbling headfirst through the tapestry. I cursed the fates as my head bounced off the corner of the wall, falling to the floor in a sprawling heap, scraping my palms against the rough flagstones.

Damned earthquakes, I thought to myself as I pushed up onto my knees, throwing my cloak back over my head to find the two imposing figures staring down at me. Of all the times for a shake, why now?

Gingerly, I lifted my head to look up at the two tall men staring down at me. King Bronwydd’s pocked face glared down at me with red fury lighting his cheeks, his tree bark dark hair, flecked with dots of gray, was tied up in several braids, glared from beside his advisor, Lleu. The other man's placid unamused face was framed by radiant rose-gold locks of hair, his icy gaze making my legs quake in fear.

Shit.

That exhilarating pulse of fright and anticipation I’d felt thrumming in my veins hardened into a leaden ball of dread, settling into my gut with a thud as I met my king’s fury-filled gaze, and my mind spun, suddenly full of horrible imaginings. Thick hemp ropes tied into nooses, the broad gleam of arrowheads flying like falcons towards my bound body, flames licking the edges of a thin pyre.

“Boy!” Bronwydd barked, startling me from the bloodsoaked landscape of my brain. “Why are you here?! What have you been doing behind-”

Lleu cut him off. “It is as I said, my king. That was no quake, and the boy grovels in fear at your feet. Listen to me, my brother. The eye's sight is true, it has never led you astray before. Why do you reject its predictions now?”

The king’s mouth worked for a few seconds, his face reddening slightly. Lleu shook his head, letting out a tired sigh as he turned his yellow-gold eyes toward me. “Go, Bast, find the prince. There is little time before the slaughter begins. Do not worry, escape this castle and the two of you will be safe” His words were calm, soothing almost, but all I could do was gawk in a wild mixture of fear and confusion. What the hell was going on?

“Stop with that nonsense, Lleu,” the king said, finally breaking from his frustrated sputtering and shaking his head, anger in the firm set of his jaw. “Gods, Lleu, It was just an earthquake, not an invasion of gods’ damned Romans!”

Lleu ignored the king, much to my awe, and bent down to grip my shoulder, a sudden warmth spreading through me beneath his touch. It almost seemed as if the growing lump on my head and the scrapes on my palms were slowly becoming less painful. Was it just my imagination?

“Go now, boy,” the king’s advisor said, shaking me from my astonishment. “Any more time lost and your prince shall perish.”

“Y-Yes, sir,” I managed to squeak out before bolting to my feet and fleeing without a second thought, inwardly exalting the man for granting me an opening to escape the king’s wrath. Another angry growl sounded from King Bronwydd behind me as my feet thundered against the stone floor, but I didn’t stop. History had shown time and again that the king would show no mercy to an eavesdropping fool of a boy like me.

The king’s shouts disappeared as I rounded a corner and ducked into another alcove, this one open to the night dark hallway. Footsteps thundered after me, and I prayed to every god I knew that the alcove was deep enough to hide me. After a moment the footsteps rushed past me, the side of the king’s face flashing past in a blur of candle light. I held my breath, waited another moment for his footfalls to fully pass, then slid from my hiding space and dashed away on silent feet.

I only made it four steps before a new, more terrifying sound found me.

The crash of splintering wood and screaming echoed from the hall in front of me, pale flickering light lapping at the shadows from around the corner. Lleu’s command echoed through my head, ‘find the prince,’ repeating again and again in my mind.

As if under a spell, my feet began to move away from the sounds of fighting taking me towards the castle's upper levels, clashing steel replacing the panicked shouting as I ran. Armed men rushed past me,mail clattering against wood shields and leather scabbards as the guards ran, knocking me aside. I stumbled the rest of the way to the prince’s chambers, sliding to a stop outside his rooms before shouldering into the thick oakwood.

I bounced off it like a leather ball, sprawling across the hall floor, narrowly avoiding getting trampled by another group of guards. A second later the prince’s door swung aside. The young prince Caerwyn stood before me in his tunic and mail, a small decorated sword at his hip as he glared at me, one hand on the weapon's pommel.

Unfortunately for the prince, his seven year old frame did nothing to aid the ferocity of his gaze. It was hard to be scared of a boy more than four years my junior.

“My prince,” I said, voice trembling, and bowed my head as I shifted off the floor and knelt before him. “I have come to take you away from here, by command of your father.” A chill ran up my arms at the lie, the words coming to my lips before I could think of what to say, as if they’d come from someone else.

Caerwyn frowned at me, the line of his brow furrowing. “And who are you? Why would my father trust you with such a task?”

“Just a humble servant, my lord, I work in the kitchens.” The words were my own this time, a near habitual phrase I’d repeated countless times to the lords and ladies of the court.

“Again,” the prince asked, his soft voice laced with mistrust and an edge of fear. “Why would my father grant such an honor to one as low as you?”

“Who better to smuggle a prince to safety than a low-born nobody,” I said, and again I felt that chill sensation run along my skin, the words coming from my mouth not entirely my own.

The boy prince opened his mouth to question me again just as the castle shook for a second time, the sounds of fighting suddenly closer than before.

“We’re out of time, my lord. I beg you, follow me,” I said as the prince’s apprehension twisted into fear at last.

“Fine,” he said without hesitation, a slight quavering to his voice. “But if you try anything, I’ll cut you down myself.” Caerwyn rested his hand on the wrapped grip of his sword as if to reinforce the threat, but it only made him look more frightened as his fingers trembled on the leather wrappings. I did, however, admire the boy's seemingly limitless well of courage.

“If you must, my prince. Come,” I said and darted away, the prince’s boots pounding on the stone behind me as I led him away through the tight twisting corridors and passages forgotten to all save a few of the more curious servants.

Whenever the clattering chaos of the fight drew too near for comfort I led the boy back, found another route, then another until we reached the greater courtyard. Hidden in the shadows still clinging to the outer walls of the keep, the prince and I watched as dozens of men battled in the night, swords and spears flashing incomprehensibly as men screamed and died.

What little I could make out of the invaders was unfamiliar to me, some wearing domed helms while others were topped with multicolored plumes of hair. They held tall oblong shields, short spears and oddly short swords with narrow hilts and bulbus pomels.

Slowly, I guided the prince around the mele, careful to follow a path that kept to the shadows and offered little opportunity for the prince’s clumsy boots to give us away. As we neared the gatehouse I let out a sigh of relief, just before a pair of plumed soldiers rushed into the courtyard.

The pair paused as they sighted us, their faces hidden in the shadow of their helms, blood red cloaks billowing in the soft breeze. In a blur of motion their spears fell down, angling towards us as they charged.

Cursing I drew my belt knife. The iron blade was barely longer than my hand and rusted in a few spots, but it was better than nothing. A strange sense of calm settled into me as the men drew nearer, the world almost seaming to slow as I stepped forward without a second's hesitation and knocked the first man’s spear away with my free hand, ramming my knife into the exposed flesh of his neck just beneath the rim of his helm.

Blood sprayed in a violent arc as I withdrew the blade, the otherworldly calm leaving me as I exhaled and turned to find the prince with his blade already sticking from the second soldier’s stomach.

I froze in astonishment watching the seven-year-old draw his blade back, clean it with the dying man’s cloak, then slide it back into the leather sheath hanging from the boy’s belt. He was eyeing me as if surprised to see me still alive, which in fairness, I was a bit surprised myself.

Shrugging, the prince turned away from me, reaching down and pulling something from the soldier's belt. He tossed it to me a second later and I barely caught the waterskin and it landed in my hand with a loud slosh.

“That should help with the nerves,” the prince said, and I frowned, uncorking the skin and sniffing. The strong smell of honey with a hint of alcohol met my nose, and I took a tentative sip. It was sweet, more so than I’d expected, but also stronger than anything I’d ever had before. Warmth flowed into my stomach after only a few seconds, the tension leaving my body with a soft sigh.

“Come,” the prince said, giving me what I could only interpret as a slightly self satisfied grin. “You said time is short, yes? I imagine my father will be less than pleased if we linger for much longer.”

“Erm, yes, my lord. Please, uh, follow me,” I said, a fresh unease mixing with the warmth in my gut and leaving a nauseating ache in its place as we ran through the gatehouse and out into the surrounding woods. Likely, the king would not survive the night.