Jurij Korybut, space cadet

 remember I was messing around with the idea of a graphic novel?  well, I've been playing with cartoon style on Night Cafe. The story starts at the bottom and goes to the top; I can't flip it without rearranging every pic.  Anyway, here's the collection if anyone wants to take a look. It's in the 'Happy Jurij' universe at an unspecified sf time period. I'm adding to it as and when. I shall probably turn it into a novel novel sometime perhaps with some of the pics in it.

 

https://creator.nightcafe.studio/collection/pM4mosCTFHngFLKADL6p?ru=CardinalBiggles 

And speaking of Simon, and Castamir...

here's a taster with a Dwarven drinking song. A bit rough as yet, but you have to understand that Castamir made a free translation for everyone as I doubt anyone speaks Dwarven.

No?  didn't think so. 

 

 

Dwarven drinking song

 

Raise your cups my brothers

Let the mead keep flowing

We have foes to fight

Feel our axes bite

And our runestones glowing

 

Drink to death or glory

Fill your horns for drinking

To our victories

Through eternity

And our foemen slinking

 

Deeply drink, my brothers

Let the mead flow steady

As each axe drinks blood

Foemen hewn like wood

By our bright steel deadly

 

 

Falconburg ascendent 1

 no more votes in so falconburg chapters 1-12 won by a squeak. 

Chapter 1

 

The big man with pale blond hair shivered.

“Are you sure it’s safe?  That he won’t find out?” He whispered, running his tongue over his dry lips.

His companion gave him a look of scorn.

“Of course he won’t find out.  He’ll be dead.”

“But what if he remembers ….”

“He will be mindless.  Your puppet. You have the ritual materials?”

“Yes, Lord Clovis.”

“No names! Come then, we must blend his fingernail clippings with the bone of a relative and your blood as his master, along with my own ingredients, and place the two near-identical smooth stones in the potion.  You have the river stones?  One for his heart and one as a control?”

“Yes my lord.”

“Good.  It would work better with his flesh and bone, but I recognise that this is difficult for an underling to obtain, so the bones of his ancestors from the churchyard will have to do.”

The blond looked shifty but nodded.

The cloaked Lord Clovis made a careful brewing, scorning to explain to his tool what he was doing.  Finally he laid the two stones into the liquid and chanted.  When he brought them out, they had a silvery sheen.

“And now to his chamber before he awakes, and a poniard in the heart,” he gloated, “And I will be able to see how well it works before I try it on that old fool Engilbert.”

The blond shivered. If anything went wrong, this was treason.

He hastened to the castellan’s chamber, his companion following.

Peter Haldane awoke in a hurry, confronted by his illegitimate son, the captain of his guard.  Before he could register that he was betrayed, however, the slender poniard had slipped through his skin, between his ribs and into his heart.  He died surprised.

“Good.  Now open his chest and put in the replacement heart,” said Clovis.

This was something which was almost the undoing of Kort, Peter Haldane’s son.  He was a brutal enough man normally, but this was his patron and father, even if he was surviving too long, and had failed to make a will in favour of a bastard son while he had a living, legitimate daughter.  A daughter married to the warlord, Gyrfalon, who would not accept his wife’s inheritance being usurped.  Better to keep the ailing Haldane in the semblance of life and enjoy the benefits of being castellan de facto.  He gulped, and cut, and blenched at the blood.

“I’m wondering whether to cause death by exsanguination would be a better course of action,” murmured Clovis.  “The blood might just putrify quicker if left in the body; a dry body might last longer before the smell is apparent.”

“Now you tell me,” said Kort, angrily, thrusting in the stone and sewing up the body, fighting on the desire to gag as he did so.

“You knew this was an experiment when you agreed to take part in it,” said Clovis.  “You can always have him will his lands to you now.”

“True,” said Kort. “If Gyrfalon will accept that.”

“Place it in the hands of the ecclesiastical court; that will hang it about for years,” shrugged Clovis.

“If Gyrfalon doesn’t decide to make sure it goes to my next of kin by gutting me,” said Kort.

“He has to catch you; and it’s a strong castle. I’ll leave you a scroll which you can use to raise all the dead in the churchyard if need be.”

“That would help.  What do I do now?”

“You have put in the new heart and sewn up the hole.  Rather badly, but never mind.  Now put your hand on the other stone and command him to get up.”

Kort swallowed hard, trying to keep his stomach contents where they belonged.  Dead men were supposed to stay dead.  Everything in his being screamed at him that this was wrong, and that he should never have listened to the necromancer.  Too late.  One more swallow and he laid his hand on the stone and thought at the corpse to get up.

It got up.

“Tell him to open his eyes, moron,” said Clovis.  Kort made a face and did so.  It was horrible, seeing the staring, unseeing eyes of his former parent. He started to retch.

“Control yourself!” snapped the necromancer.  Kort swallowed on the thin, bitter taste of vomit.   “Now get him to speak.”

Kort thought of a trite phrase like ‘good morning.’

Peter Haldane’s corpse bleated, loudly.

The necromancer’s staff threw Kort to the other side of the room.

“What did you do, you incompetent?” screeched Clovis. “Did you fail to obtain bones from the churchyard and settled for those from the midden?”

“I … I was afraid of the dead,” Kort did vomit then, ashamed as he did of the sharp, acrid taste of his own fear, remembered and present.

“Afraid of the dead?  You idiot, the dead cannot harm you.  Not unless I’ve had anything to do with them,” sneered Clovis.  “Well, you will have to make the best of it, and make sure you tell people some witch has cursed him.  He can write notes.  He can write?”

“He … yes, well enough,” said Kort.  He got up from the crumpled position he had been thrown into.  “But it worked.”

Clovis sighed.

“After a fashion,” he said.  “I must be going before anyone gets up.  Let me know how it progresses.”

“Yes, my lord,” said Kort, repressing the urge to cross himself.  He had gone too far for that comfort now.

 

 

“Floris,” said Gyrfalon, “I was thinking that when winter starts setting in, it might not be a bad idea to visit your father’s court.”

“Won’t the barbarians attack in winter?” the young prince asked.

“No, they have enough trouble surviving.  Much more snow where they come from than we have,” said Gyrfalon.  “So as he is an old man, it would be prudent to go and see him while he is still alive.  He will want to know what you have been doing, as my page, and he did express an interest, however badly couched, in meeting me, as well.”  He smiled grimly, recalling the arrogantly-worded letter, written by a scribe, summoning him like a naughty boy to the capital.  Cardinal Alessandro Cordo had sorted that out very quickly, but King Engilbert never knew how close he had come to having his summons answered by an invasion. 

“Besides, with the signalling towers in place, and working properly now, there will be plenty of warning to withdraw all the village and their animals and food within the walls,” said Falk.  “And I presume you did not mean to take all the church knights from their chapterhouse?”

“No, though I shall expect Sir Lyall to work with whomsoever I leave as castellan,” said Gyrfalon.  “I should think that Foregrim will be happier to run the castle, even with attacks, than to make a ride at military pace?”

Foregrim shuddered.

“I grow too old for military pace, my lord,” he said.  “I would rather face a barbarian horde.”

“Good; and young Lyall is in the habit of doing as you suggest anyway,” said Gyrfalon, sitting back in satisfaction.

“And what of your wife, my love?” asked Annis. “Not to mention your son,” she indicated the baby she carried in a sling at her hip, currently sleeping off his last meal.

“Did you want to stay, then? No, I thought not,” as Annis shook her pale head.”And our adopted sister? Pauline?  You are not due for some months.  Will you come?”

“I will,” said Pauline. “I want gold wire to sew up the insides of our people when they are sore wounded, as it seems to work, especially as we have determined that what Annis does with her healing is magical, to enhance my skill.  I can ride military pace; I never heard that being pregnant stopped Annis from doing so.”

“I wouldn’t dare ask her not too,” grinned Gyrfalon. “We are lucky to have you both as healers.”

“And lucky to have strong stomachs to put up with tales of healing over breakfast,” laughed Falk, grinning at his brother.

“Oh, the children soon stiffen our stomachs,” Annis smiled on Floris, Lukat, and Wilgarth, her husband’s pages, and on her half-sister Sylvia. Sylvia was more occupied with a mug of milk and a bowl of porridge than on the conversation.

“I am promoted from being one of the children?”  Sylvia’s sister, Jehanne asked.

“You are well on the way to being a warrior,” said Annis, and Jehanne glowed with pleasure.

 

 

The elf who called himself Hrafyn was travelling on his own business.  He had been to see his people, but as always the stay had been brief.  Elves kept themselves to themselves these days, and private and standoffish as most humans would have considered Hrafyn, he found himself stifled with the same conversations, same music and same opinions, day in, day out.  He had fallen in with a human companion once, and had found some humans to be stimulating.  He preferred to watch them from a distance, as a child watches a disturbed ants’ nest, but watching them amused him. 

He rarely gave much attention to the efforts of individuals, but this individual had caught Hrafyn’s interest.

The low, autumnal sun flickered golden speckles through the trees in a small clearing, and danced on the silver-gilt hair of a youth, slender as a wand, slender almost as an elf.  She was using a longbow to shoot at a target, and it was quite plain that she had never been taught properly.

It annoyed Hrafyn. 

The bow and its art were his passion.

The girl gave a sigh of frustration.

“I am doing something wrong,” she said to herself.  She was not expecting an answer when Hrafyn said, simply, “Yes.”

His voice had her starting, and reaching for a dagger as she turned towards the sound.  She relaxed slightly at the slender, leather-clad figure of the elf, hardly taller than herself. She noted the bow that he carried, and that he raised it with the casual grace of one so much an expert that he hardly had to think. Almost before she could realise it, let alone react, he had three arrows in the air. The first thing that she consciously noticed was three brief thuds, the sight of three arrows growing out of bullseye of the target, though he was further from it than she was.

“That’s how you do it,” said Hrafyn. 

“Not much help to me when you are so good that you move faster than I can see, Master Archer,” said the girl. “Do you look for an apprentice?  I’m not afraid of hard work.”

He regarded her.

“I do not generally work with others.”  His voice was slow, every word weighed and considered. “But I will not leave a young girl helpless.  I will start you on the path of learning.”

“Thank you,” she said.  “My name is Idonea.”

“Hrafyn.”

“Thank you, Master Hrafyn.”

“Just Hrafyn.”

Hrafyn was an elf of few words; he took her bow, and placed it in her hand, showing her how to push the bow away from her when she had the arrow nocked.  Once Idonea had been shown the proper technique, the improvement was dramatic.

“Why?” asked Hrafyn.

“Why do I want to learn?  You might call my reasons whimsical.”

He shrugged; she might expand on that, or not, as she chose.

“It’s a complex story,” she said.  “My mother was a maid to a great lady, Lady Emblem.  Lady Emblem married, by arrangement of her parents, one Peter Haldane.  It so happened that my mother, Edgyth, was also the half-sister to Lady Emblem, and when Lady Emblem was ill after her daughter was born, Haldane used my mother.  He threw her out when she conceived me.  The Lady Annis is about two years older than I am, and word is that she is married happily to a strong marcher lord.  I thought to join her, but I will not be a maidservant.  I hoped to bring useful skills as a warrior to a northern march castle.”

“I have heard the name of Lady Annis, daughter of Peter Haldane,” said Hrafyn.  “Do you know the name of her husband?”

Idonea shrugged.

“Gyrfalon the Dark,” she said.   “Some speak ill of him.  But it is said by the peasants of Haldane’s demesne that Lady Annis is good and kind.  She would scarce choose, as rumour says she chose, a man who does not use her well.  Though by all accounts about My Lord Gyrfalon is that he has ever been less hated by his underlings than our shared father.”

“I … have stood against Gyrfalon,” said Hrafyn.  “I, too, am following rumour.  The rumour that a friend of mine, Gyrfalon’s brother, has reconciled with him.  Our paths lie together.”

Idonea brightened.

“Will you have time to continue to teach me if we travel together?  I will, in exchange, readily undertake all camp chores.”

“You have a good eye.  It would be a shame not to teach you more.  I do not need you to act as a servant.  I camp with little fuss. You humans need so many things. I do not.  I will teach you to camp like an elf.  Have you eaten?”

“You are an elf?  I … I saw the ears but did not like to ask.  I thought all the elves were dead.”

“No.  We … have ways of hiding at need.  One day I do not doubt we will disappear, unless we learn to change.  Change … is frightening.  You have not answered me.”

“I … I think it would be a shame if you disappeared.  No, I have not eaten. I have a bag of meal with me to thicken a stew, and can recognise some edible herbs and roots. I  hoped to get good enough to hunt one day.”

“You may yet learn enough,” said Hrafyn. “Determination gets further than pure talent. You will have to learn the sword from Falk. It has never interested me as much.”

“Tell me about elves, please!”  Idonea was eager.

Hrafyn hesitated, then shrugged.

“It does not matter; nobody will find an elf who does not want to be found,” he said. “Elves are some of the oldest beings. We had magic before anyone; and our magical skills are valued.  We live in forests by preference.  At need, we can merge with a tree.   We build by making trees grow as we want them to, living architecture.  We value learning and beauty, and music.  There is learning and music and beauty in the firing of the bow.  One must become the bow to be a true archer.  There is no arrow, only the firing.  Thus we approach those skills in which we excel.  For me, there is no path through the woods, only the passing.  For my brother Lwysgain, who is a bard, there is no harp, only the music flowing from his body.”

Idonea nodded.

“I think I understand,” she said. “I will find that helpful when learning.”

“Yes,” said Hrafyn. 

 

poets and spies 15

 

Chapter 15

 

Jack was beyond delighted when Daphne brought him his dinner on a tray. She blushed.

“I need to apologise,” she said.

“You have nothing to apologise for; I was indelicate in my delight in sharing understanding,” said Jack.

“I shouldn’t have been so... Francine would call it ‘preceptress disease,’” said Daphne. “You know, unwed ladies of uncertain age who have given up all hope, and so find anything to do with... with intimacy frightening.”

“And you don’t?”

“I don’t want to be a governess. I want to be married and have my own children, and I want a husband who cares about what I want as well as what he wants. I’d like to marry well enough to thumb my nose at my stepmother, who wants me kept down.  She has her children, my half-siblings, and she doesn’t want reminders that she’s only four years older than I am, and that I’m the only child of Papa’s first marriage. I don’t really care about being anything like a countess so long as I am free. I considered David Peacock, you know; he seems a good sort of man, and I’m used enough to hard work, I’d make a good farmer’s wife, you know.”

“It seems a waste of your brains.”                                                                                               

“The Peacock boys have bettered themselves, don’t underestimate them,” said Daphne.  “But I couldn’t help it, when I saw a beautiful young god across the salon... but he belonged to someone else.”

“You felt it too?”

“Yes.” She blushed. “But l... lust isn’t enough.”

“How eminently sensible!”

“Francine,” said Daphne. “We discussed love and lust hypothetically at school, and she waved her hands and said something like, ‘eh bien, mes amies, lust, oh it makes the blood sing and the pulse race, and you have a beautiful young man, but if that is all you have, what will you then do with him when he is forty, and has a paunch and is thin on top?’ because Francine is very practical.”

Jack laughed.

“I am vain enough to fight gaining a paunch and my family usually has a good head of hair. But I will go grey and gain wrinkles some years in advance of you. I am something of a sportsman, but I am also a closet poet, and  I like to read. I like the theatre, but I genuinely enjoy being in the country, where I tend to live much like a country squire. Alice hated it; called it being ‘immolated in a muddy hole.’”

“I like living in the country,” said Daphne. “Are you proposing, and if so, is it as wife, or mistress?”

“What, you would expect me to suggest making a young lady into my mistress?” Jack was startled.

“I have no great family and I am no catch as a wife to an earl,” said Daphne. “They say mistresses have more fun; I should think the ones who have most fun are wives who are treated also as mistresses, because they have no worries about being discarded and poor. I would want a legal document if I was your mistress, to have a pension of three hundred a year if you discarded me.”

“A mean amount. But you have thought it out.”

“I... I want to touch you and I want you to explain the more... well, you know which poems. But I’m not stupid enough to think I can aspire to marrying you, so I need... safeguards. A woman who has lost her looks is a leaf tossed in the wind, at the mercy of the world’s cruel  wintery blast. I know it’s mercenary; but... but it is a big step.” She finished on a whisper.

“Come here,” said Jack.

She went to him; and though he only had one good arm to put round her, he pulled her on top of him. And then he kissed her, rolling her over with his injured arm on top so his hand could caress her without moving too much.

Daphne surrendered to  his kiss, wriggling happily against him, one hand sliding into his blond hair, the other on his chest.  When he lifted his lips from hers, she growled at him.

“A wife who is treated like a mistress suits me very well,” he said. “Oh, Miss Kempe! What is your first name? Nobody has ever told me.”

“Daphne,” said Daphne.

“What, a shrub to be mother of my little shrubs? You are fond of them, I think?”

“I adore them,” said Daphne. “Are you sure you want to marry me?”

“Oh, yes, I’m not going to let you go; you are intelligent, enter into my interests, and you bubble with passion. Though we might get married quietly, here, and forget to send a notice to the paper so we can pretend you are my mistress.” His eyes sparkled with mischief.

“Oh, what a most excellent prank!” said Daphne.

“I need to see your father,” said Jack.

“I should write first,” said Daphne. “If I say I have received an offer of marriage from my friend’s husband’s brother, my stepmother will assume you to be the sort of bucolic she assumes Mr. Brierly to be. If she had any idea who you are, she’d take steps to collect me and make sure I never saw you again, you know.”

“She could try; I am not going to let that happen, however! But Stoat, a bucolic? I can imagine his outrage, and him groping for a quizzing glass,” laughed Jack. “Oh, you can say I own some land in Hertfordshire, and run sheep.”

“I shall,” said Daphne. “But you have a wounded arm, and you are using it too much! You should lie still while I kiss you, now I know how.”

“Oho, you would like to take the lead? Well, why not?” he rolled back onto his back, and she sat over him, blushing, and brushed his lips with hers.

His dinner tray, on the commode, was entirely forgotten.

 

oOoOo

 

Stoat negotiated rapidly with the farmer who had possession of horses, and soon had acquired a couple of good riding beasts. Francine had no fears of riding astride, and they cantered off. Stoat was inspired to stop at the coaching inn.

“My friends!” he said. “I am looking for my cousin, who owes me money, and moreover I suspect him of trying to cheat at a wager; he is a sallow fellow, with dark hair, and he affects the English look with a coat he bought from a smuggler.”

“Oh, him!” the landlord spat. “So that was what he was agitated about, that it was imperative to know when the calèche would be here. And he was relieved not to wait long.”

“Oh, the cheat! The villain! You mean he has left already?” cried Stoat.

“Aye, two hours since,” said the landlord.

“Well! I was to race him to Paris as we both have business there, but we were to set  off together,” said Stoat.  “I pray you, what inns are the overnight stops for the calèche?” the calèche stopped overnight instead of going night and day alike like the stagecoach or the mailcoach. 

Furnished with the information about the overnight stops, Stoat left a vail which would be generous for a prosperous grocer, and went out to mount up.

“He has two hours start on us,” he said. “And though I want to push on and get ahead, I don’t want to push the horses too hard. The calèche after all will have changes of horses regularly, as it’s a government-run transport.  They’ll be able to sustain a speed of eight miles an hour;  and reasonably speaking on these nags, we won’t go a lot faster.”

“They are not bad animals, I think,” said Francine.

“Sweetness, they are not bad animals, but they have not been exercised regularly, or had their stamina maintained. They are too old to be likely to throw out splints, but we don’t want them dropping dead of apoplexy for being pushed too hard. Or developing cramps, or dying for sweating too hard and not being sufficiently hydrated. We shall have to stop and buy them bran and give them a wet bran mash with honey and salt, to keep them going.”

“I am sorry; I had no idea,” said Francine. “Me, I only ride the beasts, I do not know what makes them go.”

“A lot of tender care, actually,” said Stoat. “Horses are unbelievably delicate.”

“I know about needing to cool them,” said Francine, “And to be gentle with their mouths.”

“Which is more than many know, and in most circumstances is all you need to know,” said Stoat. “But these beasts have been allowed to get out of condition, and as you can see, they are reluctant to canter.”

“But that man did not warn us, we might have been people who would make them gallop!” said Francine.

“Quite,” said Stoat. “And I’ll see if we can’t take the poor beasts with us when we go.”

“Good; cruelty to dumb beasts is not proper nor respectable,” said Francine.

“I doubt we will catch up before the calèche stops for the night,” said Stoat. “At this point we have a problem. As, indeed, at all points hereon if we stop the calèche. Collet is surrounded by people who will not like to see another man killed.”

“But he is in English clothes; will they question it if you pretend to be whatever the French have instead of Bow Street Runners?”

“Not as easy as when the Committee for Public Safety was so feared, but... it might work,” said Stoat. “When we stop to feed the nags, I’ll see if I can construct a document. Few enough of them will have seen a warrant for arrest or a policeman’s warrant of identity, and I know the basic form and enough formulaic phrases. I even have an official seal on my fobs.”

“Bon, that will do nicely. You have the bearing and sheer gall to carry it out.” She considered. “There is, somewhere, a pun in there on Gallic and gall, but I cannot think it through at the moment, my brains are being jarred worse than my backside is, for this wretched beast refusing to go at anything faster than a trot.”

“You know to rise and fall, at least.”

“I have watched men at the trot. I am not unobservant. I am not happy with M. Collet, for it is not an accustomed movement, and everything is going to hurt, tomorrow.”

“I am sorry, love.”

“I do not blame you, my Stoat, I blame Collet. And I will not weep for him. He is interrupting our marital bed, and that is unforgiveable.”

“Totally,” said Stoat, with a straight face.

What was amusing was that most Frenchmen would nod solemnly in agreement with  Francine; l’amour was sacred.

 

They stopped to feed the horses at a ramshackle looking inn, in a village which appeared not to have a name, and Stoat was content to order food for the horses and for his companion and himself and to sit in the shadows to construct some papers which should pass muster when they caught up with Collet. The odd food stain would not matter, but would indeed add verisimilitude. Francine was glad just to be off a horse, and wished only that the chairs were not so hard. She sat on her satchel.

“Sorry, little one,” said Stoat. “Shall I hire a room for you to rest, and go on alone?”

“I will not be a liability,” said Francine. “Me, I am hardy. Did not I manage to drive, and drive, and drive, in pursuit of poor Romilda, when my wrists were breaking, but breaking from the effort? I have the fortitude to be an English heroine, as good as any in any novel, yes, and better than those who scream and faint to give the hero something to do. Me, if I wrote a novel, I would make it so that the heroine does not know what hysterics are, and make her a good foil for her hero. But some of them can endure, and mon Dieu! How loudly some of them do their enduring! But me, I suffer, but in silence. Have I made one word of complaint?”

“No, my sweet, you are stoic and uncomplaining, and I adore you,” said Stoat. “But a man is permitted to worry when he sees his wife is in some pain and suffering, and to offer her succour.”

“Vraiment,” said Francine. “And his wife appreciates such courtesy, but though she longs for nothing so much as to sink into a goose-feather bed, and preferably in his loving arms, the good wife is nonetheless more dutiful than this, and manages not to sigh after a cushion for her so-abused arse.”

“Sweetness!” said Stoat.

They applied themselves to a simple, but nourishing, meal of chicken stew, with plenty of onion and turnip to pad it out, and a piece of black bread with a scrape of butter on it. The wine was red, rough and undistinguished.

“Adequate,” said Francine, somewhat revived “But they would have been better to have fed the wine to the chicken, to revive it before butchering it.  But if that was cassoulet de poulet aux fines herbes as he said, I am a Hottentot.  Certainly, the pullet involved was more of an old crone of a fowl. But it was well enough cooked.”

Stoat laughed, and went to settle up. Some negotiation led to him presenting a feather pillow to Francine to ride on.

“My hero!” said Francine. “I will express my gratitude when we can be together properly.”

“I hope it helps,” said Stoat.

“Me, I will not cease to resent Collet, but I will do so from a position of less discomfort,” said Francine.

 

 

Francine was certainly ready to curse Collet in English, French, and Latin by the time they reached the large village of Brecqueflori, a pretty village set on the side of a hill, which the road climbed. There was an estaminet as well as the coaching inn. Here they left their horses, having paid for them to be fed and watered, not a usual service offered by an estaminet, but Stoat bribed the proprietor well, and to bring them on to the inn when they were satisfied. 

He flashed his forged documents.

“I am about to arrest a dangerous criminal, citizen,” he said. “Your co-operation is appreciated, and I know you will do nothing to impede my official business.”

The implied threat made the accompanying thanks more credible.

They drank a glass of unmemorable wine, and strolled over to the inn. Under cover of darkness, Francine slipped a cold hand into her husband’s hand. He squeezed it reassuringly.  Killing a man in what would be cold blood was never easy; but Collet had shot the unsuspecting earl, and planned to finish him off.

And Stoat was certain that he had more blood on his hands than that of his harmless brother.