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When I was a child, I’d watched a cat stalking birds in the gardens of the institution where I was brought up. That was the exact memory that visited me now—Nicolo reminded me of that cat. Even when he moved slowly, you could almost sense the muscles beneath the leather of his jerkin, and when he struck, he did so with an explosion of power. It was almost as if he were doing a dance of sorts—as if his feet moved on air, rather on the hard, cold ground. There was an ease and a fluidity to his body that almost seemed impossible for a human body. And yet, there he was.
The man in red was a trained warrior who handled his weapon with skill and precision, certainly, but Nicolo’s skill was at least his equal, and his athleticism clearly beyond. When the man struck, Nicolo was somehow no longer there—he simply sidestepped or backstepped or frontstepped his opponent. And he did so quickly—incredibly so. He never seemed rushed; no, he moved with the grace of a dancer, the strength of a warrior and the speed of a cat.
Briefly, I looked up from the spectacle in the courtyard to the walls of the King’s Tower. People watched from most the windows, but the one person who caught my eye was the highest up.
Was it…? I had to shield my eyes from the sun to be sure.
Yes.
The Old Queen was watching. And she didn’t look happy.
From what I had gathered in my studies, the man now known as Master Nicolo had been born a peasant, not even in the Gath itself, but in one of those country villages that scraped out a farming existence in the shadow of the Castle Complex. One day Woodfall Gath would swallow them too—just like it had all the others.
Anyway, Nicolo’s violet eyes had made him and his mother outcasts, as superstitious villagers insisted he was the spawn of a demon. The fact that Nicolo’s mother couldn’t name his father confirmed this belief and the pair were driven from their home.
To watch Nicolo now, I half-wondered if the rumors were true and his demonic heritage was the reason for his skill and the way in which his body moved.
Returning to the stories of his youth, for years, Nicolo’s mother eked out what living she could on the fringes of those little villages, begging, stealing scraps and doing everything in her power to keep her child alive.
Then, one day, the royal coach cracked a wheel near the place where Nicolo and his mother were living. The coach contained the Old Queen, her daughter and Prince Balduin, the heir to the throne, though at this point in time, the prince was only five years old.
But Balduin at five was a very different boy to the strong man he would come to be; he was not expected to live to be six. A year prior, he’d been struck down by the same wasting disease that had claimed his grandfather, King Moros, and since then, Queen Nell had devoted herself to seeing the boy cured.
The queen had exhausted every doctor, healer and preacher in Woodfall Gath, and so they’d ridden out beyond the Castle Complex, in search of local mystics and medicine men who might be able to help the young prince. They were on their way back from another fruitless visit when the accident occurred.
As the coachman fixed the wheel, the two boys played together, and by the time the afternoon was waning into evening, Prince Balduin was healthier than he had been for months. The adults assumed this gift was simply the delayed effects of the healer whom they had seen earlier that day. So, they gave thanks to the Great God and headed back to the Great Castle.
But, the following day, Balduin lapsed back into ill health and the Old Queen wondered over his happy disposition the previous day. The very next day she returned to Nicolo and his mother, and again the boys played, and again, Balduin grew better. At the end of the day, the Old Queen offered to buy Nicolo.
Though ground down by poverty, Nicolo’s mother refused to sell her son.
So, the queen’s guards simply took the boy.
From the day Nicolo arrived at the castle, Balduin grew better, until he was as strong as his new playmate, who now shared his every waking hour and who slept in the same room with him.
It was a wrench for young Nicolo to be separated from his loving mother, but the pain was made easier by his youth, the fact that his every request was happily seen to, and by the fact that he’d never before had a friend, and he and Balduin were fast friends. They could have been made for each other, sharing everything, enjoying private jokes and pranks, playing together to their heart’s content.
They’d remained that way through the years, as close as brothers, which was why so many feared Master Nicolo: the peasant who had the ear and heart of the heir to the throne.
Through my research, I learned that in preparation for his role as King, Balduin was given lessons on everything from politics to sword-fighting, from strategy to geography. Nicolo was there too; not being taught, of course, but learning, just the same. But when it came to lessons, the boys differed; Balduin had no interest in his education, preferring play and, as he grew older, wine and women. Nicolo too acquired a taste for wine and women, but he remained an avid student. He learned to be a better king than his friend could ever be, and that too scared the people because it wasn’t the way things were supposed to be.
Those of the royal line were supposed to lead, not poor bastards with the strangest of eye colors.
As the man in red struck again, Nicolo spun out of his way and delivered a sharp blow to the back of the man’s head, knocking him to his knees. Then Nicolo disarmed his opponent with a swift kick.
“What a specimen of a man,” breathed Elsie from beside me.
“Aye, but what a right bastard,” whispered Katy.
“Yes. But a magnificent bastard,” said Burval.
For a moment, the two combatants looked at each other, in acknowledgment that the fight was over. Most of the girls looked away as Nicolo ended the duel with a single cut, the man’s body dropping to the ground.
I looked up to see the queen’s window empty.
She’d forbidden Nicolo from taking part in such fights, because if he died, so did Balduin. And they knew this from trial and error. According to my sources, the queen had done experiments, Nicolo leaving the Great Castle for increasingly long periods. Balduin’s condition had improved as he got older but three weeks was the limit he could go without his friend before the disease returned. And to this day, no one quite knew why Balduin’s health was returned to him when in Nicolo’s presence. Of course, rumors of Nicolo being the demon spawn of hell were never far from conversations regarding the bizarre mystery.
But to any civilized person, such stories were nothing more than fairy tales because we were all well-aware that there were no such things as demons.
