Chapter Text
It was the end of winter and the ground beneath their feet was nothing but mud, ice, and shit. The trees were bare except for the pines, which swayed noisily in the cold bitter winds that howled down from the mountains. The brush between had been thinning on hare, deer and pheasant having long since fled the area.
It made for sparse evening meals, occurring in dark wet woodlands, with cold, miserable men huddled around a cracked greasy cooking pot for warmth. Each attempting to elbow their way to more food, more heat, more of anything that might make the long nights more bearable.
It was neither the atmosphere nor the company Ištván wanted to take his meals with.
And so he didn't! Almost every day for the past few months he had had his meals brought to him so that he would not be torn away from his work and thus, his tent. Sparse as it was, it was warmer, more comfortable, and quite frankly smelled better than the alternatives. No, if he had it his way, he wouldn't leave for anything but the latrine and the bath tent until the trees started blooming and the moorhens started singing. It was his right as the chief, after all.
Unfortunately today it had been a right he was unable to indulge in. A recent returning lookout, injured with a stab wound and broken leg, had necessitated his taking dinner in the sick tent. He listened to the scout's report while Peaky, their camp's perpetually half sober doctor, splinted his bones. Pulling details from the barely conscious mercenary in between his bouts of pain induced vomiting and curses, while Peaky complained about their dwindling medical supplies and how many foot boils he'd had to lance recently, had been the entertainment to accompany that evening's dinner.
It hadn't been the least pleasant meal of his life, but it hadn't put him in a good mood either. He emerged from the tent not so much standing as skulking, head high but shoulders hunched against his frustration and the cold, eyes hunting the darkening camp for anything to take his frustrations out on.
"Are you sure we can't arrange more bedding, sir?" Peaky called after in his usual uneven warble.
"Mind your patient." Ištván replied without looking back.
Perhaps they'd get lucky and the wretch would freeze. One less mouth to feed.
It was a half-light world that Ištván walked out into, with the sun over half set and their camp tucked deep into the forest. The frozen trees that encircled them hung ominously overhead, their shadows long and deep, empty branches blotting out what little sunlight remained of the day. It was only by the glow of their campfires that anyone could navigate their pitiful encampment.
Both the physician and cook tent resided at the center, around the biggest fire where the meal pots hung from splintering stakes. And so it was also where most of the men were. Milling about, either circled around the fire eating, or otherwise huddled in their shelters playing dice and drinking themselves to sleep for entertainment. Walking through them now, it appeared mealtime had passed. The evening ration preventing a mutiny for at least another day. Ištván was not much settled by this fact, and made his way out of the camp's crowded heart, to somewhere he could think without having to look over his shoulder.
He wove through them quickly, most wisely moving out of his way as he went. Past the tents of his captains, the armorer, and the bath. Past the last of the wagons and firewood. Then suddenly into a much more open, emptier ground.
The outer camp mostly constituted hutches and scrapped together sackcloth tents, with smaller fires dotting the ground in a bid to keep the lower ranking men from freezing to death. There were fewer people there, but more smoke. Trading one form of constriction for another.
Ištván's tent sat towards the outermost part of the camp, against the sole remaining wall of a once beautiful manor. Burnt down by the land's serfs just a few months prior, the now blackened stone offered the camp protection from the north wind and whatever bandits it carried with it. Certainly more than the hastily built palisades and watch platforms at the camps southern and western ends.
In better conditions Ištván preferred to be at the center of camp for the safety and ease of it, as well as the warmth. But, he had reasoned, this placement offered more protection than a circle of hungry, cold, and dubiously loyal mercenaries. Besides, he had always dealt with the cold better than most.
Wintering here hadn't been the plan. Indeed he had planned to continue further South to Molhenice or even Olomouc. There was no work to be had in the winter, let alone in such an isolated place. Armies returned home, peasants became too focused on survival to revolt, and it was too cold for the nobility to leave their castles to start petty squabbles. There was simply no need for men of their sort.
But a last minute request from a desperate lord, and the large sum of money that came with it, had kept this current lot together several weeks past the first snow. They had gotten paid but the destruction of the lord's manor and the resulting death of the lord himself meant that there was no shelter when a sudden and early snow buried the roads out of the region. Similarly it meant none of the lord's relatives would come to claim the area until fairer weather permitted. And common travelers and traders, already sparse in the region, were entirely absent.
They were stranded there until the Spring.
Plenty of men had chosen to brave the elements. And perhaps some had survived. But just as many had stayed rather than take their chances. Unsurprisingly, they had turned to him for their survival with a resolute entitlement that left little room for question. Starving, freezing mercenaries were hard to shake and keen to cut the throats of those they blamed for their misfortune. And regardless, even if he could rid himself of them without risk to his own life, the damage to his reputation would be a far worse outcome.
And so, Ištván was stuck with twice as many men than expected, in a season he had not planned to keep them, with no accommodations to house them, no money to pay them, and a land with dwindling resources to feed them.
It felt like god was laughing at him again.
Now the tall charred edifice of the manor wall loomed over him, its shadow seeping over the outer reaches of the camp, soaking into every inch of it like spilled ink onto paper. Concealing, blending, smearing it all together into a formless hollow. The charred stone, the sack cloth tents, the inches deep graves just a few steps into the woods. All of it covered in snow and ice. All of it barely hanging together. One grand monument to his massive fuck up.
That was where he spotted him.
Near the stables at the far end of the wall. Sat on an large sunken down rock that scarcely kept him out of the muck. Alone and away from the nearest grouping of men, the light of their fire barely reaching him. Almost invisible but for the glow flickering brightly on his pale hair and paler skin.
Erik.
No more than four months had passed since he'd found him. A raiding spoil he'd greedily snatched from the ruins of a village who's name he'd already forgotten. It had been both a whim and a forethought on his part. A reasoning that quickly proved mutual. Part abduction, part imposition. An investment in prospect, and a promise of retribution. Domestication on both ends of the leash.
It hadn't taken him long to start eating like a bandit. Timid worrisome bites between constant flinching movements as he ate at Ištván's table, had evolved to one arm around his food, head low and hunched over like he was guarding it from the other men. Gross, unrefined. It made Ištván grimace in disgust as he got closer.
The cooks had been given strict instruction on the boy's meals. He was served food last, of course, but always served. Occasionally Ištván had the boy bring him his evening meal, no doubt spit in and half emptied, and let him eat sat by the tent's brazer. But usually he ate with the rest, or at least, around them. From Jára's reports the boy tended to shy away from eating with the brutes and bastards that made up the rest of the camp, instead preferring to eat in the cook's tent or off by himself.
Much like now.
Ištván was loathe to remain out in the cold like this. His face and fingers were already growing numb. His mood was still foul. But habit called to him. From the first Ištván had made sure to check in on his little war prize frequently. Keeping an eye out for how he was adapting to his new life, what chores he was completing, any additional attempts on Ištván's life he might be plotting. Walking towards him now, hands behind his back and head held high, he appraised him like one might appraise a recently purchased horse or fine piece of jewelry.
Pale skinned, thin armed, bundled in a few layers of oversized clothing that only served to make him look even smaller than he already was. His head and hands were clean, but visibly cut up from work. His face was hidden as he hunched over himself, eating his meal as fast as he could.
He walked casually past the fire, ignoring the men there who laughed and talked amongst themselves. They nodded respectfully, some lowering their voices, but all smartly avoided addressing him outright.
Ištván watched his shadow cast long and dark in the firelight as it passed over mud, sleet, and horse shit, slowly coming to envelope Erik where he sat. The boy took no notice of his approach. Or if he did, he didn't bother to acknowledge it. A minor slight. Training respectability and deference into him would take time.
Ištván walked past him, then around, settling in the shadows behind him like a night owl behind prey. He reached out with one thickly gloved hand, and slapped him on the back.
"Sit up straight."
Erik jumped nearly a foot off his seat.
Ištván laughed, grabbing the boy's shoulder to pull him more upright.
"So jumpy."
Erik turned to look at him, his dark brown eyes glaring, his thin lips twisted in a snarl, calloused hands gripping his food closely to his chest as if Ištván would make to snatch it from him. For a moment it seemed like he would retaliate. Some meager insult or slap of the hand like any child would when annoyed.
But he said and did nothing.
Erik returned to eating his meal like an animal.
Ištván hummed, unsurprised. Despite their abysmal predicament, Erik had been doing better these last few weeks. Trudging around the camp with less moroseness than he had upon his joining them, committing to his daily chores with less self-pity and eyes further up off the ground. The hunting dogs had stopped growling at him, finally. And the men complained about him less. He was a wet, crooked puzzle piece that was slowly, and just barely, wedging itself into it's proper place.
But with that place came impertinence.
"You eat like a lout." Ištván commented.
He waited for a response, watching as Erik continued to eat his meal in the same slouched brutish manner as before. After a few bites, and after it was clear Ištván expected a response, he spoke.
"What's it matter?"
A statement, not a question.
"What was that?"
Erik shot him a look, then quickly thought better of it. He adjusted his seat, spooning at his food nervously.
"What's it matter, sir."
Ištván smirked.
"It's embarrassing. Were you never taught proper table manners?"
He slapped his back again, and again the boy jumped.
"Or how to sit?"
Ištván grabbed his shoulder from behind and pulled it back, with more force this time, correcting his posture like a crooked fence post.
"I know how to sit." Erik grumbled, pulling his shoulder inwards and shuffling away in the few centimeters his makeshift stool would allow.
"Like an animal eating table scraps, yes."
"There's no table here."
"That doesn't mean you should eat like an beast," Ištván shot back. "If you were eating in court they'd have you thrown out like a beggar."
"I'm not in court I'm here," Erik mumbled, returning to his previous posture, obviously having no intention to follow Ištván's directions. "Eating with you."
Ištván huffed, but couldn't help smirking.
He wasn't wrong obviously, just a child. No foresight or consideration for the future ahead. Or at least, no future further than beyond the point of a knife. Eating a meal once a day in the cold near a warm campfire may have very well been an improvement from his previous life. The lap of luxury for a peasant like him. Why should he ask for more?
Yes, Ištván thought, why should he.
"Is our company all you ever want?"
Erik said nothing. Silence, it seemed, was his choice of rebellion for the evening. Whatever childish form of protest it was or what he thought he'd get from it Ištván didn't know, but it was beginning to irk him.
But still, it seemed to give him pause. His eating slowed, then stopped, eyes looking out over the the muddy frozen camp in front of him. One of the men by the fire laughed obnoxiously loud, another belched. The wind, bitter now that the last of the day's light was fading behind the mountains, blew his hair into his face.
He stirred his food without comment, but stopped eating.
There that's right, Ištván thought. Use that head of yours to actually think.
Because it really was ridiculous. Had it been any other man here, Ištván wouldn't have given a damn. Let the whelp fight with the rest of the rabble over scraps, allow him to continue eating his meal like a pig in peace at the trough.
But that was not what he was here for. Why he'd been spared.
And again, taking his dinner away from the comfort of his own tent really had put him in a bitter mood.
Ištván yanked him back into proper posture once more. Erik once again fidgeted from his grip.
"Stop touching me-"
"Your manner is just as atrocious." Ištván continued, circling around him. "You forget your place, how to address your betters. You're lucky your lapses in decorum are usually between the two of us or I'd have to start having you belted."
"I just forget."
"That's no excuse," Ištván said calmly. "Forgetting in this line of work can get you killed."
"It's not like you're a lord or anything."
"No, but I am the one leading this band and the one keeping you all alive. You are to address me like everyone else under my command."
"You don't command me."
"Oh?" Ištván stopped in front of him. "So you've been shoveling shit and washing clothes for fun then?"
Erik snorted.
Ištván stepped forward, hands held behind his back, eyeing the boy carefully,
"Fine," he said. "I'll be sure to assign you to the task more frequently then. Imagine how much more you'll get done when you're actually told to do it!"
That, of all things, finally got a reaction from him. Erik looked up at him, expression of disbelief distorting his face. Even in the darkness Ištván could see the shadows that haloed his eyes. They were almost black in this light. A flicker of distant campfire reflecting in them to match his rising anger.
"But-"
"But what?"
Ištván let himself loom over him, holding back a smile at how utterly hopeless the wretch was. Waiting for him to talk back so he could give him even more work to do for his trouble.
But Erik, slow to learn as he could be at times, had at least learned better. He turned from him, biting his tongue, face and ears growing red with barely contained rage. That was a detail Ištván had been delighted to discover about him. A predictor he had quickly learned of, that foretold the boy's outbursts. What's more it was infinitely amusing how frustrated he would become over how transparent his emotions were.
Ištván walked around him, placing himself to his right, just out of line of his periphery, leaning down to speak into his ear.
"If you ever want to be more than a shit shoveling laundress, you need to start acting like it."
He kept his voice cool, calm. Erik looked straight ahead.
Ištván slapped his back, hard.
"Sit up straight," he reached out across his chest to grab at his shoulder. "Don't make me tell you again."
Erik lunged forward, mouth open, and sank his teeth into Ištván's wrist.
His food dropped to the ground as his hands shot up to grab Ištván's arm, a guttural snarl slipping past his teeth as he clenched down, sinking deep enough into Ištván's wrist and palm to draw blood. Practically to the bone.
Without really any thought at all, Ištván grabbed the side of the boy's head, pulled him up, and slammed his skull onto the rock on which he'd been sitting.
Erik instantly released his his hold, jaw unclenching in shock before he fell limp to the ground.
Ištván straightened himself, pulling his wrist to his chest, hissing as he leveled a hard kick to the the boy's stomach. Erik, already dazed from the blow to his head, was instantly winded, the force of the kick curling him inwards with a pained gasp as he wrapped his arms around his middle. But Ištván denied him the even that small protection, rolling him onto his back with the heel of his boot before pressing it firmly onto his throat.
Erik's hands shot up, thin fingers pitifully trying to raise the boot off his neck. His legs kicked out in an attempt at finding leverage as his body twisted to try and roll away.
But it was useless, he was already pinned.
It was over in seconds. Ištván stood breathing heavily, teeth clenched and wrist bleeding into his gambeson. Erik writhed under his heel, choking and coughing in equal measure, oversized clothing quickly soaking through in the icy mud.
Ištván looked down at him without pity or mercy, the thought of a warm tent forgotten in the heat of the rage washing over him. He could barely see for the red in his vision or hear for the thudding of his pulse in his ears.
And looking up at him, Erik. There was already blood running from the side of his head and his mouth. He was crying, eyes dark and wide and full of a terror and rage all his own.
From the corner of his vision Ištván could see some of the men at the nearby fire watching with vague interest. Some had already drawn their swords, ready to aid him. But the smarter ones had averted their eyes entirely.
All were quick to return to their evening routine, once they saw there was no danger.
Embarrassing.
"How dare you!"
He leaned forward, pressing his boot hard on the boy's throat as he did. Erik, hand to his heart, growled at him.
Ištván pressed down harder.
"You little bastard."he hissed, jaw rigid, glove tightly gripping the bite, blood oozing onto leather as he kept it clutched to his chest.
It was clear the other was dazed. Erik's mouth opened and closed, teeth snapping, either trying to speak or trying to scream. Still kicking despite the futility, feet striking painlessly at Ištván's other leg again and again, efforts slowly weakening with each attempt.
Ištván couldn't hold back from laughing at his pitiful state.
"What? Nothing to say for yourself? Has your courage left you, boy? Gone with your audacity and insolence?"
He ground down his boot, mud and leather cutting into the pale skin beneath it. Erik gasped.
"I asked you a question!"
Erik squirmed in the mud, the blood from his head having reached the ground now. He was covered in muck, each jolt and push of his body only covering him in more and already shivering as it soaked into his clothing. A mix of emotions flashed across his face, each one no doubt dampened by his increasing lack of breath and the blooming pain in his skull. His teeth were grit, fingers turning white with effort as he tried desperately to remove Ištván's boot from his windpipe. He was crying, not just in pain and fear but in clear impotent rage.
Finally, after a few more moments of helpless squirming, he began to still. Breath heavy, eyes squinted, focused.
"Told you to stop touching me," he grimaced with barefaced disdain. "Sir."
Ištván said nothing, glaring down at the ungrateful, pitiful, foolish little whelp. The rage storming inside him only made more turbulent by the insolence of it all. He had half a mind in that very moment to bring his boot down on the boy's neck and snap it. Be done with him. Put him out of both their misery and be rid of the stupid wretch, to hell with whatever sentimentality or machinations he'd convinced himself of.
Erik looked up at him. Scared, helpless, hurt.
Enraged.
It was startling almost, like catching the eye of an animal stalking in the bushes. Something so painfully, achingly, familiar. Ištván looked down into his eyes and saw, recognized, something there. It nipped at the heels of his rage, chasing it away like a wolf after game.
A steady slow breath fogged the air before him as he came-to. It was cold. He was cold. The blood on his wrist was warm.
Very slowly a smile cut its way across Ištván face.
And then he laughed.
It was a sudden jolting laugh he hadn't even expected but there it was. Head back, breathing in the freezing night with a racing heart and a pounding head. And as he laughed he realized he couldn't remember the last time he'd done so with such genuine mirth.
Ištván looked back down at Erik, practically grinning.
"Well look at you." he sighed.
For just an instant he pressed his boot harder onto his throat, watched him grimace in pain, eyes watering in fear. But the anger, the rage, the hate never once left.
Ištván lifted his boot off of him, shoving him away with his muddied sole and another laugh.
Erik rolled out from under his reach, then scrambled on hands and knees to the manor wall. Not leaving his back turned for long, he curled up against the barren stone. Clever brat that he was, he'd grabbed his fork and now held it up as if to defend himself.
It made something in Ištván's chest swell.
He looked down at the bite. Right over his wrist, mostly over the bone and only just into the fleshy meat of his palm. A small but somewhat ragged circle of punctures. The blood was almost black in the darkness, the light of the campfires reflecting off of it like gold.
Looking back at his incorrigible ward, Ištván shook his wrist, letting it splatter over the ground and into the food Erik had so quickly abandoned.
"Finish your meal," he said, light and breathy and surprisingly jovial, even to himself.
"Eat it properly. When you're done see Peaky for your head. Tonight you'll be washing dishes and scrubbing clothes until your fingers freeze. And every night for the next two weeks as well."
Ištván turned and left, finally walking back to his tent.
***
The sound of summertime reveling was distant this far up in. The walls of the castle kept the drunken music and laughter suitably muffled. The occasional bark or trumpet blow might reach him here, but he was otherwise unbothered by the noise of lower court life. Enveloped in sheets of silk that smelled of chamomile and rosemary, free of burden, he rested, however briefly.
The nightstand candles were low, their light having burned for hours after he'd retired to his quarters. But they were not yet so low he couldn't see. The moonlight too, flowing into the open window with the warm night air, cast a fine silver glow into the room. On the far table a half drank bottle of wine shimmered in the twin lights. The fine tapestry of St. George hanging on the wall swam with every gentle breeze. The writing desk in the corner, covered in various letters and maps, danced with a dozen fine intermingling shadows as it's contents were rustled.
And the scar on the hand in front of him rose and fell in the smallest dips and valleys of his skin.
He'd been tracing a finger along it absently. Feeling his own touch somewhat muted over the thicker tissue. It was a well hidden scar during the day, kept beneath his gloves and the sleeve of his pourpoint. Only ever visible when his reach, greedy and impassioned as always, was exceeded by his desire. Two uneven crescents of ragged dark red dots.
It was a scar very few ever saw.
The bite had infected once and opened a half dozen times as it healed. A result of it's place on his dominant side. It had necessitated multiple trips to Peaky's tent, each visit punctuated by tired sighs and huffy complaints. The swell of pride underneath it always well hidden from the doctor's unfocused eyes. When it finally healed, the scar had been an ugly nasty thing. For a time it sat garish, raised, and uneven from the tearing and frequent restitching. Ištván thought it a shame that some of its rawness had faded in the intervening years.
He felt the muscled arms around him tighten, pressing him against a strong toned chest. A deep soft warmth spread through his back and into his very core. The smell of sweat and rosemary.
It brought him back to the present once again.
"Why you poking at that so much?" Erik mumbled into the back of his neck.
Ištván hummed, letting himself sink into the embrace.
"Just reminiscing."
They were elsewhere now. On there way to Skalitz, but waiting on the a replacement wheel for of one of the carts. They were stranded, technically. Ištván had been anxiously mulling over the various ways his plans had been delayed. Letters he'd have to write, scouts that would have to be sent to reassess the land, the additional days worth of food, the additional money for the men stationed in the courtyard beneath them, how their delay would effect their future orders.
Erik had just been eager for them to steal away for a few private hours together.
And well, Ištván could never deny the boy anything.
"Do you remember this one?" he asked, languidly flexing his hand, entwining their legs and being met with reciprocal grapple for closeness.
He felt Erik look up from over his shoulder, his fingers, thick and tanned by long days in the sun, grazing gently along his chest. A huff, and then his head falling back into the pillows, lazy and relaxed.
"Hmm. Don't expect an apology."
Ištván chuckled.
"Never."
In the following silence, he continued his ministrations. Erik had been lucky enough, so far in his life, to have only lost one of his teeth. One of the back ones in the lower left side if he remembered correctly. How odd that here was a mural bitten into his skin by and of the boy Erik had been.
Ištván smiled to himself.
"It's my favorite you know."
Erik snorted against his back.
"Sentimental old man."
But he squeezed him gently, kissed him even more so on the nape of the neck. Erik buried his face into Ištván's hair and was soon sound asleep beside him.