Fanfic:Battle Bred
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It was expected that you’d make yourself scarce after the death of your Ward. They went on and on about how horrible the severed bond was, but Sarkaska Jinlo wasn’t sure they’d ever been bonded to anyone like Nelune. They suspected she had severed the bond herself, when she had discovered the lump sickness inside herself, but Sarkaska wasn’t sure. It wasn’t like her to spare him anything. She certainly skewered him with her logic when she wanted to. And then sometimes, she left him wondering how she was dedicated to logic with the way she acted. The only things he was sure of were that he was fine and that he wasn’t needed in the Grey Tower. Perhaps this was his punishment. He really wasn’t sure about that, either.
There was only one place he belonged, if the Tower had no use for his blade, and that was House Kol, deep in Shienar, boldly facing the Blight. He had inherited the lordship of the House at five and twenty, and then, he had left it in capable hands. To his surprise, those capable hands had passed on: it was always a shock to leave the Tower and behold how other people aged. He aged, too: he’d been aware that the new crop of Drin was getting younger every turn of the calendar, but it hadn’t dawned on him that he was getting older at the same time. People he had left in positions to oversee his House were in their dotages, but that wasn’t the biggest surprise waiting for his return to his ancestral estate.
No question but that the boy was his: Sarkaska saw himself in the boy’s proud features and his willowy height. Also, he definitely remembered the boy’s mother. They’d been friends, then he’d been caught visiting her bedchamber and her father had objected. She’d never mentioned a son. The boy wanted little to do with him at first, but by the end of the first fortnight of training in the house militia, Sarkaska had noticed the addition of a tall figure with a waterfall of long, dark hair at his morning sword practices. The boy came slowly closer, like a starved cat to the hearthside.
But one day, there was more than one of them. The second was younger, but no less his. Sarkaska considered how many women in his estates he’d had flings with, and wondered how there weren’t more sons, or daughters, among the denizens of House Kol. The older boy slowly became his student, showing promise in the broadsword, and as they trained, Sarkaska drilled him for information that hadn’t been included in the reports, or the funds, sent onward to Hama Valon. It was no trouble for his estate to breed and present the Tower with upwards of fifty fine colts a year, but somehow, no one had ever bothered to tell Sarkaska that he’d sired more than fine horses. That sounded like Nelune’s doing, but he supposed that no one of Shienaran descent would think to bother an Aes Sedai for anything (they were too valuable and too important) and anyway, she’d likely have told him. Probably while drunk.
Maybe she had. Sarkaska’s memory had never been the finest.
His elder son was Aydrik, and he was six and ten. Sarkaska personally had the boy’s name changed, adopting him into the lineage of House Kol without fanfare or ceremony. His younger son, still not yet possessed of his entire growth at the age of eleven, was Riordan. It took effort to acknowledge Riordan, as his mother had tried to pass her son off as something other than a bastard of the Bastard Lord of House Kol. Still, Sarkaska persevered, and by spring, when the colts were culled and the best earmarked for the Tower’s stables, he had two sons of his House in the party that traveled south to Hama Valon. Aydrik wanted to pledge himself to the Gaidin, but Riordan, thrust from his childhood home and into Sarkaska’s insecure safekeeping, only wanted to be away from Shienar.
Where did you go when you were tired of home? Sarkaska appointed new regents, discreetly (for Sarkaska) inquired as to whether he had any more children, and upon hearing “no!,” headed south, with the riches of House Kol’s extensive stables surrounding him. If home was where your heart was, then Sarkaska carried home with him: he was fond of his sons. They seemed fond of him, too: fiery Aydrik had taken to trying to best him with the training lathes that were all Sarkaska allowed him, but Riordan, moody and frightened, needed a father’s love and guidance. He wasn’t too good at providing either as the journey began, but when the tall, accusatory finger of the Grey Tower rose on the horizon, Sarkaska suspected he’d mastered fatherhood. At least, he allowed, a little. The love that flowed in him for his sons was fierce and genuine, and it competed with the desire he bore to serve, still. Again.
Surprising discoveries to make at six and thirty, but they were his own. The Tower welcomed him back, as if he had gone somewhere other than home, and it had outstretched arms for his sons.
