04. Solomon the Miser

                                    

                                          
"I'll kill you! I'll kill you! I'll kill you!"
                          
Reuben sighed. The peasant's repertoire of threats hadn't become any more inventive during the past five minutes. He was trying to get tired of this.
                          
"And why, exactly?" He asked the man he held tightly in his arms.
                          
The man kicked out, trying desperately to free himself.
                          
"I'll kill you! I'll cut your head off! I'll strangle you with my bare hands!"
                          
"Yes, yes. But why? Look." Taking a calculated risk, Reuben took one hand off the peasant, Reuben gestured uphill.
                          
"I'll kill you! I'll kill you! I'll..."
                          
The peasant's voice slowly died away. His eyes had instinctively followed Reuben's gesture—and they had caught sight of his son Peyr in front of the inner gatehouse. The boy was no longer tied. He was sitting cross-legged on the ground, chatting and throwing dice with the guards that had brought him in just a few minutes ago, wrapped up like a beef roulade.
                          
"How... why..."
                          
The peasant's voice was no longer mad with rage. Instead, it was weak, now, and slightly trembling.
                          
Reuben rolled his eyes.
                          
"Oh please. You didn't really think I was going to chop his head off, did you? I have better things to do with my time."
                          
"But you... you said..."
                          
"Don't you know better than to believe anything a noble tells you? If we couldn't lie and cheat like the devil, how do you think we would manage to squeeze so many taxes and tithes out of you peasants?"
                          
The last bit of resistance went out of the peasant. Reuben calculated the likelihood of Volrad still wanting to chop his head off, and decided it was rather small. He let go, and the peasant stumbled away from him. Trembling, he rounded on Reuben.
                          
"Y-you just pretended? Pretended to want to kill him? He's just a child! You must have scared him to death!"
                          
"Oh, I doubt that, somehow."
                          
The little boy looked up from his game of dice. He saw that Reuben had released his father, and immediately sprang to his feet and came running towards them. Reuben sighed, as the little brat held out his hand demandingly.
                          
"Here." Fishing two copper pennies out of his surcoat pocket, Reuben flipped them towards Peyr, who caught them expertly, a grin on his greedy little face. "Excellent acting skills, by the way. Congratulations."
                          
Peyr's grin transformed into a demure little smile and he fluttered his eyelashes in a way that should be illegal for boys. "Don't I get a bonus for my talent?"
                          
"Piss off, you little maggot!"
                          
"Yes, Sir! Immediately, Sir!" With an exaggerated bow, the boy turned and ran back uphill towards the guards and the little black-haired girl who had joined them by now, and who seemed rather familiar to Reuben. No doubt the brat was eager to gamble away the first money he had ever made, or maybe get drunk for the first time in his life. Reuben smiled. He really loved children. They could be so sweet and innocent.
                          
Next to him, Volrad the peasant looked as if a troll had hit him on the head with a horse-sized cudgel. He gazed from his son to Reuben, and back to his son.
                          
"But he... you... you mean... that can't... I..."
                          
"You should be proud of your son." Reuben patted the confused peasant on the back. "He made his silly father see sense and made two copper pennies into the bargain. Not bad for an eight-year-old, don't you think? Now, if you will excuse me, I have a few matters to attend to."