“Alright, let’s hear it,” Domnal said, his voice loud as he walked to his small office. He threw his heavy key ring on the table. It hit with a loud clatter, slid, and fell off the other side. Domnal scowled and swore as he sat down and then groaned as he leaned over and picked the ring up off the ground.

Heden followed him in and closed the door behind him. The room was small, warm, made of hard wood and lit by four candles in sconces on the wall. The floor was covered in a layer of sawdust the guards used to absorb any blood that spilled during the execution of their duty. Domnal’s large desk was covered in parchment. Heden knew the man could read and write, but only the typical phrases found in official documents. Put a book in front of him, and he’d start to sweat.

“You heard it from Mathe,” Heden said and shrugged, sitting down in the armless chair.

“I want to hear it from you,” Domnal said, scowling. His face red.

Domnal was Mathe in 10 years. A big man in every sense of the word. Tall, wide, gone to fat. His pale complexion meant his face went flush any time he was angry or ashamed or had exerted himself. It was currently beet red. His hair grew in short brown wisps. He was loud, brutish, and effective.

Heden recounted what happened, and voiced his own culpability.

“Well what the fuck did you come here for if not to help,” Domnal threw his keys on his desk, half at Heden, in disgust. They clattered and rang on the wood and slid down off the table again, landing at Heden’s feet.

“Ah, fuck it,” Domnal said. Heden, aware Domnal’s outburst was not directed at him, reached down and picked up the heavy iron key ring. He placed it on the desk, out of reach of Domnal.

“We don’t see you for a year and then you show up and one of my men dies,” Dom wasn’t really talking to him, Heden knew. He was just angry. “Why didn’t you just stay the fuck home?”

Heden didn’t say anything. Dom needed to let it out. Heden knew that if he tried to defend himself, Dom would just get angrier.

“I’m going to have to go talk to his wife,” Domnal said, his voice now betraying weariness.

“You want me to do it?” Heden asked.

“Nah,” Domnal looked at the floor, at nothing. The morning’s events still unprocessed. “It’s my job.”

“I know a good hymn for a fallen guard. It’s very moving. Poetic.”

Domnal grunted a negative, adjusting his bulk. “It’s got to be me. She’d think I didn’t care if I sent you.”

Heden conceded the point. Domnal was probably right. Heden could see his friend was no longer angry at him. Sometimes it paid to keep your mouth shut.

“Where do they come from?” Domnal wondered. Heden had not used a prayer to calm Domnal and now he’d bled all his anger out and had time to be resentful.

“The King” Heden suggested.

Domnal straightened up, frowned and made a questioning grunt.

“The King burned down the bridge across the Mal,” Heden said. Domnal, frowning, nodded. “Lot of trade across that bridge. The towns and farms that relied on it, now they’re poor, struggling, they don’t know any other work and they become desperate. Easy targets for priests of Cyrvis.”

Domnal listened, then scowled and grunted. “That don’t explain it. My da was poor for 2 years after the Duke took his farm. He didn’t kill no-one. It don’t explain it.”

Heden knew both of them were right. “No, it doesn’t,” he granted.

“How’s Megan?” Heden asked after a moment.

He saw Domnal’s face flash blank for an instant, and Heden’s stomach turned. He recognized the sign that something was wrong between Domnal and his wife, and that just saying her name caused him discomfort. Domnal was about to lie to him.

“She’s fine,” he said without feeling. “Keeps saying we should invite you to dinner.”

“You should invite me to dinner,” Heden agreed.

Dom sighed at his friend. “You wouldn’t come,” he said with sympathy. “You’d find an excuse to stay in that fucking inn you never open.”

Heden didn’t say anything. He wasn’t aware his desire to avoid the world was so obvious to everyone.

“She says you just need a woman,” Domnal said, gaining interest in talking about something other than the Eseldics and his dead guard.

Heden shrugged. “What did you tell her?”

“I asked her if she was volunteering,” he said, flashing a quick smile. Heden smiled a little for show. For some reason he couldn’t explain, he found that kind of talk distasteful.

Domnal took the question seriously and answered; “I told her it was too late for you. Tried to explain.”

“What’d she say?”

“She didn’t listen. She don’t believe that stuff. Not a romantic, like you,” Dom said, drawing the word ‘romantic’ out to make fun of Heden. “She’s got a niece she says would play your organ like a fife if you’d but loosen your belt.”

Heden looked at the ceiling and blinked as though asking Cavall for strength.

Domnal chuckled at Heden’s reaction and this made Heden happy. “She don’t know you,” Domnal concluded.

Heden waited a moment and changed the subject.

“Did you know Teagan was a ratcatcher?” Heden asked, guessing at the new guard’s old profession.

“What?” Domnal said. “Teagan? ‘Course I did,” he said, frowning. “Everyone does. You know what it’s like here, no room for secrets.”

Heden did know what it was like there and knew there were more secrets than Domnal would let on.

“He’s good,” Heden said. Domnal was impressed with Heden’s evaluation.

“He’s a mare,” Domnall grinned.

Heden frowned. “He’s a what?”

Domnall sat back in his chair, his grin turning into a smile.

“Fancies men,” Domnall said.

Heden’s face went blank for a moment as he absorbed this. “Hm.” He shrugged to himself. “Well he’s that good in a fight, he can do what he wants with his prick. Who was he with?”

“The Sword of Silver,” Domnal said raising his eyebrows and pronouncing the words with exaggerated precision. Most people thought company names were absurd.

“Really?” Heden said. “They were good. They recovered the Blade of a Thousand Years. I always thought ‘The Immortal Blade’ would have been a better name for them after that.”

“That’s because you give a shit about what’s poetic,” Domnal said.

“True,” Heden said.

Domnal remembered something, and threw a sharp glance at Heden for a moment. Then, seeming embarrassed, cast his eyes down.

“Listen, Heden,” he said, screwing his face up with reluctance. Heden could tell his friend was embarrassed by something and for some reason Heden was in no mood to let him off the hook.

“Uh, listen,” Domnal said again lowering his voice, seeming to shrink as he asked a favor. “I was wondering if you could, you know after everything that happened this morning, if you could…say a blessing for me?”

Heden frowned and looked Domnal up and down as though he were being tricked.

Domnal seemed anxious and ashamed. Heden shrugged. “Ok,” he said. Domnal was immediately relieved. The two men got up and approached each other.

Domnal straightened up, eyes closed. Heden grabbed his amulet with his left hand, held up his right, palm out, and prayed to his Saint, Lynwen.

Both men stood there eyes closed as Heden spoke his prayer in the First Language. As he did so, Heden caught a fleeting glimpse in his mind of two eyes, a woman’s, rolling with amusement. Heden felt his hands grow warm and knew Dom was feeling the same unnatural heat.

The prayer was not ceremonial, it was purifying. It was effective in proportion with how just and fair the subject was, as was Cavall’s will, but Heden prayed to Saint Lynwen, who had her own agenda which none but Heden understood. The prayer would strengthen the body and cure small ills. And reveal any physical problems with the supplicant.

Heden’s eyes flashed open, angry at the secret Lynwen had revealed to him even as she cured it. Now he knew why Dom was ashamed to ask.

“You fucker,” Heden said.

“Heden!” Domnal said, flinching at his friend’s judgment rather than his choice of words. He was breathing a little heavily as a reaction to the curative power of the prayer.

“You know I’m going to have to pray over Megan now, too.”

Domnal half turned, picked up a proclamation off his desk. “Well you can do that when you come to dinner.” He avoided Heden’s gaze and pretended to read the document.

“You complete piece of shit, you know she dotes on you. Brags about you.”

“Should I tell her, do you think?” Domnal asked, his face screwed up, his voice quiet.

“Should you…no you should not tell her, you should be faithful to her! You should go to the church and ask Cavall and Llewellyn for forgiveness!”

“Am I going to be alright?” Domnal asked, stung by his friend’s anger.

“Not if you keep paying for whores!”

“Listen, Heden, did you come here for a reason?” Domnal struck back, angry because he knew Heden was right. “Everyone here does it, you know. Maybe you’d be….” He stopped. Heden cocked his head and raised an eyebrow.

“You going to finish that sentence?” Heden asked mildly.

The small office was silent for a few moments. Then Domnal looked away and sniffed. “Nah,” Domnal said.

“You’ve got someone here for me,” Heden said. “A girl.”

“What?” Domnal said, forgetting his earlier question. “Oh fuck you’re right,” he said, glad to have something else to think about. He put the papers down. “I’d forgotten about her,” he reached out and picked up his keychain, his thick fingers searching through the keys.

Heden fingered a small pouch on his belt as Domnal selected the right key and moved to the door. Heden stood behind him.

“Black gods,” Domnal said, and Heden saw some weight pulled off him, his body sagged a little with relief, “she’s been here for three days, most of my men won’t go near her. I end up having to bring her food and drink. She’s in a terrible state. Not bad looking though,” he mused, then remembered who he was talking to. “Thank the gods you’re here. I knew they’d send you,” he smiled at Heden. “Knew you’d show up to take care of it.”

“Yeah,” Heden said. Domnal turned to leave.

Domnal looked over his back. “Thank you for the prayer.”

“Yeah,” Heden said. “Tell Megan I want hogget.” He pushed his friend forward. “Let’s go.”

Domnal opened the door and led Heden to the cell.

On to Chapter Three!

Read the Gloss for this chapter.

Chapter 2

This is the first chapter where I feel the tone of the book is in evidence, and considering it’s only chapter two, that’s a good thing. Dom and Heden have a very natural, to my way of thinking, authentic relationship, and you can see it in the way they talk.

I should mention a little bit on language.

Each character in the book speaks in a specific mode that’s meant to convey where they’re from and their station. Mathe and Domnall, for instance, speak in a very similar way, and both use language differently than Gwiddon. And none of them talk like Heden. There’s really only two other characters in the book who talk like Heden, and both for the same reason. Heden’s developed his own accent, basically, as a result of his travels abroad and this accent is, in my mind, very American. West coast.

And since this is an alternate world, not our world at any time, not even our culture or any real culture, they would not really be speaking English. Tolkien kinda went overboard with that stuff, going all the way to give all the characters names in the invented languages they’d really be speaking. So Frodo’s name in the language the Hobbits actually spoke in Middle-earth was “Maura Labingi.”

I, however, am not that kind of writer. But knowing that these characters would not be using these literal words freed me to ‘translate’ their speech into our mode. So they swear. Real actual medieval people swore, often, and colorfully, these characters are no different. They just do so in a modern manner, because we are modern readers.

The profanity in the book is purely to make the characters speech natural. Not an artifice as language in so much fantasy is. Many readers may be turned off, because that artifice, that romantic sense of a lost age, may be one of the reasons they come to the genre and this I cannot begrudge them, but that’s not why I come to the genre, as a reader or a writer.

Here in Chapter Two we meet Domnhall, a recurring character and one of Heden’s best friends. If it seems like they’re estranged, that’s mostly because of Heden, as you’ll see.

There’s an important plot point here, but we’ll cover it in the chapter where it becomes explicit. Instead, let’s talk about hot man sex.

Taegan is, as you now know, gay. We’ll see him a few more times in this book, but he becomes much more important in the next book and, by Book Three, he is the title character, Fighter. Though not the main character, the main character is always Heden.

I can’t think of a time I ever felt like I decided what a character looked like, or what their gender is or race or sexuality.  Usually I feel like I’m watching a movie in my head and just writing down descriptions of the characters who show up on screen.

Not only is that how I come across my characters, like I’m discovering them rather than inventing them, it’s how I think it should be done. Working in video games, I get very frustrated with the constant deconstruction and reconstruction of story and character in order to avoid certain connotations or implications. That’s not writing, that’s marketing. As a designer all that mattered was “is it fun?” As a writer “is it good?” turned out to have nothing to do with what mattered to the powers that be.

I’d gotten Heden out of the Hammer & Tongs and was working on What Happens Next when I realized I’d just introduced a whole lot of characters, and none of them were gay.

“That doesn’t seem likely,” is literally what I thought. “Some of the characters are gay, and I haven’t figured it out yet!” I felt like some of my characters were in the closet and hadn’t told me yet. I remember casting about, wondering who was hiding what.

Originally I thought “Gwiddon,” whom you have not yet met, and my only defense is that after having that thought, I found a great little exchange between Heden and a woman you are about to meet. She says she thinks she remembers Gwiddon from the Rose Petal and Heden patiently explains that this is very unlikely and she gets defensive, thinking he means “Gwiddon is too good a person to visit a brothel,” but Heden interrupts her and says “Gwiddon would not be interested in you, because you do not have a prick.” And then we get Vanora’s reaction and her asking about Heden, which was very cute. Because I liked that scene, I believed Gwiddon was gay longer than I would otherwise have.

I gave that draft to She Who Must Be Obeyed and one of the follow-up questions was “what do you think about the fact that Gwiddon is gay?” And she said “I knew it as soon as you were describing his shoes.”

Now, that may be true. But it offended me. It meant I’d done something horribly wrong, I’d created a cliché. Understand that the Gwiddon she was reading was in all ways the same as the straight one in the current draft. All the same dialog and mannerisms, only later in another scene do we hear about his sexuality.

My offense at my own laziness, made me remember that originally Gwiddon was supposed to be a popinjay. He dresses and acts the way he does because it gets him the chicks. It’s the height of straight male fashion, in a culture where being fashionable is not associated with one gender or the other. Heden is a contrast not because Heden is Masculine and Gwiddon is Feminine, but because Heden is a gormless lump who wouldn’t know how to dress nicely if his life depended on it. A finely tailored suit would spontaneously rumple upon contact with him.

So I threw that out. I wanted Gwiddon to be an unrepentant, unironic ladies’ man. Not compensating for anything, not doing it to prove anything, just lucky to still be attractive and powerful in middle age, aware of it and willing to exploit it. Back to the drawing board.

As soon as I’d thrown out Gay Gwiddon I hit upon Taegan. I instantly knew he was the right guy for this. I like subverting expectations and the idea of the bad-ass fighter being gay is still unexpected. I mean, we’re maybe close to 50/50 at this point, because certainly we’ve seen it elsewhere.

There are only two steps really in this process. The process of making him gay. Step one was leave him exactly as he was, and just say he’s gay. I believe there is a gay point of view, just as there’s a female point of view, and getting in there can be hard, hem hem, but step one is not looking for it. Because I believe that we’re humans first, all that other stuff second. Maybe we’re Matt and Geoff and Bob and Taegan and Gwiddon first, and humans next, and labels last, I’m not sure.

Step two was the give him the opportunity to be gay by which I do not mean “listen to showtunes,” but put him in a relationship. That doesn’t happen in this book, because Taegan is a minor character at this point, but stay tuned.

Part of the gay point of view is how a gay person fits into society. And being gay is merely unusual and maybe a little distasteful in the culture these characters are from. It’s not a sin, or unnatural, no one would think that or even understand that point of view. So in a certain sense, Taegan acts like a gay fantasy. He gets to be gay, have a real relationship, he’s not sexless, but without being judged. He’s free from the crap gay people have to put up with in our society and that’s part of the package here. Escapism. Fantasy. Heden is impossibly tough, and that’s why we like him. Taegan is impossibly gay. You know what I mean. He gets to be gay in a way a lot of people don’t.

It took me almost a whole day of reading out-of-print books online before I found the authentic medieval term for a gay man. That’s part of the process too. These people are living in a pre-enlightenment, pre-industrial society, and so while they are not from OUR medieval period, they are from an analogous time, and so I find such research adds verisimilitude.

Chapter 2