In Which Halford Prepares for War

November 9, 1168

Arydath nuzzled against Halford's back and draped her arm over his side. He normally wouldn't have minded the contact, but this couldn't have been a good sign; he had been hoping that his raspy, labored breathing wasn't keeping her awake. He waited for the sound of her snores to put his fears to rest, but the minutes dragged past and they never came. "Sorry," he choked at last, quietly enough so that he wouldn't wake her on the off-chance that she was sleeping silently.

She pressed herself even closer; his suspicions had been correct. "Halford..."

As near as she was, her voice was a distant echo. The room was an assortment of blurred shapes. Halford closed his eyes tightly, then reopened them--no change. His senses were failing him. Was this dying? He wasn't sure. He might have thought he was simply falling asleep if tasks such as breathing hadn't become so difficult. He was afraid that it had ceased to be an automatic function, and he would be at the mercy of his blood-starved lungs the moment he drifted off; he wasn't even sure how long he could keep breathing if he vowed not to sleep.

"Halford?" He didn't respond. Breaths were a struggle, and words were a war. If he didn't have to, he would not start what he lacked the strength to finish.

But no one found answers in silence like Arydath did. A faint shift of fibers against his skin told him that she had risen, and the parting graze of her arm betrayed her intention of leaving the bed. "Don't try to talk, Halford."

He didn't. He heard two faint, almost inaudible sounds that must have been her feet upon the dirt floor. The bed creaked, and her footsteps resumed, softer at first and then stronger again. He managed to lift his eyelids just enough to see her petite, shadowy figure making her way to his bedside; she was radiant even in this distorted world of darkness.

"Do you need something?" Her voice was even further away than it had been before. He wished he could hear it properly. He wished he could see her properly. He supposed he was lucky to hear and see her at all.

"Halford? Don't speak, just nod." Did he need something? He didn't think he could eat. He might have drowned himself with a cup of water. I need to breathe...

"Chil... ren." He took a few extra gasps to compensate for the air lost over the course of the word.

"The children?" Arydath repeated. "Halford, don't be ridiculous; they're fast asleep. There'll be plenty of time to see the children tomorrow." He wondered briefly if she was trying to assure herself just as much as she was him, but the very thought was exhausting. Such musings were far more draining than he ever could have guessed.

"Chil..." he rasped again, the second syllable too much for his closing throat to handle.

The urgency soon overcame her denial. She slipped her hand under the blanket and squeezed his own; he felt as if her touch had set the blood pumping again, if only for a little while. "I'll get them. Just keep breathing, all right? Promise me."

He nodded weakly as she hurried out of the room. Halford took advantage of his solitude and took as many extra breaths as he could. He had to get through these struggles before he could fight the wars. He would need the words. He had to tell his children just how much he loved them.

NEXT CHAPTER:

In Which Halford Is Called by Name

February 25, 1167

Lord Severin was by no means a short man, but there were few men alive who needn't have looked up to meet Halford's eyes. Being big and tall had its benefits--he had a long stride, and rarely did anyone make the foolish mistake of picking a fight with him--but this was one time where it seemed like almost a handicap. When you were tall, people assumed that you had power, that you knew the answers, that you possessed the ability to make everything right.

And knowing this made unfortunate tasks all the more difficult. Great things were expected of tall people; men of Halford's stature were meant to fix things--not to tell others that some tragedies were beyond repair.

"Halford," Lord Severin greeted him as he prodded the fire, only turning his head for the briefest of moments. He did not use the honorific of 'Goodman Diarn', for which Halford was grateful; he supposed it was somewhat better to hear bad news from someone one felt comfortable calling by name.

Perhaps the same was true of telling such things, but Halford doubted he would have been any less tense if he could have called the man by some childhood nickname. "My lord. I just came from Adonis's house. Arydath is still there."

Lifting his head, Lord Severin put down the poker and stared forward. "I would assume that Honora had the baby, then, but you don't seem like a man with such happy tidings. Is the child all right?"

"Fine, physically," Halford breathed, the image of that poor little brown-eyed infant screaming itself to sleep in Arydath's arms still fresh in his mind. "They were going to name the baby for your wife had it been a girl, but it's a boy, so they named him for you."

The other man nodded. "I shall thank them when I go to see the boy. How is Honora?"

Halford's upper lip drew inward as he took a sharp breath. "Well... she lost a lot of blood. Arydath needed an extra hand after the baby came, so I went in and I just couldn't believe it. I never would've guessed anyone had so much blood in them."

"Is she all right?" asked Lord Severin, but something in his tone suggested that he already knew the answer.

Halford sighed. "Arydath did everything she could, but... Honora's heart just kept racing. Adonis had to run to get Laveria, and even between the two of them, neither had ever seen anyone bleed out so quickly. There was nothing they could do for her. I'm so sorry, my lord; I know she and your wife were very close, and..."

There was no 'and'. There was just the silence that occurred as the news became reality.

Slowly, Lord Severin turned away from the hearth, his expression inscrutable. "Have you ever had one of those days where you just knew from the moment you woke that something terrible was about to occur?"

Halford shook his head; when one was married to a woman whose intuition bordered on the supernatural, one left such matters to her. Lord Severin's dark eyes flickered toward the ceiling, then met Halford's own. "My youngest daughter, Vera, she sometimes complains of seeing this... color. She doesn't have a name for it, and she can't really describe it--how can you describe a color, really? Anyway, it scares her; she woke me and Alina this morning by running into our room, screaming that the color was everywhere." He shifted, his shoulder rising as if he were trying to crack the joint. "The thing is... every time she sees this color, somebody dies, someone whose death affects the family. I don't know if Vera knows it, and I'm afraid to tell her, but I couldn't help but notice after a few instances. The stronger the color is, the nearer geographically the death occurs."

"So it was strong today, then?" Halford guessed.

Lord Severin closed his eyes. "Strongest she's ever seen, she claims. And then, a couple of hours ago, it just... stopped."

"Honora died a couple of hours ago."

"She did."

Halford watched as the other man began to pace about somewhat, strolling to the edge of the fireplace and back to the other before glancing at it again. "Sometimes I wonder if knowing half the fact is really any better than knowing nothing at all. All day I knew something would happen, but I was powerless to prevent it because I didn't know exactly what it would be."

"There was nothing you could have done," Halford tried to assure him. "There was nothing anyone could have done."

"I know--and yet, that makes it no easier." Lord Severin allowed himself to exhale, then bit his lip. "I shall tell my wife what you told me; Honora was her best friend and close confidante for years before we came here, you know. Go back to Adonis and your wife, and I'll be there soon after, with Alina if she so chooses. Tell Adonis and the children I'm sorry."

"I shall."

Agitated, Lord Severin tugged at his sleeve, his frown deepening. "The death of a good woman. A little girl seeing otherworldly apparitions. You know how some people wonder whether or not there actually is a God?"

Halford nodded. Lord Severin's eyes wondered warily about the room. "It seems to me that if the Bible is at all trustworthy, then the existence of the devil would prove the existence of God; therefore, I believe today has proven the existence of both."

NEXT CHAPTER:

In Which Severin Meets the Other Side of His Coin

October 14, 1165

There were many activities that could be enjoyed with large groups of people, but so far as Severin was concerned, horseback riding wasn't one of them. He'd always enjoyed going for rides on his own, or perhaps in the company of his wife or some of his children or maybe even one or two of his friends, but it was a quiet, thoughtful sort of pastime; he found that the presence of too many people ruined that, making it more of a chore than anything else.

Or, perhaps it was more a matter of context than anything else. Parties on horseback rode to battle. Parties on horseback rode into exile. Ten able-bodied males between the ages of eighteen and thirty-seven who lived in three different shires never just went for a leisurely ride or an afternoon hunt together; there was work to be done, likely of the unpleasant sort.

About a week or so prior, he and Raia and a handful of guards had ridden to the fringe of the forest to meet with her friend Tavrin, who agreed to arrange for this audience with his grandfather, the apparent leader of these forest-dwellers. The next day, the boy had led Severin and Dalston to the exact spot and had given them the date and time--this date, this time.

A handful of men had volunteered to come along, just in case the negotiations didn't proceed as peacefully as planned. Falidor, Aldhein, and Florian were among their number, as were Adonis, Ceidrid, Halford, and Seoth. They had met at the armory at Severin's castle that morning, where they had all been properly fed and equipped, then they had proceeded into the woods, Dalston in the lead, with Octavius to his right and Severin to his left.

After about an hour's ride, they drew near the assigned meeting place and halted. Severin fiddled with the reigns of his horse, knotting and unknotting the strap of leather with the obsessed intensity of a child fighting to find the trick to a difficult riddle. For the first time in his adult life, he wished his father could be with him. He was a lecher and a cad and an altogether dishonorable man, but Lonriad could hold his own in a diplomatic exchange. He gave people what they wanted while achieving his own ends. He steered conversations while convincing the other party to believe himself in charge. He found loopholes that allowed neither side to come out of a situation feeling cheated or looking like an idiot.

And yet, of all his skills, the only one he had managed to pass on to Severin was an enhanced tendency to mentally undress attractive women--go figure.

Dalston swung his leg to the other side of his horse and eased himself to the ground. "Deian? Are you there?"

"Yes," replied a voice from further into the forest. It was a silky baritone of almost aqueous quality; Severin recalled a semi-repressed memory of a drop of clear poison rolling off the rim of a glass phial and into the cup of wine below. "And you, my good sirs, are late. Fortunately for you, I feeling patient today."

Severin dismounted his horse and stared in the direction of the voice, scanning for a silhouette of a humanoid figure; he was unsuccessful. "Sorry."

Wherever he was, Deian laughed the sort of laugh one might have expected to be greeted by in Hell. "I have no need for your apologies. The three of you, simply come hither; leave your men where they are."

Exchanging the briefest of glances with Octavius, Severin nodded, then followed the other two toward the origin of Deian's voice. He repeated Tavrin's description of his grandfather again in his head; tall, white hair, silver skin, all-seeing eyes...

But what he saw was not what he had been told to expect. There were sights, he was well aware, that rendered men speechless, and others that summoned screams from even the most stoic of champions. Some caused people to freeze in their tracks, while some sent their witness leaping backward and running in the opposite direction.

And some, like this one, merited stupefied, slack-jawed gapes accompanied by blinks of disbelief.

It was an orb--a hovering, cloudy orb.

Octavius raised an eyebrow. "You're Deian?"

"Indeed," Deian's voice answered from the orb. "For the sake of your comfort, I decided to contact you from afar using this artifact of my ancestors; I figured you might be somewhat uneasy in the presence of a man who has spent the past few years slaughtering your people at random. I hope this isn't an inconvenience."

His speech was laden with a demon's oily taunting, falsely considerate and even mock-patronizing. It was the sort of voice that was only used to provoke an angry response; Severin resolved not to give him one. "Believe me, it's no trouble. Anyway, I imagine you're a busy man, and you've waited long enough, so we shall be blunt--why are you murdering our people?"

That toxic laugh resounded once more; the poison met the wine and diffused throughout the chalice, undetectable save for the ripples remaining from the drop's impact. "I shan't bore you with the details; all you need to know is that I need your people out of this valley. Since you don't seem to have any intention of heading back to your native Dovia any time soon, I've seen fit to commence in your extermination. Is that a satisfying enough answer for you?"

"In all honesty, no," replied Octavius, the toe of his boot furrowing into the ground. "Why do you want us to leave?"

An annoyed sniff could be heard from the orb. "I am not at liberty to discuss that--particularly not with men who make adulteresses out of their own queens, men who lock their mad wives in filthy dungeons, and men who are so deeply bound within tightly-controlled personae that they no longer even recognize themselves."

By process of elimination, Severin had to place himself as the third. He stared at the orb and frowned, trying to process the words, but failing to make sense of them. "Sorry?"

"You heard," insisted Deian with the hint of a cackle. "You know, it really is a pity that we have conflicting interests, because I imagine under better circumstances, you and I might get along splendidly; we're two sides of the same coin."

Severin scowled. "You're mocking me."

"And if my mocking isn't the truth, then why should it hurt you?" the voice teased. "I like you. I believe I shall kill you last--of course, a man such as yourself would probably rather die before having to live without his precious wife and children, correct? I imagine that woman is the only thing keeping you from some rather self-destructive vices, and it would be a shame to see someone so outwardly honorable descend to such behaviors."

"And now you're just stalling," he concluded, turning to his companions in hopes that the subject would be changed.

Dalston came to the rescue. "There must be some way we can stay here without further inconveniencing you."

"Actually, that is not the case," Deian insisted, "but I would be willing to perhaps stall my quest for your destruction--if you do something for me, that is."

Severin glanced back at the men and their horses. At this point, moving the whole kingdom back to Dovia was almost out of the question. Florian was an exile. Aldhein was up to his eyeballs in his father's debt. Adonis, Halford, and Ceidrid had all established themselves here for more firmly than they ever could have in Dovia.

Perhaps Octavius might be given a title and some lands as a result of his marriage to Holladrin, but Dalston would hold no rank higher than that of a knight in the old kingdom, just like any other second son. Severin himself would probably not even achieve that; he did not think he could raise seven children on a gentleman's income. None of the assembled cared to leave, he could tell from the unease with with they clenched their fists and gripped their reigns--if there was a chance that they could stay in Naroni for however long, they would take it. "Obviously, just 'stalling' your planned genocide doesn't benefit us in the long run, but I suppose we have no choice but to hear you out."

The other two nodded in agreement, then peered expectantly at the orb. Deian allowed a second or two to pass before he spoke. "I want the three of you to play a little game with me."

Dalston tilted his head to the side. "What sort of game?"

"The sort of game that all three of you could potentially win," Deian assured them, "and it isn't possible for just one person to win; either you all win, you all lose, or two of you win and one of you loses. For each one of you who wins, I will hold off on the further slaughter of your people for a whole year, so even if only two of you win, that should give you plenty of time to decide whether or not your half-imagined kingdom is worth dying for, and for you to plan your evacuation if you decide that you value your lives over your delusions."

Octavius frowned. "And suppose we lose?"

The venomous laughter rang once again; Severin's hand flew to the hilt of his sword. "I suppose there's no sense mincing words; any man who loses this game dies."

Severin ground the lining of his cheek between his teeth. "So if we all lose, then not only will you continue to burn villages and maul travelers, but three shires will be left be lorded over by children?"

"Well, you can't expect me to offer to postpone my plans and therefore seriously inconvenience myself and my family without making it into some sort of wager," mused the voice of Deian. "That would be rather unfair, don't you think? Anyway, make your choice--will you play, or will you not?"

Dalston sighed, his eyes darting back and forth between Octavius and Severin. "What do you two think? I think we can risk it; the boys were better groomed for the task of ruling than we ever were, we have to remember."

Severin nodded. "True. It seems to me that it's only responsible of us to accept this wager; better one of us than God knows how many of our people."

"Florian!" Octavius called to his steward. "If none of us survive, tell the king to evacuate the kingdom as soon as possible; he won't like it, but even he's not dense enough to stay in such a situation."

"Yes, my lord," Florian responded from atop his horse.

After sending what might have been his last ever glance to the brave men who had agreed to accompany them, then to Dalston and Octavius in turn, Severin faced the orb and nodded. "All right. We'll play your game."

"Excellent," hissed Deian as a white light burst from the orb, fast engulfing the trees, the sky, Severin's own body. "Best of luck to all of you, my lords; it is always a shame when men such as yourselves meet untimely ends."

NEXT CHAPTER:

In Which Lyraina Plays a Different Game

March 16, 1163

"No fair!" cried Had as Lyraina laughed victoriously. "You're not supposed to hit that hard!"

Lyraina shook her head. "You know the rules; the winner gets to hit the loser. They don't say how hard the winner's allowed to hit, so that just means the winner can hit the loser as hard as she wants."

"You tell him, girly!" chuckled her papa from the fire. At the sound of his voice, her grandmother appeared quite disappointed; Lyraina concluded that she herself had been about to say something similar, but now had to remain silent so as to not appear to agree with him. That did seem like something her grandmother would think: Never let a man know you agree with him--it goes to his head, and before you know it, he thinks he's smarter than you!

"Oh, come on, Had! It's just a game," she did her best to assure him. "It's nothing to get all mopey over, you know."

Had remained silent, simply rubbing his arm with his other hand while his teal eyes glowered up at her.

"What? Hurt by a girl?"

Immediately, he let go of his injured arm and laughed. "Of course not, silly! It's just... you girls and your 'it's just a game'. It's not 'just a game' to us boys, you know--it all counts for something."

"Think it makes up for the fact that you're all shorter?" Lyraina teased.

Had contorted his features into a rather pained-looking face. "You've seen adults, haven't you? We boys get to be taller than you girls in the end, you know!"

"Yes, I'm sure the day will come when you tower over me!" she giggled; given the good number of inches she'd always had on him, the thought was absurd. She squatted and stared up at him, her eyes wide and adoring. "Oh, Had, you're sooooo tall! When did this happen?"

The boy scowled. "Shut up--you're not that much taller than me, you know." He shuffled toward her so that they were nearly touching; if she'd wanted to, she could have easily kissed him. "See?"

"Not really," she informed him. "The view must be different from down there."

"Shut--up!"

Boys! They were just so easy! "Even if you do get taller, I'll probably still be taller than you," Lyraina told Had matter-of-factually. "My papa's quite a bit taller than your papa."

"But my mama's taller than your mama," he protested. "What if we end up being the same height?"

"Then you'll still never be taller than me."

Had opened his mouth to argue, but before he could say anything, Lyraina's papa called, "Had, I'd better take you home now; I promised your mother I'd have you back for your supper."

"Why can't he have supper with us?" Lyraina demanded.

"Because his mother wants him to have supper at his house," her father restated--then, with a devilish twinkle in his eye, he added, "besides, I'm sure you'll be eating enough suppers with him when you're older, hmm?"

She raised an eyebrow. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Her father simply laughed; meanwhile, her grandmother's forehead hit the table.

"Bye Lyraina," Had bade her, pulling her close for a quick hug. "Thanks for having me over today."

Lyraina felt her face grow warm; perhaps she was catching whatever her brother and sister had? "You're welcome, Had. Thanks for coming."

Her father shot the two of them a dark glare. "Don't you touch my daughter before you marry her, you hear?"

"Ewww!" they exclaimed in unison.

"Oh, they say that now," sighed her papa to his mother-in-law as he made his way around the table.

"Shut up and get the boy out of here already, you great useless dolt!" Lyraina's grandmother snapped at him.

"Yes, your majesty. Come along, Had."

Lyraina watched as Had scrambled to the corner of the room to fetch his cloak, then hurried outside after her father. She was still rather disappointed that he wasn't staying for supper--and still trying to figure out what her father had meant with his cryptic comment.

"Men!" moaned her grandmother from the table. "Good luck trying to find a damned mule with less of a brain than any one of them! Let me tell you something, girl--there's only one part of a man's body that was ever of any use to anyone, and you won't be catching a glimpse of that until it's too late and you're already married to the rest of him!"

Frowning, Lyraina shrugged. "I don't know, Grandmama; I think they're funny."

NEXT CHAPTER:

In Which Halford's Wife Is Not Herself

June 11, 1160

"All right, honey, I'm finally home!" called Halford triumphantly as he stepped into his house. Earlier that afternoon, he'd discovered a rotten board in the fence of the pigpen, and had been forced to take only a few minutes to go and fetch a replacement plank from the woodpile behind the house. 'Only a few minutes', however, had been sufficient time for Bacon and Pork to escape.

Pork was a rather fat pig who could not have gotten far in any case, so it had been no trouble to find him; he'd barely made it to the road. Bacon, however, was a prime example of porcine athleticism if Halford had ever seen one. He'd chased her all the way to the duke's keep, then from there to Florian's old house, and then his new house. She'd then led him to the village in Veldorashire and the pond where everyone went to have sex, up to the church by the castle... and then he'd had to stop to take a breath. By the time he'd recovered, she was long gone.

So at last, he'd headed home, only to find Bacon safe and sound in the pen, happily making piglets with Ham. Go figure. Oh well, now he could go to his wife and work on some babies of his own.

Unfortunately, it appeared that Arydath had already gone to bed. The baby-making would have to wait another night. That damn pig!

Frustrated, Halford kicked off his boots and trudged into the bedroom, where he was greeted by the sight of his sleeping wife.

He found her just as he always did--snoring loudly, drooling every which way, eyes rolling back to the of her head as their lids rapidly flickered open and shut. God, she was beautiful; so divine was she in her obvious imperfection that it almost seemed a sin to wake her.

How had he been so lucky to have found a woman such as she? He could search the ends of the earth, he was sure, and never find another quite like his Arydath--there never would be another. It made him almost sad, knowing that his own son would never find a woman who would even come close to the splendor that was Arydath.

Smiling, Halford quickly undressed and pulled back the covers on his side of the bed, careful not to disturb her as he settled himself to the mattress. Then, as he always did, he shuffled toward her, gently wrapping her in his arms as he rested his chin at the nape of her neck.

Suddenly, the snoring stopped--she was awake. Damn his carelessness!

On the other hand... he thought deviously as he began to caress her thigh. Perhaps Bacon hadn't prevented the conception of his fourth child after all.

His fingers slowly crawled up the inside of her legs, past the confines of her shift. He was getting close, he knew; it was only a matter of time before she turned around and...

"Not tonight, you great dolt," she muttered gruffly. "It's not your birthday."

"So...?" he pried breathily. This was odd; Arydath was ordinarily up for sex any day of the week.

She shoved his hand away and pulled herself upwards. "Stupid pig. You know better than that, Corry."

"Who the hell is Corry?" yawned Halford. "I'm not in the mood to be angry right now, but I'll beat the living shit out of him tomorrow."

She replied with a silence broken only by her footsteps as she made her way around the bed. Then--

"Up. Now."

Clearly, she wasn't her usual self. Not wanting to anger her any further, Halford stood. "Look, I don't see what the problem is here. I'm sorry if I did something to hurt you, but you normally don't mind, so--"

"Normally?" she shrieked, cutting him off. "Normally? What the hell is wrong with you, you useless sack of potatoes? None of this is normal--that is, unless you make it a such practice to randomly get into bed with women and fondle their cunts with your filthy sausage fingers that you forget who you've already felt up and who you haven't? Damn you, Halford! My God, just wait 'til I tell Arydath about this! I swear, I'll..."

Just wait 'til I tell Arydath? What on earth did she mean by...?

Oh, God!

The resemblance, as always, was uncanny. She had the same cinnamon hair, the same ebony eyes, the same small stature and olive skin... and yet, this was not his Arydath. It was not her nose, nor were those her brows, and though they were barely visible in the darkness, the bags under her eyes and the wrinkles by her mouth did most definitely not belong on the face of his twenty-five-year-old wife.

But what was she doing here?

"Hilla!" he gasped in horrified recognition. "My God! Why in the hell are you here?"

"Well, after my son died, I figured I'd come over here to live with my daughter," she spat bitterly, "only to find out the ass she married is a bloody lecher! That girl never did know how to pick a man!"

Halford scowled. "In case you forgot, you're the one who made her marry me!"

"Well, we both thought you'd knocked her up at the time, didn't we?" screeched Hilla. "You damn kids and your stupid pranks! I still can't believe she opened her legs just to get the last laugh--you're just lucky her father was long dead at the time, or else he'd've strapped you to the back of a bull and poked it in the ass with a red-hot brand! Now, get the hell outta here!"

That was a request he was only too happy to fulfill.

Or at least, so he thought until he saw his wife just outside the bedroom door, one hand on her hip, staring him down as he entered the kitchen. Halford swallowed nervously.

She had heard it all, he was quite sure, though her expression was unnervingly neutral. Perhaps she was in shock--and really, what woman wouldn't be? Hopefully, she'd realize that it was just all a misunderstanding; surely, she didn't think he'd ever feel up her mother on purpose, did she?

He opened his mouth to explain, but before he could say a word--

"Oh, Halford, you're an idiot!" Arydath cackled appreciatively, catching herself with one arm as she bent forward with unyielding laughter. "You just got into bed with my mother and didn't even notice that she wasn't me! I can't wait until the kids are old enough for me to tell them about this! Can't you just imagine the look on their faces?"

That was all he needed to hear--he understood completely.

"You planned this, didn't you?" he snarled as he lunged toward her, tickling her in his fury--he couldn't bring himself to do anything worse. "Dammit, woman! You and your jokes!"

"You must admit, it was terribly funny," she insisted with a chuckle.

"If it was anyone else, maybe!"

Arydath rolled her eyes. "Oh, don't be such a killjoy! Anyway, I was just going to sleep in the children's room until we get Mother a bed of her own. Join me? I promise you that this woman won't snap at you, no matter where you stick any of your sausages."

"In the children's room?" he repeated as he continued to run his fingers all over her. "Are you mad?"

"The children are spending the night at Florian and Thetis's," she insisted. "Besides, Mother kept me up with her yelling--I have to get my revenge by keeping her up with my moaning."

Halford grinned. "Well, I can't exactly say no to that, can I?"

"Will you kids keep it down?" yelled Hilla from the bedroom. "Relentless little scamps, your generation, always with your minds in your naughty bits! Why, back in my day, we'd've never even dreamed of..."

NEXT CHAPTER: