Brute (2 page)

Brute remained on his back as the other men untied the rope from the timber. It took the whole lot of them to lift it up. Someone trod on Brute’s hand, but the soft ground saved him from too much injury. The log echoed loudly when it thudded back onto the others. Brute was still there when the horses led the cart away.

“Get up,” Darius said, kicking lightly at Brute’s leg.

As he slowly rose to his feet, Brute felt every inch of his seven and a half feet, every one of his three hundred pounds. Not for the first time, he wished he were an ordinary-sized man who was given ordinary-sized duties to perform. But he’d learned a very long time ago—before he even had the words to express the idea—that wishing was useless.

“Back to work,” said Darius.

“I’m done for today.”

Darius glanced up at the sky. “We’ve another hour of sunlight.”

Brute shook his head. “I’m done.”

“I’ll dock you half a day’s pay.”

It wasn’t fair; they both knew that. Brute had already accomplished more than any of the other men, and that wasn’t even counting his rescue of the timber. But Darius was stubborn, and Brute knew that fairness was of no consequence to the foreman. So he shrugged, turned, and descended the path.

People stared as he plodded down the road to the village but, as usual, passersby didn’t meet his eyes. He’d gone through a period a few years earlier when he tried smiling and greeting people, but nobody ever smiled back or bade him good day, so he gave it up. At least today no old people made warding signs as he walked by, and no children jeered or called him an ogre. But it was still a long walk, and his back itched as the accumulated mud dried and flaked.

The landlord of the White Dragon—a squat man named Cecil—was Darius’s cousin, but then so was a good percentage of the village. Those who weren’t directly related were generally indebted to the Gedding family in some way. Darius’s father had been sheriff for years, and now the post was held by Darius’s older brother. The priest at the small temple was another brother, and the local healer was his aunt. So if the landlord overcharged for room and board, there was little Brute could do about it. The other workers had families and lived in little huts near the edge of town—rented from the Geddings, of course—but Brute had a tiny room above the White Dragon with a too-small bed and mice in the walls.

There was a well in the courtyard behind the inn. Horses snorted softly in the stables as Brute peeled off his shirt and upended a bucket of water over his head. The little lean-to behind the tavern contained a battered metal tub, but it was a tight fit for Brute. Cecil charged him two coppers for each use, so Brute splurged only infrequently, usually in the depths of winter when he couldn’t quite face another dunking in frigid well water. Today, though, the well water felt good. He used his shirt as a makeshift towel to wipe away the worst of the grime, promising himself he’d wash the shirt before he went to bed. For now, though, he looked down at his torso, where bands of bruises were already forming, red and purple lines over his bulky muscles. He’d be sore by morning.

He rinsed his feet and drank two cupfuls of water before climbing the stairs to his room.

Because he usually worked from shortly after dawn until dusk, it was rare to see his room in the daylight, and the mellow glow of the late afternoon sun certainly didn’t improve things. The floorboards were bare and splintery, the walls streaked with decades of grime, the bed and tiny table rickety. His bedding was more patches than blanket; the curtains were hardly more than rags. The entire place reeked of smoke and grease and sour ale. And when he lifted the lid of the chest where he kept his few belongings, the hinges squealed in protest.

In the midst of all this was his one other shirt, clean and neatly folded. It had originally been made for a much smaller man, and the tailor had added wide strips of fabric at the side seams and along the bottom so it would fit Brute. Not exactly stylish, but there was really no use trying to make himself look passable. He pulled on the shirt, ran fingers through his damp hair—which had grown too long again—and trudged downstairs.

Cecil gave him a sour look as Brute entered the tavern’s main room. “’S early,” he grumbled.

Brute didn’t bother to answer. He crossed the room with his head down, ignoring the stares of the other patrons, and sat on a bench in the far corner. It was the darkest corner of the tavern, even now when the last of the sun’s rays stole through the open front doors. On the very first day that Brute had moved into the White Dragon, back when he was still a half-grown boy, Cecil had ordered him to sit there. “Don’t want to upset anyone’s appetite,” he’d said back then, and Brute hadn’t dared to retort that the Dragon’s food could do that all by itself.

As soon as Brute was settled, Cecil brought him a tankard of sour watered ale and a tin plate heaped high with… something. Most of the time, Brute was thankful that his dark corner made identification of his meals an impossibility. Whatever was on the plate, it always tasted the same: bland but slightly gamey, with pockets of grease and bits of squishy stuff that might have once been vegetables. There was always a stale hunk of bread to sop up the drippings, which Brute always did, because a body like his demanded as much food as he could shovel into it.

He ate quickly, washing away the taste with generous gulps of ale, and it wasn’t long before his plate was clean and his cup empty. And gods, he was tired. He wasn’t quite sure of his age—twenty-seven or twenty-eight was his best guess—but right now he felt eighty, every joint and muscle protesting as he stood and walked the length of the tavern floor. Neither Cecil, his wife, nor his son wished Brute a good night. They never did.

Luckily, he’d remembered to bring the dirty shirt down with him, so he didn’t have to climb the stairs to fetch it. He washed it as best as he could in the trough beside the well, hoping the caustic hunk of soap would cleanse away the grime without actually eating through the thinning fabric. But when he held the shirt up, he saw a few new tears and he sighed. His attempts at mending were clumsy at best, and they would have to wait for another day. Right now he was too exhausted to see straight.

Yffi, the stableboy, limped by just before Brute headed upstairs. He spared a half smile for Brute, and Brute grinned back. Born with a twisted foot and a badly malformed upper lip, Yffi was only a little luckier in life than he. Yffi was a Gedding—or his mother was—and so he’d been granted a job he could manage. He slept in the stable on bales of hay that were probably more comfortable than Brute’s bed, and he saved his wages so that someday he might marry the shy girl who worked in the sheriff’s scullery. Yffi never teased Brute and occasionally even found a spare moment to exchange a few pleasant words, and Brute tried not to envy him.

The stairs seemed especially steep and creaky tonight, and the noise from the tavern filtered through the floorboards of his room: shouting and bursts of laughter, the clanking of tin plates and tankards, and the pounding of booted feet. Nobody was singing tonight, which was a shame, because Brute was too tired to hum to himself. He hung the wet shirt on his single chair, stripped off his trousers, shirt, and breechclout, and set them aside for the morning. Naked, he climbed into bed. He had to curl on his side so that his feet didn’t hang over the edge, and then he had to position himself exactly right to avoid the worst of the lumps in the mattress, but he was long used to such maneuverings, and it took him only moments to fall into a dreamless sleep.

T
HE
roosters began to crow well before the sun rose, and soon morning noises echoed in the courtyard. Gods, he was sore. He stood—carefully—and stretched, hoping to work out a few kinks from his frame. He prodded gently at the bruises from the rope, then scratched at the dark thatch of hair on his chest. Unbidden, his hand traveled south to grasp his cock, which was as uselessly perky as it always was in the morning. It was the only optimistic part of him, and sometimes he wondered when it would give up too.

Once a year, during the Festival of the Harvest Moon—when even Darius was forced to give his men the day off—Brute gathered most of his hoarded coppers into a cloth purse and made the three-hour trek to the royal city of Tellomer. With head held high, he endured the stares and jeers that were always worse than in his home village, where at least the residents were used to him. The dingy little corner with the molly houses and brothels was mostly deserted on the afternoon of the festival, when people spent time with their families and only the most desperate of men and women would be selling themselves. Brute always went to the darkest, most dismal house, the one that didn’t even bother with a sign or a name, where the scowling keeper charged him double the usual rates and the whores squabbled over who would be forced to take him.

Brute would stand in the filthy little entry hall and pretend to retain the shreds of his dignity.

Finally, some poor boy would be appointed, often the oldest and the most well-used, and he’d gesture impatiently for Brute to follow him into a tiny back room. Brute always wished that he could caress soft skin, could linger over tender spots. But if he tried that, the boy—the man really; these whores were often older than Brute—would grimace with distaste. So in the end, neither of them would even undress. Brute would loosen his trousers and the boy would loosen his, there would be a perfunctory application of lips and wet tongue to Brute’s cock, and then the boy would turn around and present his backside for Brute’s use.

Every year as Brute walked home, he’d promise himself that he wouldn’t return to that house in Tellomer, but when the next festival came around, he always did. It was the only time anyone ever touched him, and, as meaningless as those touches were, he suspected that he’d shrivel up and die without them. Or worse yet, that he’d lose his humanity altogether and become the monster everyone assumed he was.

The festival was months away, and he had no time this morning for the only other touch he experienced—his own right hand. He gave his cock a warning glare before pulling on his breechclout, trousers, and the now-dry shirt that still needed mending.

His morning routine varied little. He used the outhouse that was in one corner of the courtyard, washed and roughly shaved at the trough, then entered the tavern, where Cecil wordlessly handed him a bowl of lumpy porridge and gristly meat. Sometimes Brute was fortunate—if Cecil was in a good mood and the hens were laying well, he would receive an egg or two. This was not one of those mornings. He ate his breakfast and grabbed the metal bucket that had been left on the counter. The bucket contained his lunch, which was generous in portion but no more tasty than the White Dragon’s other fare.

As Brute neared the river, his long strides overtook a few of the other men on their way to work. They seemed a little nervous, and he remembered, belatedly, that the prince would be inspecting the bridge today. The only noblemen Brute had ever seen had been passing through the village on fine horses. He was uncertain how to behave in the royal presence. He supposed that his best bet was to keep his head down and his feet moving, to act the stupid beast.

The prince had not yet arrived at the worksite, and Darius had worked himself into a minor frenzy. Several members of his family were standing impatiently at the bottom of the hill—the sheriff and his wife, the priest and three of his acolytes, the former sheriff and other elder members of the Gedding clan, and a half dozen of the village’s wealthier merchants. Aside from the priest and acolytes, who wore white robes, everyone was dressed in bright finery. The hems of the women’s skirts were dragging in the dirt.

“Stop goggling!” Darius shouted at nobody in particular. “You’re paid to work, not to stand about like fucking fools.” Some of the women laughed, and the workers ran to their places. Osred and Osric began to chisel at a hunk of stone, shaping it into a rough cube. Their task was nearly complete. Within a week or so they would have produced enough of the stones to construct the bridge’s foundations. Other men scurried up the slope to assemble the bridge components that were waiting for them. Brute found the rope and canvas harness that he’d discarded the previous afternoon and tied it around his shoulders and back. It hurt a little, but at least the straps were too wide to dig very deeply into the narrow bruises.

Osric and Osred hoisted a stone into the harness, and Brute began his first uphill trek of the day.

It was midmorning when the prince and his retinue arrived. Brute was on his way down the hill at the time and heard the clop-clop of their horses before he actually saw them. He was relieved they had finally shown up, because the waiting crowd was getting very restless and Darius was growing ever more ferocious with his tongue. The foreman had picked up one of the switches used to hurry the cart horses along, and it was clear that he wished he could use it on his men.

Brute didn’t pause in his work when the prince arrived. He simply waited for the next block of stone to be lifted onto his back and listened as the crowd shouted greetings to their royal visitor. Brute was already on his way up the hill again before the prince had dismounted.

But when Brute descended once more, the prince was still standing there, chatting loudly with the sheriff about transportation costs. Brute snuck a look at him while waiting for Osric and Osred. Prince Aldfrid was a tall man in his midthirties. He was handsome, with a thick mane of yellow hair and a small, pointed beard. But if it weren’t for the deferential way the other people stood around him, Brute never would have guessed that the man was the son of the king. He wore plain traveling clothes—no doubt well made, but free of decoration or frivolity. They contrasted markedly with the costumes of the villagers, making the locals seem gaudy and maybe even a little silly.

Brute had just allowed himself a small smile at this notion when Prince Aldfrid turned his head and caught sight of him. “What is
that
?” the prince asked in a booming voice.