Chapter 11: The Hall Floor

The Wolf Moon feast was loud, hot and long, and Rolf Vesterhal drank through all of it.

He sat halfway down the high table with his forty men along the wall behind him and a gold cup in his fist.

Every time a servant passed, he bellowed for more wine.

Elior sat at the duke's right hand, as Teodric had asked, and a fortnight ago he would have been looking for the exits.

Tonight he was looking at Rolf's hands.

"The pup looks pale," Rolf called down the table.

"Does your little bedfellow need a nurse, cousin?"

"Sit down," said Teodric pleasantly.

"We have not reached the toasts."

He lurched to his feet and came around the table with the cup.

He stopped at Elior's chair and grabbed a fistful of copper hair.

He yanked Elior's head back.

"Look at him, my lords.

"The great prince of the south, sleeping on a wolfskin and eating from a Hallgard plate."

Elior did not flinch.

"Take your hand off me," he said, very softly.

"Or what?"

"Or my lord will ask you a question."

Rolf laughed.

Then the great hall went silent, because Teodric was on his feet and nobody had seen him rise.

"Cousin," the duke said.

"Let go."

Rolf let go.

Teodric took a folded paper from the breast of his coat.

It was dirty and creased, and the wax was cracked.

"Two days ago," he said, "my riders stopped a courier at the Black Pines crossing.

"He wore Savennian blue, and he was riding north to your hall, Rolf.

"I have kept this letter since.

"I wanted the Moot to hear it."

All color went out of Rolf's face.

"It is a forgery," he said.

"You have not read it yet."

Teodric unfolded the page and read it aloud in the flat, carrying voice he used for tallying the dead.

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