511: The King of Sorestan

Sir Brandegoris here...

This year I fulfilled my duties to Young Count Derfel by helping him systematically secure old Sorestan and bring the saxons under his rule but in the end it was the old queen of Sorestan that persuaded her people to pledge loyalty to the count. I suppose that I misjudged her, and I apologized and told her so. So Sorestan is subdued by my young and brave count.

For my loyalty my count gave me the wardship of three very favorable manors. he has made me a rich knight, even without taking the money from the manor of Auburn, which I have under wardship for squire franklin(Paderns oldest son). I am saving all of the income from the manor for him and constantly striving to improve it for him, so that when he comes into his majority he will be well provided for.

I have completed my Stone tower to protect Tilton and I am now making a ditch and rampart. Once I am finished protecting the manor I will hopefully be able to build an orphanage for all of the childeren in leicester that have been forgotten by God. We will see. I feel weary. I am getting older and my joints hurt as well as many of my old battle scars. The only thing that gives me hope is that our Youmg High King seems blessed by God and maybe he will give us victorty over the heathen saxons and foreign invaders. We will see.

Sir Edward here...

Even though I was a young child when Lindsey was overrun by those heathens from across the sea, my heart burned just as brightly as those in the chests of the old guard when the call came from this new high king Arthur to rid Sorestan of its Saxon nobility. We spent much of early summer working our way north, until we finally stood in the hall of the red city. But much to my chagrin Count Derfel of Lincoln fell to the charms of the dead king of Sorestan's witch of a wife. He would not have her harmed, nor put her in a nunnery for safe-keeping, but instead found her a most perilous place of keeping—his bed!

He's styling himself the king of Sorestan these days, and I'm sure nothing good will come of it: his ursurpation of a title far above his station, and his overfamiliarity with the devil himself clothed in the flesh of that woman.

As the hay was coming in I proposed to the rest of the Leicestermen that we do our duty to our lord and rid his lands of that damnable Black Annis once and for all. I could see they clearly did not want to face the hag a third time, but I kept at it—still sore over the count of Lincoln's dallying with his witch-consort, I think—until we stood before the secret door in Leicester's storerooms.

We forced our torch-bearing squires into the tunnel with us...at the first scream of that ghastly hag they turned and ran. That I expected, though I did not expect Sir Bledri to do the same. Seeing that the valor of the other knights hinged on seizing the inititive, I threw myself at the hag to give Sir Brandegoris a chance to put his knife skills to work. He was able to deal her enough blows to send her scurrying out the cave mouth, and we tracked her up the creek for some distance, but we lost her bloody spoor in the water...I spent what turned out to be a rather fine autumn laid up in Leicester with an awful wound, though I'm recovered now.

I'm afraid we will have to make Attempt No. 4 sooner or later. Damn it.

Young Squire Franklin here...

The Master of Pages, old Sir Amlas, told me I was to ride up to Lincoln and have a word from the count. The Lady of the house got me dressed right proper and sent me off in the company of knights for what turned out to be the count's official recognition of my right to Auburn Hall. And being that I am underage he placed it into wardship, a prospect that made me right glum until he assigned it to good old Sir Brandegoris. Huzzah! Now when I'm all grown up and a knight I won't come into a charred piece of land decorated with a hearth, but with grandfather's old hall. Not that I remember grandfather's old hall, or even mother. Father placed me in the care of the beautiful Lady Christine as a babe, and for me now Leicester is the old familiar hall and the lady my mother.