Wilstender the Brave

The princess! A day could pass when he was occupied, harried to and forth, but then a dream, a smell, a voice through the thronging village streets, would send him back to her. It would send him back to his shivering hell and then he would grasp at the walls, a mockery to all who passed him by, for there is the knight that was once called Wilstender the Brave.

In the beginning of his life, the longest and shortest part, he hadn't lived like this. As Wilstender the Brave he had brandished the word of the one true God to all the corners of the land, trodden down evil in his path, saved the maiden fair, and carried out messages to the old and lonely, wherever they might reside.

And as a humble knight he had been suitably humble when he also, on his holy way, had been found by a messenger summoning him to the one true king of the Western Reaches. That had been his greatest honor. What he didn't know was that it would later become the horrid thing that tormented his long nights. He could feel it now, the stiffness, the terrible lust that filled him. But her face! Like an angel pure and silken skin! Ah! She formed in the woodsmoke from his fire, moaned with silent lips far from his reach, and in his dreams he found no peace.

--

The royal halls where echoing in their vastness and was a dizzying sight for eyes that had seen nothing but the countryside for weeks on end. Gold and silver covered every surface. Wine poured forth from fountains. Beautiful ladies of the court glided along the cold white floor.

But when Wilstender the Brave met their playful eyes and flirting smiles he shook his head like an old man and let them pass him by in disappointment, for Wilstender the Brave was a handsome man, was what many said, and many a girl would have sacrificed the family honor on his sword. They did not know that he had traveled to the cloister of St. Albertine to receive the blessing from the saint, herself in harmonious correspondence with the one above all, that he should remain pure of heart and body, chaste and Godly all his days, till death should carry him to his final resting ground. Since that day he had sinned no more, never had an impure thought, never lusted and never lied. Every day at dawn he went down on his knees to pray.

"Wilstender the Brave!" spoke the Mouth of the King. "He calls you forth."

Every eye in the hall turned towards him as he went to meet his ruler above all, save one.

As a young man the king had been a tall and gangly figure, almost like a scarecrow, and though he had been a formidable fencer in his youth it was well known that he had never had any constitution for war. Now the eyes beneath the crown testified to his long illness and a surge of pain coursed through the knight as he thought of the suffering that this meeting caused the monarch. The table to the left of his throne carried the weight of all that medicine could do to alleviate the suffering. The knight would have left him to his rest but he was summoned, and the doors to the king's chamber closed behind him. They were alone and soon all that was heard above Wilstender the Brave's doomed heart were the rasping of the king's breath.

Without a word Wilstender the Brave fell to his knees and said, "My king!" over and over again. He dared not look up but waited for a sign to rise.

He did not know how long he stood bent over like that. Long enough to give him some cramps. But nothing could have moved him from his place. He would have remained till the end of days. Only... He heard a tittering sound. And silky steps started to move. Still, he knelt.

"Oh! Rise, my knight!"

The voice was unexpected but very familiar and he rose up like a beanstalk and gasped, "Your highness!"

Gasped indeed, for he had never seen any woman, lady or otherwise, as he now saw the king's only daughter, Lucia the Ember, princess of the Western Reaches.

Her eyes glowed, true to her name, like the last living ember on the gray coal bed. Her skin also, but like a frosty morning, and though he never saw her hair he had always heard it spoken of as oaken honey. He could almost smell it now as she leaned against her father's seat in a thick, grey dress that flowed close over her hills and meadows and gazed at him with all the fire left in her.

She smiled heavily at him, sadly even, as she patted the king on his shivering forehead.

"I must beg your pardon, sir, for my fathers weak state." She turned to look down at him. "The only thing keeping him alive now are these ghastly tinctures, and would you call this existence life?"

"Your highness!" Wilstender the Brave said again. Starting to suspect why he was there his heart quickened. "Tell me what I can do to help?"

"Stop that," said Lucia the Ember with a frown. "It's no use anymore. He would have died long ago, only..." Here she dried some spit from the royal lip. "I have a soft spot for him after all these years."

"But he summoned me?" tried Wilstender the Brave.

"I summoned you," said princess. "As princess regent I should know."

"I beg your deepest apologies," cried the knight and once again he threw himself to the ground, but when he heard laughter he looked up.

The princess laughed herself to tears, clinging to the throne to keep herself upright.

"My knight!" she snorted. But soon she steadied herself and separated from the throne.

"Wilstender?" she said with her head sideways. "My dear knight, would you listen to me?" He nodded. "I see my future clearly, make no mistake, and I know that I will need a good man by my side for the times to come, someone loyal, true. Wilstender, I would have you as my husband and my king, to rule next to me as equals."

For a moment he couldn't breathe. Then he blushed, for the first time since he took his oath, and turned away from the princess great mirth. As she couldn't help but notice his distress she moved close enough to put her hand on his armor, close enough to look up at his downturned face with a pixie smile.

"I have seen you around court," she mused, "but not as much as I would have liked. I used to dream about you, you know." Something made her smile bigger. "Still do, to tell you the truth. But I knew it was impossible to even contemplate. That is until..."

Silently she turned her shapely back to him to look at the king.

"He would never have approved. But now I am the only one who can tell his mutterings from gibberish. Apparently his weakened state has given him plenty of time to reevaluate some policies and laws that could have led to serious problems down the line. Who would have known unless I had been here to translate?"

Once again her eyes fell upon the knight, and now he seemed to take up their entire world.

"Wilstender," she begged, "please be mine and I will fill your every living hour with pleasure. Like you I have saved myself, like you..." She stopped as she saw his sad face. "Like you, Wilstender?"

Wilstender saw the future, his greatest temptation yet, but found the strength to remember his promises, to lift her hand to his, and, after a gentle brush with his lips, say, "I have given myself to God. I am sorry, your highness."

For one second she burst into another set of laughter, but the second died and with it came a cold silence. She quivered and grasped at his breastplate to steady herself.

"No?" she said with her face reaching up to his. "Don't you see that I'm delivering you from your vows? I am giving you to me!"

"I am deeply honored," Wilstender the Brave finally answered, "and I wish that I had been a free man, to follow my heart, but that way was closed to me long ago, and I..."

"No!" she screamed in his face. "I am your queen and I forbid you to defy me!"

"I am sorry, my queen, to disa..."

"Wilstender?" she screamed, tears thrashing from her eyes. "Look at me? Why are you doing this? For God? For nothing! What about me? What about my bed? Our bed?"

"I am not worthy, your high..."

"Stop saying that! I don't care. I command you to marry me!"

"Your highness," spoke Wilstender the Brave. "I beg you let me take my leave."

"You..."

Her whole body tense she backed away from him, almost to the throne itself, where the king sat and ruled in theory. Her face was wet with tears and spittle, her dress distraught. For a moment she was the saddest woman ever walked the earth but then she turned from him for a second and when she again met his eyes she was once again Lucia the Ember, perfect in every way but with the ember in her eyes almost dead.

"So..." she said, "this isn't good enough for you?"

She moved one hand down her front till it was put to rest at her crotch and there she started to rub. Her eyes glared at him while her lips made soft moaning noises.

"Wilstender," she moaned. "Wilstender, Wilsten... Ah! Yes! Take me! I love you, Wilstender!"

She shuddered and stopped. But her body couldn't stop shaking, sweating, humping. Soon her hand was at her crotch again and this time she didn't make-believe and she didn't stop.

"I will marry," she said. "I will marry some fierce man, thick cock, bigger than you, and I will let him treat me like his whore, do everything that your holy mind can conceive and filthier, wetter, everything!"

To his horror she went down on her own knees in front of him and started licking her other hand, all the time grasping at him with her wide eyes. Between her lips and her licking tongue she whispered, "And I will take his great thick cock and let him put it in my mouth, like the sluts from the north, and fuck me till I choke on his seed. I will let him fill me. I will swallow it all."

For a moment she stopped, and Wilstender the Brave hoped it had come to an end, but to his horror she started to shake like someone possessed and thrust her hand deeper into her crotch and her hand, almost the whole fist, into her whimpering mouth. It lasted a couple of seconds, an eternity, and when she rose he saw her whole front soggy and creased and a smell came from her that made him lick his dry lips.

Although she was wet and flushed she was prideful and hard in front of him. She nodded gravely before she spoke.

"I will still be your queen," she said. "And that man, that cocked beast, will be your king, who you will serve, and I want you to think about that all your days."

She faltered on the last word, let free a little scream, but silenced and would never acknowledge it.

"Wilstender the Brave," she said, "you have my permission to leave my sight. But you will come before me again."

With that she turned and once again disappeared behind the throne, through some hidden door, most likely, and Wilstender the Brave sobbed and fell to the ground, only to hasten up as the smell of her filled his nostrils. Her heat steamed from the cool floor and filled the chamber and he had to leave.

--

For many days Wilstender the Brave lived with the hope that he would come to the end of his torment, that the nightmare would release him, but when the news came of the kings death and the queens new marriage he knew that he now lived for ever in that same nightmare.

Therefore Wilstender the Brave continues to brave the wilderness, eager to seek adventure, even death, for he knows that the day will come when he once again will be summoned before his queen. And at dawn he raises his quivering lips in prayer that it will be so.

The end.