Chapter Text
Prince William Leopold Guts Charles Wyndham wanted nothing more than to sneak away from breakfast.
First, he had been disappointed to see eggs on his plate instead of the raw bear meat Corkus—that’s Sir Corkus to you, twerp—said Uncle Guts devoured every morning. How was he supposed to get strong if he ate as Mother did? She picked at things like a baby and made Father feed her from the end of his fork.
“Ah, love,” sighed that round bald man. Foss was his name. William didn’t like him because he looked like the eggs he was trying not to eat. Pouting his lower lip, he decided to glare at the egg man until someone told him to stop. “William,” said a cool, clear voice not a minute later. Father’s gaze could burn holes in people’s heads without them seeing, from commoner to foreign king. He felt its heat scald while his own eyes struggled to hold onto their fire for a new enemy, then lowered in shame.
“Good. No more sulking,” Father said, and so there wasn’t.
Second, most meals with grown-ups bored him. They talked about the squiggly duchy borders from the maps and blobs that he was supposed to care about because they represented countries he would have to visit someday. Foss and Father led the conversation on royal progresses, Mother chipped in with which mothers and fathers had children around his age, but off to the side, Count Teigen asked him directly what sort of knight he would prefer squiring for when the time was right.
“Only someone who knows what he’s doing,” William replied. “Or—or what she’s doing,” he remembered to add. Far fewer women knights protected Midland than men, but before Father’s decree, there had been none at all.
“Are you sure you meet my son’s criteria?” Father asked him. “I seem to remember a certain Kushan skirmish...”
The men all laughed. William could tell Mother had bit back a giggle behind her napkin as well. He was the only one seated who didn’t get it.
That was the last thing that made him want to escape to the grounds: the feeling that there were certain understandings beyond his grasp.
His life was easy to understand. Mother liked to tell him stories, wrapped up in their canopy bed with warmth crackling in her words. He was born from a real-life fairytale, everyone knew it, from a dashing knight’s love for a simple princess.
“I was a shy young girl then, always tripping over myself—until your father caught me!”
“But he was common then?”
“Yes, he was common, my darling. It is why he endured being struck across the face for my sake.”
No matter how many times Mother said it, William had difficulty believing his father was of common blood. The effortlessly highborn way he talked, moved, and looked put the rest of the court to shame. Sometimes he had a secret theory Father was really a lost elf prince, that his birthright was magical too. That the behelit around his neck would open and transport them all to a land of unseen sights he could only dream of.
“Nah,” Uncle Guts said when William dared share his thoughts. “Griff—your father ain’t an elf, and that behelit don’t mean anything. It’s a creepy hunk of junk.”
“But Father doesn’t look like other men,” William protested. “He could be!”
The corner of Guts’ mouth quirked upward. “He’s just pretty.”
Father had been the one to tell him to start calling Sir Guts “uncle.”
“But he’s not my uncle,” William had said, scrunching up his nose. “He doesn’t look like you at all.”
Father chuckled. “I should hope not! But he is as family, and so it would be a courtesy to your father.”
He thought about it for a moment before nodding. Sir Guts had been around for as long as he could remember, sat next to him at feasts, and taught him to put his thumbs on the outside of his fists.
“Good.” Father rubbed his thumbs into William’s shoulders in little circles, which always relaxed. “I just—it pleases me that you get along.”
On one hunting trip, Sir Guts claimed he could catch wild fish with his mouth. He’d dip down into the murky water and come out with a dead fish clamped firmly between his jaws as Father gasped and applauded. William believed it until he waded through to discover the already killed fish at the bottom, waiting to be found.
“I like it when it’s me and you and Uncle Guts,” he admitted.
Father pulled him into a hug.
It followed as naturally as the sun moving west that Guts’ name was thrown in the mix when it came time to pick his knight. Mother said a few were dreadful snobs about the choice, but if the snobs voiced their opinion, William never heard. He and his uncle made their way through the royal forest on foot, the fallen sorcerer’s staff Guts used for a walking stick as tall as the sword strapped to his back. The Kushan invasion began years before Mother and Father were married and ended when he was a toddler. Before he was born, their wedding had revived the spirit of Midland in a time when the common folk expected Emperor Ganishka to strike into its heart. The Kushans used dark magics to make monstrous soldiers and war beasts Father and Guts slew by the hundred in the name of the Holy See and freedom for their people. A long, ugly scar ran down Guts’ left arm where one of the creatures had slashed him, called an apostle. William wanted to learn more about apostles: what they were, where they came from—but none of his teachers ever knew anything.
The trees went from broccoli-shaped and green to elongated and yellow where Guts took them, away from their usual route. Heavily wooded pathways covered in roots faded into a sparse trail leading to a mound ringed by trees. They looked as though they had been poked into the surrounding ground by a maid making a tidy circle in a pincushion. One of their maids liked to feed him little candies from her pockets, but he had begun to refuse them. A man like Uncle Guts wouldn’t accept handouts. William clutched the wooden sword he carried tighter and felt his stomach jump from excitement as they plodded to the top.
Guts placed down his walking stick, then sat cross-legged on the grass. The skinny trees swished and swayed, and nothing happened.
“Uncle Guts?” he ventured.
“Mm?”
William came close enough to prod one massive shoulder, then again for good measure.
“Aren’t you going to teach me how to fight?”
An eye opened. “No. Why’d ya think that?”
He waved his sword about. “Why else would I have brought this?”
“To play.”
“To play?!” he shrieked. Guts didn’t so much as glance at him. The greatest swordsman there was, the one he was almost sure to train under, saw him as nothing more than a child. It was almost enough to make him steam at the ears. Be a prince, he told himself. William gazed down at Guts’ seated form. “You’re going to teach me sword fighting now,” he said after a terse breath.
“Am I?”
“You are.” He resisted the urge to stomp his foot. “Because as your prince, I decide what you do. If you had to die for me, you would. So teach me as my subject if you won’t as my uncle. I command it." He tilted his chin up at the end in defiance, sure to appear every inch his superior.
He didn’t expect Guts to burst into laughter.
“What’s so funny?” he asked indignantly.
“Nothin’,” Guts said, getting up. “It’s just that you sound like your father. Fine, I’ll teach you, then.” William felt his legs sting a second before his knees hit the ground, swept out from under him by a hefty hit. Guts had his walking stick in hand and was holding it like a weapon, pointed at him.
“No fair!”
“You think the guy coming at ya with a blade’s gonna play fair? Block the stick.”
He came at him again, aiming for his right side. William thrust his sword out in front of him and felt it connect before the thing spun out of his grip, out of control.
“‘S’okay. Not bad for a six-year-old,” said Guts.
“Six and three quarters,” he corrected as he went to retrieve it.
He gained no ground over the next twenty minutes or so, no tiny victories. The instant William's back was turned, Guts charged him and shoved at it with his stick so forcefully he almost toppled over. He seemed to know exactly what he'd do before William realized it himself, and his arm had never felt so short as it did trying to close the gap between his sword and Guts' chest. He had watched enough of his uncle's practices in the yard to know that when he struck, it wasn't always a bear's brute attack; sometimes he was a viper. Guts waited for him to tire himself out with useless jabs before gently tapping his stick into his stomach.
“You want to take a break?” Uncle Guts asked.
William was ashamed of how quickly he said yes. Guts sat down again and motioned to a spot on the grass beside him. “Sit.”
Then he looked at him, and a smile grew on his craggy face. “Y’know, your father and I fought on a hill like this, long ago.”
“Really? You did?” William had never heard it before.
“The grass on our hill was greener, but yeah. You might be a swordsman like your father someday, if you quit looking for my reaction each time you move. He was... he was something else. That day...”
He settled back onto the grass, knee-deep in recollection.
“Your father wanted me in his merc group. You knew that one. As for me, I didn’t wanna be press-ganged into nothin’, so I challenged him to a duel. If I won, I’d carve a hole in his chest.”
“You’d kill Father?”
Guts fixed him with a blank stare. “I didn’t know him then. And it goes both ways. If he won, he could have me as his soldier or…” He furrowed his brow.
“Or?” William prompted. Guts took several seconds before continuing.
“Or his maid. Doing chores around camp, whatever. Doesn’t matter. Point is, we dueled, he stood at the top of my blade, jumped right on it.” He shook his head. “He was like a spirit, sylph, something outta the world we know. I couldn’t believe the way he would just... glide. Like we were dancing or somethin'.”
The image of Father and Guts dancing in a ballroom came into his head, and he giggled. They’d look rather silly having no women to partner with. “And then?”
“Then I bit his blade and we rolled down the hill.”
Father wrestling like a rowdy villager was even funnier than his last thought. He put his childishness away and listened sympathetically as Guts described the pop of his shoulder when Father dislocated it. And yet, they were the best of friends. If any of his friends popped out his shoulder, they wouldn’t be invited to his birthday. But then, he supposed Father and Guts hadn’t been friends at all, since they had started off as two mercs caught on either side of a castle. Father could have ignored Guts and went on to become king without him, but that would have been wrong, like doing it one-handed. William begged Guts for one more round, just one; he ended up taking a dive down the little hill. Guts mumbled something about "honorin' your roots", and came tumbling after him.
Father received them in his study, window thrown open to let in the evening breeze. William excitedly told him about the day they had, what he'd learned. He raised a long finger to interrupt once he'd gotten to the specifics of their duel.
"My maid?" Father asked, an eyebrow arched in Uncle Guts' direction.
"Yeah, yeah, give me shi—uh, guff for rememberin' that part,” Guts muttered.
"Well, I might give you guff for teaching my son swordplay before his knight is chosen," Father pointed out.
"Aw, barely! He hardly learned anything. No offense, kid." William huffed as Guts said, "He forced my hand, y'know. Used the hawk look. You're raising a tyrant."
Father's shoulders shook as he began to wheeze an ugly rasp of a laugh. "No," he said. "We're raising a tyrant. William, please head to the library and take some books. After all, I could not defeat Ganishka through strength alone." Uncle Guts turned to leave, but Father said, "You can stay, Guts."
"Why does he get to stay?" William complained.
Father's eyes twinkled. "My maid has some cleaning up to do."
Sitting upright in bed with an unopened book on strategy he bet not even teenagers understood, he was brought back to Father's laugh. Father's undignified wheeze. William only heard him laugh like that when they were around Uncle Guts. With Mother or at court, his laugh was always velvet; always even. It fell silkily from his mouth, sometimes when William thought a lord’s joke wasn’t particularly good or clever. He did not snort or cough or wipe the corner of his eye. His laughter, like everything else about his father, ran like clockwork. Except in relation to his uncle.
The fact gnawed at him like a little worm until he quashed it in his head and went to sleep, remembering the excellent day he had.
If Father laughed oddly when Uncle Guts was near, that was just the way of it.
It didn’t matter to him, who yearned to grow up greater than his uncle and his father combined. Today had been the first step of his grand destiny, no matter how small the footprint. He couldn’t wait to be a knight.