“Sure as you’re born, sire, beggin’ your pardon, sire.” The furrier added the last part hastily, afraid he’d gotten too familiar with one of the royal blood. The prince could only shake his head. Life would be much easier if we could cut through the He wished there were some way he could spare the peasantry this awkwardness. Or himself, for that matter.

“My pardon you can have — for a fee,” he said, smiling reassuringly. The man looked confused. “All I require is a description of the beast.”

“O’course, sire. It were frightful large—”

“Compared to an elk…?”

“An elk I reckon it could swallow whole and take hardly no notice, sire,” the furrier said. He was more animated now, less afraid. This was a brush with greatness, after all. “That’s if meat’s its diet, which I couldn’t say, sire. But it were scaly and wrinkly like, and frightful large.”

“Yes, so you said.”

“Reminded me of a tortoise out its shell it did,” the man continued. “It had them kind of legs like, bowed, squat. But they was spikes on its back instead of a shell, if it please you, sire.”

He turned to Brorr and tilted his head; the bald old huntmaster nodded reassuringly. 

“It does,” he replied to the furrier at last, turning back to face him. Ruddy-faced and full-bearded, he looked the picture of health to Prince Rahbo. Perhaps the corrosive effects of proximity to the survivors of the White Battle were overstated. What a surprise. “And you’re sure you can direct us to the beast?”

“Sure as you’re born, sire, beggin’ your pardon, sire,” the man said again, before realizing he was repeating himself. He bowed in apology. “Beggin’ your pardon, sire,” he said. 

“Again, it’s not…” He pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers, which he’d unsheathed from his glove before conversing with the peasant. People liked to be able to see your hands when convincing themselves to trust you, he’d found. It let them tell themselves you weren’t hiding anything. “Friend — may I call you friend?”

“Why, of cou—”

“Friend, we are glad of your counsel, and your guidance. Long leagues are we from the capital, where even now my father awaits news of our victory in this hunt of one of the Foul One’s spawn.”

“A good man, your father, sire — I mean the King — I mean His Majesty, your kingly father, sire, beggin’ your—”

“And your father,” Prince Rahbo said, knowing how this sort of thing went. “Did he by chance serve the King’s father, my royal grandsire, in the Third War?”

“The Final War he called it, sire!” The furrier seemed proud, as though it had been his accomplishment. “The last overthrow of the Foul One’s servants in the capital, the cleansing of his strongholds and laboratories, the routing of his soldiers and monsters, the renunciation of his perversion and blackest science, AN END TO EVIL!.” This was all repeated with the unmistakable cadence of a child’s memorized catechism. All that was left was to add— “Sire.” Ah, there it is.

“Aye, that it was,” Prince Rahbo said absently. He was fiddling with the locket around his neck. “Brorr, get the directions from this man, and make sure he’s outfitted for the trip. I’ll be back in my tent.”

“The trip, sire?” It had taken the furrier a second to realize with Prince Rahbo had said.

“You said you’d lead us to the beast, did you not?”

“I — sire, I—”

“Leave a couple of guards behind with his family just in case,” Prince Rahbo said, heading through the door of the furrier’s small timber home. 

“In case of what, sire? Are they in danger?”

“If you steer us true they’re in no danger at all,” Prince Rahbo said as he left. He’d gotten the locket open. By the time he reached the flaps of his yellow tent, emblazoned by the historic sun emblem of the Kings of Lihann, he’d inhaled three pinches of the light blue powder inside. 

He caught Aleen’s expression from across the tent, where she lay wrapped in furs of gold and red. He looked right back at her and had a fourth sniff.

“Don’t you start with me,” he said before she could begin. You don’t know what it’s like dealing with these people.” He took off his heavy cloak and tossed it on a chair. “The shit I have to do just to get through the day.”

If he’d hoped this would defuse things with Aleen he realized his mistake soon enough. “The shit you have to do just to get through the day?” She was seated fully upright on the bed, her mane of curly black hair hovering around her like a cloud, furs clutched about her chest. If she’s not letting me see anything I’m in real trouble, goddammit. “Okay, fine, let’s start with the fact hat I wouldn’t know what you do all day — you never take me anywhere!”

Prince Rahbo rubbed the bridge of his nose again. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I’m here — in a tent I can’t leave — not even to relieve myself, Rahbo.”

The prince smiled. “You’re welcome to visit the latrines.”

“Shut up.” Aleen wasn’t amused.

“Sorry! Sorry. But I mean, you know how it works. Consorts,” he said, being extremely generous with that word, “don’t attend meetings or join sorties. I’m pushing it having you here now as it is.” He poured himself a goblet of wine from a nearby decanter and drained it. “Plus,” he said, swallowing. “Plus my son is here, and I don’t wanna have to get into—”

“Your son is three, Rahbo,” Aleen said, incredulous. “Tell him I’m Queen of the Faeries. And leave him with his mother next time, for fuck’s sake.”

“A boy’s place is with his father,” the prince shot back with surprising vehemence. “I’ll not have him raised behind his mother’s skirts as I was.” 

Aleen smirked. “He’ll stay behind her skirts if you want what’s beneath mine.”

Prince Rahbo paused, then smiled back slowly. “Oh, I think I’m entitled to what’s beneath those skirts.” “

“Is that a fact. On account of your incredible performance these two nights last?”

“It’s true, the drink and the powder did interfere with — well, it’s of no matter. I think you’ll recall my tongue faced no such impediment.”

Aleen shrugged. “I’ll not deny it. I may still deny you, though.”

The prince had shucked off his mail. “Is that wise,” he said, approaching the bed, “eeing as I’m the reason you’re sleeping in a tent bigger than your family’s old hovel?”

Aleen sighed, shaking out her curls. In the process she let the furs fall to her lap. “You’ve got me there,” she said, and smiled wider.

“I’ve got you here alright,” said the prince, undressing.

—

The hunting party got underway an hour later than Brorr had planned, and it made the huntmaster uncomfortable. Not angry — if the prince wished to pursue other interests until such time as he felt prepared in body and spirit, that was his princely prerogative — but on edge. 

The burden-beasts had never been the deadliest or most fearsome creatures in the Foul One’s legions. Left to themselves they roamed the far northern jungles where the foliage was dense enough to hide even genuine behemoths like these. Pressed into the Foul One’s service by one of his Great Spells of Control, they were warped into indefatigable servants, carrying orcs, trolls, even ogres to the front lines. Their massive horns and spikes were no joke, and like all creatures of the Wild North they triggered the Sickness among humans sufficiently exposed, but they had no will to battle of their own, not even after facing the Foul One’s cruel tutelage.

That said, they were ferocious creatures at bay, and the same qualities that made them among the hardiest survivors of the craggy, wooded Southern wilderness surrounding the site of the White Battle two generations past made them among the most dangerous. They were solitary creatures, impervious to most attacks, and too stupid to stay hidden when raiding human settlements if food became scarce. Orcs, by contrast, knew their geese were cooked. They hid, eking out a meager existence from homes within the Great Trunks — or had done, until Father had them burned out for good and all. The Kingdom faced its highest death toll from orcs since the White Battle that year, but such was the price of victory.

“I have my concerns, my prince,” the huntsman said, his huge eyebrows twitching. The hair missing from his head seemed to have migrated to directly above his eyes, the prince thought. 

“Well then,” said Prince Rahbo, bending to kiss Aleen’s pale bare ass. His naked consort lay flat on her stomach, asleep, snoring softly, and the touch of the prince’s lips did not wake her. “Share them.”

“Burden-beasts are known to be at their most restless near dusk,” Brorr said. “It’s when the Foul One trained them to expect feedings.”

“Not this one,” the prince said, sliding out of bed and into the robe hanging off a nearby seat. “You heard the furrier — its horns haven’t curled into ram shape yet. This isn’t one of the beasts that rode into battle against Grandfather, it’s…” He stopped, realizing something, and smiled. “Why, it’s a grandson, just like me!”

Brorr smiled politely. (The prince noticed this, but he appreciated good manners.) “Even so, my prince, the mark of the Foul One runs deep, into the very life-essence of the creatures he corrupts. Think ye not of how often we see the young drakes burning fields instead of soaring off to their mountain eyries, as they’d done before his dark work was done to them?”

The huntmaster wasn’t wrong. (He rarely was, the infuriating man.) Prince Rahbo knew the dragon thing had really upset people back then; even his father would swear and cuss when the topic came up, to a degree that seemed to the prince almost involuntary.

Control yourself, he’d always thought at his father. It was a long time ago. And you’re welcome to end dragon-riding in your armies anytime you like, you hypocrite.

“Alright, alright,” the prince conceded. “We’ll get moving.” He glanced back at Aleen. They fought sometimes, but he planned to make her a gift of the creature’s skull after it was all over. Traffic in relics of the Foul One was illegal in the Kingdom of course, but if you knew the right trader and greased the right palms you’d be set for life. He didn’t know how much longer this thing with her would last,  but he didn’t want to be mean when it was over. Besides, he’d long found that a happy mistress was a quiet mistress. 

“I’m all done here anyway,” he said, grabbing his robe before following Brorr deeper into the tent complex to the armorer.

—

They marched along the forest road for half a day, Brorr leading the way, the furrier by his side. Prince Rahbo road in the back of the train, near the weapon-wagon, which required his close supervision. Messengers ran back and forth along the line if the prince and the huntmaster needed to communicate. The road his grandsire cut through the forest ran so straight it was said the keen-eyed could stand in the center at one end and see straight through to the other. 

Like most things about Grandfather, this was peasant horseshit, too good to be true. He’d taken the road often enough to know it bent fifteen degrees to the southwest midway through to avoid the Brownie King’s domain. Not even the Foul One’s leftovers would tread where the mad faery warlord and his army of maneaters made their home.

Either way they had not yet reached that point when a messenger, breathless, ran up to Prince Rahbo’s destrier. They’d found a bear carcass in a shallow bend of the river they were soon to cross. Brorr said it had been gored, and the edge of the wounds was burned a dark green.

So it’s to be easy, then, he thought, sighing over all the time he’d wasted conversing with the furrier in his hovel. I could have had my face between Aleen’s legs. I’ll miss that; she tastes like something I’d order twice. 

“Tell Brorr he’s to signal me the moment the beast is in range,” Prince Rahbo said.

“Aye, sire.” The messenger ran back whence he’d come. After a few minutes, the line began to move again. 

—

“But sire, I—”

“I’m sorry,” Prince Rahbo said to the furrier. “Did I give the impression this is a negotiation?”

The prince took another pinch of blue powder from his locket and snorted it. He’d catch hell if his father got wind of this, but he’d thrown enough money and girls around court that his father hardly got wind of anything anymore. The old man was still formidable, of course, but…

“Negotiation?” the furrier repeated inanely. “I’m sure I wouldn’t know about all that. It’s me family, sire. Without me I don’t know what would become of them.”

“Nothing will become of them!” The prince had to stop himself from wincing at the sound of his own voice, his statement sounding more angry than reassuring. “You’ll be fine. You see this weapon-wagon, right?” He slapped his gloved hand against the wooden cart. “You’ve got nothing to fear against some burden-beast whose horns haven’t even curved yet.”

“You’re right, sire, begging your pardon, s—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, you have my pardon! Never has there existed a man with more of my fucking pardon than you, man. Now what I need you to do,” Prince Rahbo said, reaching for his sword. “Is to get your fucking ass out into that water,” he continued, drawing it. “And bring that fucking burden-beast out from the cave behind the fucking falls.”

“Sire…my family…”

“The family surrounded by my guards?” Prince Rahbo said, eyes twinkling. “The family we know are alive right now? That family? Because if you want I can send someone to ask the guards how they’re doing.” He put his hand on the furrier’s shoulder. “Would you like me to send someone to talk to the guards about your family?”

The man’s face went white. “No need, sire, no need! I’ll go! I’ll go!”

“Good!” Prince Rahbo clapped the man on the back. “Good. Bring us that burden-beast, my good man, and you and your family will have every reason to be glad of it.”

The furrier nodded low and scampered back up the line without a word. 

The prince signaled to the men who worked the weapon-wagon. The Sun of Lihann shone white against their black uniforms — Prince Rahbo’s own style. He knew that even now there were those in his father’s court, some even of his own generation, who objected to the absence of yellow in his vexillography. 

But the strength of Lihann had never been of gaiety and gold. The Kingdom’s power lay within the white bone and black resolve of its people. If these were also the colors of the Foul One, what of it? Where was it written that a former Chief Wizard of the Kingdom, whatever his faults, must needs be wrong about all things?

“Roll it forward,” Prince Rahbo commanded the men. “Carefully, now.” He nudged his horse forward, keeping pace with the weapon-wagon as the horse that drew it carefully made its way down the increasingly overgrown road. As they passed one particularly hoary tree, the white-on-black sheet covering the wagon’s cargo snagged on a low-hanging branch, revealing a massive metal tube, its mouth broad enough to fit a human head.

—

“I needn’t have worried about the noise.”

“What?”

“I said, ‘I needn’t have worried about the noise’!”

“Aye, it is!” Brorr said, nodding vigorously. It was clear he hadn’t heard a word Prince Rahbo had said. It was nearly impossible to be heard over the roar of the falls, which splashed into the rocks that jutted out of the pool below like teeth before the water continued its flow. The falls created a curtain of water in front of the entrance to the cave behind them, creating a bone-rattling boom with its echo. The half-eaten carcasses another bear and two forest lions lay snagged on the jagged stones; their waterlogged fur made their mangled bodies look sad in the gathering dusk.

From where he stood in the treeline with Brorr, Prince Rahbo turned away. He’d never liked seeing things like that. These were beautiful creatures, their lives cut short due to Father’s failure. He felt a despair well up inside him he hadn’t felt since he led the attack on the Farmer’s March to the capital, the Year of the Bad Wheat. Father’s weakness had forced the prince’s hand then, too. Much as they hated each other, neither Grandfather nor the Foul One would have allowed things to get that far. The Foul One especially would—

“My Prince!” Brorr was shaking him.

Prince Rahbo turned to look at the huntmaster square in the face, staring right at his lips, fat and pink as nightcrawlers. Maybe he could understand what he was saying better this way.

“The oracular statue the scouts found said the beast returned to its cave at daybreak and hasn’t left!” The man’s bald head was beet red with the strain of shouting to be heard. 

“Then we must draw it out while the light shines still. Send the furrier.”

Brorr half-nodded, half-shrugged. “We could always send the furrier,” he shouted.

Prince Rahbo pinched his nose again. “Good idea.”

Brorr turned to his squire who ran down the supply line. Several long minutes later he returned with the furrier, who looked harried and disheveled.

“Begging your pardon, sire, I do apologize sincerely for my tardiness. The call of nature…” He trailed off, embarrassed to shout about taking a shit in the woods.

“Never you mind all that, friend,” Prince Rahbo said. “Now’s your chance to help us rid the King—”

“Beg pardon, sire?”

“—dom of —” He stopped, restarted. “I said, ’Now’s your chance to help us rid the Kingdom of this—”

“I’m sure I don’t rightly know how big the Kingdom is, sire. Frightful big, I expect, sire“

The prince took a deep breath, his eyes widening as far as they’d go. “It’s fucking huge, dipshit.”

“Beg pardon, sire?”

“I said, ‘Go down there and lure the burden-beast out.’”

This the furrier heard loud and clear, judging from the way all the color left his ruddy bearded cheeks. The prince took some satisfaction in that. It was the color people went when they realized they were going to do something not because they wanted to, but because Prince Rahbo wanted them to. He referred to it as the whore’s blush in his mind, though in his memoir he hadn’t yet settled on a name for it.

“Sire, please—”

“Oh, it’s fine,” said the prince, pushing the furrier off the side of the road nearest the falls. With his other hand he pointed back at the weapon-wagon, at the metal tube with Prince Rahbo’s monchromatic coat of arms draped over it. “You will not end in the beast’s belly, this I promise. With this weapon the work of my grandsire will, at last, come to an end. It begins here, friend. It begins with your bravery.”

The furrier grabbed his own beard and tugged. “What?” A pause. “Sire?”

Prince Rahbo grabbed he man by the fur lining of his coat and pulled his face in close, speaking directly into his ear. “Get the fuck down into that pool and start splashing. We’ll kill the fucking thing before it can touch you, this I swear on my grandsire’s tomb.”

Still the man did not budge.

The prince brought him in even closer. “We could fetch your family if you’d like their support, of course.”

That did it. Without another word the furrier turned and scampered down the sloping surface of dark brown soil, green moss, and knotted tree roots. In under a minute he was thigh-deep near the banks of the pool. He turned, looking back at the prince for approval. 

Prince Rahbo turned to his huntmaster, who shook his head no. 

The prince turned back to the distant furrier and waved him forward with his gloved right hand, dangling at the wrist, whisking at the air to motion him on.

The furrier was waist-deep now. His head tossed this way and that, now at the prince, now at the falls and the cave behind it. 

Looking back at the furrier, the prince raised his arms in the air and waved them frantically. The furrier took a moment, then three, before turning back to face the falls, waving and splashing.

They felt it move before they saw it, and with the falls they never heard it. But the massive, trunk-like bowed legs of the burden-beast were moving, up towards the entrance of the cave. 

A forked tongue emerged from he darkness, luridly pink, flicking at the spray that filled the air in the space between the cave and the cascade. 

Slowly into the light emerged a serpentine head the size of a haywain. Its horns, which protruded from the crest of its head, had just begun to curl. Its eyes shone black in the twilight. 

The furrier turned and ran. 

On its great legs the burden-beast, a young adult now, emerged from the cave. Its horned, fanged head connected almost directly to its body, its circular shape giving the impression of a tortoise out of ifs shell. Rows of bristling spikes guarded its massive back instead; this creature had never known riders, but time was the servants of the Foul One strapped themselves to those spikes and marched these monsters to war. How hardy they’d proven, while in the Kingdom only the oldest of the old still lived to remember their maker’s defeat. How noble they were in exile.

“FIRE,” Prince Rahbo yelled.

A whirr, like the stirrings of a great wheel, could be heard even over the din of the falls. The tube, now fully unsheathed, glowed purple for two seconds, three, before a sound like a thunderclap split the air and a burning white globule burst forth from its mouth. 

Prince Rahbo watched as the white fireball sped through the air, embedding itself into the flank of the burden-beast with a sizzling thunk. The creature bellowed in pain, then stopped, froze, suddenly motionless. Beams of red light, then orange, then yellow, then on through the spectrum shot out of its torso from where the white fireball had embedded itself. Each ray punched through guts and bone and muscle and flesh and scales and spikes on its way out.

The burden-beast opened its mouth to roar again. Then its head flew off.

The severed skull was several times larger and faster than the furrier when it collided with him, killing him instantly. The rest of the body exploded in a shower of black blood and viscera that burned every living thing it touched. Prince Rahbo sighed with relief. Out of range, he thought. The tests had not been conclusive about that.

—

The men were moving by torchlight now. Some were tending to the beast’s head, which they’d found fifty yards from the edge of the pool, The furrier’s head and spine remained wrapped around the horn that had hit him when the explosion decapitated the creture; the rest of the man was missing. 

Prince Rahbo stood by Brorr, watching the men clean and dress he head for transport. He couldn’t use the royal tanner, that would raise suspicion even about a Prince of Lihann. But he knew someone; knowing people was his real role in this Kingdom, and knowing how to convince them of the inevitable. That someone could transfer the preserved head to Aleen, at which point someone else he knew would take it abroad and sell it for a small fortune. White War enthusiasts were always eager preservationists of history.

But there were other, more frustrating matters to attend to first. “I’ll have to say something to the widow,” the prince said. (At a conversational volume; the trees were dense enough here to block most of the noise from the falls, though the beast’s horned head had shattered a dozen of them like twigs before it landed.)

Brorr continued looking at the giant head. “Will you?” he asked quietly. Beneath his bristly brows his eyes were twin secrets.

Prince Rahbo pinched the bridge of his nose again. Rule is an ugly business. He signaled to the nearest messenger, who came running. “Go back to the furrier’s cabin,” the prince said. “We left guards there.”

“What should I say to them, sire?”

“You won’t need to say anything,” Prince Rahbo said. With his brows furrowed in confusion, the messenger nodded and sped off.

An ugly business, rule. But what could he do? He couldn’t have word of the weapon getting out beyond his loyalists. People would wonder what book of witchcraft contained the instructions for its creation. People would wonder where the prince might aim it. People might prepare against it.

We can’t have that, Prince Rahbo thought. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, we can’t have that.

He would succeed now, he knew. The destruction of the burden-beast was proof of that. A monster bred for generations to be nigh indestructible by man or nature, shattered like a thrown glass, blown apart by magic even the Foul One himself had not yet mastered when Grandfather drove a sword through his face. But he’d kept the great wizard’s spellbooks, every one. For decades now they’d been kept in a vault deep beneath Castle Lihann, where only members of the royal family could access them. To keep them safe, Grandfather had told him just before he died.

Oh, they were safe alright, Grandfather. For year after year we kept our most dangerous weapons safe by not using them. How many good men had died putting down the Farmers’ Rebellions? How many loyal soldiers of Lihann went to the gallows after the Pinewood Conference, all for the offense of demanding a seat at the table? Men died on that day, and this the Council of Regents called a crime. But men die — that’s what men do. If the day came sooner for some than for others…

Well. Let the Farmers take up their pitchforks again. Let another Yellow gather a crowd to hear her calumnies against me. Let the Eastlanders keep swarming the Sun Gate, spreading their filth in the capital. Let the Council of Regents meet to discuss what is to be done with me, and let them invite Father. 

This was not the only weapon he’d had made. Even now they were hidden throughout the city, manned by his most loyal soldiers, aimed squarely at all the Kingdom’s problems. The moment they forced him to forego his policy of peace and act, which they came closer to doing with each passing day, the White Sun would rain fire on everyone who befouled the land of Lihann. Then the work of putting the Kingdom to right could truly begin. The men were eager for that day, maybe more than he was himself.

Prince Rahbo walked over to the massive head, pressing one gloved hand against its forehead, above the point directly between its huge black eyes, which shone dumbly as they reflected the torchlight by which the men worked.

“My prince, I wouldn’t—”

“Your grandsire probably fought my grandsire,” Prince Rahbo said to the severed head quietly.. “When we ended evil.” 

He took his hand off the horn, wiped his glove against his tunic, and turned to the men. “Work all night if you have to,” he said, and turned back to find his horse through the torchlit gloom, taking a sniff from his locket as he walked and taking care to avoid the water befouled by the beast’s blood, which by now would have spread far downstream. He wanted the head back at the tents for his mistress and his son to wake up to; he’d be transported, and she’d be so busy cooing over its market value that he could probably get away from her and home to peace and quiet for a week. There would soon be so much work to do.