Black Rose

(This story began as a story I was writing several years ago on Literotica, using a previous profile (I've had more than two on this site), which was calledFreyas Saga.

I got over-ambitious about it, and I deleted that profile, and rewrote the storymanytimes, between 2015 and about 2025, in an attempt to make it into something I could publish in the traditional sense.

Eventually, I realised that that wasn't going to happen. I'm not very good at writing sellable stories.

This is a Literotica story in its very bones. I feel like only this site might let me publish this story.

I'm putting this revised version up here, to see if anyone likes it. It will be long. Like, very long. NotWheel of Timelong, but long. I haven't finished writing it yet.

Two typographical conventions:

Jumps between different scenesare signified by three asterisks in a row, and a setting in bold for the new scene, e.g. :

***

Fourteen years earlier

Jumps between different POVs in thesamescene, are signified by a single asterisk, e.g.:

*

I am posting this saga under Non-Erotic because, although it's a fantasy saga, sort of, it's notmainlyabout the pleasure of sex. I don't want readers to be wondering why there's not more fanservice. There is some (I hope) good sex in it, but it's not the main point of the story.

If it's anything, it's a love story.

I hope you find something about it to like.)

***

Nature is not interested in our separations...

--Feynman/Leighton/Sands, *Lectures on Physics*

Chapter 1: The Celebration of the Peace

The Year 501

Hargest

The baron stood up, and the assembly fell silent.

'First of all' he said in his measured voice, 'greetings.'

The baron looked down at his own hands, clutching the lectern, and then he looked up at the assembly again. He smiled at them, warmly.

'Greetings,' he said, 'and thanks to you all. It has been a long war, and the victory was hard won.

'We of Hargest have little time for long speeches, but sometimes it does good to look back on what we have done, and weigh it against what our forefathers did, and see where we are in the balance. This is such a time.

'The king, my brother, honours us with his presence today. If any among us is owed thanks for this victory, it is him.'

He turned to his brother, who sat beside him with a cup in his hand, smiling his calm smile, always still, never rushed.

'It was the king,' the baron said, 'who first recognised that all our peoples had a common enemy in the Dominies.

'It was the king who rallied us tirelessly, encouraging us to put aside our differences so that we might fight against the Dominies, because he saw that only the combined might of several domains was strong enough to defeat them.

'It was the king who saw that our best hope of staying united was to leave behind our old gods, and to rally around one law, and one god, and one Book. And it was the king who led us in battle and directed our forces, so that we were able to strike down the arrogance and cruelty of the Dominies, and break their staffs. The Dominies have been vanquished. Never again shall magic have dominion over man.'

The baron looked again at his taller and larger brother, and lowered his head in respect, and raised it once more.

'Brother,' Hargest said, 'I have long looked up to you as an example of how a man should run his estate, and you remain the rock on which the peace is built. Health and long life.'

Hargest raised his cup and the king raised his own, and then knocked it against the baron's with a littletinknoise that was small and silly enough to raise a laugh.

The king grinned. That was one of the things about him that made the people of Hargest love him. He wasn't so big as to have forgotten how to have a laugh.

They drank, and the king set his cup down again and settled himself to hear the rest of the speech.

'When a man of Hargest became king,' Hargest said, 'there was much talk and argument about how our house had too much power. Surely the king would favour his brother, in his dealings with the other domains. But it has not happened. Hargest does not seek more power than it has. Why would we need it?

'Other domains are richer. Losso has its fields, and its livestock, and its glorious fertility, and the long slow life of its folk, and their ways.'

He bowed to the delegation from Losso, a group of half a dozen florid, straw-haired men seated by themselves at one end of a table, goblets of wine before them. They did not return the bow, or even acknowledge the tribute, but looked around the room with unsmiling faces. Behind their leader, on a small stool, sat his wife, dressed from head to foot in black, with her head bowed, her hands folded in her lap, awaiting her master's pleasure.

Hargest smiled pleasantly. He wasn't about to register the snub.

'The northern domains have their mystery, and their beauty, and the power and majesty of the sun.'

He bowed once more to the two-person delegation from the north: a man in a richly embroidered coat, and next to him his valet: a black-skinned woman in neat dark clothes with a discreet gold pin on her lapel. The man stood up and smiled at Hargest and lifted his glass in tribute, then sat down again, looking pleased with himself.

'The west has its tales and poetry, the songs of its sad people.'

Nobody said anything.

There were no representatives from the west, and everyone knew why.

'What do we have, here in Hargest? We are poor in tales and poetry. We have no great works to speak of, left us by our glorious forefathers. We live under the wind and the sky, in the hills we love. Our winters bite, and if our summers have three days of sun in a row, we call it a festival.'

There was a ripple of laughter at this.

'Our fathers chose this life,' the baron said, 'because we have what others do not have. A tradition of service.'

He looked over them all, silently challenging them to disagree. No-one did.

'Hargest was always the kingdom that came to the defence of the others.

'Because it is what we do.

'We fight.'

He raised his hand, and indicated the Hargest battle honours that were hung around the walls of the hall.

The higher up and further back you went, the more tattered they became. The ones near the back wall were grey nets hanging on poles.

'These are our stories,' the baron said, his eyes bright, his voice full of emotion. 'These are our poems. To our guests, I would say that every man here, and most of our women, can tell me where these honours were earned. All of us have ones who died to earn them. And the sign of our command, the emblem of our honour, is the oldest of all.'

He turned and looked up at the Hargest battle flag: the original and oldest, which hung apart from the others, on the wall behind him.

It was the plainest of all the flags, and also, thanks to the native magic of Hargest, the newest-looking.

A simple, dark green banner with four letters on it.

It showed little sign of wear; it did not unravel, moths didn't eat it, woodworms couldn't penetrate its staff. It was cleaned every so often, to get rid of the grease and smoke which clung to its surface, but that was all. Even cleaning couldn't weather it.

RGST, was all the flag said.

'Whenever I look at our flag,' the baron said, smiling, 'I am reminded of the story of the Hargest goodman in the wars long ago, who was marching beneath it.

'He was fighting alongside men from other commands, who had their own flags, all more beautiful, all more inspiring--at least to those who didn't call them their own.

'And the other soldiers teased the goodman for his flag. One of them said "You call that a flag? With no device? No colours, other than green and brown? No names of battles? No beasts? No emblem? Only your name?"'

'The goodman said "Aye, I call that a flag."

'The other man said, "It is not even the correct name. It is only the letters of the name. And not even all of them. Only the consonants. Where are thevowels, man? Where are the vowels?"'

Everyone was grinning. They all knew the punchline of this story, but it was a good one.

'And the goodman said, "Vowels?"'

Hargest crinkled his brow, in imitation of the soldier's disgusted look.

'"Hargest don't need no fuckingvowels."'

There was an explosion of laughter. The baron grinned.

'I do not wish to spoil a fine tale by squeezing a moral out of it,' he said, 'but there is truth in what the goodman said. We go without many of the good things that other folk take for granted, so that we may be ready to give up this world, if necessary, if it means that others will not have to.

'In this war, we have done without much, and we have set our hands to strange tasks, which we would once have thought beneath us. And we have done well, for victory was ours, and we know our part in it.

'One of the things we have had to let go, will strike home to all of us.

'We have all now embraced the one god, who we know to be the true god, and we have left our old gods behind us, as tales fit for children.

'But while I revere the one god, I confess that I hold no scorn for children's tales. A child's tale contains in it truths that we hold to ourselves all our lives. Truths about the things we hold dear, as people: friendship, and belonging. The one god has his laws, the chiefest among which is to have faith in him, and to practice mercy. And one of the forms of mercy, the word tells us, is hospitality.

'We love our own. We look after our own. But one of the measures of a people is how they treat guests. I have already mentioned our guests here, representing the peoples who joined with us in the fight against the evil of Dominion. It warms my heart to see men at my own table, who once I would have driven from my house, but who I now call my brothers.'

There was a cheer. He signalled to the servants standing around the hall to go among the tables with more drink.

Right then. Back to work.

Five, who was at the other end of the hall, hoisted the jug onto one shoulder and set off to the tables.

At this end, the baron was a small figure at the high table, his voice barely audible above the scuffling of boots on the floor and elbows on the table and murmured conversation. Nobody wished to be seen to be talking while the baron was talking, but back here, nobody seriously expected everyone to shut up. What happened at this end of the hall would be barely noticed and quickly forgotten.

Hogs were roasting in spits turned by exhausted, red-faced boys, the fat dripping from the hog's slashed hides into trays, from which it drained into pots, to be used later as lard.

Five had been a spit boy, and when graduating to servant had been eager to show the kindness that Five hadn't had. You tried slipping them little morsels and sips of beer, but the new lot were an ungrateful, foul-tempered bunch who liked to play mean pranks, such as greasing the path on which a person was about to walk carrying a loaded platter.

Little wankers. It wasn't worth shedding a tear over them.

The central fire was where the really good meat was cooked: the beef, for the nobles, and for the king and his party.

Cooking the beef was a lot harder than cooking the pork, because the nobles prized that crusty exterior and juicy interior, and for that to happen the beef had to be timed well, and then allowed to sit.

Five had fucked up, once, and had not allowed the sirloin to sit for long enough, with the result that when the baron's knife had plunged into it, it had yielded up most of its juices in a slow gush which had rapidly given the trencher the consistency of porridge. Result: cleaning duty for a week.

Didn't make that mistake again.

Then there were cooks preparing the other dishes: taking pickled onions and radishes and beets from their barrels and putting them in bowls; smearing butter on slices of the bread that had been baked that afternoon; piling up apples and plums and gooseberries onto dishes and doling out sweet-sharp jam into pots, and cutting slices of cheese.

Five fucking loved the kitchen.

After twelve years, you got good enough at filching a morsel that you could eat a good meal as you went about your work, and since you never actually sat down to eat, the head cook admired how tireless you were, and secretly admired your skill at keeping yourself nourished without everseemingto do so. Everybody did it, and nobody minded, as long as nobody said anything.

'This war,' came the baron's faint voice, 'was not fought by us.'

That can't be right, Five thought, and after puzzling for a second, realised it must have beensoughtby us. Yeah, that made more sense.

'But we et it into it with the termination to win,' said the baron.Enteredinto it.Determination.

'Over here, potboy,' grunted a fat man in a woollen jacket that smelled of wet dog. The man was holding out his mug, a dented pewter thing that looked like he'd been carrying it around for several decades. Five turned to the man and lifted the jug, and the clear amber beer flowed. The man looked up at Five and squinted.

Five took care not to look at the bloke's face and looked at his jacket instead, and noted that the reason it smelled like wet dog was that it was made from a dog. The eyeless, toothless face gaped on the man's shoulder.

'Anything else, sir,' said Five.

'No, you're all right,' said the man, and as Five moved off you could hear the man muttering something to the man next to him.

-That lad with the beer, what's up with him?

-Who?

-The dark one, not from round here?

-Oh, war orphan from Lohesch.

-I don't mean that. I mean...

-Oh, aye. Just an odd one. Pay no mind.

Just an odd one. Nobody knows exactly.

Don't ask. It'll sort itself out.

Nothing's forever.

And, always, Hargest loves to remind you where you're from.

There was a story about a Hargest couple who were off on some quest. While they were off, wife gets up the duff. On way back, starts labour. They hurry to make it back to the borderland but just outside the gate, wife goes into labour. Baby's born, all well, they enter the homeland. Kid grows up to be a squire, then a knight. Fights against the True Rock, covered in glory. Marries a local girl, loads of sprogs, titles, dies aged 80, a noble and a general and a grandfather. Generations mourn.

Baron gets up at the memorial service and kicks off:

This honoured guest at our table...

That's how Hargest keeps track of who's theirs.

'Good men," said the baron, "who we will not see again.'

The herald at the side of the hall stepped forward with the roll of the dead, and everyone stood up. Five lowered the beer jug to the floor and stood to attention.

The names rolled past. Most of them Five had only heard of. The knights up at the top table stood still and solemn, as they listened to the names of their fallen comrades.

Five knew them all by sight.

Ulf Jansson. Calm, sleekly handsome with his golden-brown hair tied back behind his head, and his grey eyes for once not always moving, but fixed on the herald. Still probably wondering who he was going to bed that night. The heartbreaker of Hargest, they called him. More like The Fucker of Dairymaids. There was more than one little Ulf-alike running around Hargest.

Siegfa Stopbern Jornsson: the great young hope. Adopted he might be, the 'Stopbern' name let everyone know it, but anyway his looks showed it: he had the black hair and narrow eyes of someone with a bit of high-caste Westerner, and in him it made for a beauty that was unearthly. Brave and full of dash, but also one of the kindest and nicest of the lot. Always with a smile.

And next to him his twin sister, Solveig. Holding her brother's hand and, like her, staring at the herald. Funny; she looked so like her brother, tall and broad-shouldered like him, and they said that even though she wasn't a soldier she was better on a horse and with a sword than he was--but his piercing beauty made you want to be with him, while in her it didn'tdraw you in,the way it did with him. Siegfa shone like a star, but his sister had something about her that was the opposite of shining.

But the most striking of all was the tall figure of Freya Aelfrethe, with her bronze skin and her long, dark, glistening, greenish hair hanging down her back in two heavy plaits. Like all the others, she was bareheaded.

Five could have looked at Freya all night.

She always made your heart beat faster. It wasn't

just because she was beautiful. It was also her terribleness; the rows of seventy-six figures tattooed below her collarbone.

'Erik Godwinsson,' called the herald, 'Master of the Baron's Pantry, House of Hargest.'

That, now; that was a hard one.

Erik was gruff and frightening and sarcastic but he'd been a good friend and a good master. He'd never given Five any of the funny looks that everyone else gave, perhaps on account of his being blind in one eye. Or perhaps because Erik cared less who you were, more what you did. Five had worked hard and learned quickly and Erik had never failed to give praise.

Erik had been killed in a sneak attack on the food wagons during the battle of Skyrmallen. Five had been too terrified to move, and Erik had pointed to an upturned cauldron and hissedWait there!. Five had peeked. Erik had fought off three men before being speared in the chest. Five had been sick with terror, but then some Hargest men had come up and had slaughtered the Dominies' men.

And now Erik was dead.

Typical.

I'll miss you, Five thought.

'Oskar Grimsson,' called the herald, 'Knight of Hargest.'

Five looked at Freya again, and saw her raise her face and look up at the ceiling.

Freya's dark face was bleak and wet. Her lips moved, silently, and Five wondered what she was saying.

It struck you to the heart. Nobody else seemed to have noticed, they were all either with their eyes shut or staring at the ground.

Had Freya loved Oskar Grimsson? Or had he been her friend, too, the only one she had? Surely she had lots of friends, but Oskar was older than her and happily married.

Maybe she'd just loved him, in her way, the way Five had loved Erik.

Everyone knew that Freya and her father had troubles, on account of the way Freya thought her mum had been treated.

So maybe Oskar was the dad she wished she'd had. Just like Erik had been, not Five's dad exactly, more like a scary mad uncle who meant well but who sometimes got too enthusiastic with a cleaver.

Freya lowered her face and her gaze swept the room, and she caught Five looking at her, and Five's heart fluttered. Five immediately looked away, but Freya's icy stare could be felt fifty yards away across a crowded hall.

Never get involved with nobles,Five remembered Erik saying.Take orders from them, do their bidding, serve them well. But don't get to thinking that you're in with them, that you can talk to them straight, the way you and me talk, cause they don't like it, and they'll cut out your heart and fuck your corpse.

He was a teeny bit bitter, was Erik.

Five stood still, waiting for the end of the roll call, and after a long time it finally came, and there was a mass shuffling and scraping as the entire host rose to its feet and lifted its mugs in the air and drank to the immortal name of the dead.

Well, nearly all. Those of them who'd embraced the word specially hard didn't drink, and looked with cold eyes on the ones that did. But, Five thought, nobody's going to take away from the people of Hargest the pleasure of good beer.