Date: Sun, 22 Aug 1999 15:13:10 EDT
From: Tommyhawk1@aol.com
Subject: Squire.of.Carlovain.Chapter.14

		      SQUIRE OF CARLOVAIN, CHAPTER 14
			   "The Knights Errant"
			   By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM

     When Renaud insisted that Andrew accompany him the following day to
visit with Lord Montaigne, Andrew's had an immediate gut-wrenching
reaction, a surge of disgust every time he thought of how his body had been
invaded by Lord Montaigne at the masque.  When Renaud noticed--and how
could he not--Andrew felt comfortable enough with Renaud and Marcel to say
so.
     "I will not defend his actions." Renaud said.  "There are many who
take the masque as a means to behave abominably.  But by this same reason,
you go now not as a masked guest that he may misuse with impunity, but as
my servant and he will expect your presence now that you are healed."
     "It is true." Marcel said.  "I have been told that he hosts frequent
masques and has done as much to others."
     "That is more than I have heard." Renaud said.  "Though I did hear his
plans for the second masque.  Had I known he had intentions toward you, I
would have said more.  Still, it is past and probably not to be repeated.
He is the Lord Protector and we petition his favor; we must let this go as
well as we can."
     Andrew thought about playing sick, but it was a card he had played too
many times and, besides, he really was well now and tired of feigning
weakness, even though it had proved useful to him yesterday.  "Very well, I
agree.  But if he lays another hand upon me, I do not promise to be
answerable for my actions."
     Renaud smiled.  "If he lays another hand on you, I shall answer for
you, you may be sure."  Renaud reached a hand across the table and stroked
Andrew's cheek.  "You are my friend, and none may molest my friends without
my intercession.  Rely upon that and rest your fears."
     Andrew nuzzled the hand.  "I shall rely, then, upon your
intercession."
     With that agreement, they went to call upon the soi-disant Lord
Protector.
     It was Andrew's first up-close look at Lord Montaigne; the night
before, he had worn the mask and been further disguised in rather flowing
full-length robes.  Now he wore a simple jerkin and tights, no better than
Andrew's own, and only his position among the group told Andrew which he
was.
     A tall but somewhat slender man, he put Andrew in mind of the slender
whippets that were gamboling around the outer courtyard.  He had moved to
the King's outer throne and was seated there, not in royal assembly, but in
what appeared an earnest consultation with his retainers.  His posture was
arrogantly comfortable, slouching over the throne as if it were some
ordinary chair.  That brought home to Andrew more than anything how wrong
this was, that someone besides the rightful King should sit upon the
throne.
     "Ah, Renaud." Lord Montaigne called out, that familiar, cultured,
affected speech causing Andrew to grit his teeth.  "You are here.  I was
about to send for you."
     "I am at your disposal, my Lord." Renaud said.
     "And now I see the face of the valiant Andre, of whom you have spoken
so highly." Lord Montaigne said.  "I am pleased to see him restored,
indeed, quite vigorously restored to health."
     That brought an obliging titter of amusement from the congregation;
for his part, Andrew simply waited to hear the next words, he settled for
bowing while plastering a smile on his face.  It felt like a grimace there.
     "We are pleased to see you have such a loyal and sturdy retainer."
Lord Montaigne continued.  "And we commend you, Andre, for your service to
your lord against those execrable footpads."
     "Thank you, my Lord." Andrew said.
     "Yes, for such loyalty, we can forgive much." Lord Montaigne
continued.  "Even if your sense of honor is sometimes a bit misplaced."
     "My Lord, if I gave insult to you last night in the matter of the
prisoner, I humbly beg pardon." Andrew said.  "I serve my Master, and I
serve honor."
     "And what of your loyalty to Carlovain?"
     Andrew knew the official answer to that, and it was ambiguous enough
to suit his purposes.  "Carlovain is its lords, and its lords are
Carlovain.  I serve my Master and thus I serve my country, in a single
fealty."
     "And you serve honor.  That makes a double fealty, by your own words.
What if those two should be at odds?"  Lord Montaigne riposted, earning
another titter from the company.
     "I know my Master, and cannot imagine him performing any duty without
honor." Andrew said.  "So the issue shall never arise."
     "And what of your duty to me, as the head of the Lords of Carlovain?"
Lord Montaigne said.
     And there was the trap!  A quick glance at Renaud told him he was
still on his own; whatever intercession Renaud would offer was not yet
there.
     "The Lords choose who is to be first among them.  My Master has chosen
you and is loyal to you.  For myself, I am loyal to my Master."  That
should throw it back in his teeth!
     "So I am to be given only secondary loyalty?" Lord Montaigne pressed.
"With your primary loyalty going to young Renaud here, who has no land or
title of his own?  What if the requirements of Renaud and myself should
differ?  Whom shall you choose?"
     "You yourself were in this position, when you chose between your
loyalty to your fellow Lords and loyalty to the King." Andrew said.  "You
have made your choice and it seems not to have caused you grief.  I
misdoubt but that, should the need arise, I shall find my own course
equally clear and easy to my conscience."
     He had just insulted Lord Montaigne, for the oath to the King was
quite clear and unequivocal, to support the King against any who would
oppose him.  But he had boxed Lord Montaigne as well, who could not rebut
this comment without recalling this directly to the assembly.
     Lord Montaigne's response was unexpected; he laughed a hearty laugh.
"Well spoken, Andre!  Did I not tell you all that he has spirit?"
     "You did indeed, my Lord." one of his retainers said.
     "I knew he wouldn't back down to me, for all my titles and power."
Lord Montaigne said.  "I knew it when I heard of him.  You can't tame the
spirit of such a man, you can only earn its loyalty.  Renaud, you have
earned his loyalty.  That speaks well of your own abilities."
     "Thank you, My Lord." Renaud had been watching this exchange
carefully, and the relief in his voice was very clear.  "For myself, I have
chosen to follow you, and my loyalty to you is chief among those in my own
heart."
     "Excellent." Lord Montaigne said.  "For it is time for me to depend
upon that loyalty.  Your uncle is not here?"
     "Nay, my Lord, he is still with my father's ships in the harbor at
Gullsport."
     Andrew tried not to look like a dog with its ears perked up.  The
Count's ships were at nearby Gullsport?  Count Ratisbon had held the King's
navy for eastern Carlovain.  Trevish and Adomeh had spoken of trying to
capture some of those ships.  As for the rest of Carlovain's tiny fleet,
some had fled Heslov's harbor entirely under the King's loyalists, and the
rest had been scuttled and now lay at the bottom of the harbor.  But if the
Count's ships were here...what then?  He wished he dared question Renaud
directly on this.
     But Renaud, for all his vaunted confidences in Andrew, had said
nothing of all this.
     Lord Montaigne stood and Andrew could almost see them all prepare for
a speech.  His voice changed timbre and pitch, became resounding and
fervent; the affectational inflection now gone.  Now there was the voice of
a leader among men!
     "Go, then, to your uncle and tell him to prepare the ships.  Know you
all now my plans which I have kept a closed secret until now, when I may
speak of it to you, each of whom has declared their loyalty to me.  I have
deliberately kept my own men out of the field, and assembled them in Heslov
for this purpose, a force now twelve thousand strong.  The other French
lords will continue to keep the Neresterii rabble busy in the heartland
while you will travel with me and my men by ship to land an expeditionary
force at Winseran Point.  From there we will have a free hand to plunder
their lands, burning their fields and killing their livestock and
peasantry, leaving an empty wasteland in our path.  The Neresterii shall
have to retreat to defend it, and in doing so, their forces shall become
disorganized and fall into discord, as the lords each choose to protect
their own lands at the costs of the others We will crush them in a vice and
I don't doubt but that we'll drink our Christmas wassail in the vaunted
stronghold of Castle Tiresval, surrounded by the bounty of the Neresterii
treasure hoards."  Lord Montaigne looked keenly around the group, which was
mostly the younger nobles and their retainers, and they were hanging
eagerly on his every word.  "As for all of you, you will have your chance
to show your prowess in battle.  There'll be lands enough for all when the
Neresterii lords are crushed, and Carlovain becomes totally ours!"
     A loud cheer rang out through the assembly, and Andrew, feeling Lord
Montaigne's eyes upon him, joined in as heartily as he could fake it.
Renaud was genuinely happy, he could see.
     What would such a rear attack do to the loyalist forces?  Andrew knew
from his days abed and talks with Renaud that the King's lands in southern
and central Carlovain were now totally under French control.  Scattered and
with small populations on the whole, they had fallen easily to the larger
French forces around them. The large section of the King's land in the
south of Carlovain was mostly the Tenemon Marshes, and while loyalist
forces still held much of those marshlands, the only usable portions of it,
the northern stretches where the King's horses were raised, had been
eagerly seized by the French lords.  On the whole, only the Neresterii
lands were still free from the rebellion and battles were raging all
through the heart of Carlovain as the French lords' smaller numbers were
balanced by the superiority of their armament.  The northern provinces were
poor and the ground not as fertile, they faced not a true army in the
field, but an armed rabble of peasantry that were easily cut down by the
armored lord's forces.
     With this blow falling, it could mean the end of Carlovain's long
reign of independence.  The land which had successfully held off the forces
of the Roman Emperors, who had retaliated by forbidding the small peninsula
to ever be drawn on the maps of Rome, the army of Charlemagne, who had lost
over two thousand men to the bogs of the Tenemon Marshes.  Phillippe I had
won because of his use of ships, and now Lord Montaigne meant to do the
same to wipe the last of the Neresterii from their holdings, land held by
them uninterrupted for all of human memory!  Even their language remained
intact, unrelated to the many Romance tongues that held sway over the rest
of Europe.  Only the Basques in Spain could claim a similar past, and even
they could not claim the long independence of Carlovain!
     "I shall begin the travel to Gullsport today, then, if I may." Renaud
said when the applause and cheers had died down.  "And you may depend upon
the ships to be ready."
     "Very good." Lord Montaigne said.  "I shall depend upon you, and you
may in turn depend upon my favor when the Neresterii rabble have been sent
to join their forefathers and I must place their lands in hands more
trustworthy to the French cause."
     Renaud beamed at that more than ever.  He was assured of a share in
the despoiled lands, it seems.
     "You will need another, in case the hazards of the trip are more than
you can bear.  I would not trust your retainer to continue the mission if
you were slain, since his loyalty, by his own words, would then be at an
end.  Ah, Marcel shall accompany you." Lord Montaigne said, peering about.
"He is your friend, is he not?"
     "He is, my Lord." Renaud said.
     "You may leave then.  With the courageous Andre protecting the two of
you, I am certain my message shall arrive safely."
     Andrew barely remembered to go with Renaud and Marcel as they left.
He was too stunned by the plan.  It would work.  How could it not?
     He had not yet been contacted by Adomeh or Trevish.  How was he to use
the knowledge he had gained by this long pretense, how to get it to the
hands of the loyalist forces?  He would have to steal away at Gullsport
after getting a count of the ships there, and make his way to the loyalists
as best he could.
     But what good would that do?  All the knowledge would do is split the
loyalist forces in two quicker than before.  He imagined the lands of
northern Carlovain, emptied of its fighting men, only the commoners left to
till the soils and fish in the abundant waters of the North Sea, these
would be all that would oppose Lord Montaigne.  Many would die before any
loyalists could be brought to bear upon his men, and even then, such a
force was unlikely to be enough to overcome a force of twelve thousand men!
Montaigne had by far the richest lands in Carlovain, his lands held the
most people, he was far richer than the King, and he had seen with his own
eyes that Montaigne's men were well-armed and trained.  Montaigne must have
planned this rebellion for years!
     It all depended upon the King, now, and the help he could gain from
England.  England, which had lost its substantial holdings in France but
for the port of Calais and made no attempt to regain it.  And after a
hundred years of war, would England help?
     He would not, were he the King of England!
     "You are pensive, Andre." Renaud said.
     "I am thinking.  Lord Montaigne has trusted you much, this day."
     "Yes, and this is what I knew, why I came here to the palace.  I knew
he needed my uncle's ships and I was an obvious choice to use as liaison
between my father and the Lord Protector.  My uncle thought the ships
themselves were more important, so he has gone to them instead and sits
there waiting for Lord Montaigne to come and humbly request his help in
using them.  But I knew better.  Montaigne will not ask, he will show up
with his men and he will simply take, given my word as my father's son as
sufficient license." Renaud babbled.  "I, not my uncle, will be the favored
one."
     "There is still a long road to travel." Andrew warned.  "Not just to
Gullsport, but thence to Winseran Point and by foot across northern
Carlovain, which is a rugged and unfriendly place."
     "But it is the final path to be taken." Renaud said.  "A man may
endure much, if he knows his goal awaits at the end."
     "What of Cederel?" Andrew asked.  "You spoke of it as the land you
wished to take for your own."
     "Let my father keep it, as he and my uncle's men seized it upon the
chosen day for the rebellion.  It was only a place I knew well.  He and my
uncle may spar for it as they will, that and the King's land to the south
which he divided with Lord Montaigne and Lord Bouillon.  For myself, give
me a land to which others hold no claim and I shall take it and make it my
own."
     "The Neresterii lords hold claim." Andrew reminded him gently.  "Do
not forget what will come first, the killing and burning and stealing of
everything of value."
     "We shall take our share of all that." Marcel interposed.  Andrew had
forgotten he was there, he had been silent for so long.  "And use a
generous hand with it at first when the land is given to us, so that we
will be the benefactors of the peasants.  They will remember their old lord
only as one who failed to protect them, and will embrace our new protection
with gratitude."
     "Are you sure that will work?" Andrew asked.
     Marcel shrugged.  "It worked here when Phillippe I and our ancestors
came to this land.  It will work again."
     That silenced Andrew.  Marcel was right.  Taking away the treasures of
the land and then giving it back as largesse.  How could they lose?
     They were packed and on the road again by noon.  Andrew rode the horse
he had ridden all this time, the King's own horse, and none had known it.
It was the first he had occasion to think of this.  Odd, he had known every
regular customer's horse by sight after the first few visits; he could see
the horse and knew who visited, even if the horse were unsaddled and
otherwise featureless.  Horses had individual faces the same as men.  Were
the men in the stables so blind?
     Ah, but the lands were in turmoil.  No doubt many men rode horses
which were no longer owned by the men of a few days ago.  Or the stablemen
could have been replaced by Lord Montaigne's own men.  Yes, that would be
what would happen.  Lord Montaigne would not trust the King's own
stable-hands, or they would have fled, and he would have replaced them from
his own house.  That made him feel better.
     The ride was slow and quite pleasant.  They would be in Gullsport by
morning, for it was not a long ride, and the road was wide and
well-traveled.  It was easy enough to forget that this was a land in the
throes of civil war, if you ignored the occasional groups of peasants in
wagons or on foot, carrying all they could and trudging along, bound for
Heslov and the chance for a new life there.  This meant that their lands
had been taken from them or despoiled by the troops; now footloose, they
would naturally gravitate to the towns, their best hope, where work could
be had for a lucky man with a good pair of hands.
     They had been alone on the road for some hours, and it was nearing
nightfall when Andrew heard it.  He cocked his head and looked over at
Renaud.  "What is that?" he asked.  It was a jingling sound, a clanking
sound, and heavy hoof-treads all combined.  Clomp-clomp-jingle-clank!
     "You know not this sound?" Marcel grinned at him.  "And you the son of
an innkeeper?"
     "Nay, I have not heard it before." Andrew admitted.
     "It is the sound of a knight in armor.  More than one, I should judge.
Nobody else makes such a racket while traveling, with armor clanking and
spurs and bridles jingling and the poor horses laboring along under that
heavy tread."
     "Knights in armor." Andrew said.  They had always been scarce in
Carlovain, and ever since the battle of Agincourt, armor had fallen into
increasing disuse and disrepute.  Though useful against spears and arrows
in the thick of battle, the danger was that you would be unhorsed; as at
Agincourt, where many knights in heavy armor had fallen and drowned in the
churned-up mud or died at the hands of the common soldier, who had the
prostrate man below him and could choose an entrance point for his spear at
his leisure.
     An armored man was encumbered, depending upon the amount of his armor,
by over a hundred pounds of solid steel.  Strapped properly onto the erect
body and with practice, it rode with you well enough, but if you fell down,
that same steel became a dead weight to be raised along with your own body
and strapped in a way that you could not get up and then pick it up, you
had to raise it with your own muscles, the smaller ones unused to heavy
burdens.  So the one best way to defeat an armored foe was to unhorse him
or knock him off his feet, after that, his life was yours.
     But here they were, two men in armor riding their way.  Silvery armor
gleamed, they wore helmets, breastplates, backplates, and arm and leg
guards.  The horses they rode labored under their heavy weight; they did
not gallop, they plodded.
     "Ho, there, fair knights!" Renaud called out good-heartedly.  "How
fare ye?"
     "Are you friend or foe?" came the response.  "Who be ye?"
     "I know not if you would call me friend." Renaud admitted.  "I am
Renaud, son of Count Ratisbon, and this is my friend Marcel, son of the
Marquis of Lesleran."
     "And the third?"
     Renaud shrugged.  "He is merely my retainer.  Now who may you be and
whence do you travel?"
     "That me regards." came the enigmatic response.
     Marcel was taken aback, then laughed.  "This is rich!  Right out of
the old stories, it is!"
     Renaud was laughing as well.  "Can you remember the right response?"
     "Not exactly."
     "I don't think they'll mind if you get the gist of it.  You'd best
start it quickly, if we're to have a running start at them."  The two
knights were now close enough to make out details, and Andrew frowned.
There was the faintest bit of familiarity about these men.  And those
horses.  He had seen them before, as well, but where?  It was recent.
     "Knight, that is discourteously said." Marcel called.  "And if ye give
me not your names, we shall not let ye pass."
     "Then we shall pass anyway."
     "Ride beside me, close but somewhat behind." Renaud whispered
hurriedly to Andrew.  When we reach them, ride on their right-hand side."
And Renaud handed him--the end of a rope!  And he winked at Andrew.
     It took Andrew a moment, then he grinned.  "As you wish, Master." He
said.
     The knights kicked their steed, who whinnied in protest but began to
gallop so slowly towards their group.  Marcel took Renaud's right-hand
side, leaving Renaud in the center, and they began to gallop toward the two
knights, who had drawn their swords.  Those swords shone in the evening sun
the same as the shields.  Marcel rode up ahead of Renaud, while Andrew kept
by his side and behind as ordered.  Marcel galloped up to the larger knight
on the right and going to his right-hand side, deprived the knight of his
protection of his shield and swung a blow at the knight with his blade.
The knight turned in his saddle, awkwardly and slowly, and just managed to
fend off the blow, catching it on his armored arm guard.  Marcel was able
to dodge the slow-moving response of the knight's sword easily, not
encumbered by the arm being weighted with twenty pounds of steel and rode
on behind them.
     Now Renaud and Andrew were upon them and Renaud said, "Now!" and cut
to the two knight's right as well.  Andrew took the left, going around the
other knight whose horse had turned sideways in the road at his behest,
leaving his shield foremost and Andrew had to duck to keep that blade from
slicing at his head.
     But the rope was now there and did the trick.  Just clearing the
horses' heads (both had dropped their heads, as a good fighting horse is
trained to do when battles close, which permits his rider to swing his
blade freely), the rope caught both knights across their chests and the
force of their ride and Andrew's tight grip with both hands on the rope and
his legs clenched to his horse's sides, they were able to unseat both
knights in short order, them toppling to the road's dusty surface.
     "Hah!"  Marcel yelled at the horses, after ducking the rope
himself--but he at least had expected it--and managed to scare the horses
away from the hapless knights, so that they did not even have the help of
the horse's stirrups to pull themselves up with.
     For they were both flat on the ground and struggling.
     "Quickly!" Renaud said as he slipped off his horse and ran to the two
men.  Andrew did the same and imitated Renaud's action, which was to
promptly sit down on the knight and carefully pry the sword out of the
helpless man's hand.  Both shields were already discarded.
     The men tried to rise despite the weight of a man perched on them and
the weight of the armor, but they moved slowly under the weight of the
steel on their arms, and Andrew was able to anticipate and counter every
movement.
     "Do you surrender?" he asked the man below him.
     "You sons of serpents!" came a rather familiar response to the man
beneath him.
     Andrew reached down and yanked off the helmet which hid the man's
features entirely and looked down.
     He was looking into the face of Adomeh.  His eyes widened and seeing
that Adomeh recognized him as well, he covered well as he could.  "Do you
surrender now, knight?" he asked.  "Or must my sword find its way into your
body through your eye?"
     Andrew lifted his sword up with both hands, point downwards, to
illustrate his point.
     "I yield." came Adomeh's grudging response.
     "Do you yield?" Renaud asked his still-struggling counterpart.  He
also yanked off the helmet to reveal...Trevish!
     "I yield." Trevish said.
     Marcel came up and looked down at the two prostrate forms, one leg
still in the stirrup and the other cocked over his knee, a comfortable man
with no need to fight at the moment.  He grinned down at Trevish and said,
"Well, sirs, shall we have your names and your mission now?  These are days
when a man must know where any stranger stands."
     "I'll tell you nothing." Trevish said.
     "Then we needs must apply some persuasion to these arrogant knights."
Marcel slid off his horse, reached down and took Trevish's pouch and opened
it.  Hmm, just coins here.  No letter from any protector.  Knights errant
then, are you?"
     "Yes." came the grudging answer.
     "But we still don't have your names.  Shall you tell them us now?"
     "Nay.  Nay!" came the two responses.
     Marcel sighed.  "Help me drag this one off the road.  Andre, you keep
that one pinned down until we can return for him."
     They grabbed Trevish each by a leg and pulled him like a dead weight
into the bushes which marked a small campsite clearing by the roadside.
     "What are you two doing?" Andrew hissed at Adomeh.  "Are you mad?"
     "Not so mad as to ride into Heslov with our faces showing." Adomeh
whispered back at him.  "We were too well-known by Lord Montaigne.  We had
planned to go into Heslov and then to seek you out by stealth, but feared
being recognized on the road, and so this armor, which we took off a couple
of dead French nobles in a battle two days ago.  But this is better, and we
are well-met, kinsman.  You are doing right.  You don't know us.  Where are
you bound?"
     "Gullsport." Andrew said.  "Count Ratisbon's ships are harbored there.
And...."  Marcel was returning.  "Tell us your names and we may let you
go." he said louder.
     "I shall not!" Adomeh responded.
     "Okay, Andrew." Marcel said as he took up one of Adomeh's struggling
legs.  "Let's grab the other and drag him so fast he can't get up.  Watch
him as we go lest he grab a handhold of some kind.  He is helpless without
a handhold or room to move."
     "You offspring of a lonesome noble's wife and a barely pubescent
page!" Adomeh stormed.  "You get of curs, let me up!"
     They dragged him down to the clearing which abutted a small stream,
and found Renaud perched atop Trevish who still struggled feebly, obviously
tired from the dead weight of the steel armor which he couldn't have been
used to.  To ride with that weight on in this heat!  It must be a mercy to
get into the shade of this area, with the coolness of the stream nearby.
     Adomeh kicked and Andrew lost his hold, falling down, and Adomeh
kicked entirely free.  Then he used the sloping land to roll himself onto
his stomach, and then managed to get his legs beneath him and rose to his
hands.
     But Marcel was upon him and Renaud jumped off Trevish and came to his
assistance.  Soon they had Adomeh pinned beneath them, though still on his
legs and hands, it took both of them to hold him in place.  Andrew saw
Trevish rocking himself (he was lying in a small concavity in the ground,
which further hindered him) and ran over to sit on Trevish's lower chest,
grimaced, and slid down to Trevish's crotch, where there was no armor at
all, only the cloth of the close-fitting, hooded, padded doublet and
trousers he wore beneath the armor.
     "We must learn if these two pose a threat to our Lord Protector."
Marcel said.  "But I do flinch at force upon what may well be simply an
ally refusing to admit defeat in honorably combat."
     "Honorable combat!" Adomeh surged.  "You played a peasant's trick on
us."
     "Yes, and it worked." Marcel agreed.
     "We should find means to persuade them." Renaud agreed.  "There must
be many things we can do to men who are helpless beneath us."
     Trevish went into a bout of struggling, and Andrew rode him out.
     "You look very fetching, sitting astride him like that." Marcel
ventured.  "One would think you were lovers, not antagonists in a battle."
     Andrew saw, then, a way out for his friends, perhaps.  If he could
turn this into a game, these young noblemen would likely forget entirely
any thoughts of torture.  "Well, as you said, we may do what we would to
these two knights errant."  And he wiggled on Trevish's crotch
suggestively.
     "Ah, Mother protect us!" Trevish groaned.  "Are you so lacking in
honor that you would use us as you would a common barmaid?"
     "Andre, I think he just insulted your mother." Renaud said.
     "I think you're right." Andrew gave Trevish a hidden wink.  "And none
may do that with impunity.  It is time I taught that to this whelp in iron
clothing."
     Marcel came over, leaving Renaud to keep a tight grip on Adomeh,
Renaud sitting astride Adomeh like a man on a horse with his full weight
resting on Adomeh's strong back, and reached down between Andrew's
buttocks.
     Andrew slid up and looked over his shoulder, Marcel was fondling the
helpless Trevish's crotch which had swollen up in response.
     "Well, if we have to slice anything off to get them to talk, we know
where to start." Marcel said as he fished his knife out of its sheath.
     Trevish's eyes grew wide with this.  "Mercy, sir, have pity!  Take my
submission, good sir, with all honor!"
     Andrew was equally disturbed.  "Marcel, please, you wouldn't!"
     "You are too kind to the enemies of the Lord Protector." Marcel jibed
at him.  And he stabbed down with the knife and Trevish moaned in fear.
     But the knife merely slit the trousers wide open.  In a trice,
Trevish's entire groin was exposed and vulnerable.  And his cock was erect
and standing tall.
     "I do believe he has a taste for this treatment." Marcel said.
     There was another surge from Adomeh, Andrew looked over to see Renaud
having slid off of Adomeh, clinging to his back and now fondling Adomeh.
"Yes, I think they both like the idea of being our playthings." Renaud
said.  "Don't you, Sir Knight?"  He slid down Adomeh's trousers and soon
Adomeh was equally vulnerable.  Adomeh again tried to move, to stand up,
but the combined weight of Renaud's body and the armor was enough to pinion
even strong Adomeh quite effectively, he moved a few feet forward, but that
was all.  Renaud had slid back even further now and was thus kneeling
behind Adomeh while he clung to Adomeh's cock with his hand.
     "Ah, thank you, sir." Renaud said as he hitched back at Adomeh.  "I
accept your offer with gratitude.  You have a choice now to make." he said
as Adomeh continued his struggle.  "I have my knife at hand.  I can either
use my free hand to convey my mouth's water down to my manhood and prepare
it thus, or I can use my free hand to hold a knife to your throat.  Pray
take your selection now, for I tire at your convulsions beneath me."
     "I do recommend that you hold still, sir, for I can attest that he is
a gentle lover when he wishes to be." Andrew said to Adomeh.  "While both
of these men are quite loyal to the Lord Protector Guy Montaigne, they are
not naturally sadistic.  But you challenged us to a combat and now must pay
some penalty.  As we have no desire of your armor or your gold, we must
take what offerings you have."
     "Ah, then be done with it!" Adomeh growled.
     Renaud began to hawk spit into his palm and grease his cock.  Andrew
watched this, and hearing Trevish give out a familiar moan, he saw that
Marcel was ministering to Trevish's prick with his very talented tongue.
Andrew looked into his friend's face, and smiled, scooted up more to where
he sat on Trevish's chest.  "Now if you will join your comrade in his
payment, I shall be grateful." he said to Trevish.  He winked again
secretly at Trevish and got a small smile in response, before Trevish
raised up his head to touch Andrew's cock to his lips.
     Andrew needed to put on a show for Renaud and Marcel, so he grasped
Trevish's head and pushed it in, hard, knowing that Trevish was adept
enough to be able to handle such rough treatment.  Trevish grunted, choked,
but bore it and soon Andrew's cock was being given a powerful suction as he
forced Trevish's head back and forth upon his organ.
     "Agh, ahh!" Adomeh groaned as Renaud's cock slid into his anus.
Knowing how Renaud's small yet broad prick worked on him, Andrew
sympathized with Adomeh's grunts, the faces he made as he lay his head down
on the summer grass still moist and verdant in this favored spot, and
Renaud humped at him eagerly.
     Marcel was playing his tongue over Trevish's cock, not taking him
completely, but rather taunting and teasing the supine warrior, and Andrew
felt a strange pride in this, his old friends being taken by his new
friends, and neither knowing the other.  It caused a strange gurgling in
his balls as Trevish slurped on his pud, driving him to greater and greater
heights of passion, so that he moaned lustily with the warm lips on his
prick, the feel of cold metal beneath his legs, the heat of the summer day,
all coalescing sensations in his nostrils and his brain, so that he felt a
strange powerful ecstasy quite unlike his normal passion stealing into his
soul.
     Adomeh was grunting and moaning as if in real pain, but Andrew saw
that his pud was still erect and twitching of its own accord, Renaud having
released it, and his face flushed, he growled in his submission and his
cock suddenly became a churning bubble mass of white soggy jism that poured
out of his slit and partially down his shaft before the twitching movements
of his body from Renaud's thrusts sent it flying off to land with rich
ripeness on the green carpet below him.  Renaud gasped in pleasure as
Adomeh squirted his wad and Andrew saw his face light up with a familiar
pleasure-look, and he knew that Renaud was pumping his jism into Adomeh out
of that stubby, wonderful prong of his, which was just long enough to
trigger that love-button buried deep inside.
     Andrew felt Trevish shift, and then Marcel's body behind him, sensed
rather than seen, and he watched Trevish's face, wondering how Trevish
would take this violation.  But Marcel must have lavished some care on his
own pud, for Trevish's face crinkled only in a brief flinch of insertion
combined with pleasure, and then he was slurping on Andrew more lavishly
than ever, and Andrew saw this, knew his friend was being ravished as he
sucked on Andrew's prick, and Andrew gurgled, sputtered, gasped, and he was
blasting his load into Trevish's sucking maw.
     Marcel was making Trevish's body rock as he moved, and Trevish,
drowning in Andrew's jism, suddenly clutched as if stabbed with a spear
from beneath the ground, and Andrew felt the heavy splatters of jism hit
his back.  Marcel was left to finish a poor fifth, and he pumped at Trevish
lustily for some minutes afterwards, until he shot his wad into Trevish's
now limp and unresisting flesh.
     "It is nearly nightfall." Renaud said as he got to his feet.  "I think
this is a good place to set our tent."
     "Might we camp here with you?" Trevish said as he got to his feet, now
that nobody was stopping him.  Then to Adomeh, still lying there in his
ravished position.  "Come on, my friend, you have taken worse.  And dealt
it out, if you will recall."
     "True." Adomeh said.  "But it's this blasted armor.  I am fain worn
out from trying to rise in it with this luggard on my back as well."
     "We warned you to quit struggling." Andrew said.
     "True." Adomeh managed a grin.  "And I need to remove this armor
anyway, for I have decided it is useless in a fight.  Until I meet up with
an army, I intend to keep it strapped to my horse."
     "Good of you to decide that." Andrew said.  "For I doubt if it would
make for a comfortable sleep."
     "May we know your names now, good sirs?" Renaud said, with a tone in
his voice that made it no confrontation at all.
     "Certainly." Adomeh said.  "I am...Adam and this...this is Trevor."
Andrew grinned, Adomeh had converted their names from its Neresterii form
to its English forms, the same as his had been changed from English to
French.  The problem with being a spy was keeping track of all the lies you
were faced with telling.  "We are Englishmen who heard there was a war
brewing over here and decided to come try our fortunes.  Having decided
that the Neresterii had nothing of value to offer us, we thought to speak
to the new Lord Protector."
     "You should come with us, then." Renaud offered.  "For we travel to
Gullsport on the Lord Protector's business."
     "For what reason?" Adomeh said.
     Renaud shook his head.  "We are not at liberty to reveal that.  I will
simply say that it is a good place to be."
     "We would speak with the Lord Protector ourselves." Adomeh said after
casting a glance at Andrew and getting a shake of the head in prompting.
"If he is still at Heslov, then we journey there.  But we thank thee for
your kindness in our defeat.  I shall not be so quick to challenge again
when in armor."
     "Armor has its purpose." Renaud said in a tone that meant he had
discussed it in depth in his past.  "But you trade agility for defense when
you don it.  I'd rather trust to my own abilities and eyes to protect me.
Though in the midst of battle with arrows flying thick and fast, it must be
invaluable."
     "No more valuable than a large shield which you can cast aside at
need." Marcel put in.
     "Yes.  We should speak more on armor." Adomeh said.
     "And we shall, for we have the night ahead of us before we retire."
Renaud turned to Andrew.  "Go fetch our pack horse and set up camp.  Then
start our meal." And Renaud turned away from Andrew, forgot him in the
enthusiasm of greeting these new men.
     So he was a mere retainer now.  Well, under the circumstances, perhaps
that was for the best.  Andrew walked away to find the pack horse, which
was fortunately still on the road and down it a fair ways, having wandered
in search of forage.
     "I shall fetch our horses." Trevish called and joined Andrew a moment
later.
     "Good to see you again." Andrew said softly.
     "Would I would say the same." Trevish said.  "Why did you arrange
that...degradation for us?"
     "Because last night I attended a party where the enemies of the Lord
Protector were not treated nearly so kindly.  I trusted my knowledge of
these two, that once they had shared their bodies with you, they would look
on you with favor and not as enemies."
     "Seems you were right, though I would as lief have foregone the
sharing in just that manner." Trevish said, working his jaw with
exaggerated care.
     "Shouldn't you be rubbing your buttocks instead?" Andrew asked.
     Trevish managed a grin.  "All right, so it was fun, in a distorted
way.  But why shouldn't we accompany you?"
     "Because you must get word to the Neresterii forces at once." Andrew
said, and he explained the plot.
     "I see." Trevish said as they gathered the horses and turned back to
the clearing.  "You are right, we must ride and warn as we can.  You are
certain they go to Winseran Point?"
     "That is what Lord Montaigne said." Andrew agreed.  "Though perhaps he
thought to distract us, for he told many people at once."
     Trevish pondered, then asked, "Who was in the crowd he told?"
     "Those such as Renaud and Marcel, young noblemen, and their retainers
such as myself."
     "Then he trusted all of you." Trevish said.  "We shall treat this
intelligence as accurate, then.  It was a lucky day for Carlovain when the
King rode into your inn."
     "I wish I felt lucky." Andrew said ruefully.  "For I see no way to
stop him.  The Neresterii cannot fight a battle on two fronts.  And Lord
Montaigne will not accept surrender as Phillippe I did, he has too many
French lords to reward.  He will wipe the Neresterii nobility out to the
last man if he can."
     "We must return to our roles now." Trevish said.  "Anything else."
     "Only that, unless the King can pull off a miracle of alliance in his
exile, I see nothing to stop Lord Montaigne." Andrew said.  "He shall win
over all of Carlovain.  And when the Grand Duke's forces arrive, they shall
stay here forever.  Nothing will stop them."
     "Yes, we need a miracle." Trevish said.  "Until then, we fight on as
best we can and trust to God to supply the miracle."
     "Yes." Andrew said.  And he said his private prayer to Vedron instead.
"Pray, noble sir, have mercy upon your people.  Let the King work a miracle
in England."

			     END OF CHAPTER 14