Chapter 690: The dog(1)
The castle of Stilum was, by any generous measure, a modest place, unfitting for the company it now held. There were no golden chandeliers to dazzle the eye, no marble floors to reflect the light of highborn vanity, nor towering tapestries depicting great deeds of ancestors long dead. Its walls were stone, grey and pitted by years of rain, its corridors narrow enough that four armored men might pass only by turning sideways.
It had not been built for pageantry, but for defense.
Yet tonight, seven high lords with their vassals, the fractured remnants of a royal court, and the weary bones of a battered royal family all found themselves crowded within its confines like nobles stuffed into a farmer’s barn.
The only thing keeping them from scattering to their own corners of the realm this very night was the promise of hot food, that might, just might, drive out the taste of dry rations, smoke, and mud that had clung to their mouths since the retreat began.
Tomorrow they would leave, return to their fiefs, their squabbling, their paranoia.
But for one night, they feasted.
The great hall was dressed for the occasion as best as could be managed. Reed mats had been thrown over the flagstones. Rushes soaked in pine oil burned from iron sconces, giving off a flickering light and the faint scent of forest sap.
Some long wooden tables, scarred by time and use, groaned under the weight of the meal: platters of roasted lamb basted in honey and rosemary; bowls of thick stew made with grains, and what little game the surrounding woods could provide; skewers of pigeon and duck glazed in wine and garnished with wild apples.
Even now, a small boar roasted over the hearth, spitting fat into the flame while its skin crisped to a golden crackle.
Wine flowed more freely than sense. Red, spiced, and strong, it stained the teeth and loosened the tongues. Goblets clanged, laughter , despite the heavy mood, echoed too loudly in the cramped space, and the occasional bark of an argument flared up before being muffled under laughter or another toast to past glories, as if they had forgotten the humiliation and shame of the previous days.
Outside the crumbling walls of Stilum’s inner keep, the rest of the army stretched like a tattered shroud across the castle grounds and surrounding fields. They had poured in earlier that day, a slow-moving mass of mud-streaked soldiers, limping horses, bent carts, and the stink of sweat, iron, and fatigue.
They filled the outer yard first, those lucky enough to find space in the barracks or stables quickly claimed it. The rest found shelter wherever there was a patch of dry ground: in grain stores, beneath old awnings, along the walls, and when nowhere else was left, under hastily pitched tents or under nothing at all but the overcast sky.