The next day I ask Princess Gyla about the book from Captain Etrek. He had promised to deliver it the very next time we employed his mercenary company. Surely in their year-long romp of carnage—at my expense—they had found the time to return the book?
She denied that he had, and in her denial I saw instantly that Princess Gyla was lying. Deception is not part of who she is. I didn’t challenge her, but decided to wait and see why she would feel compelled to lie about something as petty as this. Why would she lie?
Princess Gyla’s Story
Chapter 85
Princess Gyla never knew her father. The Duke Albrikt became king when she was one year old and died of illness when she was two. He left behind a wife, a mystic mistress, and four children between them, of which Gyla was the second youngest.
In the elective succession of Sweden, Princess Bothid managed to cobble enough counts and dukes together to become queen. Like Gyla, she was of the House of Stenkil. She was the last Stenkil to hold the crown.
The Stenkils and Stenhrykas had continually fought politically over the crown, passing it back and forth between them as the children’s leather ball during their ubiquitous outdoor games. Until Bothid’s reign, however, it had never come to outright violence. That was to change.
Princess Bothid held the crown for four years until Duke Sigbjorn led a revolt of nobles from the House of Stenkyrka. They felt that King Albrikt had unjustly convinced the electors to grant him the title after their last queen had died of illness. There were also rumors that the Duke had stooped to bribes and blackmail to cajole nobles to the point where they would fight for him. Taken by surprise by the wellspring of force against her, Bothid was forced to abdicate to Duke Sigbjorn. Princess Gyla was eleven.
Any guesses on where he got that scar?
Bothid transfered Gyla’s tutelage to Baron Dan of Othem, marshal to the crown of Sweden and master warrior. He was a just but firm teacher. At first he disapproved of tutoring Gyla, but he quickly found her to be an apt and capable pupil in the arts of war. More capable than he guessed. One day he tried to push her with taunts and he went too far. She erupted in a barrage of blows against her tutor, and the nearby men-at-arms could not spring forward quickly enough to pull her off of the Baron, leaving him severely wounded. He eventually healed, leaving a deep scar on his face. He wore it with stoicism and never blamed Gyla, however. “I should accept what happens when I pull a tiger by the tail,” he would tell people. In fact, to some he almost seemed proud of the scar.
Twelve years passed with King Sigbjorn ruling, continually stripping power from the Stenkil dynasty whenever possible. During this time Princess Gyla’s brothers and mother lived under the protection of Princess Bothid, but their means were meager despite their exalted status. When Gyla’s official studies ceased at 16, Princess Bothid strove to find a mate for Gyla, but she lost hope as all potential suitor families were frightened off once they observed her frequent sparing or fist fights with the knights. The knights took to her as a sort of mascot and continued her education with all manner of weapons and tools of war. She remained eager to learn.
Yes, this is not going to end well.
Aside from her comrades the knights and men-at-arms, Princess Gyla’s only friend was her brother Erik, one year her junior. The shy Erik was educated as a cleric, and quickly learned the religious and scholarly teachings, but from Gyla he learned almost everything she knew about fighting and war. The two of them began setting out with Bothid’s knights to put down bandits and brigades, initially to the condescension of the men-at-arms, but they soon developed into reliable components of these forces, and even eventually into their strongest warriors. The siblings earned the respect of all the warriors of the duchy as well as the nickname, “The Sword and Mace,” as the elder sister favored the slash of a sword and the younger brother the blunt smash of the mace. The men-at-arms knew that if the fighting turned against them, they could rely on the Sword and Mace to stand back-to-back as a wall the rest could rally behind.
Princess Bothid the Wise bided her time to attempt to take back the crown. Finally she found her chance as King Sigbjorn was hard pressed in a war with the Danes. As the unifying figure for the other disenfranchised Stenkil nobles, Bothid rebelled and her men quickly began to take the upper hand against King Sigbjorn, who was now fighting a war with two fronts. But Sigbjorn was not a fool, and he quickly sued for peace with the Danes, even though the peace cost him more than he would have preferred to pay. Now he could focus his full might against Princess Bothid’s forces, and he quickly turned the tide against her.
Princess Gyla and Prince Erik fought bravely for their liege, Princess Bothid. They knew that losing to Sigbjorn would doubtless end with Bothid imprisoned and her duchy stripped from her, which would break the back of Stenkil power. Still, the king’s men pushed Bothid’s back, and they would have crushed the last of her defenses had not Gyla and Erik fought their way in the final battle to the very housecarls defending King Sigbjorn himself.
These were the toughest warriors that the pair had yet faced, and yet they cut and smashed their way through them handily, the siblings fighting as one warrior with four constantly whirling arms. They were almost surprised when suddenly they were alone standing next to the king, who had been knocked to the ground, his blade held up in desperation to stop these angels of death.
Princess Gyla moved forward, her sword upraised for the final stroke.
“Wait, sister,” Prince Erik called. After she lowered her sword he addressed the king. “Yield today and live. You will abdicate the throne to our liege, Princess Bothid, who will treat you with more justice and compassion than you have shown our house. It is more than you deserve, but it is right. What say you?”
King Sigbjorn coughed and began rising, his sword still held but lowered, and he began to speak.
How the king would have chosen will never be known for at that moment Princess Gyla struck him a mighty blow in the helmet with her sword, killing him instantly.
With Sigbjorn’s death Princess Bothid’s war against him ended and the crown passed to his ten-year old daughter, the cynical, slothful, and greedy Malmfrid. Mayor Algot of Visby, her regent, was not nearly as slothful, however, and the mayor immediately sent a large force of warriors to arrest the killer of the old king. Not being a warrior himself, the mayor did not understand Princess Gyla’s role in killing the king, so he instructed his men to apprehend only Erik.
When the force surprised the siblings returning from a hunt, the two took shelter in the stables. They knew they had only a few moments before the men would break through and be upon them. They had no armor and only some bush thrashing clubs, and there were a lot of men. It did not look good.
“They want only me,” said Erik.
Princess Gyla laughed. “Ironic, isn’t it? Oh well, we either die fighting or we manage to fight our way out of here. I’d put my money on the latter. We’ll go live as brigands, taking from the Stenkyrka whatever we want and living like royalty in the forest.”
“Sister, there are too many. We cannot fight our way out.”
“Then we die here and take as many as possible with us,” snapped Gyla. “Do you think we will otherwise live forever? Come, let us not waste any more time.”
A strange look was in Erik’s eyes as he looked at his sister. “Forgive me, my sister, my courage is but the moon to your sun.” And that was the last she saw of Erik, as he struck her in the head with his fist and she blacked out. When she woke Malmfrid’s soldiers and Erik were gone.
Bothid knew in this new political climate she had not a hope of convincing the nobles to open another war, and so she ignored Gyla’s pleas to try to rescue Erik. It was only a matter of time before even the moronic Mayor of Visby would realize his mistake, and so as long as Gyla remined in Sweden, retaliations were very likely. Suddenly it was urgent that Princess Bothid remove Gyla from Sweden, as far away as possible. So when she received a message from a duchess across the world requesting a marriage to Gyla, Bothid felt it was God’s providence. What place could be more distant, more inaccessible than Armenia? She agreed to the marriage on the condition that Gyla was never to be allowed to return to Sweden. The Byzantines were all too happy to agree. Things would all work out extremely well, thought Princess Bothid the Wise. For once things would work themselves out.
To Princess Gyla, however, things had not turned out so well. She was now married to a lazy old spymaster whose highest abilities were associating with eating sweet rolls and gambling. Even powerless in a country as far away as Byzantium, she plotted how she might return to Sweden and rescue her brother. Then one day, two years after her exile from Sweden, she learned that her brother Erik had died in Malmfrid’s dungeons. She was never to lay eyes on her beloved shield-brother again. Her plans changed. Now she was out for revenge.
