Chapter 2: Castle Brats

“He might be our cousin but in reality he is still just a bastard” Rick said as he tighten his grip around Jason’s neck.

“I wish you would not be so crude about it” Clarissa said.

“Rick, let go of Jason” Chloe said.

“Why?” Rick asked. Jason had long ago stopped struggling and was trying to relax to preserve the little air he was getting.

“It looks as if he is getting blue in the face” Chloe said. Jason heard some shuffled near his head.

“Rick! Let go!” Clarissa demanded. Suddenly Jason could breathe. He kept his eyes closed as he rolled over onto his stomach as the coughing fits racked his body.

“What a wimp” Rick said as he got up and stalked away.

“Are you okay?” Clarissa asked gently as she put her hand on Jason’s shoulder. He was still coughing every now and then. He just shrugged his shoulder and ignored her.

“Just leave him alone” Chloe said. “You and Rick has done enough damage already” Jason could hear Clarissa getting up and walk away without a word.

It has been three months since Jason and Clair moved into the castle of the Duke of Grendel. On his first day in the castle he was told to join his cousins in the school room where two tutors were teaching his cousins. Rick was three years older than Jason, as well as heavier even if he was slightly shorter than Jason. Clarissa was a year older than Jason and even at the age of thirteen she was behaving like a lady, in her speech as well as how she dressed and moved. Chloe was a bit of a tomboy and a year younger than Jason. Both Clarissa and Chloe were beautiful, so beautiful that Jason was too shy to even talk to them. Rick turned out to be a bully.

One of the classes that Rick was good at and Jason had no experience in was the Physical Education class. All four of them had to do it but for the boys it was different than for the girls. While Clarissa and Chloe learned to dance, Rick and Jason was taught skills such as wrestling, boxing, Judo, and Karate, as well as fighting with various edged weapons like swords and knives. Jason had his first introduction to wrestling and the saber and rapier. Jason’s arms and wrists were far too weak to keep up with Rick in that class so he was shown the basics and given some exercises to do to strengthen his arms and wrists.

Even in the wrestling class Jason was no match for the heavier and more experienced Rick. In the class Rick obeyed the old Grendel Marines gunnery sergeant but after class Rick quickly started bullying Jason, doing it subtly and only in front of the girls and their servants. Under the guise of helping Jason catching up, he kept challenging Jason to boxing and wrestling matches. These matches usually took place outside the castle wall next to a small stream that ran past the castle. Clarissa and Chloe would often join them, or invite them to join the girls for a picnic. Each time Jason ended up having the wind knocked out of him or getting choked in some wrestling hold.

What made these events even worse for Jason was that he felt utterly embarrassed in front of the two young ladies. The fact that each of the ladies had a servant girl of about her own age with her at all times, and that these commoner girls also giggled behind their hands as Jason got pommeled and beaten didn’t not help his lack of self-image. Many a night Jason had to fight back the tears as he lay in his bed, sore and stiff from trying to defend himself against Rick, and from the humiliation he suffered in front of the girls.

Jason stayed on his stomach long after the coughing stopped. All that kept him down was his own embarrassment. Then he realized it was totally quiet around him. He slowly sat up, and found himself looking into the large eyes of Chloe. She was alone, her ladies’ maid has gone as well.

“Enjoying the spectacle?” he asked in a less than friendly voice.

“I feel sorry for Rick” Chloe said softly.

“Why are you still here?” Jason asked as he struggled to his feet.

“Somebody had to stay and make sure you are okay” she said as she stood as well.

She was a lot shorter than Jason. Unlike Clarissa who only wore knee-length dresses and shoes, Chloe was dressed in jean shorts and a t-shirt. She was also barefoot.

The blanket and picnic basket that the four girls brought to the little clearing next to the stream were gone as well. Jason just grunted and knelt next to the stream to wash his face in the murmuring stream of clear water. No black eye this time but he could make out the red welt on the side of his neck as well as a green smudge surrounding a scrape on his forehead where Rick scraped his head on the grass. His shirt was missing a couple of buttons as well.

When Jason was done surveying the damage and cleaning himself as best he could he glanced around to see Chloe standing waiting for him. He definitely didn’t want to talk to her or even face her, not then nor anytime soon. On the spur of the moment he turned towards the stream and just walked in.

The stream was not very deep or wide. He only got his pants wet up to his knees before he again started wading the shallows of the far side of the stream. The castle was located at the narrow end of a wide valley with the capitol city farther down the same valley. Behind the castle was the first of several relatively steep ridges making up the wall of the valley.

“Hey, where are you going!?” Chloe called when he didn’t turn around on the far bank of the stream.

Jason ignored her and started climbing the hill. He wanted to just keep going but realized the hill was only the first of many, and the others were higher and steeper. As he descended on the far side of the low hill he heard Chloe again calling his name. By the time he topped the second higher ridge he glanced back and saw her jogging back to the rear gate of the castle. By the time he topped the third ridge he was the same height as the castle towers. Jason couldn’t see Chloe anywhere so he turned and continued up the ridge.

Jason had very little opportunity to be on his own and to just explore in the past. To suddenly find himself alone in the mountain was exiting and liberating. At first he just enjoyed the freedom and silence but by the time he discovered the natural crack in the side of the canyon he was climbing up, he realized he loved the solitude.

He had to admit, total loneliness could get old quickly. He would not have minded if Chloe or even Roxy were to tag along with him. While Roxy always search him out whenever she could, her mother never allowed them to be totally alone, and never allowed Roxy to go anywhere with Jason. He assumes Chloe would have similar restrictions. He was surprised the first time he was invited to go on a picnic with them, until Rick suggested they practice some wrestling moves.

The crack in the side of the mountain made him forget all about being lonely and about Rick’s bullying. The crack was narrow and high. For the first dozen of meters he could see all the way to the clear blue sky but deeper in the top seemed to get narrower. That crack drew Jason like a magnet.

For the first fifty meters the crack was wide enough so he could walk comfortably on relatively level ground. Then the edged above him seem to be leaning in as the ground started sloping slightly up. He could still walk even with the walls much closer to his shoulders. The light at floor level got dimmer and the crack got narrower but not so that Jason felt uncomfortable. Even when there was no more sky visible at all there seemed to be some light coming from above, enough to see where he was going.

Suddenly the floor rose sharply, forcing Jason to scramble up over a pile of loose rocks and dirt. As he got to the top of the pile he realized that in front of him was no light at all, just a looming darkness. As he turned to look backwards he dislodged one of the rocks on top the pile. From the echo of the tumbling rock he concluded that the floor beyond the pile was not very far, and that there seemed to be a large opening which echoed the sounds of the tumbling rock. Then it was quiet again. Jason decided to come back and explore that cave some more, with light, food, and water. That was a quest for another day. He turned back and made his way out of the crack in the side of the mountain.

When Jason came out of the narrow gorge that led to the crack he noticed that the sun was already below the mountain ridge and the valley and the castle below him were in the shadows already. He checked his chronograph and noticed supper time was already underway. He was already late for supper so rushing back would not make any difference. Besides, Jason and his mother were mostly ignored by everybody else in the castle. He doubt if anybody would realize he was absent, especially if his mother again took her meals in her chambers.”

Jason needed to think about his new life and what he wanted to do with it. He decided to explore some more before the sun set. He needed to stick close to the castle so he didn’t get lost in the dark. He ended up making his way down to the stream and walked around the castle perimeter along the stream bank. The ground was level and covered in short grasses so he didn’t need to concentrate on where he stepped as he walked.

Jason realized he was a Nobody, the grandson of the current duke and nephew of the future duke. He would never be a commoner but he also would never be a nobleman, unless something extraordinary happened. With his uncle and his cousin already in line to take the place of the current duke, who was in his middle to upper seventies, he was convinced he would forever be one of those related to the nobility but nothing more.

Jason was not at all happy with Rick’s bullying activities. Rick didn’t go out to bully Jason, he just seemed to like showing Jason and others that he was better than Jason. Jason wondered if the fact that he was three centimeters taller than his older cousin had anything to do with Rick’s attitude towards him. Jason decided there and then to get stronger and more adept in hand to hand combat as well as his skills in the use of bladed weapons. He knew he had to put in a lot more exercise, muscle-building exercises, than he has been doing to date.

It was only when Jason walked up to the closed main gate of the castle, and he noticed the guards moving to intercept him, when he realized that not only was it nearly completely dark but also that he just found the ideal jogging track on the outside of the castle. He just needed to find the best time to start jogging, a time when nobody would look for him of bother him.

“Master Jason, safe and at the main gate” the Grendel Marine sergeant said into his tactical communicator as Jason walked up to the small security door next to the huge gate. Jason nodded and smiled at the sergeant as he stepped back to allow Jason to enter the castle. “Cook is waiting for you in the kitchen” the sergeant said in a low voice.

“Thanks, Sergeant” Jason said. He suddenly realized how hungry he was and started jogging across the courtyard towards the servant’s entrance to the kitchen.

“Where have you been?” Jason’s mother scolded him as she came bustling into the kitchen. Cook, a jolly and plump old lady in her sixties didn’t even blink an eyelid when he walked in. She just pointed to a table against the far wall and brought him a plate of food.

“Just walking” he said. “I wanted to do some exploring”

“This urge to explore had nothing to do with Chloe claiming that Rick was hurting you, by any chance?” his mother asked as she pushed his head to one side to expose his neck. Jason didn’t respond as he tried to keep on eating. Jason was surprised to notice Chloe has also walked into the kitchen and was standing a short distance away looking at Jason with huge sad-looking eyes.

“I’m fine” Jason said impatiently as he pushed his mother’s hands away from him. Both the ladies sighed and rolled their eyes at each other as they walked out.

Ever since Jason and Lady Olivia moved into the duke’s castle, Jason got woken up before dawn when the guards got changed. They were mostly quiet as the guard commander escorted the new guards to their posts but there were still the sound of boots crunching on gravel outside his window and the slap of a hand against a rifle butt before the sergeant continued to the next guard point. In the past Jason just turned around and went back to sleep but today he sat up and checked the time. Through his uncovered window he noticed the day already broke. It was still hours before breakfast or before anybody else would be awake. It was the ideal time to go for his run.

When Jason came out of the back entrance to the castle, generally referred to as the garrison gate, he noticed a troop of marines busy doing calisthenics on the grass outside the castle. It seemed they had just started since they were all still fresh and full of energy.

“Going to explore again, Master Jason?” another sergeant asked as Jason tried to walk past the group without getting their attention.

“Just for a morning run” he said.

“Ralston, how is your back?” the sergeant called.

“Still stiff but fine otherwise, Sergeant” one of the marines responded.

“You can accompany Master Jason on his morning run for today” the sergeant said. Jason started jogging along the path he used the evening before, ignoring the huge marine falling in next to him. Neither of them said anything for a while.

Jason soon realized he was horribly unfit. The marine next to him was not even breathing hard and he already felt as if his lungs were on fire. He urgently needed to walk but didn’t want to look like a total wimp in front of the marine.

“Let’s walk it off for a while” Ralston said as he started walking. Jason was eager to obey.

By the time Jason and the marine made it through half of the running course that Jason was planning on doing, he was too tired to continue. Ralston led him back to the field at the rear of the castle and nudged Jason into doing some stretched and push ups before he suggested to Jason to keep it up and not to give in too early.

School used to be fairly easy for Jason. Attending private lessons by a small group of dedicated instructors was totally different. The subjects they were taught were different. There was a lot less emphasis on mathematics and sciences and more on history, political, and strategic studies. The only subjects that were about the same language studies. At first Jason was surprised when he realized that the servant girls assigned to Clarissa and Chloe as their personal maids also attended the lessons along with Rick, Jason, and the two young ladies. Jason was also surprised to notice that the two servant girls seemed a lot more interested in him than in Rick. As usual Clarissa ignored everybody around her while Chloe seemed to be mostly normal, as compared to the girls in the public school that Jason attended in the past.

Over the next month Jason suffered through all sort of weather and temperature changes as he forced himself to run every morning as well as doing various strengthening exercises.

Once he managed to run the full kilometer course around the castle, he found the marine sergeants more often using his course to send injured or recovering marines to accompany him. They even urged him to run around again, and later added a third circuit. He even got invited to do early morning exercises along with the other marines. Jason realized that the marines seemed to know a lot more about events and happenings around the castle than one would realize. A few weeks after starting to run and exercise with the marines, the sergeant instructed one of the marines to give Jason some wrestling practice as well.

During formal classes Rick and Jason were the only males and always ended up sparring against each other, with the result that Rick turned it into a bullying session, and with the wrestling and boxing instructors not doing anything to hold Rick back. After a few lessons from the marines, Jason started to stand up for himself, and soon afterwards Rick started backing down and even stopped sparring against Jason. That was when the instructors decided to get the help from a few marines. Rick suddenly realized he was not such a great fighter as he liked to think, especially when he noticed Jason fighting the marines with much more aggression than he ever showed towards Rick.

Six months after Jason and Lady Olivia moved into the duke’s castle the duke and his whole extended family moved to the capitol, Grendel City, and into the ducal palace for the season of festivals. The first of four festivals was the combined birthdays of Richard the Fourth, Clarissa, and Chloe. Since all three had their birthdays within a week of each other, Viscountess Sylvia decided to combine the three birthdays into a single week long festival. The second festival was mostly in the form of informal holiday for the planet’s commoner population and was called the Harvest Festival. This festival also lasted a week.

After the Harvest Festival followed the Grendel marines’ graduation ceremony. This was when all the new recruits who started their boot camp training after the mid-winter start of the New Year, finished their initial training and became full-fledged Grendel Marines. That ceremony was followed by the graduation of the new Grendel marine officers from the officers’ training school located just outside Grendel City in the main marine barracks on the planet. The Grendel nobility saw the last two ceremonies as a more accurate form of harvest, the harvesting of new troops. The two ceremonies and all the related balls and functions lasted a week.

It was also during this two-week period that a selection committee from the Imperial Marines training center on Secundus came to Grendel and reviewed all the training records for that class, both marines and officers. While the initial marine training period lasted a year, the training period of the officers lasted an extra three years. This meant the newly graduated officers started their boot camp training four years earlier. What made the visit from the selection committee so much more nerve-wracking for the newly graduated marines and officers was because the selection committee was there to recruit the top twenty percent of all the new marines to join the Imperial Marine Corp, the highest honor and objective any commoner could hope for in the Pleiades Empire.

The actual harvest festival didn’t involve the duke or his family. The various barons were much more involved in the harvesting of crops and products in their baronies. The second week was marked by a number of parades and street parties. While the duke, the two viscounts and various barons and their families gathered to review the parades, the street parties were for the new marines and their families to let loose and enjoy themselves.

While marines with less than ten years’ service were not allowed to get married unless there were special circumstances, numerous young ladies aged from as young as thirteen to full adults, ended up pregnant during this festival. The guilty marines were not allowed to marry the poor ‘innocent’ and unlucky girls, but the Grendel Marine Corp still expected the marines to stand up to their responsibilities. The unlucky girls end up receiving half the pay of the guilty marine until the result of the festival, their ‘unexpected’ offspring, was old enough to join the marines himself, or become pregnant herself.

While sex outside of marriage was heavily frowned upon, the huge discrepancy between the numbers of males and females played a big role in it happening anyway. Cluster-wide, the male population made up for a third of the total population with females making a two thirds. This mean a girl had little chance of catching a husband. For a man to get a girl pregnant usually meant he claimed her as his concubine even if he was already married.

The festivities of the final week was aimed more at the noble families and the newly minted officers. They had their own graduation parade, attended by the duke, the viscounts, barons, as well as a noble representative of the empire, all the way from Secundus. This parade was followed by a number of formal balls, attended by all the nobility and new officers. While the rule on not getting married for the first ten years applied to the officers as well, during these balls it was the turn of the young noble ladies, aged twelve to adult, to have their turn at being ravished and impregnated, but by the new officers.

The financial compensation was the same as for the regular marines but in the case of the officers the families of the poor ‘unfortunate’ young ladies tried very hard to keep the pregnancies a secret. Invariably a lot of the young ladies of noble birth and semi-noble birth all ended up being betrothed during this festival even if they didn’t end up pregnant. Among the noble classes of the empire, marriage was not out of love but for financial or political power. Arranged marriages worked much better if the girl ends up being willingly seduced by her betrothed rather than to just being shoved into each other’s arms and lives, with an announcement that they were now married.

Jason and Rick loved to watch the parades. While Jason ended up standing among the other non-ranking semi-nobility, Rick and his dad stood on the review platform behind the duke. That was also where Clarissa and Chloe ended up standing. Lady Olivia declined to attend the festivities and stayed in the palace.

“I don’t want to come within a kilometer of my husband” Lady Olivia announced loudly when Viscount Richard the Third tried to convince her to join his wife and daughters for the parade and ball during an informal gathering in the lounge of the palace the evening before the officers’ parade.

“And he, in turn, refuses to divorce you” Viscountess Sylvia responded.

“That is because the lands and resources he received as dowry stays her property but under his control. If he divorce her he has to return all those lands and resources. He will be stupid to petition for a divorce.” the duke muttered. “The only person who can set aside your marriage is the emperor himself. If I do it I have to let the baron keep the dowry.”

“Has the emperor ever even set foot on Grendel?” Rick asked.

“If he had it was totally incognito” Clarissa said.

“That will be difficult” Viscount Richard the Third said. “He will have to hide away his imperial wand while acting like a commoner.”

“More likely as a soldier” The duke said.

“What is so special about his wand anyway?” Chloe asked. Jason knew the answer but didn’t bother to reply. He was trying very hard to be invisible and in the background.

“The emperor and some of the upper level nobility have these jade wands” the duke responded. “I have only seen one of them at a distance when I visited Secundus shortly after I became the Duke of Grendel. Rumors have it that those wands have special powers. They can determine if the owner is about to be attacked. According to the rumors the wand can zap the attacker, cooking him from the inside.” Everybody gaped at the duke, the ladies with their eyes wide in surprise.

“What does this wand look like?” Rick asked. “Where do they get them?”

“Where? Nobody knows. Rumor has it that even they don’t know where they got them from.” The duke said. “The wand I have seen was about forty-five centimeters long and about five centimeters in diameter with flat ends. It had some intricate markings carved around the shaft. It looked like it was a solid jade crystal, a pale green color. I have heard that the emperor’s wand is actually a meter-long staff. That would be a lot more difficult to hide if he wants to travel incognito.”

“The emperor is not going to suddenly appear and fix all my problems for me” Lady Olivia said grumpily.

“Would you ever consider going back to him?” Viscountess Sylvia asked Lady Olivia.

“After insulting her by appointing his bastard nephew as his heir, I will forbid it” the duke said heatedly. “As it is, I feel like petitioning the emperor to yank his title from him. He also insulted me.”

“Wouldn’t Jason also be seen as a bastard?” Rick asked. Jason was sitting out of direct sight of everybody as he watched as all the others, especially his mother and Chloe, gave him a glaring look.

“In theory yes” the duke said as he looked around the assembled family members in the palace lounge. “The main difference is that Olivia do not know who the culprit is.”

“While Sand Harbor’s sister knows exactly who got her pregnant.” Viscountess Sylvia added with a naughty giggle.

“I know who Jason’s dad is” Lady Olivia said grumpily. “I just can’t find him.”

“So, Sand Harbor’s sister doesn’t want her children’s sire around while you seemed to have lost Jason’s sire.” Viscount Richard the Third said jokingly to his sister.

About ten months after Jason and Lady Olivia moved into the ducal castle, the duke had a visitor. During the time since the most recent festivals, Jason has made progress as far as his body strength and fitness were concerned. He regularly did calisthenics with the marines and ran a full five kilometers every day, often while being chased by a couple of marines recovering from the sick list but more recently the sergeant tend to send marines on his shit-list to try and keep up with Jason since only the real fit marines managed to keep up with him by that time.

“Go shower and hurry up” Chloe instructed Jason when he walked into his room.

“What are you doing in my room?” he asked. As usual Chloe ignored his question. She has developed the habit of walking into his room without knocking or otherwise announcing her arrival. The only way Jason could be sure of absolute privacy was to lock the door but the key disappeared once he tried that on Chloe.

“Your mom wants you to take breakfast with her” Chloe said as she stayed seated on his bed while watching him intently. Jason just shook his head as he wiggled out of his sweaty T-shirt. He headed into his bathroom, nudging the door closed behind him. He never bothered closing the door before because Chloe seldom stayed in his room when he wanted to shower. He also never took very long showers.

“Hey, stay inside the shower!” Chloe shouted when he turned off the shower. In confusion Jason peeked out of the shower stall, which consisted of a stone wall on three sides with the open side facing the bathroom wall. There was no door or curtain. As Jason peeked around the corner to see where Chloe’s voice was coming from, he saw her sitting on his toilet with her skirt around her hips and her panties around her ankles.

“What are you doing in here when I’m showering?” he demanded.

“I said don’t peek!” Chloe squealed as she tried to cover up even more. Jason stood back and waited. “Okay, I’m done” she said. She was gone when he came out of the shower.

Breakfast was usually a very casual self-help affair, and usually Jason was first in the breakfast lounge, but when he walked in he found the room full of ladies. Besides Clarissa and Chloe there were also Viscountess Sylvia, Lady Olivia, and two other ladies.

The two newcomers were obviously mother and daughter, and both quite pretty. The girl was about Clarissa’s age while her mother seemed to be the same age as the Viscountess Sylvia. Since there were no males in the room, Jason would have liked to back out and go scrounge for breakfast in the kitchen, but Chloe told him his mother wanted him, and by the time he realized there were no males in the room it was too late to disappear.

“Jason, come let me introduce you to my aunt, Duchess Sarah of Bova and her daughter Penelope” Lady Olivia said as she waved at Jason to step closer. All of the ladies stayed seated as Jason bowed in front of the duchess. She gave Jason a nice smile as she held her hand out to him. He took her hand and briefly brushed his lips over the back of her hand, since she was family even if he never met her or even heard of her before. For a duchess she was amazingly young and pretty. With his grandfather being the only duke Jason ever met, he assumed all dukes were old, and since he never knew his own grandmother, he also assumed a duchess should also be old.

“You are quite tall” Duchess Sarah said to Jason. “How old is he?” she asked Jason’s mother. Jason noticed all the females, even Clarissa and the new girl, were watching him intently, as if they were expecting him to suddenly grow a new head or a pair of horns.

“He turned twelve a bit less than a year ago” Lady Olivia said. Lady Penelope didn’t move or extend her hand so Jason made no effort to do anything more than give her a slight bow.

“He is exercising with the marines every morning” Chloe volunteered as she gave Jason a big smile. That comment resulted in Clarissa rolling her eyes at her sister while Lady Penelope lifted one eyebrow as she studied Jason some more. When Jason realized that the duchess and his mother were chatting softly with each other and the Viscountess, he backed away towards the buffet where he helped himself to breakfast.

He was facing another dilemma when he turned back towards the table. He didn’t know if he should ask to join them or sit by himself at the other end of the table. Since none of them were looking at him he decided to sit by himself. He was relieved when the females continued to ignore him.