I decided not to ask why.
“Still, I think I would do better telling you about Alfhild,” he continued. “She lived what you would call once upon a time, in a kingdom at the foot of a great mountain. There were hundreds of petty kingdoms then, some barely larger than the castle walls of the main keep, others with vast lands under their control. Alfhild’s was neither particularly small nor overly large, but she—did I mention that women could rule then?”
“Must have forgotten it.”
“Well, they could. Until Alfhild. She serves as a cautionary tale for that, too.”
I considered smacking him, but I was feeling mellow and was busy gnawing some bones. I settled for a look. “I take it she was a bad ruler?”
“Oh, no, quite the contrary. One had to be skilled to survive then. The petty kingdoms were always squabbling among themselves, making treaties and breaking them, and going to war every spring as soon as the new buds flowered on the trees.”
“Did you ever fight her?”
Caedmon feigned shock. “Just how old do you think me, Dorina?”
“Pretty damned old.”
He grinned. “What is it they say? Age is but a number? But my number does not go that high.”
I frowned. “How old is this story?”
“It goes back a bit, even for us. For you . . . let’s just say, when the need arose, there were no scribes yet among you to write it down.”
I frowned some more. “‘When the need arose’?”
He patted my leg. “Alfhild was ambitious and, despite having a prosperous land, was dissatisfied with her lot. She therefore used her beauty to seduce her neighboring kingdoms into a coalition. One she planned to use to attack the large, peaceful, and prosperous land belonging to one of my ancestors. It was in the mountains then, too, but had several verdant valleys under its control that Alfhild coveted.”
“I assume she lost the war?” Otherwise, I guessed, Caedmon wouldn’t be here.
“There was no war. Her coalition members realized that, instead of attacking a well-equipped and, of course, very valorous kingdom—”
“Of course.”
“—they could attack her instead. Thus taking a smaller but more certain reward, instead of risking a war they weren’t sure they would win. And that, even if they did, might see the spoils end up more under Alfhild’s control than theirs, allowing her to pick them off, one by one.”
“So they picked her off first.”
“No, but they should have,” Caedmon said, suddenly grim. “Instead, they exiled her to an island in the middle of a large lake, and ringed the small fortress there with spells. They thought it would hold her, at least long enough for them to have the victory feast!”
“It didn’t.” It wasn’t a question. His expression was eloquent.
“No, it didn’t. The legend says that she somehow escaped, gathered her most loyal supporters, and while the five dastardly kings who had betrayed her feasted well into the night, she struck—”
“And killed them all!” That was a story I could get behind.
Caedmon nodded gravely. “Yes, she killed them all. And then she killed their families, down to the last child, still in the cradle. And then she killed their generals and their families, their nobles and their families, the leading townsmen who had supported their war efforts by taxation, the merchants who had sold them arms, and even the cooks who had fed them. A bloody great slaughter of virtually everyone who had had anything to do with their treachery.”
I blinked at him. “Damn.”
“Oh no.” Caedmon looked at me, his eyes gleaming. “We’re not to ‘damn’ yet.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Do I want to hear this?” I asked him.
He cocked a head. “I don’t know. Do you?”
I debated it. But I’d polished off the bird, and I’d come this far. “Yes. Finish it.”