No more. No more ever again. He's like a boy throwing stones at a chained wolf to show how brave he is. He knows not that this wolf is free.

Richard made his shoulders slump with defeat, let his gaze fall to the floor, and slowly closed the distance between them, his bearing such as to not give any hint of a threat. When he was but a pace away, only then did he raise his head and look his brother full in the eye.

"What would please me, dear Ambert, is for you to forget all about it," he whispered. "Do you mark me?"

Ambert winced as though in pain and drew a hand over his brow. "How-how d-dare you speak thus to me?"

Richard puzzled for a moment over this surprising resistance. Certainly Ambert had more reason to defy his will than would a compliant young girl, but he was still made of the same ordinary flesh. Perhaps drunkenness had befuddled his mind, making him more difficult to influence. Richard bent all his concentration upon his brother, eyes focused so hard and steady he thought he could almost see past the bloated face to the pitted vestige of his soul.

Ambert gave a shudder, breaking into a sweat, and this time he did not look away.

"You will forget all about disturbing the lady by the lake," said Richard, his voice calm, but brooking no argument.

"You have no interest for her or her people, none at all." Dear Brother's lower lip sagged, trembling, but no words came forth.

"Forget her. Completely."

He flinched as though each utterance held the sting of a wasp and still did not look away.

Richard eased back slightly, fascinated a moment by this evidence of his own power, then finally released his invisible hold.

Ambert staggered, clutching at the table to steady himself.

"Have a care, brother, the drink is besting you tonight," said Richard. He was once more standing several yards away. He watched and waited for Ambert's reaction... which was only to shake his head as though to clear it. Not one sign of what should have been red-eyed fury. Oh, but this was most wonderfully interesting.

"I've not had enough is the problem. What's become of my cup?" He stared peevishly about, but missed his crushed property amid the litter on the table.

"Does my lord the duke send you to fetch me?" Richard inquired, hiding his amusement and satisfaction. This ability to sway others to his will was very useful indeed.

"Please you to wait," grumbled Ambert. "You'll see him soon enough and like it not when you do. You'll like it not at all." He then burst into a harsh laugh, pushed from the table, and tottered back the way he'd come. Down the hall a door closed with a bang; by its sound it was the one to the duke's inner chamber. Ambert would have gone there to apprise the old man of the presence of his other son. Either the wearisome task of waiting would soon end or Richard would be out here the rest of the night.

The two hounds whimpered, still hiding under a far table. Richard bent to look at them.

"Come on, my lovelies. Am I not better company than Ambert? When did I ever kick and curse you, eh?"

Merlin whined, head pressed to the flags, but gave a tentative wag of his tail.

"Come and be friends again. I'll not hurt you." He put forth first his hand, then his will, to see if it might also work on animals. "Come, now, come to heel, there's a good boy..."

Whether it was his voice or his influence that coaxed Merlin out, Richard could not be sure, but after much hesitation the great dog did finally emerge, slowly followed by Prince. With halting steps they came close enough to touch. Richard ruffled their coarse fur, praising and reassuring them. As if shamed by their previous fear of him and wanting to make up for it, they licked his face and hands, tails still tucked, but wagging.

"You're all right, now, aren't you? Good, good lads. What a pity Ambert and I can't get along as well as you two."

They rolled on their backs for him to scratch their bellies, friendship restored. Richard sealed it by finding some choice scraps from the table to give them.

A door opened somewhere. As one, Richard and the hounds swung their heads in the direction of the noise, alert.

Light spilled into the feasting hall from the entry. Richard heard a rustle and grunt from his father's chamber followed by the sound of slippered feet. Perhaps his long wait was nearly over.

"Go on, lads. You won't want to be here." He pushed the dogs off and found a place to stand in the darkness well away from the candle.

A large shadow fell across the floor as his brother's ample frame obscured the entry light. For a moment, Ambert peered across the apparently empty hall, saying nothing before moving forward, his steps hesitant and faltering. He picked up the abandoned candle, holding it out ahead of him.

"Richard... ?"

Richard remained quite still.

"Are you there, or have you run away like the craven you are?"

The silence that followed must have convinced Ambert that what he thought was indeed the case, and his courage grew proportionately.

"Well you may run, sirrah, for you are of no worth here," he spat to the room. "The midwife should have strangled thee!"

He turned to go back, but gave a sharp cry when the candlelight shone on Richard, who was suddenly in the way. Ambert started, letting the candle fall, only to see it caught in midair by his brother, who calmly raised it to illumine their faces once more. They were close enough that, had he been so inclined, Richard could have counted the broken veins on his brother's nose. Ambert shivered, and his face twitched into what should have been a scowl, but his fear spoiled the attempt. He jerked his chin in the direction of the hall.

"Fa-Father wants..." But he did not seem to be able to finish. His words sounded too thick to escape the trembling portal of his mouth.

"I await only my lord's pleasure, dear Ambert," said Richard evenly.

"Damn you," he choked out in return.

Richard placed the flickering light back in Ambert's shaking grasp. "Have a care, brother. One fallen candle on these rushes could cost you your castle."

A booming voice from down the hall cracked through the still air like a whip. "I would speak with you, Richard!"

Their father's voice. Even the favored eldest son cringed at the sound.

"Let me see you, boy!"

Richard turned and, released from his sway, Ambert hurried ahead to disappear into another twisting of the hall. It had always been one of his greatest skills, not being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he practiced it now to perfection. Light spilled brightly from the chamber ahead, and like a moth to the destructive flame, Richard went toward it.

The duke's sanctum was quite large. Torches in their sconces along the walls provided some heat for the cheerless room, along with all the light. Their smokes rose high, adding to the soot already coating the ceiling. Several embroidered arras covered portions of the walls. Some stirred gently, doing their work of cutting down drafts coming from the doorways they concealed. Off to the right was a huge oaken table. Benches ran along each side of it, and at the far end where Montague now stood, crouched a massive thronelike chair. No one ever dared to come near it. When he was a child, Richard had once been foolish enough to crawl up and sit there, pretending to be a king of his own castle and lands. His father had seen, and the outcome was a beating of such severity that many thought the boy would not live. Even now as Richard looked at it, a tremor ran through him at the sick-making memory. It had been the first of many other beatings, so many he could not count, but that particular one stood out by its right of place.

The room, full of its vile memories, was empty of people apart from the duke. That was a blessing. At least there would be no witnesses to the coming censure.

Montague d'Orleans was a giant of a man in all ways: in stature, in reputation, and in deed. He was the most powerful man in Normandy, and there was answerable for his actions only to God, and then but rarely. He was a brutal pragmatist, a survivor. He had no time for failure, hating it as if it were a contagious disease that might be spread to him and cause his downfall. Now more than ever before, he had no regard for Richard, for his son had become a carrier of this contagion since the tourney.

"My lord." Richard's greeting was murmured low, and he bowed from the waist delivering it. "Father."

Montague had his back to his son, and did not turn. "Who is it that calls me father?"

Richard stepped into the golden light cast by the torches, dropped to his knees, and spoke the words of old ritual that were required of him. "It is I, Richard, your son. You sent for me and, as ever, I await your pleasure."

"My pleasure? My pleasure!" The old man turned and leveled what Richard could only assume was meant to be a murderous look upon him. Unfortunately, the effect was ruined by the slurring of his voice and a decided stagger as he came forward. He was very drunk. "My pleasure was to have the champion of all the land within my own household.

Within my own family."

Richard kept quiet. Comment would only draw out the process.

The old man loomed over his kneeling son, blood in his eye, building in his anger. "Once it was so. By some miracle or witchcraft you were champion, but no longer. Now, I have only shame to distinguish my household. My reputation lies in the dung heap!"

Richard stared straight ahead, keeping a stony face. He could not trade words here as he'd done with Ambert. That would not stop or deflect the flow of bile.

Montague reeled to one side to refill his empty tankard from a keg on the table and swilled back a mighty draught.

"Explain yourself, boy." "I cannot." Richard replied honestly, for although he knew that Sabra had had much to do with the outcome of events that day, he also knew he would never disclose any of it. It would mean immediate death both for him and his lady. "I was beaten."

His father lurched toward him and bent until his face was close; the rank stench of his breath filled Richard's nostrils. "Clearly, you were never beaten enough!" He suddenly righted himself.

Richard saw the blow coming. His reactions were sharper, faster since the changing, and he could have easily avoided it, yet something within him made him hold his ground and brace for it. No stinging open-handed slap, Montague used the full power of his fist. The force of it knocked Richard flat on the floor, but surprisingly, he hardly felt any pain. It was no more to him than a sigh of air on a summer's day.

Am I beyond being hurt or grown so used to it that I feel it not?

He waited a moment, expecting next to be kicked, but the old man drew away and gulped down more drink.

Richard got slowly to his feet, brushing at his clothing. He felt cold inside, very, very cold. Like the dead.

"You've disgraced me, brought humiliation to my house," the duke continued. "Wise you were to skulk away afterward. You missed all the sly looks, the hidden laughter from the others when I had to give the purse to that damned bastard pup. That you yielded at all was defaming enough. Couldn't you have had the wit to cede to a full- grown man?"

He stared without expression at Montague.

"Well, boy? Give me answer!"

"The new champion will serve you honorably and with much heart," said Richard, astonished at how steady his voice sounded.

"That is no answer. Why did you yield?"

"He offered me quarter. I accepted rather than-"

"Rather than die," Montague concluded for him. "Aye, showing the world the kind of coward I sired."

Richard clenched his jaw hard to keep back the sudden protest that wanted to spring forth at this unfairness. He'd begun the tourney as one of a hundred other fighters and managed to last until but two remained: himself and the boy.

To survive for so long in such a struggle was not the achievement of a coward. He took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. This is of no matter. There could have been a thousand of us and the duke would still speak to me so.

"You don't deny it, either. Pah!"

"I am my father's son," Richard muttered. "But what part of you is in me?"

"What say you? What was that?" he snarled, pausing in the act of raising his tankard.

"I await my lord's pleasure," Richard said more clearly, hoping the duke would soon finish his ravings and make his formal dismissal.

"Your lord's pleasure would be to see you dead."

How often has he voiced that wish? It's come true and he knows it not. Richard hadn't lost his life in battle, but in the throes of passion with Sabra to make his rebirth possible-something the old man would never understand.

"You smile? Do you mock me, boy?"

"No, my lord." I'm five and thirty years, old enough to have sons and grandsons of my own, and still he calls me boy. Is it to belittle me or to keep his own age and death at bay? Or both? For Richard's father was ancient, being a few years past fifty.

Many thought the only reason he'd not yet died was that heaven wouldn't have him, and the Devil didn't want to contest with him for the rule of hell.

But he will die eventually, and I will continue. The realization got him through the next few moments as his father ranted on. Richard no longer heard the words, but looked long at the man whose blood flowed in his veins, the man who had given him life, and saw only another whose cruelty shielded a sad, empty spirit. For all that, Richard could feel no pity, only contempt.

"Well, boy?" Montague's last words rang through the stillness of the castle and into Richard's consciousness. "What do you have to say?"

That he'd not listened mattered little; any reply would be the wrong one. "I've nothing to say, my lord." "Pah!"

The hair abruptly stood on the back of Richard's neck as he became aware they were no longer alone. He could sense another presence here, another drawing of breath, another scent on the smoky air. Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed the slightest movement of the heavy arras covering the wall to his left. It was not a draught or a trick of the torchlight. Someone had come silently and was listening, watching. Richard relaxed as he comprehended who it was, and knew that there would be no interference.

"My lord, as I have failed thee, I ask leave to depart from your service." There, it was out at last. The old man could rail all he liked, but eventually he must grant his permission. This had been coming for years.

"Ceding again, are you?"

"My lord the duke is above keeping company with those who displease him. I would shame you no more and depart quietly."

"Think you such flattery will make favor with me?"

"I seek no favor-"

"Only escape." The old man backed his way unsteadily to his massive chair and dropped into it, glaring at Richard all the while. "I know what dreams fire you, boy. There's nothing you'd like better than to leave this place. You'd hoped to do it with that bag of tourney gold, but failed. Now you hope to run off with that rich whore camped by the west wall. Aye, there's fitting toil for you, playing whoremaster, or have you sold yourself to serve in her house instead? Will she finish the work you started on the field? Make a eunuch of you to disport with her sodomites?" He paused, apparently awaiting a reply.

Richard could find none to give, but stifled the beginnings of a shiver. It was as though ice had taken the place of all his bones, chilling him from the inside out. The duke was trying to provoke him to make an excuse to punish him, another of his old tricks, but Richard felt too cold for anger. Sabra, what is the choice I must make?

But she was silent.

Montague leaned well back in the chair and looked at him over the expanse of his belly, all but smacking his lips at some inner satisfaction. "Well, you can put that out of your mind, boy-I've no intention of releasing you from your oath to me."

Now did Richard manage to find voice again, and it was choked with disbelief. "What?"

"You will remain here."

"Why? My lord wishes me dead, banishing me from your house is the next best thing to that."

"Aye, so you can run off to a life of ease with that woman? I'll not have it. I'll not have you nosing after the bitch and the two of you laughing at me for giving you leave to go."

"Wh-what does my lord require of me, then?" It was the question he would be expected to ask, and Richard's guts turned over for he was certain of the answer.

Montague deigned to smile. Unpleasantly. He spoke slowly, softly. "I require you retrieve that which you lost: the honor of my house. You will stay here-I'll put you in chains if need be-but you will stay until the next grand tourney."

Richard felt a swell of black despair. It surged upon him like smothering death until he remembered himself. Such feelings belonged to the man he had been, not the man he'd become. He was immune to such threats, now. The feeling faded, replaced by new strength.

The duke continued unaware. "There you will fight that damned upstart and kill him-or die yourself in the trying."

I think not. Richard's mouth twitched, the only sign of his amusement.

Montague's bloodshot eyes went narrow, on guard for any hint of an attack; his hand moved to rest on the hilt of his dagger. "You smile again, boy? What pleases you so much?"