Uhtred: Young Pride.

In his sixteenth year of life Uhtred was bigger than any of the boys he knew back home, and so his ego was wounded when he was told to stay behind. He overshadowed most of the soldiers, and could beat a man down in practice as though he was mud, but he was still treated like a boy. A well-off boy, of course, but that did not ease his hurt pride.

“You have ne’er had a beard ‘pon you, boy! Eh?” the old bastard would shout, laughing like a mule. Sir Regerald was an awful man. He drank, and the liquid would constantly pour out of a hole in each cheek from where an arrow had coursed through them. He would often joke about how his wife had tried to persuade him to keep the shaft in his mouth so that he wouldn’t talk. When he ate mutton, he would purposefully feed gristle through one of the small gaps and just shake his head to fling it aside. His mouth was always dry because of them, which meant that he smacked his lips to try and squeeze something out of his desperately abused saliva glands. When he walked, his legs bowed as though he had sat on a palisade’s tip.

But he could ride like the devil, and crush a man with his boot, which made Uhtred loved him. Indeed, he thought that he was squired to the best knight in the whole kingdom; as though this hunched, grey-bearded, foul-mouthed devil was Sir Zith himself. The prince squire took his lickings, as Regerald called him, with obedience and understanding. Today was the exception.

He sat on a felled log, turning his sword over in his hands. It was his first real sword. He had often snuck into his father’s quiet places to play with his things of war. He could still remember the crushing weight of the mail that he had put on when he was nine. It was so heavy that he had needed the assistance of a passing servant to get out of, while he was wallowing on the floor in desperation. Evangilene and he would play soldiers sometimes, but she was always very prissy and would cry the moment Uhtred hit her too hard with his stick (a sword the stuff dreams were made of).

A sword should be brilliant and glittering and full of gold and jewels encrusted in the pommel and guard, etched brilliantly with the deeds of the bearer into the blade so that foes could look upon it and tremble. A blazing, fiery weapon, proud and mighty. The sword that was now held in sixteen year old hands was none of those things.

Uhtred grimaced at the sight of it. Not even silver on the guard. It was a blank, completely undistinguished blade. Ugly, even. All of the knights who’d held it supposedly marvelled at the balance of the thing, of the way it sang in the air, and the good steel of it, but the prince suspected that they were humouring him.

Sitting there, the prince didn’t feel like nobility at all. For a moment, a great fiery injustice broiled in his belly. This was supposed to be his army! The soldiers around him, men who sharpened their weapons with stones, laughed loudly, drank sour spirits, and stomped on fires gone dead anyhow due to the mud and early morning dew; they were supposed to obey him! Yet he received no salutes as men passed, and not even a second glance despite the brightness of his mail.

Sir Regerald saw his squire’s distemper as he approached, pouring mead from his cheeks and kicking the lad in the shin on arrival. “Lazy! Lazy git, y’are! On your feet, now?” A grunt received the obedience of that mildly vicious suggestion, and Regerald turned away to face the soldiers milling about the camp. The old knight cuffed his squire upon the head, grudgingly cheerful as he mussed his short hair
“Thi’ will be your third shield wall, eh boy?” That was not quite accurate. The prince had always been situated in the back, well away from the fighting where he would be safe.
Uhtred nodded.
“A fine thing, that! Don’t you piss y’self, hear?”
Uhtred nodded.
"Grow your hair out, boy, you look like a priest." As though it could be accomplished at that very moment.
Now Regerald noticed a crumpled bit of paper soaking up moisture from the mud. “That the King’s letter?”
Uhtred nodded.
The old knight nodded, too. “She’s a good lass, I hear?” Regerald formed most speech in the manner of a question, whether it was or not. “Comes fre’ a good, noble bloodline, eh? And young! I pity the poor girl, m’self. You’ll probably rip her in twain!”
Uhtred had only the most rudimentary understanding of these things, and thus nodded. He was outraged by the prospect, however. His father was marrying him to some foreign heathen! Did she believe in God? Did she even know who the real god was? Did she speak their language? Was she ugly and full of pox marks? Could she piss without supervision yet? It was an utter cruelty to pass a young, strapping man such as he off to some child he’d never even met! What if she smelled?!

All of this outrage, hurt pride, and sour ale that dribbled on his shoulder made the prince reckless. Fine! If he could not take charge of his distant future, than he would certainly determine his immediate one. Besides, if he helped win a victory today, then perhaps he would be given his choice in other futures. A plot was beginning to formulate in his mind. And as he looked upon that naked, gleaming, bland sword he decided that the old knight, his father, and all the men of the world would be proven wrong. He would fight.

He would never cease.