Gorgeous is the weed that survives the garden dry, long beyond the brazen petals wilt.

Purple thistles prick the hapless hand, but last to please the eye till the end of time.

Look away, long as you like, but one can always rely on that little thistle’s thorns.

To stun, stick, or pluck the scornful gardener’s thumb snooping in the brush.

 

Decebal had his eye on a flower.

No, not a real one, growing in the sun, though he needed that too.

For you see, he was captivated by the glowing icecap eyes of an angel in char-blackened steel, and he knew that she would be the one.

He didn’t have much to give, little more than honorable actions and all-too-honest rags. However, his mother always said he was a courageous boy before she died, and stubborn of the heart, so perhaps that would be enough to pluck his flower up.

But what on earth would compel a boy of several more than ten, to chase what shakes the sturdiest of men?

You see, Deceball was enthralled by her legendary tale, by her many triumphs, by the chilling fate of her mate.

And it goes like so…

Their home was a castle nested upon a rickety forest strip, branched across contested enemy lines. She was always right beside him, even in the bloody throes of war, refusing to hide behind their sturdy castle walls and consign herself to the life of mothers, maidens, and whores. The only time she allowed him to scurry out of her sight was the time their eldest daughter had laid her belly too low to fight.

By the time the Queen had heard of a vassal’s wife giving birth in the middle of a siege, bringing new life into the world as she commanded from the planning tent, witnessed by their highest-ranking men, the King could ignore her dogged knightliness no more.

But as it will, the enemy came to return the favor one day, and the sight of her husband falling in a hail of burning arrowtips ignited a deadly fire within her. She killed three-dozen fully-armored men that day, cleansing the sacred gates of Castle Verdanhold of their filth.

Since then, she walked and fought alone, fending off a veritable tide of upstart fighters thinking they could up-and-claim her bloody well-earned keep. It didn’t take long for her mountain of tournament-spoils and crumpled bachelor bones to dissuade anyone but her dead husband coming up from the grave.

Decebal wasn’t scared by her at all, knowing the mightiest of prizes could be claimed only by those with the gallantest of gall.

A lovers kiss was all he could truly hope for (though he deeply wanted more) from that most stunning of maidens in the world; Dame Alga de Noct, The Reaper of Deceit, Breaker of Arrogant Fools, undefeated in quarry, tournament, and war.

The finest prize an orphaned golden-furred labrador child could take in life, at least in his blessed little mind.

He’d seen her twice, once as a boy, then as a slightly-older, far-more amorous boy. Never could he shake the feeling that she was sad and alone. But, as the woman towered by riding her humped reptilian mount out of town, he had caught her wandering gaze.

The wry smiling face she left him with sent his wanting tummy rumbling for all the things he could but very much didn’t have.

Perhaps that sunset-colored dahlia flower he’d plucked from the alchemist’s garden would be enough to warm her frozen heart.

And what better time to follow that shadow of the knight he so coveted than the summer tournament fair? Where she would be there, laying-fallow a field of ‘sirs’ and ‘dukes’ and ‘barons’ too! Then, when she inevitably defeated them all, and none other would dare to speak, he would be the one there to seek her paw in marriage.

It was a long gambling shot, one infinitely likely to fail; but hey, if he did, a short stay in jail came with bread and a very sturdy roof above your head.

Decebal would be the one to make her happy, and whatever the world tried to strike him with after that, at least he’d have the Crusher of Men watching his back. For in a world run by the righteous, courageous, and true, he knew he could not pursue any other petty task.

But how was he, a puppy born of zero plots, left to the charity of the workhouses and the street, supposed to watch and see? Where should he find his invitation-scroll to that most finest of martial feasts and shows? Especially when he couldn’t even read!

Why, he’d just be somebody else, of course!

For every child knows, before their innocence is pecked dead by metaphysical crows, that any other child is a comrade by your side. 

Decebal was a chittery lad, always barking where his muzzle was better off not. He had come to know a squire named Simon who’d always seemed just a bit too much like him. Fur, eyes, paws, droopy fun-loving ears, it was like they’d both been born from the same mother’s skirt. He’d even traded places with the lad in the past, to pull a fast one on his master, so he could court a girl of his own.

Simon owed him, and he was always looking for a way to get a day off from work! Why not give him one? Decebal had seen and helped him do his squirely things a hundred different times, how hard could it be to suffer the lashing tongue o some impatient elder, hmm?

Simon took sooo long to get himself good and vulnerable. C’mon, Simon, get your head in the game! Decebal had Dame to tame!

The day was fading away, and he’d gotten impatient by the time his moment arrived.

I shall strike him with his squire’s helm! Decebal thought while wearing a tiny stolen knightly tabard, and raised the boy’s sallet high into the air, smacking his friend's unsuspecting head as he knelt in afternoon prayer. Lightly…

He did not strike the boy lightly.

But a nap he surely would have, and a lump like that meant his master would surely believe he’d never seen Decebal’s trickery coming. 

When the honorable Sir Libel Derrogate, known as ‘The Grand Magnanimous Hand’, came stomping by to fetch him up, he had no need to suspect and check for rogue imposterous pups. “SIMON!” he barked from the arming-bench outside. “The Final Round is upon us!”

“Right away, master Libel!” he replied, hiding the flower inside his wanna-be-knightly coat.

Honestly, considering his sad state of affairs, this gig wasn’t too bad! Just a lot of ‘Come do this’ and ‘Bring me that’, perhaps he could be a squire too if all it took was putting on a funny metal hat.

Heavy pounded-metal sheets came together with an unsuspicious bit of nitticky-pickity snips. “Where’s your senses, boy, we’ve done this a thousand times since!”

“I’m hungry, Sire,” Decebal said, lowering his head. “I felt compelled to pray a little longer today, so I may keep the sloth away.”

With a grumbly grouchy ‘well I suppose’ and a ‘get your penances up before the sun’, Sir Derrogate scraped up a plate full of bread, cheese, and smoked sausage meats. The instant viscerality by which Decebal decimated the offering bought him a second helping.

Derrogate made a startled bark. “Suppose you weren’t lying after all. Is your fire sparked again?”

It took everything in Decebal’s body not to belch his satisfaction aloud. “Verily. By your graciousness, My Lord.”

His black-furred muzzle screwed up into a smirk. “About time you showed such gratitude. Now finish tying those plates, make haste!”

He helped his ‘master’ up with scrambling double-paws and a belly full of treats, truly happy for the pick-me-up after he’d learned he would need to pull a wagon full of leather, wood, and steel. By God, how many things did that one nasty-tempered man think he’d need?

The boy wouldn’t open his mouth or make a single dissatisfied sound, now while he would finally get to lay his wide-open eyes upon the marble-walled glory of His Majesty’s royal tournament grounds.

It was… not as epic as he’d initially thought, though the scores of awesome-looking knights clashing with swords made up for the wait.

He was doubly grateful for those heaps of loaf and charcuterie, as he saw the beastly battlezone that was the noble-platform feast. A field ran red with wine and the corpses of a thousand half-devoured courses. He might’ve fainted seeing so much hedonism on display, if this wasn’t the most important day of his life.

Decebal looked away from that. He wasn’t here to see the sins of wealthy foolish twits. Not while she was there, testing mettle with yet another ‘man of better standing’ who’d bothered her for just a bit too long. A sight that cleansed the soul, and fascinated him specifically.

Umber plates un-glistened ‘neath the burning midday sun, swallowing God’s light whole. Adorned in torn bits of mourners cloth, repaired time and again with golden claw-embroidered trim. Haunting any ground she touched with a presence that always left the enemy standing half-a-head shorter than she. There his strapping, busty, borzoi woman was, with fur of powder-snow. and plates that refused to hide her feminine side, dancing with blades only half as sharp as the slyness on her long smiling face.

And those eyes, shining like a cloudless winter sky. Decebal could help but sigh in delight at the fact that she had left her helmet flap opened. But he’d expected more applause than this? How could the crowd not see the same thing he was? Were they all blind?

“Will you yield?” she demanded more than asked, her claymore held towards him in a strong defensive cross.

The other fighter spat something sour out about her gender and her rightful part somewhere in a kitchen hearth, but she did not complain.

Decebal stood drowning with awe at her grace while strapped with plate and chain.

Sir Derrogate growled, patiently waiting his turn to take The Bitch down.

Then they both winced in as she caught her opponent’s arm in a torquing sword-hilt winch and snapped his humerus clean around..

With her opponent screaming from the ground, and his arm turned wrong-way-round, she held her blade in a high striker's stance. “How about now?”

The mutt-blooded fighter heely-scrambled back, with a writhing pain-induced hallucination nod.

“I’ll take my winnings in silver, Sir Knight,” she said as his assistants carried him off to see how badly he’d been taken apart. “It’s more fun to count by the hearth.”

The crowd cackled with hilarity as everyone cheered, less for her success than for her opponent’s humiliation and pain. He was a drunkard anyways! On with the show, pass the olives and dates!

“ONE FINAL FIGHT!” the King, a stone-chinned rottweiler dressed in scarlet silks, lined in bleached-white serpent scales, shouted while adjusting his gem-encrusted crown with a drunken two-try tilt. “Will any of you mongrels best this LADY so she may finally REST?”

Her labrador admirer could see by the twitching half-bared grimace on her face that the phrase was not well received by his esteemed Dame de Noct.

“Simon,” Derrogate said with an eagerness unbefitting the reality facing him. “The Hammer, the one we talked about.”

Decebal gawked.

Unbelievable! He’s confident, despite the calm dismantling of the last guy’s mind, body, and pride. How could this unwiped arse of a man stand before such divinity like he didn’t stink? Fourteen years of age and yet he seemed to be the only one with eyes left to see.

He dug through the wagon, sifting around askew of devilishly shaped blunt-force objects, wondering how he was supposed to–

Oh, he thought, I suppose it must be the shiny one that’s glowing.

The boy realized what he was looking at immediately, nearly dropping it to run for the hills and hide. He hadn’t so much as licked a page of scripture study books, but the kingdom’s many holy men sure were good at making their priestly information known.

This thing was enchanted with sorcery, evil powers harnessed by the maddest evilest of men, to upset the natural order of things. Its desire to crush bone and eat living flesh spoke to him through his skin, and it left him retching as he looked up to see the King of all people raise his glass to Sir Derrogate with a wink.

It only took a moment to realize what was going on. The King was in on a plot of witchery and deceit? A KING?! What sort of unchivalrous lizard-shit was this? Knights and kings were supposed to be the finest men there were, protecting the people from the throbbing barbarian hoards all around them. Isn’t that why they got to rule over everyone with such heavy-handed authority?

Maybe everything wasn’t running as rightly as it should be, he thought, clutching his chest with a horrified stare into nowhere.

Then his muzzle scrunched with disdain as his young untempered mind decided he would right these horrible wrongs, and in the only way that he could. If ‘Master Libel’ wanted a leg up in such a way, then he could have a leg-or-two down to make things right.

Decebal brought the vile thing forth, bowing with his giving-paws raised, like he’d seen the real Simon do nearly every day, synching the man’s shield to his arm with the cleanest bucking job he’d ever seen from anyone else alive. None could see the glowing magics while it was in the sunlight, which made Decebal even angrier knowing nobody would ever believe him, even if he really was a proper squire.

“Wait a moment, Master!” Deceball said in his greatest Simon-styled voice. “The buckles on your greaves leave too much to fate! May I set them straight?”

“Damn straight, and rightly, child,” he spat. “Hurry up before God smacks you sideways for me!”

‘Simon’, did as he was told, leaving two of the most important buckles laying very straight, totally undone and clipping a few leather strings meant to hold his chainmaille hauberk to his bottommost plates. “Fight well!” 

Derrogate was none-the wiser, even complementing him with a two-pence tip, in lieu of a half-hearted word of thanks, the miser. “Keep a good distance,” he grumbled back, dropping the money into Decebal’s paws with side-eyed make-it-rain fingers.

This was the time, the final fight, the finest moment of his life. Unfortunate that he didn’t get to see how the rest of her victims ended up, but the lack of onlooking losers in the stands, and the choir of chirurgical screaming from afar, left much to the unfortunate imagination.

Alga raised her blade with a listless unapologetic face. “You seem eager.”

Derrogate snickered, hammer lifted high above his tightest shoulder. “You’re an insolent bitch that needs a proper keeper.”

Dame de Noct was officially tired of this whole affair, scowling with a growling roll of the shoulders as she hoisted her breasty chest-plate up for comfort. “Then come and earn what my husband managed,” she spat, earning herself a loud-mouthed cackle from Decebal hiding behind a squire bench.

Oh, that did it, and Decebal would surely earn a stockaded ass-whooping-stay for the privilege of such sass.

Libel wasted no time, coming straight for her with a whistling hammerhead of death, one that surely must have ‘been bathed in the blood of a thousand screaming virgins’ or something equally awful to think about. Ever agile, Agla brought her guard up to turn his mighty strike into a timid glancing blow.

But the moment it struck her hilt, the blade went flying from her gauntlet grip and stuck into a cobbled-stone wall, twenty feet away.

It was apparent to everyone present that she was being cheated, but the cheering deeply-invested faces of ‘The King’s Finest Guests’ betrayed their disallegiance to justice.

Alga backed away, instinctively drawing her husband’s old knot-and-bollocks hilted dagger with widened eyes. “Witchcraft, by God!”

“God calls you to the bottom rung!” he screamed, hitting her with a thirsty four-pronged head full of howling undeniable magics at play. “The only witch is a woman thats bested so many goodly men!”

Decebal had to keep his muzzle clamped shut to keep from cheering for his woman in black-and-white, very nearly crying as he watched the plating of her left arm explode into fragments of scrap and shredded leather straps.

Alga screamed, snarling, buckling to her knees from the pain of a sprained something in her arm and leg that kept her from fetching her blade anytime soon. Was it meant to come down to this? Carrying on that ancient social order she’d committed herself to, just to watch it giving up its ancient morals over a stubborn child-bearer done wrong?

Then she saw his leggings jingling loose, ever so slightly, and without thinking she leapt for the opportunity.

Derrogate barked with confusion as she leapt towards his groin, swiping his roaring magical abomination inches from her head as she clipped the few leather joints keeping his greaves connected to his arse.

When his wretched metal pants fell down, it was impossible for anyone with a pulse to help but laugh as Alga swept her feet behind his knees, tackled his sacrilegious arm in place, and held him down to the ground, pushing her dagger into the apple of his throat. Lightly…

“Do you yield?” she asked, eyes locked, spoken with the same grace she’d offer any other two-faced knot-squeezing fucker in the crowd.

It was more than he deserved, but no good would come from a clear-as-crystal murder on a well established stage.

Derrogate hocked his throat to spit in her face, but stopped just short of the act, choking on his own phlegm as the tip of her husband’s metaphorical dick was pushed against his skin, just enough to bleed.

“Yield.”

He refused to say anything, but that was par-the-course. After three whole minutes, the melee was considered over, and she would be declared the winner, by a highly reluctant martial busy overseeing the event. After all, it made no sense to hold tournaments that crippled your best and meanest every year. Not that accidents didn’t happen, of course.

She stood as soon as the judge’s whistle blew, looking down, face shadowed by the noon-time sun. “Enjoy your next visit from the Clerics tomorrow… Brother.”

Decebal roared with amazement, hopping in place like half the crowd around him. Some of them were clearly invested in Alga losing her long-standing title, but like so many others he was brought to tears by her sheer audacity with life-and-death.

Alga casually walked back to her blade, dislodging it as she sheathed her husband’s dagger, stabbing her hammer-bent blade down into the ground at the center of the arena floor… and sighed.

“Any who come to claim this broken heart, let him take a knee,” she said with an obvious tire in her voice, as was custom, waiting for some truly noble ‘he’ to kneel and give some empty-headed never-coming plea.

None. Not a single one of the King’s men would risk making themselves look a fool at the mercy of an intractable woman’s vagaries.

But decebal was no man, and politely waited his turn for the older folk to come and offer up that which she would leave behind.

Finally, just when the silence painted that audience of onlooking better-born folk, he walked as people talked and laughed at what was clearly some hilarious joke.

“Where are you going, Simon!?” Derrogate barked, reaching out and failing to grab the boy’s clothes. He could’ve run up and dragged him back, but was unwilling to break the cheerful ceremonial air with the King sitting, right there, disappointed, especially with him.

The boy looked back with a cheeky evil-eating smile. “To claim that which is right in the world!”

Alga watched with abject confusion as a boy of some inappropriate-age approached. “What… is this?”

“Alga de Noct… Dame of the Northern March” he’d practiced this speech a thousand times in his sleep, finding it might be a little bit different now that his wits were actually about him. “I, Decebal…” he began, feeling smooshed like an insect beneath her armored feet as he spoke his one lonely un-familied moniker beside her noble titled name.

He reached into his clothes and held the flower aloft, like a tiny sunset shining in the shadow of his greatest love. 

“I’ve seen your soul, I know your pain, would you let me take that away from you?”

He paused, smiling to a wild comedy choir, shifting with concern as he felt the audible hitching in Alga’s throat. The hideous laughter of the crowd reached its fever pitch as Derrogate was stuck in place, waving with a chuckle and a nervous collar-tug.

“Would you let me make you happy again, my Dame?”

Alga finally broke from her mental yoke, looking down at the boy’s admittedly-rare but still singular flower. This was not the talk of insolent idiot youths, wanting to practice for their true mate a few years down the line. Nor was he playing a jovial prank that would eventually leave her laughing after she’d had a little bit of drink. This was real honest-to-God love stuff, the kind that sent younger women swooning as they looked into some wealthy sweetheart’s eyes.

So she waited, for the crowd to quiet down, before she chose to speak again.

“You have the light of goodness in your eyes…” she began, touching his cheek, softer than she’d ever touched a male in ages. “You are tender, courageous, and bold…”

Decebal’s eyes glistened with complicated tears as she handed him his precious flower back.

“...but my house does not entertain the suffering of fools.”

Alga could see this boy was genuine in his passionate kneeling plea, so she looked him back with a smile. “Perhaps my daughters will find you to their liking when they too can look you in the eye.”

Decebal was devastated, brought low with the worst emotional crushing blow a boy could feel, staggering breathless as he was dragged back to the sidelines, to the sound of gasping chirps and cheeps dying out from the peanut-seats.

“Be well, young Decebal.” Alga said and looked away, knowing the boy would be reprimanded for such an unforgettable stunt. His poor performance had come with thanks, though, by the grace of God. She would pray for him later.

“THE WINNER IS!” The King said with well practiced-gaiety in his lips, but obvious disappointment on his cheeks. “ALGA DE NOCT!”

“Simon, you idiot!” the knight snarled. “You talentless, slothy, ungrateful feline!” he screamed, casting his hand against the back of Decebal’s cheek, dislodging a couple of teeth as his helmet came loose too.

And when that noggin-plate clattered and rolled to the ground, none were made wiser than the great Sir Libel Derrogate that day.

As was normal in the world, a deceitful beggar’s son would be granted audience with his lordship’s ’Grant Magnanimous Hand’.

Deceball writhed in brainless soup of surprise as Libel beat him before the eyes of God and everyone else alive. “I’m– sorry– I–”

“You traitorous wretch!” Libel gritted past bared past bloody busted-up fangs, starting to strike Decebal with a grown man’s spite. “You measly workhouse pest!”

The festivities continued as if nothing was amiss, because it wasn’t. Everyone could hear the commotion being dragged off into a shady secluded place, and had seen that catastrophic wardrobe failure for what it was; incompetence, or so they were all content letting it be.

The contestants would settle their debts, and the well-to-do would have the less-fortunate folk fill their goblets full of wine.

Alga didn’t stand to stay for the theatre and play, hobbling off with a huff; life as a land-holding woman was comedy and tragedy enough. 

That moon-dazzled lover caught in stolen noble clothes refused to cry in light of his crimes, but wept for his failure all the same.

“WHERE IS MY SQUIRE?!” The man howled into Decebal’s face, and struck him in the gut, multiple times.

Alga spun on her one good paw, glancing icicles over her one un-busted pauldron. “What?”

Libel stuck the boy until he couldn’t speak, bare-knuckled paws clenching up above him with torn bits of puppy-colored fur.

“Pray I stop before–” he growled, and snapped his jaws back at someone stupid enough to grab his hand from behind…

…deciding not to bite down as he was met by Alga’s spine-chilling gaze.

“You will stop now.”

Libel scoffed and spit between her boots and ripped his hand away, dropping Decebal down to the ground with a head-bouncing thump. “Don’t tell a man what to do with a caught culprit that's wronged them.”

“I will tell anyone what not to do with my property, Libel,” she said, with a barely-perceptible squinting emphasis on his given name.

“Yyour– Are you daft?” He pointed with rage-shaking claws. “This is an impostor, a thief of my blessed Simon’s valor!”

“I could take my pay in silver still, if you so wish,” Alga said, meeting the man’s forward momentum with the stopping force of a stone-and-mortar wall. “And you owe my sword a smithy’s care, lest I mention certain things to the clerics later.”

The moment being pulled away from his whipping boy allowed Sir Derrogate the opportunity to breathe and see the forest for the trees. He hadn’t spoken with the marshals yet, but he was sure he’d racked up some incredible debts with a loss profound as that.

If he could lay the slate clean by handing that little criminal off to her, where he’d no doubt be shackled off to some cell in her God-forsaken lands, why not if nobody but the two of them would ever know?

“Fine.” Derrogate tossed his helmet upon a wagon full of gear, and went to pay some better youths to pull it all away. “Balanced scales.”

“Balanced.” Alga nodded. “For now.”

“Wh… wha?” Decebal opened his concussed star-spangled eyes, unable to believe what he was seeing. “Am I… have I died?”

Alga chuckled with a sage muzzle shake. “By my graciousness, you have not.”

He shuffled up against the shadowy hewn-brick wall, face slumped with bruising and shame, licking the empty sockets in his gums. “My infinite thanks, I cannot repay you, My Lady.”

“Wrong again.” Alga shook her head again. “You must repay me.”

“But how, I… wait. “Decebal looked up with smiling awe, wiping blood and tears from the fur of his cheek. “You’re taking me!?”

She nodded. “Now you’re thinking straightly.”

“That means… you’ll marry me?!” he shouted, jumping up with a rush that numbed his ravaged guts. “You’ll really marry mrff—”

Alga held his muzzle shut, looking down with her coldest, kindest, most matrilineal smile. “No.”

Decebal shook his face as she let him free, stunned with disappointment yet again. “But, I… why?”

“You said you wanted to make me happy.” She pointed to her own wagon nearby. “And what would make me happy is a squire,” she paused to get the attention of his wobbly punch-drunk gaze as she reached and snagged the flower from his coat. “One who I have seen would do anything for me, even in the face of great peril and pain.”

Decebal stood for a full ten seconds as the opportunity sank into his skull. Libel had taken his toll, but there was plenty of blood left to pick up what she was putting down for him to pull.

“Do you accept?”

“Yes!” His face cracked with a smile, blackened with bruises, glowing like a bed of coals refusing to smother out and die. “YES!”

Alga nodded with her arms folded behind her back as her newest little shadow scrambled up behind her. “Good, and one more thing…”

“I promise!” He went to hitch and pack and sling her baggage with excitement and haste and no regrets. “I’ll be the best squire anyone's ever met!”

She whistled with a growly ear-stabbing pitch, stopping him dead in his tracks, and she crouched to a smiling eye-to-eye, nose-to-nose.

“...if you ever do anything like that to me…” 

Dame de Noct stared him with ice cold death in the eyes.

“..I’ll break you better than all the rest.”