The Sacrifice

Prologue

In times of war, when all the gold in the kingdom's coffers went to defending the rights of the monarch to the throne of another kingdom, when the dignity and power of the bloodline was at stake, there were no glorious courts or grand celebrations.

Klaus Mikaelson, only recently knighted by his own father, bore himself straight and regal in the heavy custom black armour that sent a tremor of horror to all that beheld him in battle. It had recently been cleaned, and now the armour gleamed in the half-shadowed chapel as he waited at the end of the aisle for his bride. His little French bride, one not be refused, an offering that made his own father crow with pleasure when he received the missive and the offer.

"You would have me wed this girl, one I have not seen," Klaus had stated, without the lilt of a question. One did not expect to love a bride. In truth his father did not love his mother, he did not think. Ever truer, Klaus doubted that his own father held any such regard for his many children. "What does this bride bring to the table?"

"Riches from France you need," the king told him, "and another bloodline in the family to bring your bid closer to their throne." His father paused and curled his finger to Klaus, bidding him come closer. "None of your brothers have the instinct, the drive, the hunger that you have, Niklaus. None of your brothers were born to be king. You are my remaining hope to reclaim what was lost to me by the accident of being born out of the female line. Our bloodline shall not lose our inheritance because of something so trivial, son. Your children with her shall be direct descendants of my mother, sister to a French king, and grandchildren to another."

Klaus took a deep breath, and with a somber nod acknowledge the same passionate ambition to his father. "Then if this girl is my key to open those gates that have been locked to you, father, use her I will."

"Use her, and let me be alive to hear the crowds in the fatherland chant their welcome," the king muttered. He affectionately slapped Klaus on the cheek, then gripped the nape of his neck. "All hail, Klaus, son of Mikael, king of England and France."

Klaus closed his eyes, squeezed them tightly shut as the words washed over him. "You humble me, father, yet all the same fill me with pride that you have such faith in your son."

"Then wed, and be king."

"I am ever your humble servant, father," Klaus acknowledged.

In the dark chapel he stood, and awaited as the delegation from France crowded the entry way to the chapel. Klaus did not let pass a single face that he did not burn into his brain. These were the witnesses to his marriage, and would each be previous proof when he does wage his war for his throne.

Klaus noted the handful of men who served as the princess' escorts, memorized the features. On his marriage bed he would ask his new bride for the names for his records. There were the young ladies that Klaus imagined have been sent to be part of the princess' household.

He certainly hoped the princess was not sentimental. He would not have ladies of the French court, loyal only to their own king, be seated in the most intimate circles of his kingdom. It would only be intelligent to install his own sister in his queen's household, until Rebekah herself was sent for her own marriage to strengthen the family standing.

And then he saw the litter covered by the heavy veil. For the practicality of this marriage Klaus felt the thrill that rushed over his entire body. He supposed it was only healthy. He would spend the rest of his life with his bride, and as a man of eighteen years he was at a prime to bed a wife and create spawns that would fill all the castles that he would take.

Armies of his children, all loyal and loving to him, blind in their faith, fanatic in their admiration.

The veil parted, and the view was hampered by a rather generous-bodied woman that stopped before it. Klaus held his breath. The ample woman moved to the side and revealed to him a girl-a young girl-an ethereal beauty of a dark-haired girl, with skin as flawless and pale as he ever did see, with full red lips and large, dark, liquid eyes.

But a child nonetheless.

He threw a look to his father, who stood at the opposite end of the altar and regarded the child with a sneer. Klaus turned back to the child, who walked forward with her hand in the woman's, a woman he now realized was a maid. The child walked with her head held high, and he noticed the ever so slight tremor of her bottom lip. The girl was terrified, yet in the way she walked, struggling to keep upright despite the heavy, bejeweled wedding gown, she showed her courage.

Klaus could curse his cousins, for granting a child for marriage. He could tell his own father's rising fury. A child, whom likely had not had her menses, was useless in empire-building, for a man who hoped to secure his claim to a throne through children born of two bloodlines.

"What is this?" his father roared, his voice echoing in the chapel. "This is preposterous!"

The child stopped still on her tracks, throwing a look to her nurse. The slight body drew closer to her nursemaid. Klaus heard the muttering in French.

"Father," Klaus said, his voice low. He descended from the raised dais and walked towards the child. He knelt before the princess. "Je m'apelle Klaus."

From the skirts of her nurse, the princess extended a hand. "Blair," she said to him. Klaus took her hand and placed a kiss on her knuckles.

The girl. The child was pure royalty coursing through her very veins. He could see on her face the long lines of kings and queens they would produce together, with this beauty and courage thrumming in such a slight body. She was the key that would help unlock the monarchies of all the lands across the channel, not just France.

"I shall marry her," Klaus declared to his father. He turned to the king that stood by the altar. "What is a few more years to wait, father, while I amass what lands I am able and forge what alliances I can? Let me surround the French throne through might. I shall build our holdings from shore to shore before we even consummate this marriage."

"A child, Niklaus," the king growled. "I should send her head back home to her father."

Klaus returned to his father's side. He grasped his father's hand, feeling the painful unrelenting gold in his fist. "A Waldorf child, in whose veins flow the blood of conquerors, blood more precious than any the world has seen in five hundred years." He whispered, "I can use her. Let me possess her now."

The king turned to the young princess standing at the aisle. He extended a hand towards the girl and her nurse, then bid them go forward. "Bienvenue dans la famille, princesse."

Part 1

There were pangs of hunger in the depths of her belly and fear in the eyes of her father and mother, both unfamiliar, both staggering in the way they had come upon them one day. The entire town of Calais gathered round the governor it seemed. To Caroline Forbes it was a day of infamy when the governor stood in the square and declared the only demand of the prince that lay in wait outside their thick city walls.

She had been much too protected. Her parents spoke of the siege in whispers as if she could not notice that the marketplaces had dwindled in the last months, that no food nor wine came through the large city gates, or that they had not seen the countryside from within the walls as the gates never opened these months past.

Calais was under siege, and the town was much too proud to surrender, waiting for its king to aid them.

Yet one by one they fell-from hunger, from thirst, from illness. Inside the wide expanse of the town they fell. And soon what meat could be found was prepared and cooked to feed a town forsaken by its king. It started with the cattle, with the fowl. Soon the fish dwindled as even on the walls that faced the sea the enemies abound.

"The Black Prince," Caroline heard on the streets, from voices quaking with fear. "Tis the Black Prince waiting past the city walls."

In truth she stank, she knew full well. But for a city so positioned by the water it was difficult now to even get a fresh supply. The English and the Black Prince's men so guarded what came in and out of the town as the Black Prince starved out the city. She could not be ashamed. The entire town was filthy and starving and even so they gathered unhealthily crowded in the square to hear the governor in their desperate state for good news of their salvation.

Her mother and father would not have wished for her to learn their sorry state, but she saw the way her father looked at her in the morning. She doubted he had the strength to keep her from much of the truth anymore, not when there was not even a slice of bread on the table.

Caroline fell into step with the crowd, saw her father standing by the governor up on the platform. They conferred in quiet whisper, somber, and when her father raised his head and scanned the crowd that watched. Caroline frowned as she watched, and then felt a familiar hand resting on the small of her back. It was her mother, smiling sadly at her.

"Is it true that the very devil awaits us outside, mother?" Caroline whispered. At her mother's look of alarm, Caroline shrugged. "The entire town is dying, which means I die along with everyone else. You may as well tell me the truth. Is it the Black Prince camped outside the walls these many months past?"

Her mother nodded. "But we shall keep you safe, Caroline, I swear."

Caroline noticed the rings under her mother's eyes, and the heavy slouch of her father's shoulders up on that platform. Before she could offer to keep herself safe, the governor cleared his throat to address the town.

"Good people of Calais, the Black Prince has razed towns and cities across of France and the rest of the continent," the governor began. "But Calais withstood him and his army for nigh on ten moons. We have held out for our king, but our king is not powerful enough to defeat this army."

There were audible gasps, as if this was the first time some of the citizens had recognized that they were no match for the soldier prince. Caroline turned to glare at one such surprised and now sobbing citizen. She had been protected, but certainly she could not be surprised that months cut off from supply and civilization did not mean that France could not defeat the English.

"What do they want?" Caroline called out to the governor, much to the dismay of her mother. "Is it riches the Black Prince desires? We have jewels and gold and fine cloths. Let them pillage the town and save our lives."

"We have held out too long, cost the Prince too much. He shall not cease this siege until blood flows red in Calais." The governor continued, "I know the stories well, of the massive damages and the lives lost under the Black Prince's blade."

The governor turned to the crowd, and Caroline turned her head to look at the same direction that the governor did. She noticed that the wealthiest merchant of Calais, Bartholomew Bass, intently spoke with his son Charles. And then there seemed to be quiet reflection as Bartholomew grasped his son by his neck, then kissed his forehead in some dignified goodbye.

And then Bartholomew climbed up to the same platform as Caroline's own father William.

"Good citizens of Calais," declared Bartholomew Bass, "the Black Prince shall have his fill of blood, his sacrifice, to spare every last man, woman and child in Calais. He has deemed the suitable punishment for the audacity of this city not to surrender to him when he marched against us the year before."

Caroline watched in horror as lengths and lengths of rope appeared in her father's hands, and the governor began looping the rope around their bodies.

Caroline turned with a look of surprise towards Charles Bass, who stood with the crowd and watched silently as his own father was tied with the ropes.

"Six of our elders, our most prominent, our burghers," Bartholomew said aloud, "to carry to the Prince the keys to the city and stand in for the people of Calais. I shall be first, and William Forbes shall be with me. The Governor shall take his part."

"No!" she cried out. "Father, you cannot. What of me? You cannot leave me."

"Let them be."

The townspeople erupted into nervous chatter, and some into sobs. Caroline watched in horror as one by one those so beloved by the town stepped forward to take the three remaining places. Vanderbilt. Gilbert. Bennett. All to hang in exchange for the city.

As the burghers walked slowly down the streets towards the gates that had long been shut, Caroline watched the townspeople reach out to them with blessings and prayers. She met her father's eyes, saw the apology in them, could not and did not accept it.

She turned towards Charles Bass, who she had not spoken to even once in the years she had lived in Calais. He had been away much of his youth, sent by his own father to represent him in his businesses with the king and the surrounding cities. Her mother had cautioned her against befriending the Bass son—too angry, too rich, too vain, too extravagant, too much of everything that the entire time often frowned upon. Yet in Calais, Charles Bass sat atop many of the people their own age.

For a brief moment she thought her mother would stop her. Instead, Elizabeth Forbes watched teary eyed as the parade of the doomed men steadily moved towards the gate. Her own mother was too absorbed by the ill-fated march to pay much attention now to Caroline and her own mistakes.

"How could you allow this?" Caroline demanded from the young man.

"Did it seem like I had a choice?" Charles returned. "It was my father or us all. What would you have done?"

Her eyes narrowed at Charles. "Certainly not chosen the way that would ensure my father's death."

Charles shook his head. "You have no understanding of the word sacrifice," Charles concluded, "if you could choose to end the lives of hundreds for what is easier for you. Such a selfish child."

Caroline's eyes narrowed. "My father is marching to a certain death, and so is yours. I would take my selfishness than be you. You would throw away your own father, so you would be safe. Which of us is selfish now?"

"This was my father's choice, so let him choose. I have no need of anyone," Charles declared.

Outside Calais

She sat atop her mare, gentle as it was. The wind blew from the sea, whipping her thick dark hair and veil. The princess studied from afar her husband, reading nothing of the somber way that he stared at the city walls that for months would not give. What stubborn wall it was, thick and strong not even digging trenches around it could sent the considerable fortress crumbling. What a stubborn city it was, months on end without restocking meat and grain.

Such a marvelous, stubborn, strong city.

Blair wondered how many graves were freshly dug in the city since Klaus and his army surrounded the walls.

It had been ten full years since she was in French soil, and upon her return this was the very first that her husband would take her. Months in France and life was nothing but the dreary embroidery in the tent while she sat to listen to the tactical planning that her husband conjured mere feet away from her.

This was the household that she ran, far different from her education to run her husband's castle. The Black Prince's bride of ten years ran an army household. There was little food in stock, little to drink. She had in her role as Klaus' bride sent home to England and the king the call for more supplies. A day or two of delay and the men behind Klaus Mikaelson would be weak as Calais.

These were affairs that Klaus had no mind for, and this was how she served her role. Blair certainly served no other purpose, seemed to be unnecessary in the grand scheme of his quest for an empire.

"We should return home," Blair advised as she slowed her mare alongside his destrier. "We shall achieve nothing here."

When he turned to her it was with fury, sending her heart racing to her throat. "Your place is in the tent, princesse. Once again you mind business not yours."

Blair's lips thinned. She sat straighter on her mare, shoulders high despite the heavy weight of her cape upon them.

Still he blamed for the radical reduction of the food and wine, when during a meet at the far edges of the camp where he had gathered his leaders, Calais had opened its gates and out stumbled old men and women, children, many citizens that would be useless in battle and merely consume much of the reserves in the city.

Blair had given the desolate group respite, served them bread and wine and gave them much to spare before sending them on their way. Calais may have abandoned them, and Blair had seen enough of the Black Prince's raids to know what he would have done. And so hurriedly, as the night began to fall and she had known that Klaus would soon return, Blair had ushered them into a way around their own camp so they may escape without pursuit.

The Black Prince had come, had roared, had sent his army after them in his fury. He could have filled his trebuchets, the catapults, with the corpses of the aged men and rained dead bodies of the wretched upon Calais. Instead he was out weeks' worth of food and drink, and was left with a bride who had shamed him before him own men.

"I could kill you," he had warned her grimly as he pushed her into her tent.

And even as she stumbled back upon her cot she raised her chin and parried to him, "Yet you need me."

"One day I shall be strong with lands and men, and perhaps I will have no need of your blood to bolster me."

She had drawn a breath of relief then. "When that day comes, Klaus, I shall offer my neck to your blade. Until then I have a voice and a will, and they shall together work to spare every drop of French blood that they can."

And at the proud declaration he had seemed to rest back on his haunches and asked, "What has ever happened to my innocent child bride?"

The yawning moan of the heavy city gates of Calais drew her attention back to the present, where for the first time Blair took a peek inside the ravaged city. Her lips parted as she craned her neck to see. It was a sight to behold, one that so easily broke her heart. Slowly, with the audible weeping of the city behind them, men as old as her father would have been or even older, walked out of the city gates. The first of the men was older, his hair white, noose around his neck as he bore loosely in his hands the keys to the city and the castle.

"This is it," she heard Klaus murmur beside her, triumph lacing the wonderment in his voice.

To Blair, it was humiliation, anguish.

In the far distance she felt the heated gaze on her, and her eyes drifted over the old man's shoulder and to the crowd standing by the gates, a young man with his dark eyes narrowed as he watched her. Reluctantly, almost impossibly, Blair tore her eyes away from him as she turned to Klaus.

"You think to murder them all, old men, weak and defenseless?"

The burghers were some distance away, and Blair was certain in the middle ground between Calais and the rest of his army, they were the only two that could hear the other.

"You do not have a say in my decisions. You cannot have a hand in my kingdom, wife."

She looked coldly at him. "I have no hand in any part of your life, and I have allowed it." At his smirk, and his glare, she said instead, "I have with full gratitude accepted that you have allowed me. But I will not sit idly by as you murder good men who would sacrifice themselves for their own city."

"You are a child. You have no head for politics and for building empires."

When he turned towards his men, Blair stopped him. "Loyalty. Do you not admire loyalty above all else, crave it more then you crave love or wealth or any affection?" Blair gestured to the burghers. "These men are prepared to die out of loyalty, Klaus."

From the gates of Calais Blair sensed the struggle. She turned in time to see a young woman, who ran in full abandon towards the burghers, in such wanton, unrestrained exertion that her golden hair fell free of its bun and the lace that covered it. The young woman flung herself towards one of the burghers, and madly pulled away at the noose around the man's neck.

"Family, Klaus," Blair whispered. When she looked back at her husband it was to see the dark fascination in the Black Prince as he watched the young woman grasping at her father's shoulders as she sobbed. "You cannot murder these men in cold blood, and tear apart their families."

"You are a sentimental girl, Blair," Klaus said quietly, still not taking his eyes away from the scene before him.

That was all he thought of her. She swore she was much more, knew she was much more. "Tell yourself all you wish to believe, your grace. I will not sit still in a dark cabin, protected from the truth of what evil my lord husband can do. Kill them before my eyes, my lord, if you dare." Blair paused. "Or show me your compassion. I have not seen your compassion for so long. I am one of very few who shall attest that there is mercy inside you. I know you. Let them go, Klaus."

Looking directly into her eyes, he grimly declared, loud enough so that his men would hear the order, "Round up the heirs and heiresses of Calais, my friends, and haul them aboard. The princess requires company and England can refresh its coffers with ransom from the French." To Blair, he said, "This is how you tear apart families, shame your enemy, and profit for England. Let me be clear, princesse. You do not know me. No one knows Klaus Mikaelson. No one ever will."

He kicked the side of his destrier, and rode away towards the shore. The men galloped past her towards the city of Calais. Blair watched frozen on her mare as the young woman who had so bravely broken away from the city to hold her own father was taken. She saw the man who had been studying her with such loathing step forward, then peacefully and with acceptance allowed himself to be pulled behind another of Niklaus' knights.

One by one, the heirs and heiresses of Calais were taken hostage.

This was the Black Prince's mercy.