The further adventures of Rothesay and Raian and friends, presented as a separate book, apparently requires RoyalRoad to review it first as if it were an entirely unique thing. That's fair, I'm sure; meantime, it will be a couple of days before it is approved.

  But at least it is in process! It will show on my author's page as another book, rather than being accessible from this one.

  The first chapter of And the King is "Courting Trouble". Here is the opening scene:

  ∞∞∞∞∞ ∞∞∞∞∞ ∞∞∞∞∞

  “You what?”

  Thunder rumbled in the king’s voice. The plaintiff, an ordinarily sturdy farmer, broke and cowered. “I never thought ony harm on’t!”

  Deorgard stared at the kneeling man. The entire court stared, and then as one looked at the man’s wife, standing behind and the infant in her arms. Where did you think children came from? Raian burned to ask.

  The defendant was next to be speared on the king’s glance. “’T is nowt to do wi’ me!” he gibbered again. “His the cow, his the calf, aye?” Minutely, Raian shook his head.

  Jaga Spearfence was a plain man of middle years; his wife, Henlaf, young and comely, as was his neighbor Haldebrad, the defendant. For three years Jaga had turned a blind eye to their trysting—on the grounds, he said, that she was always home when he wanted her.

  Now there was this child, for whom both men disowned responsibility but came to court to oblige the other to do his duty by it. A strange suit; any other man present would have been fighting to claim it as his own—and might yet, if the principals were to be such fools. The silence in Deorgard’s hall spread till one could almost hear the smoke curling from the hearth-fire.

  Raian, sitting as always at Deorgard’s right foot as a showpiece, ‘my imperial slave boy’, did not see his master shift, but he felt it and dodged. Deorgard lunged. A guttural roar burst from him as he seized plaintiff and defendant each by the sherte front and cracked their skulls together. Together he flung them back and as they scrabbled in the rushes, stood and reared one great foot for a majestic swing. The husband found his own feet and bolted for the doors; the neighbor skidded, fell on his chin, and the royal boot on his rising backside propelled him another yard back onto his chin. As the court howled with laughter the trembling man escaped at last. The woman melted out after them.

  Deorgard shook his fists after them with another inarticulate roar, and Bradgith thumped the ruld weara to close court only just before the king stormed from it. Raian leaped and flung his master’s great cloak of two full bearskins to his back only just in time himself.

  He paused then, watching the king stomp out into the snowy world’s white-gold glare. Then he stared at his hands, that had thrown the cloak. He knew he was growing—this was his second pair of boots since he had come here to Angowin last fall. And he still had thrown the cloak upward, to gain the king’s shoulders—but not so far as seemed right. Come to think of it, he could just about look Wolf in the eye now. On that thought, he snatched up his own cloak and dashed from the hall.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  He found Wolf at Maglad’s town house, carefully closing his own master’s door after admitting king and bard. Raian tackled him back into the snowdrifts beside the porch. Wolf fought back only enough to keep his face clear.

  “Ach! Hey, boyo, we get enough of that tonight!”

  “Is there ever enough?” Raian retorted gaily. Still, he flung himself back and gave a hand to pull Wolf to his feet.

  “Maybe not,” Wolf grinned, flinging a fistful of snow into Raian’s face. “Where’s our teacher-boy?”

  “Scrubbing.”

  “Wasting our time! Let’s go get him, then! They’ll be hours,” he added, cocking his head at the door.

  “Yah. What I wouldn’t give to be in there with them!”

  “Yah, how will they ever know what great strategies they’re overlooking, leaving you out!” Wolf braced for the assault that always followed remarks like this, but Raian only tapped his shoulder.

  Sure of Wolf’s full attention, Raian walked gently into him face-first—and the tip of Raian’s nose crossed above Wolf’s. He grinned.

  “I can fix that!” Wolf yelled, grabbing for Raian’s face, and they laughed, rolled and tumbled through frozen mud and the snow all the way back to Deorgard’s house where Sorchone cleaned the breakfast pots. They lent their own hands to the work, the sooner to be done with it, and hustled him out, out beyond the village wall to their secret training ground. Sorchone, they had discovered, knew some very interesting fighting tricks, and they needed them.

  Winterbound, the Geillan men livened the dark evenings with contests of strength and skill. Clearing space in the king’s great hall after the day meal, they drank till late in the night and threw knives, hurled axes, and wrestled, wrangled and fought amid extravagant betting. For comedy, they often pitted thrall against thrall. And, as Raian and Wolf both quickly learned, slaves who fought well and won often rose in the rankings like any other victor. Most of their opponents now were freemen.

  Their street-fighting skills had won fat purses for their early backers, but it was Sorchone who was making local heroes of them. Sorchone himself invariably lost till no one now bothered with him at all. Raian alone noticed that, lose how he would, he nevertheless emerged unscathed, bruiseless and whole. Confronted, Sorchone bought their silence by teaching them to win with the devices he used for losing.

  Today as they walked back together, breathless and exhilarated after their training, Raian asked again why Sorchone always threw his fights. The young Sferan stared thoughtfully into the snow-laden woods before replying with a question of his own. “Do you like being a slave?” When they glared their answer, he shrugged. “But when you win, you please your masters. Do you wish them to be pleased?”

  Raian frowned. It was true; Deorgard and Maglad both reveled in the success of their two thralls, and gifted them handsomely. The Geillari regarded the prowess of a man, be he enemy, thrall, or vassal, as a sign of the still greater power of the one who mastered him.

  “I don’t care if they’re pleased or not,” he said at last. “It’s a waste of my time, to lose.”

  Wolf beamed at Raian like a farmer at a prizewinning chick, then at Sorchone to make sure he appreciated this elegant wisdom. Sorchone conceded with a nod, but said no more.

  “Where did you learn all this, anyway?” Raian demanded, forgetting that his earlier question had not been answered at all.

  “At home,” Sorchone said simply, and truthfully enough. “From the time I could walk,” he added, again truthfully if allowed now to refer to the Cathforrow family practices and not the Order’s.

  “Some family,” grunted Wolf, interpreting this as intended. Raian eyed Sorchone suspiciously, but he offered no details and they did not press for any.