#medievalesque verse let's goooo

[decidentia]

◈   @pohlepen said: ❛ [ WET ] : our muses find one another in a torrential downpour of rain, both soaking wet. (for farkas 💖) ❜ //  sexual tension prompts.

Homeward bound, the battalion trudged through the valleys and mist-veiled fens, mizzle bleeding through swathes of chainmail, drenching their miserable undershirts.  Mud clung to their boots, sucking the war-weary men earthward, begging them to make their home in filth, to bed down with their decaying brethren.  Darkness crawled over the eastern horizon, diluted sunlight concentrated on the tips of spears, on the combs of helms, flashing like so many dull scales.  Still they marched, his bannermen, towards that stark silhouette.  The castle – their beacon – rose as if from the lake, an ominous and jagged silhouette.  Seat of the king, home of Vilkas the Wise.

Prince Farkas was not known for wisdom, but instead for preternatural strength, for unwavering loyalty.  Beast of the northern territories, he loomed head and shoulders above his men, the executioner of those who opposed his brother’s rule.  Once proclaimed as the Wolf-hearted, now he was simply called the Wolf, as if his heart had been carved out of him.  Farkas supposed that it had.

Wrought-iron gates yawned open and a chorus of shouts welcomed them home.  Good and gentlefolk ushered them into the gatehouse’s open mouth, into the walled embrace of the courtyard.  There, at its cobblestone heart she stood, unsheltered, unbothered by the deluge, no longer a soaking mist but falling in sleet-like rolling curtains.  It dripped from their noses, from the scruff of his droplet-beaded beard, from the wetted ends of their rain-darkened hair.  His brother’s wife.  Defiant, the colour of flame.

“My Queen.”

A change in the wind, and the stabled horses grew unsettled.  Hooves scraped and a handful of shrill whinnies cut through the hum of eager reunion.  Not even the downpour could wash away the stink of slaughter, the blood that stained steel, buried deep in the treads of their boots, beneath blunt nails.  Victory’s perfume was foul.

They stood in the eyes of many, and Farkas gave no sign that, on the night before his departure, he had knelt before her most irreverently, feasting on married flesh, lapping at her arousal like a dog, his tongue coated in her honey.  His brother’s wife, but she permitted no guilt, no second thought, no hesitation to take root.  Perhaps that was why she had mounted him, ridden him as though he were a wild-eyed palfrey, blinding him briefly to the magnitude of their shared sin.  Nothing had existed beyond the parting of her pale thighs, the unsanctified union of their flesh, the sight of the field that drove itself upon the plough.  Rather than slaking, she had stoked his curiosity, and whetted his monstrous appetite.  Not even weeks at war could rinse her from the shallow waters of his mind.

Shale-coloured eyes scraped over the ramparts and turrets, tracing the edges of the sodden royal banners that hung limp and heavy.  It seemed King Vilkas was not in residence.  His gaze slunk back to his unattended queen and, out of respect for her, Farkas removed his helm, long dark hair plastered to the edges of his broad face, painted in rainwater and sweat. The chill gnawed at them both, sinking its dull teeth into exposed skin – but there were secret places where the woman that stood before him remained warm.  Farkas hungered for them, desiring to bury himself there.

Instead, he wrested a burlap sack from his shoulder, one which had been slung alongside the sword almost as tall as he.  Hessian was wet through, as were the bag’s unhappy contents.  Farkas tipped them out – two heads, tar-dipped and grimacing, rolled across the stone.  Auden the Elder, and Alfred the Younger, enemies of the kingdom no longer.