Read The Dread Wyrm (Traitor Son Cycle) for Free Online

views on intercourse plain, he’d become a fine companion and a source of warmth. And of fun.
    Boys were like horses, Nell had found. A firm hand on the reins, and never a sign of fear, and all went jogging along. “Hey! Sleepy head!” she said, and gave him a loving kick in the ribs.
    He mumbled, threw an arm out and got a mouthful of straw.
    “Drums will beat any minute now, boyo. Get your muscular arse out of the straw. Ser Bescanon loveth not his defaulters. Hey!” He rolled over to avoid her, and she jabbed calloused thumbs into both his sides.
    He exploded out of the straw like something out of the Wild.
    She dissolved into giggles.
    He tried to kiss her, and she reached into her belt pouch and handed him a five-inch length of liquorice root. “Your mouth smells like the jakes,” she said. “We have standards here, boyo. You took the captain’s silver—get moving.”
    He rolled over, his dirty-blond-brown hair full of straw. “What do I do with it?” he asked.
    “Farm boys,” she said, rolling her eyes. She was exactly one year from being a farm girl herself. “Captain says that cleanliness keeps you alive and that dirty soldiers die.” She spoke with the conviction of the convert. She knew damn well that the company were cleaner than any enemy they’d met except the Morean guards.
    “Do I have to wash?” he asked, as if asking if he had to be turned into a snake by a sorcerer.
    “Wednesdays and Sundays when you ain’t fighting,” she said. “Wash and clipped and shaved. When you been wi’ us a year, you can have a beard, but only if the
primus pilus
says so.”
    “By Saint Maurzio!” the boy said. “You have a rule for everything.”
    “Yep!” Nell said. “Now get your arse moving. I’ve been working an hour already.”
    Out in the inn yard—as big as the drill field of many a castle—the Keeper had allowed four bonfires to burn all night. A hundred men and women were gathered around the four fires, all working—men brought wood, or arranged straight-sided kettles, or stirred them.
    Nell took the boy by the hand and walked him across the yard to Ser Michael’s mess. The great knight himself was nowhere to be seen—no one expected knights to cook and clean unless they were in the shit. But hisnew squire, Robin, was sitting in his pourpoint with his master’s golden knight’s belt of heavy plaques across his knees. He and a pixy-faced Morean girl were polishing the plaques with rags dipped in ash.
    Robin, who was a good sort and widely popular, was also a lord in his own right. Nell liked him because he kept order well, was polite to young girls and worked all the time. Nell mostly rated people by the amount of work they did.
    She bent her knee. “My lord?” she said.
    “Morning, Nell,” Robin said, still polishing. “Who’s he?”
    “Took the silver penny last night. Hight Diccon Twig.”
    Robin nodded to the new boy. “Welcome to the company, young Diccon.”
    Robin was perhaps three years older than Diccon, but no one made any comment. Robin had fought well at the big battle outside Lonika—he was no longer “young Robin.” Soon he would be “Ser Robin.” Everyone knew it.
    “My da—” Diccon looked at the ground. “… my da calls me ‘Bent.’”
    Robin smiled. “No. Sorry, Diccon. It’s a good name, but a master archer had it and it died with him. Got another?”
    “My mother calls me a God-Damned Fool,” Diccon said with a smile.
    “Good, you’ll fit right in. Don’t worry about a nickname, Diccon. You’ll get one when it comes and not before.” Robin looked at Nell.
    Nell said, “I think he’s to be your archer.”
    Robin raised an eyebrow. “Well—we can certainly use the help. Diccon, get me four armloads of firewood and talk to that woman in the blue kirtle and the soldier’s cloak for further orders.”
    “Who’s she?” Diccon asked.
    Robin’s face became a shade less friendly. “Diccon, in the normal run of things, you don’t speak to