THE BASTARD PRINCE

[indiana105 2138]

WESTMARK TO WHITESPIRE

THE BASTARD PRINCE

 

 

“A warrior will sooner die than live a life of shame.”

 

---

 

WESTMARK, 508 E.S.

 

THE BATTLE WAS LOST. Banners of gold and black lay crushed beneath a mess of horse and man. They had outnumbered the enemy by ten thousand, but each man fielded by the Lodenlanders sat atop a warhorse. The foot of Haeseni, Heartlander and Dwarf could do little but charge in vain. They had been routed, pushed back into the forest. Men sunk into thick mud, screaming out before being silenced by roving bands of burgundian knights. Ivan pressed himself against the trunk of a great pine. He watched in silence as the men he’d led into the forests were peppered with arrows. Any lucky enough to survive the volley were lanced in the open field as they fled the wood. 

 

A thud sounded behind the prince. Another, at his side. Arrows had begun to whistle through the brush, burying their barbed heads deep into bark. They had spotted him, surely. The pounding of hooves drew closer. Ivan gripped the shaft of his pike so tightly it felt near to snap. “DIE, HAENSER DOG!”

 

He pushed himself from the tree, and drove the steel head of his pike into the underbelly of the charging Veletzman’s destrier. It squelched as it slid through hide and flesh, sinking deep into the innards of the reeling beast. With a final whine it crashed into the sodden forest floor where it lay atop its rider, heaving and kicking. The prince’s relief was short-lived. Four men followed the horseman, clad in shining armour and burgundy tabards drenched in the blood of his countrymen. Ivan drew the sabre from his belt and parried the first blow that came down toward his helmeted head. Another strike caught him in the breastplate. The next in the visor. That proud blackened steel which covered his body found itself dented, crushed and otherwise mangled by the savagery of the Midlanders. This day was theirs. There had never been a defeat so grand, so total. As the men continued to rain down blow after blow, Ivan’s vision began to blur. The taste of copper coated his mouth, and its scent filled his nostrils. And then there was nothing.

 

THE WILDS, 508 E.S.

 

The foreign accents of the Aaunish cut through the moans of the wounded. An aged Heartlander with cropped grey whiskers and a spotted head loomed over Ivan as he lay on a cot. Perhaps not the prettiest sight, but it was better than the void. Through a flap of cloth Ivan could see only thickets of trees, sheltering the maimed and broken who shared not the luxury of a tent. Just beyond the brush lay a rolling field of golden wheat. The war had not ruined these lands. Not yet. 

 

The elder smiled with a mouth of yellowed teeth. “Lo! And so the Haensetian prince awakens!”    Ivan had no sooner opened his mouth than a flask was pressed to his cracked lips. Cool water trickled down his gullet and into the empty pit that was his stomach. It heartened him. Though, only for a moment before a great pain seized his knee. Tattered bandages coiled up towards his waist, bloodied and foul-smelling. “Where is our host? What of the battle?”    The whitebeard’s look was pitious; absent of the adulation ought be afforded the Prince of Kusoraev, he had his answer already then. “They had the best of you, Lord. And your fellows as well, down to the man.”

 

Flashes of the battle caught at the back of his mind. Ivan had watched his father fall in some mad charge, Ser Garen and the Patriarch enraged, taking up the flank. “What of my father? My wife?” There came only a grunt in answer, and a vial of milky tincture put an end to his worries.

 

Cold, wrinkled hands shook the prince from his sleep. “My Lord! You must awake, there is word from the Whitespire!” Ivan brought up his head, for it was all he might manage. The wound still ached, sapping at what little vigour remained to him. What few hours he lay awake were feverish agony, interrupted by the changing of his soiled bandages and cleansing through boiled wine. 

 

“Speak the news, then..” he muttered through clenched teeth. 

 

The apothecary cleared his throat, and spat a vile glob onto the packed earth after much effort. “Ah, yes. It is from your . . . Golden Cylinder? No, that’s not it. The Aulic Council!” 

 

With a quick flick of a knife the wax seal of the council parted from parchment, and the missive was unfurled. It was a demand that he remain in the Aaunland. The prince was childless, and Robert incapable. The succession must be protected. Ivan was in no state to disobey, yet still he raged. “I can niet stay here. I must ride! The Veletzmen march on Balian!” His venerable attendant only chuckled. Fattened gut teetered as he crept ponderously about the cluttered tent, reach for another of his accursed sleeping tonics. 

 

 

“Nonsense. Young Lord, you serve your people best here. What is a kingdom without its crown?” The old dolt was right, there was no other; Ivan knew this, yet still he longed for the sore of a saddle beneath him. A lance and banner in his hands. More than all he longed for the Motherland, and Her people. His wife, his kin. “Cease your stirring, prince of Haense. You’ll break my stitches.” Gnarled fingers brought a cloudy glass to Ivan’s lips try as he might, the heir was too numbed now to resist. The sweet taste of poppy’s milk numbed the mouth, and the mind. Then once more, a cloying blackness drew him back into restful oblivion.

 

AAUNIC CROWNLANDS, 509-510 E.S.

 

The bustle of an unfamiliar camp had awoken him early again. The blighted Aaunish horns had sounded all through the night, warning of wolves and raiders on the road. Now come dawn, it was the hammering of iron to anvil. The prince pressed a hand flat to his bedside, and faltered again as he made to stand; the lesion on his leg had swelled again, a putrid mass of raw and rotted flesh. This was not to be his fate, the Grand Prince of Kusoraev would not be confined to some ignoble end here. Nor would he live some pitiful existence as a malformed cripple, incapable of standing without the aid of some tiresome greybeard. Ivan grit his teeth and wrenched himself from the bed, a spasm of pain sent searing up his right side. He managed barely to grasp a hold of the canvas flap and tear it away. It was a grim sunrise, grey and gloomy and the rain fell hard against his face. Then something buckled, and he was falling and there were shouts around him. Then the mud, and the dark came up to greet him.

 

The prince awoke again under a canvas, but was full to bursting. The wailings of the wounded and the dying filled his ears, his head sat hard against the flat of the cot. There were others too, crowding him and speaking in hushed whispers. One looked to him and murmured as he stirred, it was a look he had grown uncomfortably used to. Ivan made to speak, though all that he managed was a heaving wheeze. “Speak. . the leg. .”    He needn’t have waited for an answer. She had a kind face, but could not find the will to smile. “Your Highness, if we do not - it will only fester. What little strength remains to you. .”    He hissed, dismissing her with a wave of his hand. “Nie, I cannot lose it. Where is the old man?”

 

She glanced downwards briefly, and reached for the potion rack. “Gone, my Lord. Camp fever.” The prince made to raise a hand, but she did not cease, and then he was swallowing. 

 

White and red swelled overhead. They kept him addled, he knew. But, had not yet proved brave enough to act against his will; the will of a king. What a king he would make, crippled, beaten and the last of his line. She ought have come to him by now, might the oracle have offered up some falsehood? Then, pain again - and the prince’s courage had deserted him. With a grimace, he pressed a palm to his brow. His head was spinning, and the world around it.

Pale faces over Ivan blurred and twisted, blurring the fevered visions of his mind. He was flying then, and now aground, now drowning. Then he was alone against the shore, where the crashing waves carried only the cries of the mournful. “Lost? Nie . . It cannot be.” His mother’s cold visage was swollen, bloated where she lay upon the sands aside his father. “Ivo. .” He sputtered, but his man offered no reply; crabs nipped at his navel where the spear point had opened him. Nataliya, not her. He could hear her voice still on the wind, but could find only bones. It was lost, he knew. Naught remained to him but misery and blissful sleep, and so he slept. All the agony seemed not to matter now.

 

And so they had come. He was alone when he woke, save for the bodies at his flank. They had come in number, he knew, to put an end to it. Pale sunlight seeped inside the tent as the armed men threw it open under the cover of daybreak. A grey tower, on black. Renatian men. His father had welcomed House Tiber not so long ago, but war made a mess of men’s fealties. Ivan eyed his sabre wearily. Its point was driven into the dirt, just beyond the reach of his failing grasp. There was no use. “Cut my throat and be done with it.” They only regarded him oddly. The air had grown thick with dread, each man exchanging wary glances. 

 

Then, from between them stepped a woman in stark white, parting the knights alike a swan on the water. She took a knee at his bedside, and pressed a soft hand flat against his arm. “I am Cecily of Beaufort. You knew my father, I think.” She wore a sweet, chilling smile. “We come not as foes, Serene Highness.”

 

Ivan had known her father indeed. A true knight of the Aaunish and leal advisor to the boy-king Edmund. He had been a close friend to his own father, taking up residence in their halls whilst the Whitespire fell to madness. “Vy’re Ser Gawyn’s, then?” He affirmed with a short nod.

 

 “Yes, my prince. My father took a liking to you crows . . . It would be grim of me to leave one here, rotting in the mud as you are.” A strange thing this was. Hers was a line of tyrant’s blood, of conquerors and warmongers of centuries past. He needed only to meet her gaze to know this. That same dull grey had watched his broken forefathers kneel, yet in this moment he found in them an inkling of comfort. “I might charter a carriage for you. There are finer apothecaries in the capital, Highness.” Anything was better than another week festering in this tent, and so Ivan motioned weakly. “Then I shall. These men are yours, the Veletzmen and their Uruks have grown bold as of late.” Her fingers slid from their place on his shoulder. “Goodbye, prince of Haense. Until we next meet.” Her lips tugged into something of a grin, and she slipped through the canvas into the dawn. 

 

WHITESPIRE, 511 E.S.

 

It felt good to put his boots to ground again. The wound had closed, and the pain faded but the leg was near dead. His gait was awkward, lame and limping like some speared hart. The whitewashed halls of the spire left him to roam alone. The lords and their bannermen had marched the week past, taking the King’s Road to the southern marches. Most the Tiber host had joined them, few as they were. But Cecily had seldom left his side since their arrival in the capital. By all rights it was a shameful thing. Both knew it. She had been promised to the murdered boy-king, and Ivan left to skulk as better men fought his battles. Perhaps it was this loneliness that bound them, the prince could not say. He had set her aside in the apartments that night, for some green squire had hurried him to the aviary at the urging of some grave missive. A crow had come, bearing the seal of his house. It was a notice of the Covenant’s defeat without him, surely. Such had always been inevitable.   This time he peeled the wax from the missive himself. Godan had judged them righteous. A grand army of Veletzmen and Greenskin, numbering some eleven-thousand, had been cut down to the man on the shores of the Balianite coast. The Covenant marched north once more. Ivan stuffed the missive into the furs of his coat. He must join them. For too long had he lounged in these summer-lands, wallowing in sweet wines and the comfort of a foreign woman.

“Fetch me a horse, Aaunishman. See it to the gates.” Ivan commanded the squire. The boy obliged with a bow, and scurried off down the spiral steps. The prince was slow to follow. There was a part of him that longed to stay, despite it all. He could not face Nataliya. He had dishonoured himself. He had dishonoured her, but his first duty was to the realm. The prince left one fleeting glance at the Whitespire and its raging flame. Then, with a slow exhale climbed atop the black mare that the squire had brought and spurred her onwards.

 

EULER’S STEPPE, 514 E.S.

 

“Ivan? Vyr Highness?” The Lord var Ruthern laid a swift kick into the side of Ivan’s harness. He lay among a pile of motionless Veletzmen, or Adrians as they now called themselves. “Have vy some deathwish, Prinzen? We lost vy in the trees.” 

 

He dismissed the Duke with a languid wave, tasting iron on his tongue. “Stay vyr tongue, Herzen. Come, help me up.” Their steel gauntlets clattered as they met, and the aged Duke wrenched him from the mud. “Dobry. Now go, Lord. I tire of vyr wailing.” He left his dented helm atop the mud, sable hair matted in stale blood. He took up his shattered lance and began the slow march back towards the forward camp. 

 

The victorious Haeseni gathered loudly about their fires, and hulking kegs of Carrion. The prince was in no mood to partake. He had no appetite for Carrion, nor for their gaudy celebrations. His wife stood among them, clad in bloodied plate with a bottle in her hand. He could spy her searching for him in the crowd but Ivan could not bring himself to see her. He was to find no honourable end among the dwarven cavaliers, despite his best effort. Godan would not grant it. Ivan flung open the canvas to his war tent and sent a lobstered gauntlet crashing against the heavy table. There was a gasp, and he spun on his heel. The Lady Cecily of Beaufort regarded him in trepidation, for at her side cowered a boy no more than three, grey of eye and black of hair.

 

---

 

Spoiler

thanks to @Demavend and @kaylacita and @ncarr and @gohliad. filling in time for character when i was away ‼️

 

[kaylacita 1018]

As the carriage rolled down the winding roads to Valdev, Nataliya Leopoldina regarded the Prince of Kusoraev in quiet contempt. She seldom spared a fleeting thought for her noble husband of late, though these days of prolonged travel were made ever more tiresome by the bitter silence. All the same, she could not bring herself to look at him; it only brought to mind the pale eyes of that accursed bastard.

 

The princess pressed a hand to her swollen belly, a child which she had thought to be their first. He had spurned them, though. Deprived her of all they had spent years trying for. The queen had been relentless in her prodding, for it was Nataliya’s first duty to provide for them a grandchild. The heir to a kingdom. Yet, despite all her prayers and deference; Saint Juliya had not seen fit to bestow upon her such a simple blessing. She had been a fool to heed the council’s prattle — perhaps had she been with him in Aaun, the child that she carried would have been his first.

 

The carriage surged to a halt, and Natliya heard the herald welcome them home to the capital. She would not hesitate to be free of him, escaping up towards the palace, but her eyes could not help but wander toward his mistress and her spawn. The rage overcame her then, and she turned to Ivan in righteous fury, protesting “Vy cannot expect me to tolerate this, a lasting reminder of how vy have dishonoured me.”

 

Her husband appeared pitious in answer. “He is my child, Nataliya.” 

 

She hissed at him. “Go then, be with them.” 

 

Her chamber in the tower offered little comfort. She was only staring out over the gardens to see them deep in argument. That mistress had pressed the babe into the hands of some palace maid as tempers flared, pressing clenched fists to Ivan’s collar. 

 

Nataliya knew not what madness gripped her then, as she stormed towards the nursery, sending servants scurrying aside. Flinging the hard oaken door open, her gaze fell upon him in his cot, enjoying a peaceful sleep. Her trembling hands slowly tugged the pillow from beneath him and drew it up overhead. The boy gurgled some vague protest, but did not stir. The princess consort steeled herself, and pressed down hard over his mocking smile. The bastard wheezed, and flailed wildly. Her arms proved limp, then, as a wave of guilt rolled over her. The guilt of her own impending motherhood, and the bastard drew breath once more.

[gohliad 824]

Along the craggy and uneven trail did one carriage progress, wooden, and unadorned. Inside, the bitter Cecily of Beaufort rested, her thumb stroking upon the cheek of her sweet child. She examined him closely, watching as those grey eyes of his own moved to survey the changing terrain — no longer in the shadows, she thought, and no longer kept from his true home. She too drew her own beguiling glance outside, staring intensely to the fading yellows of the eventide sky, and yet still her attention faltered not from the contrivances, nor the deep brooding of her own mucky matters and unyielding thoughts of indignity. “My son. We have almost reached Valdev.” she speaks, cheerlessly, as he burbles in her arms, “Are you ready?”

 

As blackness befell unto the foreign city, a shamed woman stirs from within the palatial chambers. Haunted and begrudging; still her incessant thoughts would not cease, still the ghastly and loathsome look the Grand Princess had spared her repeated — over and over in her mind. “There is no use wishing for your future, Cecily. You have to take it.” rang the teachings of her mother, the artful Caesonia of Pronce, in all of her faux righteousness. Morality was never an option.

That next morning Cecily of Beaufort wakes, alone, to a chamber drenched in sunlight. Her steel gaze makes sense of a single perched crow on the sill, a leer of its own looking back to her. She remains conscious of that crow, and that morning a guileful smile finds its way to her lips. So doth her two skulking fingers walk themselves to the fine cabinet at bedside, snaking up to take hold of a deep, and deserved, goblet of wine.

[Demavend 286]

One embittered infant raged against the bounds of his wooden cot. A cruelly ignoble beginning for he of such venerable lineage. He had littered his nursery room with the remnants of wooden soldiers and trolls, even sent a cup of honeyed milk soaring to shatter against the painted visage of Karl 'The Lion'. Yet, the nursemaids would not come, occupied only with the witch and her expectant heir.

 

The clothen toy queen was all that remained to him. And so, with a cry, he wrapped a hand taut around her crown and tore the little head from its stitches.

[ferdaboy 1593]

Gawyn rolled in his grave, cursing Ivan and his descendants for generations to come! (he hopes).

[ncarr 2235]

Caesonia Tiber, the foreign mistress’s mother, can’t help but smile from beyond the grave.  

[ContestedSnow 778]

The Duke 'Daemonsteel' recalled the pitious look he had given that Crown Prince laid amongst the dead of the enemy. He recalled too how he had pulled that man up to his feet; he hoped that this display was not to repeat itself, after his return to the field. A bastard was no heir, if he was struck down again in another of these damned fields.

 

"Fool prince."

 

He may perhaps have understood the thoughts that the Prince had held, but still, he was a hypocritical man.

[sarahbarah 5021]

The Queen wordlessly gazes upon the Haeseni horizon, the golden hues of the setting sun casting a warm glow upon the reddened tapestries that adorned the walls of her chamber. The room, filled with naught but quiet, echoed with the distant whispers of courtly affairs and the muffled sounds of the bustling kingdom beyond.

 

As the Queen immersed herself in the beauty of the setting sun, her handmaiden, Deia, approached with a hesitancy that bespoke unwelcome news. "Your Majesty," the handmaiden spoke softly, "The Prince Ivan has sired a son - but the child is not Nataliya's." 

 

A sudden chill swept through the Queen's veins, and her eyes widened with disbelief. The room, once filled with the warmth of the setting sun, seemed to grow colder. “...How could this be?" Her eyes betrayed an amalgamation of emotions—despair, disappointment, and an undeniable trace of rage. The war outside seemed to echo the turmoil within the castle walls, and the news of such a scandal only threatened to unravel the delicate balance the Queen had tirelessly sought to maintain.

 

As her fingers began to tremble, the wailing cries of the bastard echoed throughout the royal corridors.

[erictafoya 2309]

In his very hectic and busy office, The Poet Marshal finally found time for himself to read, sit, sip his tea- "OH MY GODAN" the tea expelled itself from the Marshal's mouth. Piles of documents were soaked now.

[critter 2469]

The face of Henrik Amador, grim except in the company of his own wife and children, sets into a hard, unforgiving line grimmer still than the usual. He waves off the comments of bar patrons and his fellow smiths; resigns himself in silence to the library for a time, poring over historical texts as if searching for some insight. Though not close with his brother-in-law, he suspects the feeling in his bones is one of disappointment.

 

He spares himself a moment from his studies to pray for the temper of the Princess-Consort, and returns once more to the comfort of precedent.

[Apotolofo 1414]

Aveline Kazimira lets out a scandalized gasp at the drama! 

[Frawlic 266]

The battle bard had bore witness to the Queen receiving the news, a familiar feeling brewing within her that sent an ache to her bones. Despite her constant need to write a tune or perhaps a poem, something told her that maybe just this once, it wasn't the right thing to do. No ink or paper would be drawn from her desk that night. Verdier pitied them, every last individual involved.

[Borin 5259]

As Brother Ninnias hears rumour of a bastard prince of Haense as he worked in the Shrewsbury vineyard, he had but a momentary thought to offer... 'Hrm, that is a Haense moment' before deciding he had enough of grapevines for one day and headed to his tower

[ivery 106]

As the handmaiden Deia delivers the news, her voice terribly hushed, she bows her head down to not see how the Queen's expression grows distraught. She cannot bear it, no more than she can bear the news herself. It is a scandal beyond reckoning, made worse by their presence in court.

 

The Princess Nataliya had always been an oddly fitting piece in the palace to the servantry, and especially to her mother-in-law's handmaidens. No matter how polite she was, never to raise a cruel hand, they could not help but be intimidated when comparing her nature to that of the Queen of the People. The efforts of a single lantern are barely noticeable when placed beneath the blazing sun. In truth, many of them avoided her, in trepidation for the eventual succession.

 

But at the scandal, such frigidity started to melt. For their Princess caution became sympathy- "Did you hear?" "Her poor Highness.." - and it was the bastard prince and his mother that were carefully avoided. Little trinkets offered- cheap but meaningful to whatever culture the maid had come from, gentle compliments while braiding her hair; they could not have announced their support more obviously without forming a protective circle around Nataliya like clucking hens.

 

As for the Crown Prince, well- if they neglected to let the mouser into his study as often as they should, no one would know but the rats.

 

Spoiler

@sarahbarah@kaylacita

 

[Gandhi 2708]

Alfred tore down his awesome poster of Ivan Aleksandr with rage. "NOO!!!!! I. HATE. BASTARDS!" He screamed through the halls of Sankt Johannsburg.